Comment by todd8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by todd8 | Hacker News Reader

I've read a great deal for the last 50 years, but I feel that this gives me little time for fiction. Every time I pick up a fictional work, I know that I'm going to be forgoing hours of reading or thinking about other things. I feel that I have limited time for fiction. Sadly, this causes me to miss out on the joy of reading good fiction.

It's easy to speed read technical material, especially with the benefit of 50 years of doing it--I simply look for the new material that is inevitably mixed with lots of introductory or background material; I really can't read fiction any faster than my normal relaxed, rather ordinary reading speed. Fiction can take so many twists and turns that it's not possible to dash through it without reading every paragraph.

Recently, I've been thinking about revisiting the subject of my undergrad degrees, Mathematics. I just don't know if I really have time in my life to go back and relearn Topology for example. I didn't appreciated (nor respect) it enough to learn it well when I took Topology 45 years ago, now I wish I recalled it.

It's sobering to consider how few kilo-days I've got left. :(

Have you considered audio books? That's the main way I consume fiction these days. I love listening to audio books while doing other things (commuting, cleaning, going on walks, etc). It's a good alternative (or companion) to listening to music or podcasts. Looking at my Audible library I've listened to about 27 books in the past few years (most of them fiction).

Sometimes the fastest way is slow.

You don't need to "read fiction fast" you need to slow down and enjoy it, internalize the universes that are created by it.

Reading fiction allows you to think about non-fiction differently, i.e. you gain new perspectives by also reading non-ficion.

That's at least my experience.

You might enjoy Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It has some hard sci-fi elements inspired by mathematics (orbital mechanics, phase space). Also books by Greg Egan such as Schild's Ladder (graph theory).

I don't think you can learn much from Anathem. Greg Egan's Clockwork Trilogy, though, is a very unique and illuminating perspective on Relativity: "What if we lived in a universe where the space-time metric was Riemannian?"

Yes. I recently mentioned to my partner how many days I have left in the form of sunsets. Not that many when we think about it. You know what, I approach everything with that attitude and make the most of what little time we have. That includes re-reading number theory books in my spare time :).

Probably there is not a way to accept death. Humans forever fight against death. Probably death truly should be scary and offputting, and it’s inevitability drives us to do crazy things like believe it’s ok. We probably should fight death with all the strength we have. It’s one of our evolutionary imperatives!

Of all the reasons to delay death, an argument on grounds of an "evolutionary imperative" has got to be the weakest.

The value of life is not in its quantity alone, but in $\int_{birth}^{death} quality \: dt$. If life is extended without due diligence to improving quality of life for humans and indeed all sentient beings, we are ultimately doing a disservice to our fellow humans.

Why is that a weak argument? And don't you think its rude and unnecessary (trolly?) not only to say its weak but its literally the weakest possible? What other purposes do we have in life besides those given to us by evolution? All other purposes surely are rooted in something ephemeral or fantastical. Dreams not truths.

It's a weak argument because we have entered a fundamentally different phase of our evolution, from that steered by our environment to that steered by ourselves. Our evolutionary drives incite us to eat meat because it was scarce (but now we have farms), they incite us to view faces different than ours as fundamentally other (though tribalism is obsolete and we recognize everyone as human). There is no good reason to follow evolutionary imperatives because we now understand our own impact on our destiny and have the means to plan for and steer it.

It is the weakest because there are only a few good arguments for life extension, and all of them are better (but not by much) except for the "because we can" people.

Always when introducing these "benefits" to society we must carefully weigh and consider the way they will shape how human lives are led and experienced. And nothing good can come of extending life if there is no corresponding marked increase in quality of life for everyone who may be affected--and I don't just mean statistics like access to healthcare and food, but real, perceived happiness of individuals.

Quick edit to respond to your last point: "truths" in this context hardly mean much. There are very few things you can call objectively true. There are metrics and statistics you can measure but they only explain themselves and any correlations you may assign are spurious at best, and harmful when acted upon without fore- or afterthought.

As `naiyt` said, try audio books. I used to feel the same way as you and then bought a bluetooth receiver that fit into the back of my car stereo and now listen to audiobooks during my morning/afternoon commute. In 2 years I've probably listened to 40/50 books.

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