[HN Gopher] The Lost Art of Research as Leisure
___________________________________________________________________
The Lost Art of Research as Leisure
Author : altilunium
Score : 423 points
Date : 2025-03-19 10:09 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kasurian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kasurian.com)
| geff82 wrote:
| Currently re-visiting and re-describing old tumulus tombs in my
| area where the last survey was decades ago and where no current
| description exists. Also, I found tombs via Lidar maps that have
| been unaccounted before and I am cataloguing them. All that as a
| hobby and as a member of an association of local history.
|
| Things can be done and should!!
| vintermann wrote:
| I'm doing genealogy. Practically everyone in the hobby is doing
| research for leisure.
| submeta wrote:
| What a wonderful article! Thanks for sharing!
|
| I've been thinking a lot about how _research_ -- as both leisure
| and serious inquiry -- is making a comeback in unexpected ways.
| One sign of that resurgence is the huge interest in so-called
| "personal knowledge management" (PKM) tools like Obsidian, Roam
| Research, or Notion. People love referencing Luhmann's
| Zettelkasten method, because it promises to structure and connect
| scattered notes into a web of insights.
|
| But here's the interesting part: the _tools_ themselves are often
| treated as ends in their own right, rather than as vehicles for
| truly deep research or the creation of original knowledge. We end
| up collecting articles, or carefully formatting our digital note-
| cards, without necessarily moving to the next step -- true
| synthesis and exploration. In that sense, we risk becoming (to
| borrow from the article) "collectors rather than readers."
|
| I read Mortimer Adler's "How to read a book" 30 years ago. It
| mentions severl levels of reading-ability. The highest, he says,
| is "syntopical reading", which is a powerful antidote to this
| trend mentioned above. Instead of reading one source in isolation
| or simply chasing random tangents, syntopical reading demands
| that we gather _multiple_ perspectives on a single topic. We
| compare their arguments and frameworks, actively looking for
| deeper patterns or contradictions. This process leads to truly
| "connecting the dots" and arriving at new insights -- which, in
| my view, is one of the _real_ goals of research.
|
| So doing research well requires:
|
| 1. *A sense of wonder*: the initial spark that keeps us
| motivated.
|
| 2. *A well-formed question*: something that orients our curiosity
| but leaves room for discovery.
|
| 3. *Evidence gathering from diverse sources*: that's where
| syntopical reading really shines.
|
| 4. *A culminating answer* (even if it simply leads to more
| questions).
|
| 5. *Community*: sharing and testing ideas with others.
|
| What stands out is that none of this necessarily requires an
| academic institution or official credentials. In fact, it might
| be even better done outside formal structures, where curiosity
| can roam freely without departmental silos. In other words,
| _anyone_ can be an amateur researcher, provided they move beyond
| the mere collection of ideas toward genuine synthesis and
| thoughtful communication.
| biofox wrote:
| "How to read a book" sounds like a ridiculous premise for a
| book, but I can't recommend it highly enough. It's one of the
| best introductions to academic skills I've ever read. I
| assimilated much of Adler's advice at university through trial-
| and-error, but seeing the reading process analysed and
| systematised into an algorithm was genuinely enlightening.
|
| Worth noting that Adler was also the editor of Encyclopdia
| Britannica's Great Books Series:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...
| submeta wrote:
| I learned more about intellectual etiquette & inquiry from
| this book than from my teachers and professors. And I learned
| about the canon of european / western literature.
| ikr678 wrote:
| The best home cooks I know do this meta or syntopical reading.
| For a new dish, gather a few different recipe sources and then
| look at all the common elements, and work from there.
| zvr wrote:
| This comment is better than the submitted post.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Community: sharing and testing ideas with others.
|
| Where do you find community interested in serious amatuer
| research?
| tokai wrote:
| Don't buy it at all. Global book market is healthy and as big as
| it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even
| scholars did in a month two centuries ago. It has never been more
| accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it
| is now.
|
| The article is rolling out the same old bourgeois doomsday theory
| people like Stefan Zweig and McLuhan subscribed to. Luckily the
| democratization of literacy or even leaving the medium of the
| book behind is the opposite of an issue.
| ravenstine wrote:
| This is why my brain kind of short-circuits when I'm asked the
| question "do you like to read?"
|
| I know what most people actually mean by that, but my gears
| start turning because not only do I know that I read more than
| any of my ancestors. Reading is like breathing to me.
|
| I guess I do it out of leisure in a sense, but it's a way of
| life in many respects. Perhaps I don't read much fiction, but
| not a day goes by that I'm not cracking open an encyclopedia
| (aka Wikipedia), reading blog posts, investigating research
| papers, and reading some eBook I've stripped the DRM from on my
| Kobo.
|
| And I'm an oddball - so if I'm reading that much, then surely
| there are plenty of people out there reading stuff.
|
| I do sometimes wonder whether Gen Z and Alpha are even reading
| anything outside of school anymore, but that's probably more of
| that doomsday crap I'm prone to slipping into as I gradually
| become an old man.
| SeaGully wrote:
| The boom of Romantasy seems to be attributed at least
| partially to GenZ. So depending on how you classify reading
| Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Romantasy GenZ is definitely still reading.
| mmooss wrote:
| > It has never been more accessible to research any kind of
| subject and phenomenon than it is now.
|
| Absolutely - it's a miracle, almost. But relatively few people
| really do it because they are rarely pursuing truth. They are
| reading and watching misinformation and disinformation.
|
| > Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most
| of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month
| two centuries ago.
|
| Enjoy yourself; still, most of that is social media and that's
| equating things based on their medium. It's like saying, 'I
| look at lots of paintings' when you're talking about your
| walls, because Jackson Pollack's art and your walls both use
| paint and some of it even splattered.
|
| Also among books, there are instant romances and _On the Origin
| of Species_ and _Analects_. There 's nothing wrong with the
| former, but the fact that they all share a medium is almost
| meaningless.
|
| > democratization
|
| I'm familiar with the expression, but I think it's an attempt
| by propagandists and nihilists to ennoble their work. It's
| 'democratization' that they can spread misinformation and
| disinformation. Social media is not comparable to books; it's
| professional media, only 100x worse.
| bsindcatr wrote:
| I perused the three posts on this blog, and believe that an LLM
| was heavily used, because I used one daily, and this is the way
| its content reads.
|
| The leisure the author speaks of may be their own, and the
| research of which they speak today may be done by a machine.
|
| I think the intent is good, and if you as the reader get insight
| from it, then it is still valid, but I cannot read it, because I
| don't feel a thread of consciousness helping me experience life
| with them.
|
| If an author chose to instead pair with an LLM to research on
| their own and write themselves about it, perhaps it would be
| different.
|
| Why do these posts keep getting to the front and even to the top
| of the HN feed? We are no better than machines, I guess.
| arjunaaqa wrote:
| I feel the same way.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I see the blogger only has 1 post.
| dynm wrote:
| One of the underrated downsides of the professionalization of
| research is how much it sucked the "fun" out of things. It's
| strange, but research papers in most fields are written very
| differently from how people actually talk to each other.
| Professional researchers still communicate informally like normal
| humans, in ways that are "fun" and show much more of how they
| came up with ideas and what they are really thinking. But this is
| very hard for outsiders to access.
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| One of my favorites:
|
| https://thorehusfeldt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/soda201...
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Agree! I spent the last 15 years teaching myself genetics and
| human biology. I will send emails to researchers and we often
| some long, interesting, conversations. I even assisted a
| researcher at Stanford, helping her set up a study on a
| nutritional genetics. And another even stole my idea about
| ethanol addiction and did a study on it as well.
|
| They have no idea I only have a degree in American History and
| Secondary Education. When they do ask some actually get upset
| thinking that I was tricking them! I used to get upset, but I
| know now how much some people hold their degree close to their
| ego.
|
| Science needs more "art", that is the fun part.
| adestefan wrote:
| Adam Mastroianni talks about this a lot. His best example is
| at:
|
| https://www.experimental-history.com/p/things-could-be-bette...
| brightball wrote:
| I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college
| when I heard some things from people that just didn't make sense
| or didn't seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited,
| read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between
| the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has
| never been easier.
|
| It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than
| fiction.
|
| When I do Bible study now I do it the same way, find whatever
| sources I can to cross reference with other history at the time.
| Strongly recommend it.
|
| What's funny is that history is the subject I was least
| interested in all through school.
| pplonski86 wrote:
| Could you please recommend some history books?
| JadeNB wrote:
| The book that really got me hooked was _The rise and fall of
| the Third Reich_ , by William Shirer. He was a journalist in
| Berlin before WWII, and you can see the journalistic
| background shine through in his narrative. A lot of what I've
| read since then has been in trying to trace back the
| references he gives to how the events of WWII recapitulated
| older conflicts, which I then went and found references in
| which to learn about.
|
| Barbara Tuchman is a delightful mostly medieval historian,
| and Mary Beard is a wonderful Roman historian. Both have a
| decidedly personal voice, which happened to click well with
| me; your milage may vary.
|
| Someone else in the thread mentioned Simon Sebag Montefiore,
| and I've enjoyed most of what he's written. It feels a little
| less scholarly than some other popular historical sources,
| but that's just an informal impression from a tyro.
|
| Lots of people enjoy Yuval Harari, but I do not enjoy him at
| all.
| sethammons wrote:
| A people's history of the united states is a good one. Most
| history is written by the generals and leaders. This account
| is colored by the oft ignored people.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| These days, Howard Zinn, Chomsky, and most other left wing
| intellectuals of yesteryear have lost their cultural power.
|
| It doesn't help that most of these folks are 1. So sold
| into the "American intelligence bad" narrative that they
| look at every left wing crack point and act like nothing
| bad happened under them.
|
| Even Allende, the classic example of a "good Marxist"
| leader, was a total asshole and likely deserved to be shot.
| Zinn isn't going to tell you that or about when the US IC
| got it right... they also won't mention that the ultra
| conservative death squads were still often the lesser of
| the two evils.
|
| Sorry, but Howard Zinn is post modern neo Marxism. Might as
| well go read Deleuze or Foucault.
|
| Also sad to realize that the left in general has been
| extremely neutered. The plot to "Canadian Bacon" by Micheal
| Moore is happening IRL and no one even knows that movie
| exists except random old American leftists.
| mmooss wrote:
| > lost their cultural power
|
| Should people only read what's popular, what the dominant
| culture approves of? Are more unpopular ideas more wrong?
| You apparently dislike Chomsky; would you have liked
| Chomsky more when those books were more popular?
|
| > the "American intelligence bad" narrative
|
| You are ignorant of these issues if that is your
| understanding. Certainty also seems to support that, as
| does the ranting.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| "Postmodern Neomarxism" basically doesn't exist outside
| of a few fringe academics. Recommend you read Derrida's
| _Spectres of Marx_, which goes into detail about how dead
| academic Marxism was even in 1993 (spoiler: it's even
| deader now). His hopes for a "New International" never
| materialized and died with him.
|
| Even Zizek's more recent _Too Late to Awaken_ is a
| depressing slog of an elegy, and he is the closest thing
| to a real "Neomarxist" you could ask for.
|
| Relatedly, Foucault and Deleuze do not write anything
| remotely like Zinn. Comparing them is wholly meaningless,
| they're playing entirely different games.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| That particular book is of special interest to me as a
| stirner shill/fanatic. The "Specter of Marx" he's
| refering to is Max Stirner! Derrida is trying to answer
| the question of "Why did Stirners book, The Unique and
| its Property, trigger Marx to write The German Ideology
| and dedicate over 300 pages to shitting on stirner?".
|
| I've cover to cover read that book, and it's garbage dog
| shit just like Zizek is. The moment that you start trying
| to wax poetic about whose what ism is when you become
| post-modern neo marxism. It's academic ivy league
| eliteist careerism and its disgusting. Fashionable
| nonsense. Zinn and Zizek are playing the exact same game.
| One just writes more coherently than the other.
|
| If you think Hegel or Marx are worth citing, you're a
| pomo/fraud. If you think Psychoanalysis/Freud are worth
| citing, you're a pomo/fraud. Deleuze killed himself. Mark
| fischer killed himself. Althussar killed his wife.
| Wilhelm Reich was a loony who after writing his analysis
| of the sexuality of fascism went nuts about "Orgone"
| machines. Foucault, Sartre/De Bouvier were pedos and
| collaborators. Even my favorite half-breed of pluralism
| mixed with pomo shit, Arendt, was in love with the arch
| nemesis of "oh they were literally a nazi " pomos -
| Heidigger! And who can forgot Carl Schmitt?
|
| JUST WRITE THESE IDIOTS ALL OFF ALREADY AND LEAVE THEM IN
| THE DUST BIN OF HISTORY!
| pjmorris wrote:
| I took someone's suggestion to read a more orthodox US
| history 'A History of the American People', Paul Johnson,
| before diving in to the Zinn book.
| mmooss wrote:
| How do you compare them? Johnson, iirc, is conservative
| (is that right?); Zinn is liberal.
