Why bother with diet and exercise when there’s Ozempic? Why learn to drive when there’s Uber? If you believe that books are solely about efficient information delivery you’re missing the point
In the pre-LLM days I used to have a shortcut to avoid reading overly verbose non-fiction books, which was to watch the author's TED or Google talk. Unfortunately authors in the pre-substack era had to resort to puffing up what essentially should have been essays into books in order to feed themselves..
This completely misses the point of the impact deep reading has on the brain, cognition, and concentration, which is well established and has been for decades now.
You've taken the idea of opportunity cost and tried to compare it 1:1 here without apparently understanding the multitude of other positive cognitive effects that are conferred by periods of uninterrupted deep reading. If your response is something like 'Well, people don't sit for long periods uninterrupted anymore' then that misses the point - there's also plenty of evidence that our modern device-ridden world is counterproductive of deep thinking and creativity.
I too think AIs can be useful if used and prompted properly, but the idea that AIs or the web in its supposedly information-saturated state confer cognitive or informational substitutes analogous to what we also get out of deep reading goes completely against our current understanding of neuroscience and and behavioural/learning science.
I'm still spending about the time reading books as in the past but have become less of a completionist due to opportunity cost of rehashing info I've already seen well covered elsewhere. It seems like your suggesting maximizing idea exposure to time spent. This makes sense up to a point but at too high of a level of throughput this is counterproductive. The best ideas are the hardest to grasp since they are new to you. Reinforcing the ideas through thorough discussions / stories increases mental stickiness vs. seeing bullet points and moving on.
This is odd to me because IME teachers that advocate this were highly against crib notes and their ilk, often intentionally asking obscure tangential questions that wouldn't get covered in the crib just to make sure you read the book. Were you telling your students to read summaries and cribs in the 80s?
I'm not against it btw, just find it interesting the amount of people that give using AI a pass for identical behavior they condemn if not AI.
Somewhat disagree. While a lot of books can be filled with filler, the information in books is typically more disciplined, structured, and coherent. Most essays have more ephemeral insights.
I also think more information consumption is not necessarily better. Taking time to process and connect thoughts at a deeper level makes it stick.
Nothing to add to this conversation ... but, you've now been cancelled. Not by me, but by Google. I've been on this mailing list for quite a while, and Gmail suddenly decided that "In My Tribe" email is now spam. Go figure ...
"Some books (but not very many) are crafted so well that you should read them to appreciate the author’s style..." One book I feel compelled to recommend is by Drew Gilpin Faust (former President of Harvard), "This Long Republic of Suffering." It's about how people and society coped with the unfathomable number of deaths during the U.S. Civil War. It's not morbid at all. In fact, it's beautifully written, like poetry, and worth reading for its beauty alone but also to appreciate the zeitgeist of the time.
Maybe if the Union would have allowed the so called rebel states to secede, which was obviously well within their rights, then a lot of deaths could have been avoided? For example, how many people died when the UK seceded from the EU?
There's much awry with your comment. The U.K. and EU are not comparable to the U.S. in the sense of your comment. How many people died when the Catholics of Northern Ireland tried (and failed) to separate from the U.K.? That would be a better, but still imperfect, analogy. You also fail to mention slavery in your comment. (I can anticipate you might say the Civil War was not fought about slavery. That would be historically incorrect.)
If the Civil War was all about slavery, then why did the Emancipation Proclamation only apply to the Confederacy and not the Union slave states? That seems odd for such a noble cause.
I will also note that the process of ending slavery globally was generally not fraught with bloody civil wars or massive death tolls. The U.S. is an isolated exception although there are others.
Lastly, I will note that secession doesn’t necessitate violence and there are plenty of historical examples of peaceful breakups. All that it requires is good faith negotiations as opposed to claiming that some union is forever and always indissoluble.
Your argument about the Civil War has been propounded many times, especially about the date of the Emancipation Proclamation, which required considerable time and forethought for Lincoln to build support for it.
Although the war started because of a disagreement about secession, the Union ever increasingly adopted abolition of slavery as a cause worth fighting for.
Your comments also suggest the Union started the war, which was not the case, to wit, the Confederacy's unprovoked attack on Ft. Sumter being the first shots fired.
While secession might be feasible in some countries peaceably, it has never been an option in the United States. Where precisely does the Constitution, the Bill of Right or other amendments specify the right of states to secede? (Short answer: nowhere.)
The Constitution includes an explicit process for admitting new states (Art. IV, Sec. 3).
