One of my professors told me that only 10% of any non-fiction book was worth reading, and the trick was finding that 10% with as little effort as possible.
So I said, "You've published about a dozen books. Is only 10% worth reading?"
His reply was "Maybe over them all about 4-5% in each book because I tend to repeat the important stuff."
So I asked, "Why not just write less of the 90%?"
His answer, "Most of your readers need to be led to the important stuff or they'll never get it."
So I said, "Aren't your readers mostly other academics?"
I worry that the condensed-insights-only version stripped of the context of how that insight was formed may be more easily forgotten. Especially for somebody who is now thinking .... oh Goodie! With this technique I can now learn 10x as many books! I suspect that some things are learnt better when the reader has some regular rest sleeping as usual while the new information is going in. Some students have this problem .... they can cram for a test but next year remember nothing of what they supposedly learned. Whatever deep connections the ideal learner would have made, tying the new material to the things they already know didn't happen. They are as unprepared for a heavy course that is taught with serious pre-requisites as the people who never took the course they tested well in.
I don't know of any studies on how knowledge fades, but we ought to be able to find an interested cognitive science student and get him or her interested in your AI teaching experiment and this approach to reading books and learning.
I tend to agree, and would add that I fear the primary result would be learning what others think the author is writing, not what they actually wrote. I find that some times even the author doesn’t seem to understand what they actually argue, and many times readers don’t either. Only careful reading and rereading gets you there.
Granted, most nonfiction books are extremely shallow and basically puffed up blog posts, and could lose 200 of those 300 pages very easily. Still, I have found there is great value in engaging with the work itself, as misunderstanding what is written is far to common and easy if you don’t put in the work.
True, I could have used the time I wasted on reading The Technological Republic, which is a piece of junk, so that I could talk to Arnold about it. The world needs fewer books like that and I fear that we are about to get many, many more.
A good editor and a willing writer could have found a decent monograph in there, but rich, important people don't expect to take that kind of criticism or do that much work. And the book will sell regardless.
"I don't know of any studies on how knowledge fades..."
Interesting topic; trauma and excitement helps. Maybe better learners are able to spool up some neurotic drama about the material.
I dabble in fixing cars and trucks. I find repair manuals unreadable -- until I get stuck on a particular problem; then they are vastly interesting for that particular problem.
This seems like a good idea. I get the sense a lot of non-fiction books should have been long articles instead, but you can't sell a long article for $29.95 at Barnes and Noble.
We all have to choose for ourselves, but I think it is better if we don't just have a snark fest with each other. I am finding it strange how many likes and reshares and upvotes a post will get when a one-minute Google search is something we can all do, any time we want to. We just have to want that kind of conversation and to each do our part.
Most authors, when asked what it takes to become a good writer, cite "Read a lot and widely." If folks writing ability is awful, using AI to read accelerates the conundrum.
And...."Maybe David Halberstam"....(?) Maybe...? Sheesh...
Methinks Arnold has found a new toy and is blinded by its marvels.
What about biography? I agree with the man who said "history is best studied through biography." I confess I'm currently reading Tanenhaus' bio of WFBuckley. At 850 pages it's "a doorstopper of a book." I'd like it better if it was half as long. But I'm learning a whole lot about the 50s and 60s that I don't think I'd ever learn from a straight history book. Eg, about McCarthyism.
Look into spaced repetition learning and the use of a tool like Anki. That seems to be the most effective, but only students in Med School seems to employ it to any large extent.
This should be testable to some extent by the ai asking Qs about those important points, having you answer in your own words and the ai agrees you get the point, or need more work.
I am reminded of advice I have heard about giving a speech. What one thing would you like the audience to remember, after they leave your talk and get lunch?
It is humbling to think that you may spend over a month developing something and putting a talk together, only to be more forgettable by the end of the day than the juicy hamburger at the lunch hall. If you can accept the more realistic goal, however, you are more likely to achieve it. You can do things like put your main point into the talk title and onto every slide of the presentation. You can try to craft an analogy or some kind of running joke.