| deepsun wrote:
| > Critics assert blatant omissions of important historical
| episodes, uncritical reliance on biased sources, and
| failure to examine opposing views.
| sethammons wrote:
| and this history texts are provided as a counter balance
| to the biased sources and failure to examine opposing
| views of other history texts.
|
| take in a range and make informed decisions. When a book
| presents any factoid, something else was chosen to not be
| presented. And that choice colors the narrative. Those
| who say "teach the facts" miss that the facts chosen
| paint a bias.
| deepsun wrote:
| You basically say that everyone is biased, take the
| middle.
|
| But I've seen with my own eyes living in dictatorial
| countries, that there are wild differences in how much
| bias there are. If one source lies 5% of the facts and an
| opposing source lies 95% of the facts, taking the middle
| leaves you with 50% lies, heavily biased to one side.
| You'd better just go with the first completely and have
| only 5% lies.
|
| I've read several real scientific historical papers, and
| I immediately see they don't work like that. They are
| typically very-very boring, with tons of views and
| sources mentioned, considered and scrutinized. In fact,
| that's a good test for how scientific is a paper -- real
| scientist knows about all the works in their field, so
| omission of anything is a red flag. So they really strive
| to include everything available.
| sethammons wrote:
| One history says Christopher Columbus sailed across the
| ocean with his three ships and made friends with the
| Indians.
|
| Another history says, with quotes from him, that the
| people he found are very friendly and will make great
| slaves.
|
| I'm not saying take the middle. I'm saying there is a
| narrative. Who's story are you hearing and why? The usual
| narrative we get supports those with power. Who's
| narrative is suppressed and why?
|
| You get a narrative about Columbus the explorer and
| bringer of civilization to the new world. The other
| narrative is that he brought untold suffering and
| despair. Did he expanded European civilization and
| manifest destiny, or did he murder and enslave and
| subjugate people and their children to the horrors of
| chattel slavery?
|
| Which one is a lie? Which is fact or not fact? It's both.
| It's neither. It is the narrative that is painting the
| story that is being told.
|
| > so omission of anything is a red flag
|
| you would then agree that all the factoids and accounts
| presented in A People's History of the United States
| _not_ being present in other works and education of our
| students is a red flag. But, honestly, and you know this,
| you can't include _all_ the facts and stories. By picking
| something, something else is not included.
|
| You pick a photo to share of your family smiling, you
| didn't pick the photo of them fighting. Is your photo a
| lie? Heck, you may not have even thought to take a photo
| of the family fighting. Now future generations will only
| see the good times grandpa had. Is that a lie?
|
| A People's History is littered with first hand accounts
| and journal entries. It is full of quotes to other
| authors who've collected similar. If you can point to the
| 95% of lies it contains, that would be great. I don't
| think you can though. I think the best you can say is
| that you disagree with the narrative, and to do so, you
| must ignore the real stories from real people.
| vonunov wrote:
| Handwriting in America, Thornton
| i_love_retros wrote:
| Curious, what events are documented in the bible that
| correspond to actual historical events? Does it have good
| historical accuracy for the time it was written? (forgive my
| ignorance, I have never read the bible)
|
| Have you read Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore? I admit I
| didn't finish it, but what I did read was very interesting.
| Although I admittedly didn't fact check it.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I'd recommend to just start reading it to get a feel for it.
| It's not all history, there is poetry, proverbs, lawgiving,
| etc.
| fpsvogel wrote:
| The relationship of the Bible to history is complicated. I
| recommend the "Pete Ruins ____" episodes of The Bible for
| Normal People podcast, which is fun but also grounded in the
| academic field of biblical studies. Here's the first one for
| Genesis, where the historical aspects are especially complex
| and interesting:
| https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-277-pete-enns-
| pe...
| derektank wrote:
| With respect to the New Testament, Josephus' "Antiquities of
| the Jews" is the most contemporary historical account of the
| region, written in the late 1st century, and attests to the
| execution of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas, the rule of
| Pontius Pilate in Judea, and some other events attested to in
| the New Testament. Some of these events are themselves
| corroborated by Roman authors and archaeological evidence,
| such as coins and the Pilate stone.
| dustincoates wrote:
| The Bible is a mixture of history, poetry, wisdom literature,
| and much more. There's a really fascinating study Bible (ESV
| Archaeology Study Bible) that does a fantastic job of putting
| everything into its historical, sociopolitical, and
| geographical context.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| A prince of Egypt that believed in the religion of the sun
| was forced to leave and took some slaves with him. For
| example.
| freilanzer wrote:
| Same with geopolitics now, since the USA have basically sided
| with Russia against Ukraine. I want to have a solid background
| to be able to interpret current events and tendencies.
| LastTrain wrote:
| You've been siding with Russia since 1776?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| (We had a kind of falling out when Capitalism felt
| threatened.)
| JadeNB wrote:
| > You've been siding with Russia since 1776?
|
| Huh? In most senses of "siding with," I don't think that
| this statement has really been true for this broad a sweep
| of US history.
| LastTrain wrote:
| To say I misread your original comment would be an
| understatement, my apologies.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I am not freilanzer, who made the comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410830 to which
| you responded, so, if you do think an apology is
| warranted, then it should probably be to them.
| saulpw wrote:
| > What's funny is that history is the subject I was least
| interested in all through school.
|
| Indeed, history is largely lost on kids. You need to see some
| real world events play out before you can care about history.
|
| I also think, if you're going to teach history to children, it
| should be taught in reverse chronology. Basically here's what's
| happening now, and that's due to what happened last year, which
| is due to what happened last decade, etc. Work your way back to
| the Greeks and Babylonians. Like James Burke's Connections.
| vik0 wrote:
| >it should be taught in reverse chronology. Basically here's
| what's happening now, and that's due to what happened last
| year, which is due to what happened last decade, etc
|
| Boy, oh boy, you will hate Karl Popper if you ever decide to
| read him lol
| thehyperflux wrote:
| I do a ton of product research for leisure...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Don't know about you guys, but reading has become more and more
| of a burden for me.
|
| It is as if -- I have greatly narrowed my interest such that most
| books are not interesting any more. Even the sci-fi and fantasy
| books, once I loved, lost their magic.
|
| Nowadays there are only two types of books that excite me: 1)
| those about software/hardware engineering, such as iWoz(I even
| bought a few Tom Swift JR books for my son), Showstopper and Soul
| of the New Machine, and 2) books about existentialism such as
| Shestov's philosophy books.
|
| I suspect it has something to do with getting older and getting
| kid(s).
|
| What about you guys?
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I wonder if after you've read the classics and modern greats
| you have to start searching out and take chances on books you
| don't know. I also think people will happily walk away from a
| show or movie but for some reason won't walk away from a book.
| If you're 30% in and you hate it, just walk away.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah I feel that too. It's kinda hard to go away from a book,
| even a borrowed one and I have no idea why. Maybe I'm trying
| to convince myself that I should like the book but I don't.
|
| I used to read a lot of books including classics and others
| when I was younger, before 25, but then Internet took off so
| I barely read books. When my son was born a few years ago I
| tried to go back and found my interests narrowed to a niche.
|
| Anyway, maybe I shouldn't complain as it helps to focus...
| latexr wrote:
| > I also think people will happily walk away from a show or
| movie
|
| I'm not so sure. I feel like people may walk away from a show
| in between seasons, when a new one comes out and they realise
| they aren't interested anymore. But in the age of binge
| watching, it's harder to realise "I'm not actually enjoying
| this" because each episode is made to be addictive.
|
| With movies, my feeling is that even when people realise
| midway they're not enjoying it, they experience sunk cost and
| will watch to the end hoping it gets better.
|
| I remember (but I'm not finding) a This American Life segment
| about a woman who relished in exiting the movie theatre
| midway through a feature. It wasn't seen as a common thing.
|
| > but for some reason won't walk away from a book. If you're
| 30% in and you hate it, just walk away.
|
| I completely agree. I'd even say you could do it sooner than
| 30%.
| nottorp wrote:
| The question is, have you stopped reading same-ish books only
| to watch same-ish TV series?
|
| While various obligations can reduce your entertainment time,
| I've noticed that most people complaining about that tend to be
| able to list tens of Netflix series that they watched. And then
| wonder why I have no idea what they're talking about and when I
| have time to read.
|
| > Even the sci-fi and fantasy books, once I loved, lost their
| magic.
|
| Have they, or have you finished all the great books that were
| published before the present, and now need to wait for someone
| to write new great books?
|
| 95% of what gets published in a year in any medium is probably
| only worth watching/reading if you're _very_ bored. Your saving
| grace when you are born is there is a century of previously
| published good stuff. But you 're eventually going to run out.
| watwut wrote:
| > Have they, or have you finished all the great books that
| were published before the present, and now need to wait for
| someone to write new great books?
|
| I know that for me, the kind of books I used to like lost
| appeal. I would read them multiple times, but I just do not
| find them pleasurable anymore. It is not about me finishing
| all the great books humanity wrote up to now. It is about me
| changing.
|
| For the record, the same thing happened with some
| movies/series. They used to be super great, when I am trying
| to rewatch they are not.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I don't watch movies or TV shows very much.
|
| For TV shows I keep going back to the same ones I loved, that
| is the X-Files. And I can't even think of a second one I'd go
| back to watch...damn there is really no other TV show I'm
| going to watch, unless you count kids show such as Bluey.
|
| For movies I'm also going back to the ones I loved to watch.
| I think I did add maybe a few throughout the years, but it's
| safe to say that most of the movies in my library are older
| than 10 years old.
|
| The thing about movies and shows is, reality can be weirder
| and more interesting. Most of the movies and TV shows are
| pretty naive when they try talking about politics or such.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Without even knowing you, I think I know exactly what is your
| problem. You're not reading with an open mind. Most people only
| read books where they agree with the author and agree with the
| books content. Get some books that you'd probably find
| disagreeable, and read them with the benefit of the doubt.
| Assume the author is right, and if you really can't do that,
| just remember that the writer is probably dead since long and
| it's just a reflection of how some people thought at the time.
|
| I found that disagreeable viewpoints very seldom takes away any
| value of a book. Much worse is if it's written badly,
| repetitive, slow, etc.
|
| Have you read the Bible? It's shockingly different from what
| people believe is written there. It is a post-apocalyptic
| survival guide, as well as a collection of human stories and
| ideas that might date back hundreds of thousands of years.
|
| Have you read the Quran? Reading it is essential to
| understanding Muslims and their faith. It is first and foremost
| an anti-christian book, and the faith is foremost anti-
| christian. Just as christendom at one time was foremost anti-
| pagan.
|
| There's an immense wealth in mythology from all over the world
| to read, which takes you on journeys much more profound than
| any fantasy book.
|
| Have you read the communist manifesto? It is a short pamphlet,
| energetic and quite fun to read. Even an anti-communist can
| understand why it riled up so many people.
|
| Have you read the books written by historical figures, instead
| of about historical figures. The former is much more
| interesting, while the latter is written by some dusty
| professor with an agenda.
|
| Think about the most provocative book you can imagine and go
| and read it. It's just letters on paper, nothing more.
|
| As for sci-fi and fantasy, you shouldn't read that. You only
| have one life, why would you waste it? You can and should read
| von Brauns book "Mars Project", which is the only science
| "fiction" book which should have been written.
|
| For fiction, there are hundreds of classics, and the older the
| more interesting.
|
| When I read a book and there's an interesting reference to
| another book, I always download that book as well. This takes
| you down paths that you never thought existed, and now I have a
| couple hundred books already on my reading list. If one is a
| dud, I just delete it.
| ComposedPattern wrote:
| > Have you read the Bible? It's shockingly different from
| what people believe is written there. It is a post-
| apocalyptic survival guide, as well as a collection of human
| stories and ideas that might date back hundreds of thousands
| of years.
|
| You must mean hundreds _or_ thousands, right? Modern homo-
| sapiens are not hundreds of thousands of years old.
|
| > Have you read the Quran? Reading it is essential to
| understanding Muslims and their faith. It is first and
| foremost an anti-christian book, and the faith is foremost
| anti-christian. Just as christendom at one time was foremost
| anti-pagan.
|
| I've only read parts of the Quran in translation, and I
| wouldn't say that I understand it that well. It's not
| organized in a narrative structure like the bible, and there
| are a lot of parts that are impossible to understand without
| outside knowledge, like a surah that condemns Abu Lahab but
| doesn't explain who he was [1]. The Quran is not really the
| sort of book that you can just read on its own without
| guidance and expect to understand.
|
| So, with the preface that you should take what I have to say
| about the Quran with a grain of salt, I'm not sure how you
| could take away that it's _primarily_ an anti-Christian text.
| Yes, it criticizes Christians and Jews a lot, but it also has
| good things to say about them. For example:
|
| "Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabians--
| whoever truly believes in Allah and the Last Day and does
| good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will
| be no fear for them, nor will they grieve." [2]
|
| The main villains of the Quran are polytheists (like Abu
| Lahab). It talks about them a lot more and never has anything
| good to say [3]. By contrast, the New Testament barely even
| mentions polytheists or pagans - most of its criticism is
| directed against Jews.