The Constitution is silent about states seceding. Why would the Constitution be explicit in one direction but silent about the other? This silence implies there is no process for secession and, therefore, no right.
The Constitution also includes structural commitments implying a permanent union, such as the Supremacy Clause and the Guarantee Clause. (quoted from A.I.)
This silence is legally meaningful: the framers created a detailed entry mechanism but no exit mechanism, which courts treat as intentional. (quoted from A.I.)
Supreme Court case law, which is the law of the land, has ruled against the right of states to secede. (Unsure when these rulings occurred, Ante Bellum or Post Bellum?)
A corollary is that all non-fiction "instructive" business books (as opposed to memoirs, bios, etc.) are a good single Harvard Business Review article inflated to 320 pp so you can charge $24.95 for it.
Hmm, this year I'm definitely on pace to read fewer than the ~120 books I read last year because I'm writing one book and translating another (Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics). I suppose I could get AI to do my vibe-writing, vibe-translating, and vibe-thinking, but that would take all the joy out of the vita contemplativa...
A good bit of advice I read many years ago was to stop reading magazines and focus on books. A good non-fiction book is generally someone's best thinking. A great book tends to cite other great books and following the breadcrumbs is fun!
Books are best for extended arguments. I'm reading as many books as I used to (coz I enjoy it), but out of the billion and two possible books out there, I'm asking AI to help me select the best half dozen (with modest success). I also follow Tyler's rule--I am not obligated to finish a book just because I started it.
In lifting, strength gains are to some extent a function of “time under tension.” Weight matters but so does the number of sets, reps and even duration taken to complete a rep.
The same is likely true with respect to truly understanding and internalizing an idea. One benefit of books is that it does force increased time grappling with a particular idea even if the punchline can be absorbed in a fraction of the time.
That said the many other costs including opportunity cost of missing other ideas remains.
With respect to your writing the three language of politics has stuck with me pretty well and is a concept I go back to … despite never having read the book. Though I have encountered it plenty here and the old blog.
Why bother with diet and exercise when there’s Ozempic? Why learn to drive when there’s Uber? If you believe that books are solely about efficient information delivery you’re missing the point
In the pre-LLM days I used to have a shortcut to avoid reading overly verbose non-fiction books, which was to watch the author's TED or Google talk. Unfortunately authors in the pre-substack era had to resort to puffing up what essentially should have been essays into books in order to feed themselves..
You should have added this disclaimer at the beginning "So far, I have been describing nonfiction books" =)
This completely misses the point of the impact deep reading has on the brain, cognition, and concentration, which is well established and has been for decades now.
You've taken the idea of opportunity cost and tried to compare it 1:1 here without apparently understanding the multitude of other positive cognitive effects that are conferred by periods of uninterrupted deep reading. If your response is something like 'Well, people don't sit for long periods uninterrupted anymore' then that misses the point - there's also plenty of evidence that our modern device-ridden world is counterproductive of deep thinking and creativity.
I too think AIs can be useful if used and prompted properly, but the idea that AIs or the web in its supposedly information-saturated state confer cognitive or informational substitutes analogous to what we also get out of deep reading goes completely against our current understanding of neuroscience and and behavioural/learning science.
I'm still spending about the time reading books as in the past but have become less of a completionist due to opportunity cost of rehashing info I've already seen well covered elsewhere. It seems like your suggesting maximizing idea exposure to time spent. This makes sense up to a point but at too high of a level of throughput this is counterproductive. The best ideas are the hardest to grasp since they are new to you. Reinforcing the ideas through thorough discussions / stories increases mental stickiness vs. seeing bullet points and moving on.
This is odd to me because IME teachers that advocate this were highly against crib notes and their ilk, often intentionally asking obscure tangential questions that wouldn't get covered in the crib just to make sure you read the book. Were you telling your students to read summaries and cribs in the 80s?
I'm not against it btw, just find it interesting the amount of people that give using AI a pass for identical behavior they condemn if not AI.
Somewhat disagree. While a lot of books can be filled with filler, the information in books is typically more disciplined, structured, and coherent. Most essays have more ephemeral insights.
I also think more information consumption is not necessarily better. Taking time to process and connect thoughts at a deeper level makes it stick.
Nothing to add to this conversation ... but, you've now been cancelled. Not by me, but by Google. I've been on this mailing list for quite a while, and Gmail suddenly decided that "In My Tribe" email is now spam. Go figure ...