It seems the same for written essays. What one point would you like someone to walk away with? The essay length seems very special for this kind of goal. It's long enough that you can convey enough information that it's worth someone changing their mind over, but it's short enough that people can read it in under an hour.
A book is just too long, most of the time. Leaving aside recreational reading, the strongest example I can think of where a book can work well is when you need the reader to imagine why an idea *might* be true. The narrative form can help with this. 1984 is a good example: it's really hard to understand why Big Brother is bad without settling in for a multi-hour journey of the daily life of people living in such an environment.
So I guess if you want to write a book, maybe there's an idea to explore. What idea do you have that most people can't imagine even could be true?
What a philistine essay. This approach basically outsources critical thinking to an AI. This might be OK for a professional who is perusing professional literature only to learn something new (and to claim fake familiarity with a work). However, it would be a catastrophic approach for a student who is getting acquainted with a field or a laymen pursuing a new interest. It would deprive this kind of reader of the pleasure of immersing himself in a book, pondering the evidence and the arguments, and getting a feel for the mind of the author. Economics writing is hideous but that's hardly true of all non-fiction.
If you can get the book in PDF form, you can upload it to the AI so it will have a more informed discussion of it, and can then discuss recent books with it as well.
One of my professors told me that only 10% of any non-fiction book was worth reading, and the trick was finding that 10% with as little effort as possible.
So I said, "You've published about a dozen books. Is only 10% worth reading?"
His reply was "Maybe over them all about 4-5% in each book because I tend to repeat the important stuff."
So I asked, "Why not just write less of the 90%?"
His answer, "Most of your readers need to be led to the important stuff or they'll never get it."
So I said, "Aren't your readers mostly other academics?"
And he said, "Yes." and smiled.
I worry that the condensed-insights-only version stripped of the context of how that insight was formed may be more easily forgotten. Especially for somebody who is now thinking .... oh Goodie! With this technique I can now learn 10x as many books! I suspect that some things are learnt better when the reader has some regular rest sleeping as usual while the new information is going in. Some students have this problem .... they can cram for a test but next year remember nothing of what they supposedly learned. Whatever deep connections the ideal learner would have made, tying the new material to the things they already know didn't happen. They are as unprepared for a heavy course that is taught with serious pre-requisites as the people who never took the course they tested well in.
I don't know of any studies on how knowledge fades, but we ought to be able to find an interested cognitive science student and get him or her interested in your AI teaching experiment and this approach to reading books and learning.
I tend to agree, and would add that I fear the primary result would be learning what others think the author is writing, not what they actually wrote. I find that some times even the author doesn’t seem to understand what they actually argue, and many times readers don’t either. Only careful reading and rereading gets you there.
Granted, most nonfiction books are extremely shallow and basically puffed up blog posts, and could lose 200 of those 300 pages very easily. Still, I have found there is great value in engaging with the work itself, as misunderstanding what is written is far to common and easy if you don’t put in the work.
True, I could have used the time I wasted on reading The Technological Republic, which is a piece of junk, so that I could talk to Arnold about it. The world needs fewer books like that and I fear that we are about to get many, many more.
I was just about to start reading that piece of junk. thank you
A good editor and a willing writer could have found a decent monograph in there, but rich, important people don't expect to take that kind of criticism or do that much work. And the book will sell regardless.
"I don't know of any studies on how knowledge fades..."
Interesting topic; trauma and excitement helps. Maybe better learners are able to spool up some neurotic drama about the material.
I dabble in fixing cars and trucks. I find repair manuals unreadable -- until I get stuck on a particular problem; then they are vastly interesting for that particular problem.
This seems like a good idea. I get the sense a lot of non-fiction books should have been long articles instead, but you can't sell a long article for $29.95 at Barnes and Noble.
Arnold, i read it like this => https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learning-lab-mads-srinivasan-nstxe/
This is depressing. But, then, I know that actually reading books is not the GMU Econ way.