|
| Muslims traditionally believe that Jesus was the messiah,
| that he was born of a virgin, that he performed miracles, and
| that he's going to return and rule the world in a future era
| [4]. It's also said that Muhammad was identified as a prophet
| by a Christian monk named Bahira [5]. Early on, Orthodox
| Christians identified Islam as a heretical form of
| Christianity, not a different religion [6]. These do not seem
| like traits of a religion that is foremost anti-Christian.
|
| [1] https://quran.com/111
|
| [2] https://quran.com/2/62
|
| [3] https://quran.com/search?query=polytheist
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahira
|
| [6] https://archive.org/details/johnofdamascuson0000saha
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's easy for anybody to find a Quran and read it for
| themselves. The book cannot be more clear and concise
| regarding christians. Considering that Mohammad was
| familiar with christianity, and that the message most
| repeated in the Quran is that you should not join God with
| other gods and that you will go to hell if you do - I would
| say that the primary message of the book is anti-christian.
| Not against Jesus, but against those who worship him as
| God.
|
| The most famous saying in Islam (which you all know) is
| clear about the strict monotheistic message. While the most
| famous saying in Christendom (which you all know), is clear
| about the trinity message.
|
| As for joining God with other gods, this became a hallmark
| of Christendom even more so than just the trinity. But this
| is also after the time of Mohammad, and bears no relevance
| when talking about the Quran.
|
| No matter which, the Quran and the Bible are two very
| different scripts, even though there is a popular belief
| that they are similar. Anybody who has read both can see
| that similarities are very few.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Sci-fi and fantasy suited me when I was young as they stretched
| my mind to possibility.
|
| The older and more cynical I have become, they're kind of just
| bullshit. I'd love to say their escapist but they fail even
| there as I my escapism increasingly requires a modicum of
| plausibility. I think there are still some books out there that
| might ring true in terms of seeing people and society for the
| way they are, but then there is a lot of Harry Potter.
| mmooss wrote:
| What you describe you want is, in a sense, the definition of
| 'serious' literature. A value of it is that it has real
| insight about real people and life.
|
| A lot of people reject it - because of school/authority
| associations, because they didn't understand it in high
| school, for culture war reasons, etc. When you put all that
| aside and just read the book, it is what you describe - the
| 'great' writing offering soaring, beautiful, tranformative
| insight, the work of genius.
|
| I think it's hard to understand without experience in the
| world and life - real responsibility, pressure, failure,
| success, real injury, healing, trauma, seeing evil and good
| in yourself - whatever your age. I'm not sure it's accessible
| for most high schoolers and often people don't try it again.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah I get the same feeling about books, movies and TV shows.
|
| The moment that they try to talk about politics or something
| serious, I feel they fell short. Reality is way more complex
| than what they are trying to reveal.
|
| But I'm going to try some hard sci-fi and see what happens.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Genuinely I cannot remember the last time I read a _book_. I
| read absolute crap-tons of interesting stuff online, but books?
| Those out-of-date, read-only, closed-perspectives from people
| with _their_ ideas /thoughts/biases/prejudices they're trying
| to implant into your brain? Nope.
|
| I think there is a lot of elitism about reading and the
| intellectualism around it. "What books are you reading right
| now?" is a sort of shibboleth or even one-upmanship ("Oh yes I
| read that _last year_ - you should read this other thing that
| _I_ think is better /more clever" etc).
|
| Don't play the game. If you don't like reading books and don't
| get much out of it, don't do it.
|
| I get a secret glee when I have mentees and younger folks
| asking me about what books to read to achieve success or get
| hired etc, and I tell them "don't waste your time reading books
| - learn <thing> instead." It ruffles feathers, and I am sure
| I'll get roasted on here too, but there you go! :)
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I think there is a lot of elitism about reading and the
| intellectualism around it. ... Don't play the game. If you
| don't like reading books and don't get much out of it, don't
| do it.
|
| I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that it's good to
| get your knowledge wherever you enjoy getting it, as long as
| it's from a reliable source and you're checking them when
| possible for any claims you intend to rely on. With that
| said, I think that:
|
| > Genuinely I cannot remember the last time I read a book. I
| read absolute crap-tons of interesting stuff online, but
| books? Those out-of-date, read-only, closed-perspectives from
| people with something they're trying to say? Nope.
|
| may go too far the other direction in implying that books
| have nothing valuable to offer, which I think isn't true.
| (I'm also curious about the "from people with something
| they're trying to say" line, which, coming after the others,
| sounds like it's meant to be criticism. Surely that's true of
| wherever else you get your information, too? I can't imagine
| wanting to read the writing, in any form, or watch the videos
| or listen to the podcasts or whatever, of someone who isn't
| trying to say something.)
| mattlondon wrote:
| > can't imagine wanting to read the writing, in any form,
| or watch the videos or listen to the podcasts or whatever,
| of someone who isn't trying to say something.)
|
| There is too much "agenda" in most things I read. If you
| get to the stage of getting a publishing deal, then you
| likely have "something to say" that is advancing that
| agenda.
|
| Grass-roots publishing online has people trying to push
| their own agendas too of course, but you don't need to have
| an "edge" that publishers need to put up your own website
| or blog or whatever. You can put up something entirely dull
| and mundane.
|
| And the crucial thing IMHO that the internet has that books
| don't have is the intangible and throw-away nature. How
| many times have you read a book all the way to the end even
| though you are not enjoying it or not getting anything out
| of it? I've found you'll often feel you must finish a book
| simply because you physically have the copy and that
| perhaps you spent real money on it too, so it feels like
| the right thing to do. Online you close the tab the moment
| you decide it's not what you want, and you don't keep on
| consuming the author's agenda just because you have the tab
| open in the same way people feel compelled to finish a
| book. You can open many tabs at once, scan over hundreds of
| sources, discarding what you don't need etc in a matter of
| minutes ... meanwhile with a book you've just got past the
| preface and you'll keep on donating your limited time alive
| to read through to the end of the book often even if you
| don't want to (obviously some people do just abandon a book
| mid-way through, but I've found that very often most people
| don't)
| tpoacher wrote:
| I have exactly the same experience, and in fact, I'm slowly
| starting to lose interest in the 'nerdy' books too.
|
| However, I don't necessarily think the problem is books. I
| think the problem is 'time', and how reading has evolved in my
| life to be less about "the enjoyment of the action of reading"
| into "the necessity of acquiring the information" (even if that
| 'necessity' is intended for 'leisure' / 'pleasure').
|
| It's as if the modern world has conditioned us all to skim-
| read, prioritise, and optimise information-to-words ratio. I
| wouldn't "mind" sitting down with an unknown book and giving it
| a good-old college try, in principle, but in practice, any book
| I read now competes with some other book in my backlog, which
| I'm also not ever going to read because that too competes with
| another book in my backlog, and I simply don't have the time,
| because I should be reading more stuff for work etc instead.
|
| I remember I told a friend of mine once, that I was practicing
| speed-reading, and that I was getting good at it, and reading
| books faster as a result. I remember the look of horror on his
| face, he thought it was a terrible idea. The whole point of a
| book is to read it slowly, he said. There was this idea that,
| if you speed read it, even if you do in fact read everything in
| it, you've still only just looked at the all content, but you
| haven't really experienced or savoured the book, or allowed
| yourself to get lost in it. And he's right, I think, and his
| words do still echo and haunt me a tiny bit to this day. I do
| remember what that feeling of getting lost in a good book was
| like, and I really miss it. But I don't know how to get it
| back. Certainly not between breaks while reading reports at
| work.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| That's where I'm at. Not just with books, but with movies and
| games, it just feels like too much time to commit to a single
| leisure activity. And I'm not a workaholic or super busy
| otherwise, so I could make the time to enjoy a book. It's
| just a mindset I didn't used to have, that says I shouldn't
| just read a book and enjoy it, but should be taking notes and
| learning something while I do, or listening to the audiobook
| so I can do some other tasks at the same time.
|
| I'm not sure how that happened, but it feels like it happened
| to a lot of us.
| wantless wrote:
| I have begun to recognize a sense of restlessness in myself
| that prompts me to optimize for information, as you have
| said, and I think I can begin to name it: anxiety due to
| withdrawal. It is illuminating to have once been a smoker
| because the feeling is quite similar. That our tastes have
| changed is due at least in part to the addiction of
| information. And a solution, at least in part, is to accept
| the pain of withdrawal.
|
| It can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish good habits
| from bad where they involve the necessities and pleasures of
| life, such as food and information. Bad habits tend to
| comfort us in the moment but weaken us over time; good habits
| tend toward opposite. When I am honest with myself, I
| recognize the majority of my information seeking as quelling
| some anxious feeling rather than building true knowledge or
| wisdom, and the majority of the information I sought to be
| naught but empty distractions in the long term. And I also
| recognize my backlogs as a series of deaths that I have not
| accepted: I retain them to grasp onto the passing
| potentiality of my youth; I hold fast to the mirage of
| different lives.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Perhaps you have just found your niche. Like the person who
| reads romantasy or the person who reads history, you like
| engineering and existentialism (not an uncommon pairing) and
| you get something out of it.
|
| From the age of 20 to 38, I had a hard time reading books. I
| grew up reading Tolkien, Dan Simmons, Timothy Zahn, but the
| internet exploding in speeds and online content replaced my
| reading habits. So I moved to just read that.
|
| I recently got back into reading books by trying books I used
| to read. I'm fine with Tolkien, but I couldn't stomach 3
| chapters of Heir to the Empire. Star Wars was just boring to me
| now. And I found that I like mystery/spooky books more than I
| did before. I can still read Tolkien and Hyperion without a
| problem and I also like my nonfiction software/hardware stuff
| too.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah you could be right. I'm actually in a similar boat. I
| used to read a lot of fictions before 25-ish but then I got
| hooked by the Internet so I rarely read any books since then.
| I used to enjoy Tolkien and D&D novels a LOT but recently I
| found them to be meh.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Fiction is hard for me too, but I was able to reincorporate
| it by making it more social. I joined a local book club and
| they often read fiction books, so it's usually the better
| fiction out there and not stuff that I would pick out
| myself. I almost make it like a reading assignment, but if
| I don't like it, I will just not read it and say I didn't
| like it and listen to the discussion.
|
| My wife also reads fiction so occasionally I'll read a book
| she is so we have something to talk about.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| The blog post gives a slight posh impression. With the excessive
| quoting of authors and their book but in an incoherent manner
| that only strengthen the authors narrative by "look many famous
| people agree with me" and not _why_ they agree with you.
|
| I agree with the general sentiment of the article but I think it
| kinda defeat itself in its need to reaffirm it's own excellence
| over actually being informative. He could've skipped everything
| above the "Against hollow reading" Section and got the same
| message across.
|
| The message below that section is valuable but only in _value_.
| It doesn 't really get in to _how_ to practice it. It laments the
| modern information landscape but doesn 't tell us _how_. His
| point can be summarized to "don't be a passive consumer of
| information, be active in asking questions, refine those
| questions, and develop answers".
|
| How? Write. Write for leisure, not for anyone else but yourself
| and read it with critical lenses you use when reading others.
| Only then will you _need_ to refine your writing and thinking,
| which leads to new questions, new exploration and perspective.
|
| Research of any kind is an iterative process. You find new
| information, you create a bias in favor of it, try to explain
| many things with it. Then you realize that it doesn't explain
| everything, and now you have to go back to reading or finding out
| more. It's easier to catch yourself getting stuck with one idea,
| when you write those down and review them. Reading as he put it,
| the introspecting one is only complete when combined with
| Writing. (Or at least deep contemplation that resembles the
| structure of writing)
|
| This article reminds me of "I don't like honors" by Richard
| Feynman[1]. Too caught up in how one ought to be, rather than
| being (or informing).