"Some books (but not very many) are crafted so well that you should read them to appreciate the author’s style..." One book I feel compelled to recommend is by Drew Gilpin Faust (former President of Harvard), "This Long Republic of Suffering." It's about how people and society coped with the unfathomable number of deaths during the U.S. Civil War. It's not morbid at all. In fact, it's beautifully written, like poetry, and worth reading for its beauty alone but also to appreciate the zeitgeist of the time.
Maybe if the Union would have allowed the so called rebel states to secede, which was obviously well within their rights, then a lot of deaths could have been avoided? For example, how many people died when the UK seceded from the EU?
There's much awry with your comment. The U.K. and EU are not comparable to the U.S. in the sense of your comment. How many people died when the Catholics of Northern Ireland tried (and failed) to separate from the U.K.? That would be a better, but still imperfect, analogy. You also fail to mention slavery in your comment. (I can anticipate you might say the Civil War was not fought about slavery. That would be historically incorrect.)
There's much awry with your comment.
If the Civil War was all about slavery, then why did the Emancipation Proclamation only apply to the Confederacy and not the Union slave states? That seems odd for such a noble cause.
I will also note that the process of ending slavery globally was generally not fraught with bloody civil wars or massive death tolls. The U.S. is an isolated exception although there are others.
Lastly, I will note that secession doesn’t necessitate violence and there are plenty of historical examples of peaceful breakups. All that it requires is good faith negotiations as opposed to claiming that some union is forever and always indissoluble.
Your argument about the Civil War has been propounded many times, especially about the date of the Emancipation Proclamation, which required considerable time and forethought for Lincoln to build support for it.
Although the war started because of a disagreement about secession, the Union ever increasingly adopted abolition of slavery as a cause worth fighting for.
Your comments also suggest the Union started the war, which was not the case, to wit, the Confederacy's unprovoked attack on Ft. Sumter being the first shots fired.
While secession might be feasible in some countries peaceably, it has never been an option in the United States. Where precisely does the Constitution, the Bill of Right or other amendments specify the right of states to secede? (Short answer: nowhere.)
Where precisely does the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or other Amendments specify that the states *do not* have the right to secede?
(Short answer: nowhere.)
The Constitution includes an explicit process for admitting new states (Art. IV, Sec. 3).
The Constitution is silent about states seceding. Why would the Constitution be explicit in one direction but silent about the other? This silence implies there is no process for secession and, therefore, no right.
The Constitution also includes structural commitments implying a permanent union, such as the Supremacy Clause and the Guarantee Clause. (quoted from A.I.)
This silence is legally meaningful: the framers created a detailed entry mechanism but no exit mechanism, which courts treat as intentional. (quoted from A.I.)
Supreme Court case law, which is the law of the land, has ruled against the right of states to secede. (Unsure when these rulings occurred, Ante Bellum or Post Bellum?)
A corollary is that all non-fiction "instructive" business books (as opposed to memoirs, bios, etc.) are a good single Harvard Business Review article inflated to 320 pp so you can charge $24.95 for it.
I read one book/week
Also, I can read 100X faster than listening to someone natter on orally-which I avoid like the plague.
Hmm, this year I'm definitely on pace to read fewer than the ~120 books I read last year because I'm writing one book and translating another (Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics). I suppose I could get AI to do my vibe-writing, vibe-translating, and vibe-thinking, but that would take all the joy out of the vita contemplativa...
A good bit of advice I read many years ago was to stop reading magazines and focus on books. A good non-fiction book is generally someone's best thinking. A great book tends to cite other great books and following the breadcrumbs is fun!
Books are best for extended arguments. I'm reading as many books as I used to (coz I enjoy it), but out of the billion and two possible books out there, I'm asking AI to help me select the best half dozen (with modest success). I also follow Tyler's rule--I am not obligated to finish a book just because I started it.
nice essay. when i read books i use AI to summarize the source material for every footnote. 🙂
In lifting, strength gains are to some extent a function of “time under tension.” Weight matters but so does the number of sets, reps and even duration taken to complete a rep.
The same is likely true with respect to truly understanding and internalizing an idea. One benefit of books is that it does force increased time grappling with a particular idea even if the punchline can be absorbed in a fraction of the time.
That said the many other costs including opportunity cost of missing other ideas remains.
With respect to your writing the three language of politics has stuck with me pretty well and is a concept I go back to … despite never having read the book. Though I have encountered it plenty here and the old blog.