Meanwhile, here's Arnold's book list from one of his GMU classes.
https://arnoldkling.com/econ/GMU/booklist.html
We all have to choose for ourselves, but I think it is better if we don't just have a snark fest with each other. I am finding it strange how many likes and reshares and upvotes a post will get when a one-minute Google search is something we can all do, any time we want to. We just have to want that kind of conversation and to each do our part.
Most authors, when asked what it takes to become a good writer, cite "Read a lot and widely." If folks writing ability is awful, using AI to read accelerates the conundrum.
And...."Maybe David Halberstam"....(?) Maybe...? Sheesh...
Methinks Arnold has found a new toy and is blinded by its marvels.
“Stop, Look, and Listen”
School crossing guards throughout the land want to hug you right now.
What about biography? I agree with the man who said "history is best studied through biography." I confess I'm currently reading Tanenhaus' bio of WFBuckley. At 850 pages it's "a doorstopper of a book." I'd like it better if it was half as long. But I'm learning a whole lot about the 50s and 60s that I don't think I'd ever learn from a straight history book. Eg, about McCarthyism.
I was thinking about biography as well, especially auto-biography.
I think it is a good and enjoyable experience to read these things in a long narrative format. That alone is more than enough.
I worry about taking the information as more than that. We are all very good at spin, and the author of a book is also trying to make sales.
Look into spaced repetition learning and the use of a tool like Anki. That seems to be the most effective, but only students in Med School seems to employ it to any large extent.
I believe it is also popular with language students.
In the immortal words of Woody Allen, "It's about Russia."
Guns Roar, Russia burns.
Where's Andrey, who is Petya?
Confused, France retreats.
Everyone needs 101 Great Books in Haiku by David Bader!
This ai assist seems likely to be very efficient.
How effective?
This should be testable to some extent by the ai asking Qs about those important points, having you answer in your own words and the ai agrees you get the point, or need more work.
An ai tutor for that book.
“I am ahead of the game.“ True in many ways. Thanks for the reading tips. Will try them out.
Oh, and *Three Languages* is pretty darn well written, especially because it’s short, timeless, and insightful.
Thank you, this is very useful.
I would say Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement is a rare nonfiction book worth reading cover to cover.
I am reminded of advice I have heard about giving a speech. What one thing would you like the audience to remember, after they leave your talk and get lunch?
It is humbling to think that you may spend over a month developing something and putting a talk together, only to be more forgettable by the end of the day than the juicy hamburger at the lunch hall. If you can accept the more realistic goal, however, you are more likely to achieve it. You can do things like put your main point into the talk title and onto every slide of the presentation. You can try to craft an analogy or some kind of running joke.
It seems the same for written essays. What one point would you like someone to walk away with? The essay length seems very special for this kind of goal. It's long enough that you can convey enough information that it's worth someone changing their mind over, but it's short enough that people can read it in under an hour.
A book is just too long, most of the time. Leaving aside recreational reading, the strongest example I can think of where a book can work well is when you need the reader to imagine why an idea *might* be true. The narrative form can help with this. 1984 is a good example: it's really hard to understand why Big Brother is bad without settling in for a multi-hour journey of the daily life of people living in such an environment.
So I guess if you want to write a book, maybe there's an idea to explore. What idea do you have that most people can't imagine even could be true?
What a philistine essay. This approach basically outsources critical thinking to an AI. This might be OK for a professional who is perusing professional literature only to learn something new (and to claim fake familiarity with a work). However, it would be a catastrophic approach for a student who is getting acquainted with a field or a laymen pursuing a new interest. It would deprive this kind of reader of the pleasure of immersing himself in a book, pondering the evidence and the arguments, and getting a feel for the mind of the author. Economics writing is hideous but that's hardly true of all non-fiction.
If you can get the book in PDF form, you can upload it to the AI so it will have a more informed discussion of it, and can then discuss recent books with it as well.