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared
| mmooss wrote:
| > The blog post gives a slight posh impression.
|
| I don't know about that, but so what if it did? Why is it even
| worth remarking on?
|
| I care about the value of their ideas; they don't need to pass
| a culture war test first.
| sergioisidoro wrote:
| I think reading is an essential skill, but we also need to get
| reading out of the pedestal. Because a lot of the time these
| arguments come across as some sort of literary elitism. Like if
| you're not ingesting information through reading, it doesn't
| count.
|
| This month I spent many hours listening to lectures on youtube
| about geopolitics on the Asian continent from the naval war
| college. Sure I could have read it, but nevertheless I got
| curious about a topic, engaged in it, and "followed the rabbit
| holes"
|
| I think there is a case to be made that we need to be more active
| in information seeking, rather than just being fed what the
| algorithm suggests you - on that topic Technology connections
| recently made a really good exposition of that issue --
| https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA -- But it should not be about the
| method of ingesting information, but the quality and the intent
| of it.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I always love this conversation:
|
| Snob: "Listening to an audio book doesn't count as reading the
| book!"
|
| Everyone else in the world: "k"
| nottorp wrote:
| I could argue that it doesn't because you use different
| neural path ways to absorb the book :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Reading material (backlight vs. reflective screen) differs
| in my experience. Also typing and writing are very
| different neurologically, but people don't want to
| acknowledge that, AFAICS.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Actually, I'm somewhere in between about Audio books.
|
| First of all, for some books, that's great. Esp, if read by a
| good voice actor. It can convert a book to radio theater,
| that's magic.
|
| However, if you're listening while you're driving, or being
| distracted, you lose the some parts of the picture.
|
| Lastly, not all books are good audio books. Some of them need
| stopping, reflecting, and some re-reading sometimes.
|
| So, horses for courses I may say.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Personally, even if I lose something listening to an
| audiobook while driving, I gain more than if I did
| something else. It's otherwise lost time. I can always re-
| listen and gain something I missed the first time.
| bayindirh wrote:
| That's one perspective. On the other hand, I find many
| missing pieces what I'm looking for while driving in
| silence. When I reach my destination, either have answers
| or new questions to jot down.
|
| I think silence / noise is another form of breathing.
| After filling your brains' queues, you need to allow it
| to process these queues in its own terms. When queues are
| processed, there is loot to collect at the other end of
| the bar.
| nicbou wrote:
| I'm paying more attention to an audiobook in my car than at
| a book in a busy place.
| bayindirh wrote:
| We are all different, and that's OK. Listening stuff
| while driving is impossible for me, but I can tune out
| pretty well while reading something.
|
| I finished my Ph.D. in a Starbucks and thanked them to
| have me till closing for quite some time in my
| manuscript, too!
| nicbou wrote:
| Interesting! I guess it depends on the kind of driving.
| Once you hit the Autobahn it's pretty easy on the brain.
| Riding a motorcycle in a big city is a different
| experience.
|
| I love working from cafes. That mention in your
| manuscript is a lovely touch.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > I love working from cafes.
|
| Me too. The different atmosphere acts like a catalyst if
| I like the place and work comfortable.
|
| > That mention in your manuscript is a lovely touch.
|
| Thanks.
|
| I drive a car, but city traffic is much more demanding
| than the Autobahn. Even then, I lately prefer to listen
| to the machine, and let my brain to do its background
| processing.
|
| I somehow learnt to sit comfortable by myself and let
| what lies beneath to surface. It serves me much better
| than constantly consuming something.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| As long as you're paying more attention _to the road_
| than to your audiobook...
|
| That's the main reason I never got into audiobooks and
| podcasts. They engage my brain just enough to prevent
| multitasking, but not enough to stop a part of me from
| getting bored and restless.
|
| Similar to most work meetings when I'm not presenting or
| otherwise directly involved in specific topics under
| discussion. It's a pain.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > As long as you're paying more attention to the road
| than to your audiobook...
|
| I am, that's why I hit "Rewind" on my audiobooks _very_
| often. But even though I 'm "distracted" by the road, I
| find that I concentrate more on a (difficult) audiobook
| than the equivalent book. With a book, it's actually easy
| to zone out for a paragraph or two. With audiobooks, if I
| zone out, I feel quite lost very quickly. I _need_ to
| rewind.
| whymememe wrote:
| To be pedantic, it's definitionally not reading. You listened
| to the book, you didn't read it.
|
| There's just an odd legitimacy associated specifically with
| reading - that people want to access, and so makes other
| people weirdly snobbish/defensive of it.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| The snob's take is bad, but there is a point of agreement I
| have with one aspect of audiobooks: it's impossible to
| remember details about things that fall outside your native
| language, if you haven't already studied them. For example, I
| listened to a nonfiction audiobook about Xi Jinping. I could
| tell you the broad strokes of the people in his orbit from
| the late 1970s on, but I have no idea how to spell or even
| Google them effectively, because I never read them--I only
| heard them.
|
| The same goes for foreign concepts/places/etc., for me at
| least there is no substitute for reading when it comes to
| retention and recall of material.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I cannot say what works for other people. For me, unless I'm
| reading with my eyeballs, taking notes, and working examples,
| I'm not really convinced I'm learning anything difficult.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| disagree. You just have to _actively_ listen, and cannot
| let your mind wander. you can also read and have no idea
| what you just read if you let your mind wander. Currently
| learning spanish via a podcast and its very effective, I
| just have to pause and rewind constantly to make sure I
| fully understand whats going on
| bee_rider wrote:
| I was pretty clear that I was just describing what works
| for me, right? So, as the authority on the topic, I
| declare you incorrect.
|
| It is fine if you think I'm not representative or usual,
| but I'm telling you, I've tried listening very hard in
| many different contexts, it just doesn't work.
| noboostforyou wrote:
| A long time ago I remember taking tests in school that
| was explicitly about trying to determine how you best
| learned - audio/visual/hands-on etc
|
| So you're definitely correct - everyone learns best a
| different way.
| layer8 wrote:
| I don't think language-learning is a good example,
| because of course hearing the language is a crucial part
| there. And on the other hand, good luck learning to
| read/write Chinese (or even Spanish) with just podcasts.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I tend to rewind audio books and re listen to the last minute
| or two or three.
|
| Ten years ago I read James Joyce's Ulysses as a book. I
| enjoyed it, but when I listened to it as an audio book a year
| later, the excellent actors/voice artists really brought it
| to life for me.
|
| I often self describe myself as a 'gentleman scientist'
| because for many years I have done my own research, sometimes
| in areas where I had no interest in practical application. I
| also believe that the act of writing is crucial to thinking
| (I have written 20+ books, 2500+ blog articles). I think too
| many people put too much emphasis on "work" vs. just living:
| averaging only 'working' about 60% of my adult life has made
| room for other activitites.
| dustincoates wrote:
| I saw elsewhere that someone said it was ablist to say that
| an audiobook doesn't count as a book, which I could only
| think that we put too much importance on books.
|
| Don't take this as an anti-intellectual screed. Far from it--
| I read a lot. But I think you can also learn from magazines,
| newspapers, plays, orations, etc. It leads to this weird
| situation where people are optimizing not for what they're
| learning but for the count. How many books have you read this
| year? Does an audiobook count? Like... it doesn't really
| matter.
| dkarl wrote:
| I used to agree with you, but then I found out how most
| people get through audiobooks and TV shows. They just miss
| stuff! They zone out for a few seconds or a few minutes. They
| take phone calls and move the laundry into the dryer without
| pausing and rewinding. It's crazy! Watching a fast-moving TV
| show with someone like that is bizarre because they'll
| happily sit through a complex conversation between characters
| even though they missed all the context that makes the
| conversation make sense.
|
| Granted you can miss a lot when you're reading, too, since a
| lot of the context for any work is external to the work
| itself, but with a book, you have to actively choose to keep
| going when you're confused, rather than passively letting it
| flow past you. Nothing privileges the choice to turn to the
| next page rather than returning to the previous page.
|
| I think the experience of reading books at least is good
| training for how to read an audiobook or listen to a lecture.
| You should be quick to pause and rewind if you suspect you
| missed something.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "What do you care what other people think?"
| rottc0dd wrote:
| This is a personal take. I agree if you are actively
| participating and grappling with the material in your mind. One
| reason I like reading is that, if I don't understand I cannot
| move on to next step. So, it forces me to actively participate,
| argue and understand the text.
|
| In audio and visual medium, it is somewhat easier to trick
| myself into following the flow without actually understanding.
| I heard, that is why Feynman lectures are bad for some people.
| It is very easy to understand, but doing physics require active
| problem solving.
|
| Consuming audio is the most human way and if it works for you,
| it works for you.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Feynman lectures pretend that physics doesn't require a ton
| of hard, painful, and not all that rewarding math to get to
| any of the good stuff.
| thfuran wrote:
| >One reason I like reading is that, if I don't understand I
| cannot move on to next step
|
| Yes, you can. You can even skim--or entirely skip--whole
| sections.
| spoiler wrote:
| But with reading it's more of an active or deliberate
| choice. With listening or watching it "just happens"
| naturally as the medium progresses.
|
| I'm also a slow learner (and reader) so I think reading
| also suits me better because I allows me to control the
| pace better.
| thfuran wrote:
| You've never gotten distracted while reading and then
| found that you've scanned over a bunch of text while
| thinking about something else?
| doubled112 wrote:
| I've never read anything _without_ realizing I had
| skipped most of the text while thinking of something
| else.
| spoiler wrote:
| It happened for sure! But it usually happens for a few
| words, maybe one or two sentences max.
|
| I think mind wandering briefly is a different thing to
| what's being discussed here though.
|
| Like, let's say I'm watching a video about a complex
| subject, in my case it's easier to accidentally gloss
| over knowledge gaps than it is when when reading about
| it.
|
| It's also feels more practical to take notes or annotate
| stuff I'm reading about rather than stuff, and it's
| easier to "revisit" it once recall fails.
|
| It's also generally more convenient to consume (ie I can
| consume it while commuting/traveling), etc.
|
| However, as a counter point (since I've been doing lots
| of technical art recently) watching videos on some
| subjects can be useful, but I still pair it with reading
| to get a more in-depth understanding on the subjects
| involved
| rottc0dd wrote:
| Edit: Made my points subjective
|
| Harder for me. I thought I can while reading fiction.
| "Gravity's rainbow" proved that wrong too.
|
| What I mean is, I am more aware of information flow
| particularly because it is not the natural way of consuming
| knowledge. Speaking language is in a way part of our
| evolution. But, written language is a skill you learnt,
| like driving a bicycle.
|
| This unnatural way, makes me much more aware of my own
| thinking. While I am reading, even if I understand I stop
| and muse and breathe in and bask on thoughts it cultivated
| in me. It has not happened, for me, in other medium.
| Insanity wrote:
| Similar to other commenters I disagree. You can definitely
| read without parsing and just "move on".
|
| Or accept a superficial understanding and fail to see the
| deeper point. Philosophy might be a good domain to see this
| happen with - read the words but don't parse the meaning.
| blenderob wrote:
| > Similar to other commenters I disagree. You can
| definitely read without parsing and just "move on".
|
| What do you disagree with? Nobody said that reading makes
| you immune to moving on without understanding.
|
| What they said was that while reading it is possible to
| pause if you don't understand something and move on when
| you are ready to move on. That's harder to do in videos or
| lectures. Do you disagree with this?
| Insanity wrote:
| Parent said:
|
| "if I don't understand I cannot move on to next step".
|
| I disagree that you can not move on. You definitely can.
| So your statement about what "nobody said" contradicts
| what was actually said.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| I should have been more careful with my phrasing. What I
| meant is I am much more aware of my own understanding,
| gaps and shortcomings and more actively involved in
| learning and processing information when I am reading.
| And I honestly cannot think of even consuming certain
| books with audio medium. As I commented elsewhere,
| "Gravity's rainbow" is one such book, in which for me,
| even a single page cannot be consumed using audio medium.
| awongh wrote:
| There's also the meta element of understanding how each
| medium affects the way you engage with the topic, which I
| think can be helpful in understanding when you might want to
| switch and why.
|
| That is, assuming you probably want to have more than one
| media type in order to round out your understanding.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| I think your personal take is more so that you require
| "interaction" in the learning process; which is extremely
| common and universally accepted as best way to learn stuff.
|
| >If I don't understand I cannot move on to next step
|
| Everytime you encounter new hard concept, you really have to
| _actively_ think /interact with that information to make it
| yours. This is often lacking in the "lecture" style teaching.
| One key benefit of reading is that _you can do it at your
| pace_.
|
| I think for audio/verbal medium, you would probably have a
| completely different experience if you were _talking_ to
| Feynman. He have a lecture for you, and everytime you get
| stuck, you can interrupt him and ask follow up question or
| ask further. This is probably why Private tuition is so
| valuable (and very very often used in East Asian nation);
| whichever fence of preference you fall to, a someone
| dedicated to teaching you is an extreme advantage.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _This is probably why Private tuition is so valuable (and
| very very often used in East Asian nation); whichever fence
| of preference you fall to, a someone dedicated to teaching
| you is an extreme advantage._
|
| That's gonna be a money printer for LLMs (even if for a
| short while - "no moat" & stuffs). Many people are fine
| with LLM-assisted learning, and able to navigate the
| hallucination problem. Then there's the (in)famous
| NotebookLM, that's known for only one of its many features:
| the ability to blend a bunch of source documents and
| generate an engaging podcast out of them. And a feature
| they're testing is letting the listener interrupt the
| podcast with their own questions. Meanwhile, OpenAI's
| "advanced voice" has been demonstrating for close to a year
| now, that a spoken conversation with an LLM can be done and
| feels... natural.
|
| It's not hard to see the convergence of these ideas into
| ad-hoc experts: blend some textbooks, replace a podcast
| with a conversational "advanced voice" model, and suddenly
| you may experience "talking to Feynman". Not a real one -
| nowhere near as smart or likely to be correct - but still
| better than anything else you or me have access to.
