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Reading is not just a proxy for thinking. It's the gateway to a world of knowledge. Macchiavelli described this beautifully in a letter to Francesco Vettori in 1513 from exile in the Tuscan countryside. [1] It's the best description I have ever read of the life of the mind.

Here's the money paragraph in full.

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. And because Dante says that no one understands anything unless he retains what he has understood, I have jotted down what I have profited from in their conversation and composed a short study, De principatibus, in which I delve as deeply as I can into the ideas concerning this topic, discussing the definition of a princedom, the categories of princedoms, how they are acquired, how they are retained, and why they are lost. And if ever any whimsy of mine has given you pleasure, this one should not displease you. It ought to be welcomed by a prince, and especially by a new prince; therefore I am dedicating it to His Magnificence Giuliano. Filippo da Casavecchia has seen it. He will be able to give you some account of both the work itself and the discussions I have had with him about it, although I am continually fattening and currying it.

[1] http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/flor-mach-lett-ve...

Yup, that's how you read a book.

I would, however, cut the the paragraph as follows. Everything after is just an adversisement for the authors blog.

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. And because Dante says that no one understands anything unless he retains what he has understood, I have jotted down what I have profited from in their conversation and composed a short study..."

> just an advertisement for the author's blog

Well... It's one of the many "blogs" worth reading. And a very old one. (sidenote: I'm really not sure you can even call it a "log" of any kind)

Hey thanks for correctly my typo when you quoted my.

You're missing one big element of what books can teach far more readily than a tweet, or an instagram, which you seem to think are the equivalent - empathy.

Only through the act of imagining a narrator or character's emotional state can you enjoy a book, and doing so brings one to identify with or at the very least understand better the circumstances that individual faces.

Yes you can do this face to face, or by living a life that might be represented in a novel, but literature is a far more efficient way to broaden experience.

Books are not purely about learning facts, figures, dates and fates.

I'm not sure that books readily teach empathy, however. The can expand you exposure to things that others have to go through, but empathy requires caring about other people to begin with, and few books will teach that on their own.

Books don't give you just what others go through, but also what others think - their state of mind. If you prick us, do we not bleed? only works for psychological "pricks" if you can imagine the person psychologically bleeding, and books can let you experience that.

There's a popular study result that says it does: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/377

"Only through the act of imagining..."

Be careful with the only. I've read and enjoyed plenty of books while neglecting sympathy for the characters and their experience; looking at the interplay of ideas and theories, for example.

Sometimes I think it's been due to my lack of context. For instance, I love the little Dostoyevsky I've read, but I'm always perplexed by the social world of his characters. Maybe they're high bourgeois and clashing with the strain on that order in the Russia of his day. Still, I thoroughly enjoy the other elements of his writing that come to life. I was surprised to find the most thrilling so far was the first half of Notes From Underground. It reads like sci-fi to me: all of the talk about everything being calculated and determined in advance.

Then you haven't read enough Dostoevsky :)

I think he's one of the most empathetically evocative authors there was - by the end of crime and punishment if you can't identify with Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, you've assuredly missed a beat.

That said, context is all - and it's helpful to also read his contemporaries, understand Russian history of the time on a broader scale (this too one can acquire from books), and then follow through on the trajectory of thought and feeling with the likes of Solzhenitsyn and Bulgakov, before landing at the post-glasnost world with Pelevin and Kurkov.

Imagination. That's key. Exercising your imagination is important. And, it seems, getting to less and less important to more and more people.

We will never become what we cannot imagine.

Interesting idea. I wonder if there is any correlation to the number and types of books you have read and at what age. Would consumption of other story telling mediums such as movies, tv, video games, etc. be similar? I would guess books allow you to better put yourself in the protagonist's shoes since they exist more in your imagination than more concrete examples with a canonical author...

Reading and resulting thought are exercise for the brain. Some days you do a triathlon. Some just a stroll around the block. But both are better than mindlessly sitting on the sofa watching TV. Most TV is not exercise.

With that said, the mind is like other muscles. It has a limited capacity. That is, it also needs recovery. Reading "Your Brain at Work" was a seminal moment for me.

Finally, reading, observing (as mentioned above) and watching (i.e., TV or mobile device) seem to be three different things. They each engage the mind (and thought process differently). Based on my experience, there is a difference in people who read the news, and those who watch it. Reading, to me, is active. Watching is passive. How you think (about the news, for example) effects what you think. Or so it seems.

  > A walk in the woods, a pithy tweet, an encouter (a dialog 
  >  -- a communiation -- a discussion -- an interaction --
  > an intercourse) with another human (fucking) being can
  > also provide that eureka moment.

Eureka moments are when the new bridge has been built in your brain. Reading is one (and one of the most potent) of the things what creates columns on which this bridge lays.

> When I read an online article from the Atlantic or the New Yorker, after a few paragraphs I glance over at the slide bar to judge the article’s length

The Atlantic is usually interesting for me, but this was a major problem before. The way to combat it is to read it anyway. With lots of practice, you'll train yourself to be more focused and ignore that conscious awareness of 'ticking time'.

Edit: language

Reading is not a proxy for thinking. When you read a book about something you can get information which took the author of the book 10 or even more times to write. You cannot simply mindlessly read the book without thinking therefore you learn when you read

Upvote for holding my attention for 5+ paragraphs

nice dead prez reference

My HN reading bot gives an 84% chance that your response was not written by a bot.

* Dictated, not read.

There are several things happening here. I make a reference to a (rather famous?) book by Dale Carnegie, called How to win friends an influence people (that's the part after the asterisk).

I personally have no doubt that the above response was not written by bot. At this current moment in history -- mind this was written on 2017-07-25 (ISO, EDT, YMMV, HHGTTG, etc.) -- bot technology had not yet progressed to the stage that all HN comments were being persused by bots that knew that dead prez was written in lowercase, not uppercase.

I'd like to thank my bot for calling this to my attention so that I could answer personally. He only deploys on special occasions -- I doubt that any more than 0.4% of HN comments have been made by him.

<random quote> For we are the future, and we are the past. We are not the present -- this is not a gift. </random quote>