|
| (Whether or not you believe LLMs are good enough for this,
| or are too dumb a markov chain stochastic parrot something
| - it still begs to be tried, and someone will try it soon.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _In audio and visual medium, it is somewhat easier to trick
| myself into following the flow without actually
| understanding._
|
| That just means exploiting the medium to full potential
| hasn't been normalized yet. Much like with the books, you can
| _pause_ video and audio. And, much like with books, you can
| go through the material once to get the high-level overview,
| and then _play it again_ to learn more, now that you have
| better feel for how things fit.
|
| I've noticed that both pausing to think and playing the same
| work couple times in a short succession, are something people
| are reluctant to do. Writing this, I've noticed that _myself_
| I am reluctant to do it too, for no apparent reason. Might be
| because people my age and older, we weren 't forced to learn
| from videos or audio during school and university years, so
| we didn't internalize the same consumption patterns as we did
| with books.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| I think, it is much more to do with the fact that audio or
| visual way of consuming information is so natural that you
| can sometimes go with the flow.
|
| It helps me to be much more aware of the information being
| consumed, exactly because reading is an unnatural and
| learned way of consuming information. You can definitely do
| the same with audio medium, but books make me aware of
| where I am in the process much more than former.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| I find myself rewinding a lot when listening to podcasts or
| watching videos. It's definitely more trouble trying to hit
| the right spot where my mind started wandering, compared to
| realizing the same thing with a book and flicking my eyes
| back to wherever the text looks familiar and restarting
| there, so that may be part of it.
|
| At least for fiction, I like audiobooks for _re_ reading
| something I've read before, where I can enjoy the story and
| it doesn't matter whether I miss a few lines that might
| include an important plot point. With a new book, I'm just
| rewinding too much unless it's a really engaging book _and_
| reader.
| sigbottle wrote:
| This is really true. People love to say, "Just don't make
| the same mistake twice" or whatever, but part of the
| necessity of ingesting truly novel information is that
| you're gonna weave back and trip over yourself a ton of
| times before you get to that clean refined mental model.
|
| For me, note-taking is a godsend - I don't know how I would
| live without it. Anywhere from hyper specific detailed
| notes to just unstructured rants. It's the equivalent of
| storing things in memory - that alone makes algorithms far
| more powerful.
|
| It doesn't help with real-time tasks like talking though...
| but I've noticed I have gotten a bit better at talking ever
| since I started note taking.
|
| I think the "learn instinctually by doing stuff a lot"
| approach definitely is useful but note-taking is a healthy
| balance between that and getting perma-stuck in research
| mode.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "When in doubt, read on." -- Alfred Korzybski, the father of
| modern semantics, in his foundational 1933 book, "Science and
| Sanity."
|
| https://archive.org/stream/alfred-korzybksi-science-and-
| sani...
| voidhorse wrote:
| I don't think the accusation of elitism is valid here.
|
| Postulating that a particular kind of activity might be better
| suited to a particular kind of goal isn't elitism. Is it
| "elitist" to claim that one sorting algorithm is faster than
| another?
|
| People are so individualistic and sensitive these days that
| they take any proposed alternatives that don't align with their
| own habits and modes of consumption as a direct affront against
| them. I don't think this article is claiming any sort of
| superiority--it's lamenting a previous modality of information
| exchange and reflection that seems to be on the decline. Sure,
| you might argue that claiming civilization is in crisis is a
| form of elitism, but I interpret it more like an elaboration of
| a perceived problem and not a value judgement about the
| superiority of some alternatives.
|
| I don't like riding in cars. I prefer to walk. Plenty of people
| would be right to tell me taking a car is often more efficient,
| I don't think of them as "car elitists".
| robwwilliams wrote:
| This discussion on the immanent collapse of civilization
| never gets old. Socrates complained that this new invention
| of writing was ruining philosophy and memory. In his view
| philosophy was verbal jousting and conversation while
| walking.
|
| The primary source is from Socrates lips (unavaiable), but
| you can read Plato's Phaedrus, ask Wikipedia, or chat with
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
| Jensson wrote:
| Civilizations did collapse many times, Egyptians forgot how
| to make their large stone monuments etc. It is important to
| try to avoid that, not all new things are progress, some
| does lead to collapses.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Listening to a lecture is a far more passive form of learning
| than reading a book. Being an avid reader is seen as special
| because it requires more time and effort to do: you just can't
| read while doing the dishes or morning cardio or running unit
| tests. Also, by reading challenging books you learn the
| valuable skills of backtracking and skimming, which may be
| applied to better and more quickly understand difficult texts.
| The lecture equivalent is taking notes and asking questions,
| but you really can't do that with online recorded stuff.
| sergioisidoro wrote:
| Ok I'm going to invert that thought, and say: if books are so
| intelectually more efficient, why do we even have
| universities? Why do we have lectures, and why doesn't
| everyone just read?
|
| Spoken word is one of the most primitive and human ways of
| communicating information. Written word appeared as a
| replacement to spoken word, because there was no other
| capable medium of information. Now we have mediums capable of
| doing so, why not use them instead.
|
| Also you're somehow implying that because I'm doing the
| dishes I'm paying less attention? I think that's a really big
| assumption, and will probably vary a lot from person to
| person.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| > you just can't read while doing the dishes or morning
| cardio or running unit tests
|
| this is literally what audiobooks are for. And I concentrate
| significantly better on audio if I'm multitasking with a
| mindless activity
| jampekka wrote:
| The reading pedestal also often ignores that reading, and even
| writing, is not enough. In the posted piece the steps of
| "research" are, apart from haphazardly watching birds and
| architecture, all reading or writing.
|
| I see problems arising from this in academia quite commonly.
| The discussions based only on reading and writing (and
| discussions) tend to get detached from reality, often to the
| point of inability to point out any real world examples where
| the discussion actually applies to.
|
| Also many who lament lack of reading can be quite proudly "not
| technical persons", "not mathematical thinkers" or "not good
| with my hands", with kind of implication that these are not of
| much significance for intellectual development.
| awongh wrote:
| It feels like a healthy variety of media types and engagement
| types is the best way to engage with a subject. Internet,
| audio/podcasts, video, and also active writing on the topic.
|
| Balance them all out depending on your preferences.
|
| btw, the common idea that people have "learning styles" seems
| to have been debunked, but I do feel that there are so many
| ways to approach a topic that it's helpful to understand them
| through different media
| Eridrus wrote:
| I do think people writ large do not read enough, there has been
| a lot of knowledge already written down and many engineers and
| researchers I work with would rather do than read. And the most
| detailed information is written, not in other forms. But I love
| video/audio too, it is often presented in a much more
| accessible form than papers.
|
| But the people who put reading on a pedestal also need to
| remember that reading is still subservient to doing, because
| that is where theory meets reality and reality is not usually
| kind to theory.
| svara wrote:
| You're not wrong, but anti elitism is a much greater problem
| than potentially being perceived as elitist.
|
| When I say you should read, I'm not really saying that's the
| only valid way to take in information.
|
| I'm saying that to a first approximation, if you do read, you
| are probably practicing healthy habits around taking in
| information. And if you don't, it's likely you're not.
|
| It's a slightly blunt statement, but the more nuanced 'try to
| engage with information deeply, think through multi-step
| reasoning cascades on your own, integrate different sources of
| information and transfer them to new domains' really doesn't
| land in the same way.
| BeetleB wrote:
| If there are alternative media that covers the material, by all
| means utilize them!
|
| The reality is when you get deep enough in a topic, virtually
| all the content is available _solely_ in text form. So I tell
| people that while it 's fine to consume content in other
| formats, you have to make sure you are quite capable when it
| comes to reading.
| samspot wrote:
| The reason reading was put on a pedestal is to ensure young
| learners develop the skill of reading. Once you have the
| essential reading skills, reading loses it's special position.
| But it can be hard for adults to break the mold of what they
| were taught as children.
| mclau156 wrote:
| Reading Wikipedia can easily become research
| atebyagrue wrote:
| This article sums up precisely why I don't mind being a "forever
| GM".
|
| I'm constantly researching new things to flesh out game ideas for
| my groups to add flavor, immersion & a sense of "reality" to my
| players' worlds & I love doing it. It almost makes running the
| actual games for them, an afterthought to tide me over to the new
| thing to learn about & implement. Great article!
| janpmz wrote:
| I did some leisure research on how the Nazca Lines align with
| mountain shadows and made a publication. That was a nice weekend.
| https://zenodo.org/records/11422308
| yannis wrote:
| I find this fascinating; I do a lot of reading and writing
| (leisure work) outside my own specialization; Some I believe
| are possibly publishable, but I am reluctant so far to attempt
| to publish them. Is zenodo a good place for this in your
| opinion?
| janpmz wrote:
| I would have published on arXiv, but to do that you need an
| endorsement from an established arXiv user in that specific
| category. And even then, you can only submit papers in that
| category. On Zenodo, I was able to publish quickly, and I
| like that I can see the number of views and downloads.
| jsemrau wrote:
| "I have studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine,
| and even, sad to say, theology, all with great exertion." -
| Faust, Part I, Scene I ("Night")
| btrettel wrote:
| I only skimmed everything before "From Theory to Practice: A
| Framework for Research as Leisure" and read everything after
| that, but it doesn't seem this covers actual obstacles to doing
| research on the side that I face. I do want to note that to the
| author, "research" seems to be basically a learning process,
| whereas I'm interested in _building_ something, which I think is
| more involved. Here 's my perspective on the obstacles towards
| this form of deeper research:
|
| 1. Lack of time and energy. This to me is the largest obstacle
| for any of the research side projects I've had since finishing my
| PhD. My day job gets the best of my time and energy and
| everything else gets scraps. What I do on the side tends to be
| more superficial than I'd like for this reason. (More
| specifically: Lots of reading and writing, little implementation
| of my ideas.) I simply don't have the energy to do much deeper
| work. I recently concluded that to make progress on the one side
| project I'm prioritizing, I'm probably going to have to take
| leave from my job. And it's also been necessary to think like a
| startup, to limit the scope and focus on a MVP. But even the MVP
| is still challenging.
|
| 2. Intellectual property assignment agreements. A lot of
| technical folks' employers made them sign agreements that
| arguably give the employers' full rights to what their employees
| do in their free time. If I'm working on a side project that
| could turn into a business, it's simply risky if my employer
| could swoop in and claim ownership of the entire thing. I think
| even the "favorable" versions of these agreements that limit what
| employers can take to things related to what the company does are
| still overreach. A lot of companies do tons of things and could
| find justification to take nearly anything for that reason.
|
| 3. Lack of collaborators and community. I think the linked
| article discusses "community of knowledge" in a superficial way.
| I haven't tried, mind you, but I think it would be really hard to
| find a group of people online with similar research interests to
| mine. I think people who have more common or less specific
| interests would not have a problem, but for anything more
| specific, finding collaborators is going to be a challenge. I
| think I won't find a close collaborator until I publish something
| (could be journal article or even a web page) and they come to
| me.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It would be nice to afford to practice that art. Most people are
| practicing the art of putting food on their tables.
|
| Most researchers are doing it for a living and they might want to
| pursue other activities in their free time. Other people do not
| possess the skill level. Science and research is harder than it
| was centuries ago.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Perhaps one could work at a US tech company and spend the free
| time that results on research.
| brador wrote:
| The fact that all historians still refuse to acknowledge the
| origin of the term "yankees".
| jdp wrote:
| Stamp collecting is a good outlet for research as leisure. If
| you're the type of person who falls into wiki holes and likes
| talking about what you learn with other people, it might be for
| you.
|
| Many stamp collectors follow the research-as-leisure framework
| naturally as part of their hobby. The article outlines
| cultivating curiosity, developing questions, gathering evidence,
| developing answers, and building communities around that process,
| which is basically what collectors are doing when they're talking
| about stamps and other philatelic material. They're sharing
| discoveries they find interesting, often only after identifying
| the material, looking up its historical context, drawing
| parallels to current events, and then formulating some kind of
| answer or conclusion that makes it worthwhile to share what
| they've found.
|
| I think the experts in a lot of hobbies engage in this sort of
| recreational research for the joy of it, but it's closer to the
| norm for casual collectors. There is a whole wide spectrum of
| collectors though, ranging from aesthetics-driven folks who spend
| more time on thematic album pages than on researching anything,
| over to experts in narrow areas like Transylvanian hotel stamps
| who publish whole books on about how they weren't valid for
| postal use but were used by hospitality workers nestled up in the
| Carpathians to get mail from guests back into the official mail
| stream because the state couldn't be bothered to service up
| there. If you get into it you'll find there are a lot of curious
| and motivated people in the middle who are happy to share what
| they've been reading about (or listening to, or watching) lately.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Join the RR&R or start your own charter club!
|
| https://ephorate.org
| inktype wrote:
| I'm sure it's still out there, but I don't seem to notice as much
| prevalence of dedicated research trivia as I used to, like Damn
| Interesting, or Cracked. Lots of the articles would be some niche
| question that wasn't just a google away and it was obvious that
| it took effort and time at a library to write. The closest thing
| that comes to mind now is Asianometry's youtube channel and
| mailing list.
| awongh wrote:
| I read a fair amount and I actually do research as leisure all
| the time, but I can't stand these elitist and unoriginal think
| pieces about how much better and cooler this person's habits are
| than yours.
|
| >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the
| discipline's foundational texts
|
| I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic
| fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone
| else.
|
| I actually deeply agree with the advice in the OP around
| curiosity but personally I end up implementing it in a totally
| different way than they do.
|
| Lately I've found that LLMs are an amazing tool for this free-
| floating "research"- for example "Summarize the top three
| theories about why suburbs exist and who said them". The LLM as
| open ended semantic search engine / research tool is an amazing
| way to figure out the topology of a subject you want to dive
| deeper into.
|
| I usually work my way down a content ladder from there to
| podcasts, wikipedia and finally to books.
|
| The idea that somehow civilization is ending because of our media
| consumption habits and that "reading source material" will save
| us comes off as more an aesthetic fantasy than a real-world
| complaint about today's culture.
|
| I was around before the internet and I'm so thankful that so much
| more information is accessible now than it was when there were
| only books.
| nluken wrote:
| I think you're generally right about the OP, but I don't see
| your alternative method as a tonic to the problem the author is
| discussing. I agree that treating reading as the only way to
| ingest information is probably wrong, and that the original
| post tends towards hierarchy in an almost reactionary way, yet
| at the same time I also see that many people tend to ingest
| information from other forms of media less critically than they
| might a book or written piece. I think this dichotomy derives
| from the different levels of focus we apply to different
| activities. Reading, even for leisure, demands a level of
| effort that forces you to focus and, in a way, analyze the
| information you're ingesting. By removing that barrier, you
| might fail to fully grasp the ideas that the primary source
| expressed.
|
| In your use case, the LLM can be a great tool to get a start,
| but it's much easier to accept that output uncritically, which
| is especially problematic because it bears the biases of the
| training corpus. Sure, you can mitigate that issue if you're
| driven by the intellectual curiosity to dig deeper, which it
| seems you are, but at that point aren't you doing the kind of
| leisure research that the original post is talking about
| anyway? You're just using the initial steps to discover the
| "foundational texts", as the original post puts it, of the
| field. The LLM step becomes less material to the follow-up
| reading you've done after the fact.
|
| Many, perhaps even most people will not make it to the second
| step. I see the lack of intellectual curiosity as a problem of
| focus more than anything else, and in my experience the overly
| rich media landscape of the internet does not concentrate that
| focus in most people.
| awongh wrote:
| Yea, it's the classic conflation of the format of the media
| with other factors- it's not the fact that you're reading
| from a screen instead of a paper page that's making you
| intellectually incurious.
|
| But the disingenuous thing is that I don't think these
| arguments are really meant to examine why people might be
| less curious- it's just to sound cooler than people who read
| the OP and imagine the writer in some cafe pouring over a big
| stack of hardcover books.
|
| >> aren't you doing the kind of leisure research that the
| original post is talking about anyway?
|
| I would say the distinction is that I don't need to be
| precious about why I would look at foundational texts. Maybe
| foundational texts are a bit over-hyped- anything written 100
| years ago was made for the context of that time, and even if
| the ideas are universal to a certain extent, it's better
| digested through a modern lens in light of how those ideas
| have affected everything since then. How much more do you get
| out of an idea reading it from the original? It feels like
| there's a bit of a diminishing return in a lot of cases.
| jll29 wrote:
| > I agree that treating reading as the only way to ingest
| information is probably wrong
|
| The good news is that not only does the "private researcher"
| (curious individual person without a research background or
| job) nowadays have the ability to read online in far-removed
| libraries, they are even empowered to download the data of
| many studies, fire up their Jupyter notebooks to replicate
| some work.
|
| The danger is that some wannabes create even more noise on
| the proper science channels that are already polluted by
| fraudsters generating fake papers via ChatGPT and friends...
| making it harder for the untrained eye to distinguish between
| respectable science and pseudo-science.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| It's already hard to sort out the bs that respectable
| science generates.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I think there'd be some value in asking each of the major
| chatLLMs whether vaccines cause autism. If the answer is
| not some unequivocal variation of "no, aside from
| fraudulent and discredited research," you have a serious
| problem if you're relying on AI to do research for you.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Personally I still go on Wikipedia deep dives where you end up
| going from link to link for hours. I think the author is
| entirely incorrect with that quote, the whole idea of leasure
| research is that there are no rules, some will go ask an LLM,
| others will go read 'foundational text' while others will just
| browse Wikipedia.
| mmooss wrote:
| If that's what you like to do, of course that's fine. If we
| are going to talk with each other about what we like to do,
| we need to agree on meaning.
|
| In my thinking, the definition of research is to find
| _truth_. As ultimate solutions to that goal, Wikipedia and
| LLM output lack sufficient accuracy and lack verifiability.
| Many find them useful as bibliographic tools that point us to
| accurate, verifiable sources.
|
| Also, research requires looking at the actual evidence - the
| primary sources; that's where the truth is, that's the
| foundation of the scientific method. Secondary sources filter
| the truth through someone else's interpretation, but for
| amateur researchers that may be all that's realistic -
| traveling to archives, building or using complex equipment is
| not realistic. Still, Wikipedia and (almost all) LLMs are
| _tertiary_ or higher order sources: they are a combination of
| secondary or higher order sources - Wikipedia doesn 't allow
| citing primary sources as far as I know (which would be
| necessary for Wikipedia to be a secondary source); LLM input
| is mostly secondary or higher order sources.
|
| I don't object if you call reading Wikipedia, 'research'. I
| don't at all object to you doing what you value. But we are
| talking about two different things.
| awongh wrote:
| > In my thinking, the definition of research is to find
| truth
|
| > the primary sources; that's where the truth is
|
| I mentioned this elsewhere on the thread, but I also feel
| like the most influential primary sources are _less_
| important than secondary sources- if you read Marx, the
| social and political circumstances of his ideas are in the
| context of an industrial economy and just don 't apply in
| the same way anymore.
|
| You can draw your own conclusions directly from what's
| written, but what's the point of that? I feel like it's
| more useful to engage with those ideas keeping in mind all
| of the thought and history that's happened since- in that
| case you would wait a pretty long time to work backwards
| until you read the original.
| mmooss wrote:
| If you are researching economics, then Marx is a
| secondary (or higher order) source. The econmomic data
| used by Marx is primary.
|
| If you are researching Marx the person or Marx's ideas,
| then [edit: Marx's writings would be primary sources, and
| then] what would you think of someone who only read
| others talking about Marx, but didn't read Marx's actual
| writings? It wouldn't make much sense for anything called
| 'research'.
| awongh wrote:
| > The econmomic data used by Marx is primary
|
| Literally picking through tables of all economic data for
| the last century... _shocked pikachu meme_ not sure what
| that would gain you....
| mmooss wrote:
| Well, that's how actual research is done - that's what
| people do. It defines research, it's how they write all
| those (research-based) books and journal articles. That's
| scholarship - science, social science, humanities, etc.
| That's why Darwin travelled all the way to the Galapagos
| Islands - he identified a place to do primary resesarch
| on the questions he was investigating.
|
| Journalists also - they look at the actual evidence and
| turn it into something coherent and cohesive for others
| to understand; the location in the byline/dateline shows
| where they went - that is, that if they wrote about
| Odessa, the dateline should show if they actually went to
| Odessa and saw it for themself.
|
| Back to research: If you mean it's impractical for many
| people, that's often true. Some topics require less
| expertise, expense, and time: for example, tracking local
| bird populations. But those real natural scientists, the
| amateur researchers who get published, that's what they
| are doing. Pretty amazing!
|
| If you don't want to do it, that's fine; few do. If you
| want to read secondary sources on a topic - wonderful
| (but read good ones based on primary sources; only accept
| what is tied back to actual, hard-won facts - necessary
| are the footnotes, which connect the secondary claim to
| the primary fact). If you want to read tertiary sources,
| find quality ones. If you want to read social media, have
| fun but it's just entertainment - to the extent it's
| accurate, you can't know unless you already have
| expertise.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| > the primary sources; that's where the truth is
|
| Why is a primary source a better source for the "truth"?
| Often secondary sources have distilled the original rough
| ideas into more refined expressions of the original complex
| ideas. A secondary source will also have had more chances
| to catch any mistakes.
| mmooss wrote:
| The secondary sources take the primary source facts (if
| the author is serious and honest) and add someone's
| subjective perspectives, etc. Those facts are the
| 'truths'.
|
| For more, look up reading on the scientific method and
| empiricism.
|
| I'm not disparaging all secondary sources; I read them
| too. But there's a reason serious research requires
| primary sources.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think people are confused by the definitions of
| primary/secondary sources.
|
| As an example, almost _all_ textbooks are actually
| secondary sources. The primary source may be a journal
| article. And yes, often, those secondary sources are far
| superior than the primary sources. Insisting on reading
| all those journal articles as opposed to a good textbook
| is simply indulging in a fetish, IMO.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I think people are confused by the definitions of
| primary/secondary sources.
|
| Sorry:
|
| Primary - the actual evidence. The actual letter written
| by Jefferson; the ice core itself, etc. For example, if
| you are an historian writing about Jefferson, you
| actually travel to the archive and read Jefferson's
| letters and look through the other papers, etc. - the
| actual stuff.
|
| Secondary - the journal article, the scholarly book,
| based on primary sources (without those, it's just
| nonsense)
|
| Tertiary - textbooks, news reports, etc. about the
| secondary source
|
| Higher order - blog posts, social media, etc.: usually
| they haven't seen the evidence, haven't read the journal
| article, may have read the news report but often only
| read another social media post ...
|
| > Insisting on reading all those journal articles as
| opposed to a good textbook is simply indulging in a
| fetish, IMO.
|
| WTF do you know about me or anyone else to judge their
| choices? Your ignorance of the need for direct knowledge
| of things shines through. Here, the primary source is me;
| having no primary source your assertion isn't even
| secondary, just nonsense. Enjoy 'research' on social
| media.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > WTF do you know about me or anyone else to judge their
| choices?
|
| I don't, and did not claim to. And yes, one can and
| usually does judge at some level. I don't need to know
| much about someone to have an opinion that intentionally
| touching random strangers' private parts in public is
| problematic.
|
| Try not to be so sensitive. My comment was not a
| criticism of anyone.
|
| > Your ignorance of the need for direct knowledge of
| things shines through.
|
| Now who is making assumptions without knowing me?
|
| I spent years being paid to do research at academic
| institutions, so it's not a random person on the Internet
| saying it. Sometimes the primary source is fantastic.
| More often it's inferior to better written pieces.
|
| The reason journals like _Rev Modern Physics_ have a high
| impact factor is _precisely_ due to the fact that
| distillations can be superior to primary sources. It 's a
| journal where a highly influential person in the field
| writes a (lengthy) journal article that is basically a
| well written, accessible tutorial of the whole field.
|
| Have you tried reading Maxwell's original works? Do you
| not think there's a good reason pretty much every EM
| textbook teaches Maxwell's equations in a very different
| form from what he proposed?
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Thanks for your explanations. It would be lovely if
| primary sources and data were some kind of ground truth
| with a capital T. But no: they are often messy first pass
| experiments. If we knew what we were doing it would not
| be research ;-) A dose of Ian Hacking or Paul Feyerabend
| or Nancy Cartwright could be curative.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Many, many times in historical research the "primary
| source" (I'm using your definition here because in
| historical circles the primary source is not always the
| original artifact or document) is lost to time. It's then
| up to historians, anthropologists, and other researchers
| to figure out whether the artifact in question actually
| existed and whether there's agreement among other sources
| on what it said.
|
| In historical research at least having a primary source
| like the "actual letter written by Jefferson" is often
| rare and only found in more modern historical sources
| preserved by stable institutions. A great example is the
| Library of Baghdad where we know many texts existed but
| we still don't know the breadth of all the available
| texts nor their contents.
| mmooss wrote:
| Thanks and very interesting. Are you an historian?
|
| > in historical circles the primary source is not always
| the original artifact or document
|
| What does it mean in historical circles? I know people
| will often use a digital scan, a reliable transcription,
| etc., and not necessarily the original - but then isn't
| that based on the assumption that it's a reliable
| representation of the original?
|
| I didn't mean to suggest primary sources (by my
| definition) are always available; I was just trying to
| give an example where 'primary source' connects the world
| of ideas to the physical reality. Yes, life, including
| historical research, isn't that neat and simple.
| fastasucan wrote:
| >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the
| discipline's foundational texts
|
| Leisurely and "must include" sounds very contradicting.
| mobilejdral wrote:
| The author also asks "If you were stranded on an island (or
| small hostile planetoid), what books would you want to have
| with you?" which I also can't answer.
|
| I would fall into the category of someone who does research as
| leisure. I have been slowly unraveling the genetics behind
| gender dysphoria. Yes I have borrowed a few biology books from
| libraries, but it has mostly been reading 70 years of research
| papers, piecing together all the evidence to make a hypothesis,
| comparing it to all the research data and iterating. In the
| last year I have also started getting a fair number of WGS
| (Whole Genome Sequenced) files, and I have a whole separate
| pile of anecdotal that just because it isn't published doesn't
| mean I can ignore it either. These are about as far from books
| as you can get. It is something I do for leisure, so my
| investigation has been somewhat random, following whatever I
| found interating at that time including dead ends. Been doing
| this very open ended research for years now and at this point
| we have a really solid understanding of it, so the edge cases
| are actually now the fun stuff. I never would have made
| anywhere near the progress I did if I had been forced to start
| with reading a bunch of random unrelated biology books.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Sounds interesting, do you have somewhere I can read some of
| what you've learned across your research?
| mobilejdral wrote:
| Sure, add a way to contact you to your account and I can
| send you over the current understanding.
| weakfish wrote:
| Also interested.
| mmooss wrote:
| > can't stand these elitist and unoriginal think pieces about
| how much better and cooler
|
| Aren't you saying the same thing, putting them down? You could
| both be curious about each other.
| awongh wrote:
| I commented on the article so I suppose I'm engaging with the
| ideas.
|
| To be clear, I also think it's a shame that people don't read
| as many books these days, I don't read a huge amount but I
| feel like I'm at the higher-end of my social circle in terms
| of reading volume.
|
| Mostly, I don't like the trope that there's some kind of
| moral imperative to _Read More Books_ and that _Things Used
| to Be Better_. Overall I 'm philosophically disinclined to
| draw the conclusion that phones/attention/social media are
| bad and reading more will improve society. I also have TikTok
| but I don't think it makes me a worse person.
| ozim wrote:
| Agree, OP is points to Thoreau, Sagan, Galileo - most people on
| the planet earth are not like that and those guys were heavily
| privileged.
|
| Doing personal fancy research was not available before as it is
| now. Even though one still has to be rather privileged to have
| time to dig through obscure details that don't make him money.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Agree, OP is points to Thoreau, Sagan, Galileo - most
| people on the planet earth are not like that and those guys
| were heavily privileged.
|
| Sagan was heavily privileged? I mean, yes, he was born in the
| US and could afford to get a Bachelor's degree, but other
| than that, he was not particularly privileged.
| kevinsync wrote:
| >> I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia
| aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior
| to everyone else.
|
| The older I get, the more I'm convinced that people do this
| less to actually feel superior to others and more as a
| desperate act of establishing an identity, ANY identity, to
| simply feel seen and validated in spite of just being yet
| another person on the planet. This uniquely-human trait seems
| to run counter to the natural order, where spotted leopards,
| panthers, elephants, myriad birds all just exist and go about
| their lives, despite their objective, innate individualities.
|
| We are curious creatures lol
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Plenty of animals go out of their way to be seen. If it's a
| pretty bird it's most likely a male bird.
|
| Animals at play do appear to show off to each other. Orcas
| wear salmons as hats as if it was a fast fashion trend.
|
| I don't think humans are unique in this regard at all.
| woodson wrote:
| These observations are interpretations of behavior viewed
| through human eyes. (What's the concept of a "hat" to an
| orca?)
|
| Perhaps we interpret their behavior this way because it is
| our behavior.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Since it's a trend it comes and goes, and the behavior
| spreads in a manner similar to fashion trends.
|
| Google pics for it, can you think of any other reason for
| an orca to wear a salmon on their head.
|
| Song birds also have similar fashions in what they choose
| to sing and that spreads much faster than evolution can
| explain.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| "Faction" and "fashion" are etymological doublets. We
| wear trends as much to establish which tribe we are apart
| of as to impress potential mates.
|
| The trend of Orcas wearing hats feels very much the same:
| https://archive.is/2024.12.15-213212/https://www.national
| geo...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| As someone who's had quite a few dealings with animals
| (the family business is a horse farm) my interpretation
| is that human psychology is basically animal psychology
| with a "language instinct" bolted on as a peripheral.
|
| You might very well misinterpret an animal's experience
| or motives but it is not just mistaken "anthropomorphism"
| but could just be the same kind of misunderstanding you
| might have about another person's experience or motives.
|
| From time to time I see a paper proving that horses or
| dogs could do something that people who work with horses
| or dogs always believed they could do or that some bird
| or mammal has a "theory of mind" -- I believe all birds
| and mammals have a pretty good "theory of mind", it's
| just hard to do an experiment to prove it.
|
| We've had a cardinal that has been coming to our window
| for a few years that we can't agree on naming "bad bird"
| or "noisy bird" that sets up a nest a few yards from a
| bird feeder and spends all day fighting it's own
| reflection in the glass. My interpretation, which could
| be wrong, is that it believes it is a very successful
| bird that has found an excellent nesting spot and finds
| meaning in its life by fighting off "competition" for its
| nest -- certainly it does not need to spend a lot of
| energy foraging and has the time and energy to peck at
| the window all day.
| platz wrote:
| How do you know the bird just isn't entertaining itself
| with its own reflection.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't, but your story could be accused of being
| anthropomorphic as much as my own. If it did have to work
| harder to forage though, it would have less time and
| energy to entertain itself.
|
| A case where I know my own psychology has to do with it
| is the red winged blackbird which is a highly territorial
| bird which is always calling attention to nests that I'd
| otherwise ignore by buzz-bombing me and that I see high
| up in the air flapping frantically to nip at the tail
| feathers and harass huge hawks that are flapping
| languidly riding thermals. I see these birds sitting on
| top of "POSTED: NO TRESPASSING" signs all the time
| because these are convenient perches, although they have
| no idea that the sign fits their mindset really well. One
| of my photography goals in the next few weeks is to get
| some of those pictures though I don't have a particularly
| long lens so I'll have the problem that they'll probably
| try to buzz bomb me instead of sitting still to get their
| picture taken.
| 3np wrote:
| The same way you don't know if other humans are even
| conscious. Empathy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_other_minds
| MisterTea wrote:
| > As someone who's had quite a few dealings with animals
| (the family business is a horse farm) my interpretation
| is that human psychology is basically animal psychology
| with a "language instinct" bolted on as a peripheral.
|
| Growing up with cats and dogs all my life I 100% agree
| with this. That has caused me to look at animals as
| individuals I can't communicate with instead of lower
| life forms that are brainless sacks of meat. They
| certainty are capable of thought and I am also convinced
| they share the same basic emotional states but humans
| have much more nuance and layers over them.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I believe all birds and mammals have a pretty good
| "theory of mind", it's just hard to do an experiment to
| prove it
|
| Our pet bird (sun conure) actively tries to lie and
| mislead when he's doing something naughty. Like he will
| go into the pantry to steal treats and quickly fly out
| pretending he wasn't in there when he hears you
| approaching.
|
| This indicates he has some theory of mind. He has to
| understand there's a difference between what he knows and
| what we know, otherwise he wouldn't try to hide or
| obscure his actions.
|
| And yes there is research showing/arguing that birds have
| theory of mind -->
| https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144146926.pdf
| bumby wrote:
| I think it's latent status signaling. Humans are hierarchical
| primates and we search for status in our social groups. To
| that end, it's not much different than other social creatures
| that seek social status in their tribe/pride/pack/pod.
| dkarl wrote:
| Being "seen and validated" translates to "feeling superior"
| when people want to be seen and validated on a scale that
| very few other people are, and I think many people naively
| want this.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Few would like to feel inferior _in every dimension_ to
| other people in their group - because that effectively
| means they 're useless to the group, beyond being a warm
| body to throw at problems requiring numbers; it means
| they're replaceable and will be replaced by someone better.
|
| It feels to me that the ideas of social status, "feeling
| seen", finding connection, even finding meaning, all
| intersect in wanting to be unique along some dimension that
| at least part of your group values.
| Lerc wrote:
| _> The older I get, the more I'm convinced that people do
| this less to actually feel superior to others and more as a
| desperate act of establishing an identity, ANY identity, to
| simply feel seen and validated in spite of just being yet
| another person on the planet. _
|
| I think this is broadly correct. I have had a sense for a
| while now that there are quite a few people express extreme
| versions of their opinions substituting amplitude for
| fidelity. A strongly held opinion isn't heard as much as a
| weakly held opinion forcefully expressed.
|
| Part of this is down to mass communication and it occurs for
| all things. There are good apps for mobile phones that never
| get seen because the focus goes to the top few percent. The
| same is probably true for games on Steam. Most peoples' blogs
| will be read by fewer people than the number of blogs they
| read themselves for the simple reason that some blogs get
| millions of readers.
|
| I can see the obvious frustration that must be felt when
| someone has an idea to share that they feel isn't being
| expressed. When it comes to emotional expression, small
| communities are required if you want to have a group that
| reciprocates attention. Most people don't want to be heard by
| everyone, they just want to be heard. What we have is an
| environment where a few people are heard by everyone and lots
| of people are unheard.
|
| I think sites like HN, and the smaller subreddit communities
| along with discords (I miss IRC, It's still there, but the
| people aren't) work against that flow.
|
| There's an element of social 'groupthink' pressure if
| communities of similar opinions cluster, more often against
| ideas than for, but I think that on these platforms it also
| meets a degree of resistance that helps balance things.
|
| HN has Rust/AI/Bitcoin where there are always a few people
| who will express distain for the subject. Each of these seem
| weird if you actually consider the criticisms as being in
| good faith.
|
| Why should people be annoyed about liking another programming
| language, or want to write things in it, or talk about it?
|
| Why are there people who are certain AI is doomed to failure
| that are so concerned about the money of investors?
| Especially when many of the people who express such distain
| for AI generally do not look terribly kindly towards
| investors anyway. It's like they don't like rich people while
| simultaneously concerned that the rich might lose all their
| money.
|
| Why are those who decry Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme so angry
| about the fact that _other_ people, who they disagree with
| and _denigrate_ , are doomed to lose their money? Why are
| they so concerned for the finances for people they don't
| like?
|
| I think the motivation behind all of them is they want their
| dissenting position to be heard. When these things are talked
| about people can see some degree of popularity for an opinion
| that they don't hold. It seems it isn't enough to think "I
| don't think that will work, but good luck to them."
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Most things people do, and the stories they weave around
| their lives are about finding ways that allow them to think
| of themselves as being a certain kind of person. More than
| money, more than others' opinions even.
| 42lux wrote:
| It really reads like he would like to be a British country
| parson in the 19th century.
| deegles wrote:
| Yes, because of course I have 20 extra hours per week to
| dedicate to focused research
| somethingsome wrote:
| I didn't read the post yet, but
|
| >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the
| discipline's foundational texts
|
| It completely depends on the depth at which you are researching
| for leisure. If you like to do it to learn some stuff, just
| using LLMS, wiki and books is perfectly fine!
|
| If you're trying to make a breakthrough in human understanding,
| it is useful to understand very very well the foundations. It
| is not required, sometime, another background is enough to see
| clearly some research issue.
|
| But as you're doing research for fun, if you want to push the
| boundaries, having very strong foundational knowledge is
| awesome and very empowering.
|
| Take for example the LLMs, you have many levels of
| comprehension that you may aim for (just an example):
|
| - simply using occasionally (existance awareness)
|
| - experimenting with prompts engineering (exploratory research)
|
| - studying the neural architectures (understanding better
| what's going on)
|
| - understanding how the architectures are validated (if they
| are...)
|
| - finding limiting cases (deeper exploratory research)
|
| - thinking about in under the perspective of bayesian/classical
| statistics (research at the normal mathematical/engineering
| level)
|
| - going deep into characterizing the architectures in terms of
| manifolds, or any other suitable structure that you believe is
| true (deep fundamental research)
|
| - opening up new questions about what can be learned and why
| (leading to another research field)
|
| The first 3 are available inside a LLM, on Wikipedia and in
| books. The rest you need to fetch some papers. The more you go
| down the path, the more obscure the papers gets.
|
| Up to the end, the last point, where you land in survey papers
| for the other field, and then you can start again with new
| questions. The good thing is that most of the fundamental
| research can be readily applied to understand the new field!
| It's like a jump start.
|
| But at the end of the day, depending on which depth you want to
| do your leisure research, the deeper you go, the more
| foundation papers become important, not just from their
| content, but also the powerful ideas that can be transferred in
| other research projects.
|
| Maybe.. One thing that is missing from what I say is that it's
| not about the quantity, or even the quality of the material you
| read. But it depends on engaging in deep thinking about it!
| Someone can spend his life reading and not become smarter,
| maybe only more knowledgeable.
|
| I my opinion, deep thinking is maybe the most fun and useful
| skill in leisure research, as in paid research.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I've been finding that digital only sources have been declining
| in quality for probably 5 years now. I have actually greatly
| reduced my reliance on them due to the fact that anytime HTTP
| is involved you add a layer of potential marketing obscuring
| the goal. I've been finding especially lately that I would have
| been better just getting a book. In fact I've greatly increased
| by personal library after years of stagnation as the online
| source quality has decreased.
|
| Books are dense on info (assuming its not a churned out book
| which are also a problem now with self publishing) the internet
| tends to be full of fluff and greatly increases the time that I
| spend sifting rather than just learning and researching. My
| best purchase in the last couple years is a 10.3" ebook reader.
| Technical subject books don't work well on smaller readers and
| it makes a huge difference in quality of my personal
| development/research/learning.
|
| I do agree that right now LLM's can help you a lot when you are
| starting on especially on a subject you know little about.
| However this will absolutely be poisoned over time because
| marketing will always creep in until it dominates the HTTP
| source. There is simply too much money to be made jamming a
| product in someones face no matter how subtle over providing
| impartial information when it comes to HTTP. The subtle ads are
| the most insidious because they can often waste lots of your
| time without you realizing it. Sometimes for years if you don't
| realize you were evangelized rather than educated.
| SamPatt wrote:
| The majority of online content can decrease in quality while
| LLMs can increase in quality.
|
| If the decrease in quality is noticeable to you, then it can
| be accounted for by future model makers. We already know that
| quantity isn't everything.
|
| The average coming down only creates a stronger contrast for
| the high-quality work. As a writer, I'm excited about having
| LLMs available to help me. They're already indispensable.
| spudlyo wrote:
| > However this will absolutely be poisoned over time because
| marketing will always creep in until it dominates the HTTP
| source.
|
| I often remind myself that we are in the golden age of LLMs,
| like the pre-enshitification days when Google would nearly
| always return relevant and useful results, and I felt like
| with access to the Internet I could learn anything.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It's all the same duplicated/ copied information. No fact
| checks, no references. It's exhausting to read the same stuff
| over and over again
|
| Long live LLMs
| wisty wrote:
| I don't think it's a silver bullet, but reading source material
| is often quite informative.
|
| Did he say anything else was important? I'd have to read the
| source material.
|
| Why did he say you should read the source material?
|
| Did he consider counter-arguments?
|
| Was his overall argument more nuanced?
|
| How did he come to the conclusion that you should read source
| material?
|
| Was this his main point, or a secondary point in a list of
| several different arguments?
|
| Honestly, a lot of academia seems like social media. People
| take a one-line summary and argue over the merits, often
| without any real idea of the source material.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| But, media consumption habits to a certain degree, do dictate
| our thinking and how much and how long we can actually
| concentrate, no? I also agree that we need not do everything
| the same way we have done before and there are different ways
| to achieve the end.
|
| >> I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia
| aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior
| to everyone else.
|
| We all have our bias. We settle with and swear by a way we end
| up finding to work for us for right reasons.
|
| I notice this a lot while doing math. I would normally start
| with books because they already have predefined structure and
| have all the topics a person would normally need. I buy 3 or 4
| books for which solutions are available. I start with book and
| then I would listen to lectures. If I do not understand, I
| would read some other book on same topic. I would have one book
| which I can understand better than other. Then try to solve
| many problems from all the books and look up solutions.
|
| Though this is so time consuming and demanding with a full time
| job, when I engage with learning, I try to engage in this
| manner. If somebody asks me, I would recommend this because for
| fairly technical topics because other ways have left me with
| vague understanding but not good enough mental model to make me
| relate to problems in terms of the abstractions from those
| topics. That does not mean this is the only way and each might
| have to find thier own path.
|
| LLM has been godsend for me too here, particularly when I am
| trying to fill my gaps in understanding while reading technical
| books. And it is much more easier to listen or see, than to
| read. So, given our current landscape and how much time is
| spent with work, it is true that it is getting harder and
| harder to read and almost not feasible for many of us.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| "Where have the amateur researchers gone"
|
| To their 2nd job.
|
| "and how do we bring them back?"
|
| Pay them enough salary to survive on just 1 job.
| aurumque wrote:
| A lot (and I mean A LOT) of research and breakthroughs in the
| period of 1500 to 1900 was completed by people with no jobs
| whatsoever. If you are looking to revive the great
| mathematicians, writers, philosophers, and scientists of
| yesteryear, you will need to pay them a UBI and sit back and
| hope for the best.
| keepamovin wrote:
| AI is bringing that back. It's so fun to say: "Teach me about..."
| and just keep going. :)
| luizfzs wrote:
| My gut feeling (with bias) is that most people don't think about
| things around them because society is in a constant state of
| hurry. If someone is wondering 'how did zoning laws came to be?',
| they are not being productive. And our western society seems to
| value the individuals based on how much they produce.
|
| The person working, or commuting to/from work, is tired and
| doesn't have the energy to ponder about the world around us.
|
| The 'first researchers' if I may call them that, were the
| Ionians, a Greek island of merchants, that had the time and
| resources to pursue the interests of the mind.
|
| That's of course, only part of the story. The other part, I'd
| say, is to have the habit of questioning and wondering about the
| world around us. That comes with practice. And ironically, lots
| of parents indirectly discourage their kids from asking questions
| by becoming annoyed at how many 'whys' their kids ask.
|
| Our educational system is also discouraging of such way of
| thinking. It's mostly a production line of workers.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I agree with your gut feeling and add that to me it feels im
| surrounded by f*ing Zombies.
|
| It's not that they are too stupid, but they don't even __try__
| to think.
| gnulinux wrote:
| My boss regularly criticizes me for thinking too much.
| Sometimes I stop and think if this is the best way to
| implement something, and then suddenly receive a lecture
| about velocity, moving fast, being efficient, being ok with
| pushing bugs to prod, and all that shebang.
|
| Our society has a pathological obsession with productivity.
| aeblyve wrote:
| The most important thing is having a wealth of free time.
| jll29 wrote:
| I like the idea of collecting a list of books that you would take
| with you on a remote island. Imagine you would never leave that
| island, what would you take?
|
| - The Art of Computer Programming I-IVb
|
| - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
|
| - Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
|
| - Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition
|
| - ...
|
| or perhaps
|
| - The Bible
|
| - The Scouting Guide to Wilderness First Aid: An Officially-
| Licensed Book of the Boy Scouts of America: More than 200
| Essential Skills for Medical ... in Remote Environments (A BSA
| Scouting Guide)
|
| - ...?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Certainly survival guide stuff.
|
| I was thinking about the civilization book case and wondering
| if they had forgotten to include sun tzu, clausewitz, etc ...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Marshall McLuhan also thought television would displace reading
| but I think it only happened for real when YouTube came along in
| that YouTube vastly expanded the availability of non-fiction TV.
|
| One example is the disappearance of text guides for video games:
| circa 2010 you could still find good FAQs and walkthroughs such
| that if you got stuck or were trying to work out the dependencies
| in a _Neptunia_ game such that you need items A, B and C to make
| item D and you 'll have to visit locations E, F and F' (a variant
| of F you can unlock by making a "plan") you could do it
| efficiently.
|
| Now for a 30 hour game you have to find the right place in 30
| hours worth of video -- once in a while you are stuck because
| there is some place where you can jump where it doesn't look like
| you can jump and just seeing somebody do it in a video makes it
| totally clear, but just as often somebody in the video took a
| different route or has a different build and you've got no
| freakin' idea even after watching the video. There was already a
| problem for games like _Pokemon_ where walkthroughs were
| problematic because of the high variance of builds, but it 's far
| worse in video where you want a database more than you want a
| walkthrough.
| dartos wrote:
| Yeah, quants are another breed.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| It's difficult, especially if you have to earn money and support
| others.
|
| I'm taking some time off, and I'm currently busy reading the
| German Idealist philosophers, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and
| some Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus. I am having the time of my
| life!
| strawhatdev wrote:
| The victorian urge to travel the world collecting rare botanical
| samples.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >>> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the
| discipline's foundational texts
|
| >I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic
| fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone
| else.
|
| This is how you end up on the Crackpot Index. Thinking you
| created a theory of everything or a cold fusion device despite
| literally not knowing algebra or basic electrical engineering.
| kishore-jalleda wrote:
| I don't think amateur researchers have disappeared - they're
| evolving how they discover, process, and share knowledge. And we
| need both traditional deep reading and newer modalities to
| accommodate different learning contexts and preferences.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| The largest impediment to researching in my leisure time is the
| vast and exorbitant paywalls that academic publishers deploy.
|
| It's particularly galling when I know the work was funded by my
| own tax dollars. If a govt employee had produced the work, it
| would have been in the public domain. But if the govt gives a
| grant to a researcher, suddenly their output is intellectual
| property with a grossly inflated profit margin.
| danans wrote:
| > Where free time is not used for research -- for developing
| questions, and investigating the answers with an explorer's
| spirit -- cultural coherence crumbles.
|
| Perhaps, but the reality for a great many is that "free time" is
| occupied by survival anxiety, whether because that time is spent
| in additional paid work, care of loved ones, or attempting to get
| a leg up or to jump on a non-sinking life raft.
|
| While technology-enabled cultural fragmentation is undoubtedly a
| strong influence in this, the long term affordability inversion
| that has occurred between consumables (food, clothes,
| electronics, etc) and assets (housing, education, security) has
| exacerbated the aforementioned anxieties and therefore makes
| people vulnerable to the charms of the escapism that new types of
| quick-hit media provide, from cable-news through to social media.
| sotix wrote:
| I've been researching Greek mythology for the past few years as
| an amateur. It's been a lot of fun and rewarding for me. There
| are a few things, which make the research in my leisure time
| tough though.
|
| 1. Society is set up so that I have to prioritize making money in
| my limited free time. Fortunately this pressure has lessened
| since I got a well paying job, but it held back my free time for
| years.
|
| 2. Because of the first constraint, I don't have the time to dive
| into mastery. I'm reading works at a much slower rate since I
| have to work everyday. I've also found the time over the past few
| years to study Modern Greek, which I could have spent studying
| Ancient Greek I suppose. However, I don't have the time to study
| both and Modern Greek has been my priority for reasons outside of
| my research.
|
| 3. I owe a great deal of my research to people with PhDs/DPhils
| on the topic. However, I also can't contribute much to the field
| because they deliver their incredible work full time. I'm far
| less likely to make significant contributions when they have
| already spent years studying Ancient Greek and then every day
| performing acts such as translating great works.
|
| All that said, I'm satisfied not competing with the experts. I
| just recognize that this is purely a hobby that I perform for fun
| when I have the time, which isn't as often as I need in order to
| be a more useful researcher.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Amateur researchers are frequently derided as dilettantes.
| Sometimes they are. But "Science" is filled with gatekeepers
| demanding institutional credentials. For good and bad.
| creer wrote:
| Lost? It has never been easier to do research or start a research
| project. What has changed is the inclination to read. Reading was
| a refuge for some - and probably fiction graphic novels, computer
| games, doom scrolling are now the comparable refuge. So basic,
| cursory research has lost one population.
|
| Did that population do all that much in-depth research. Some
| sure. Not all that much.
|
| So there was perhaps an anomaly in research for a short while and
| we are now back to deeper research belonging again to the people
| who enjoy the rabbit hole and the full fledged projects. And for
| us, research has never been easier.
| thinkcritical wrote:
| First of all, there was a lot of interesting food for thought in
| this post and I love the framework it offers for leisurely
| research. However; I don't agree with this:
|
| > through audiovisual devices, which ask no discipline of the
| mind, and which are already giving the room the languor of an
| opium parlor.
|
| I wish there was concrete evidence provided to support this. I
| suspect that learning outcomes are going to be more influenced by
| the quality of the material and the level of engagement of the
| learner, regardless of medium. Bad content is bad content,
| whether it's text or audiovisual, and I can passively read a book
| as easily as I can passively consume a video.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Academia has a combination of monopoly and scarcity that drove
| would-be researchers insane. Simple as that.
|
| I mean this both flippantly in many cases and literally in many
| others. Academia in my orbit appears to be a risk factor for
| psychological problems.
| loxodrome wrote:
| The academic establishment has done a pretty good job of
| excluding and discrediting anyone without a PhD from actively
| participating in research.
| seu wrote:
| "Books as civilization" implies that those peoples who had not
| "created" books (or something similar) were not civilized. Quite
| eurocentric.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "Fundamental to the art of research as leisure is the creation of
| formal and informal 'communities of knowledge' in which well-
| researched ideas are communicated in a written form, and
| presented for wider debate."
|
| I think the better message for this article is publish your
| findings if you do original research. On a personal blog. In a
| paper. Maybe a book.
|
| All the other stuff is a bit circle jerky.
| admiralrohan wrote:
| I grew up in poverty in India, so research was never a leisure
| activity--it was a race to keep up. That's why I think the
| article is right about the cultural shift. Deep reading feels
| like a luxury not everyone can afford.
|
| Now, I see more people relying on step-by-step guides instead of
| digging in themselves. It fits the trend of passive consumption.
| But reading alone isn't enough. It only matters if you can use it
| to solve real problems you care about.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-19 23:00 UTC)