Comment by molteanu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by molteanu | Hacker News Reader

I think you might be reading books wrong if that's what you're hoping to take out of them, that is, remember this or that specific quote out of it. For me, at least, the value of a book is changing your way of thinking, or better yet, present new questions that you did not even dare to ask.

I would recommend Darwin's own Origin of Species instead of Dawkins' Selfish Gene. I've read both. They can't even begin to compare. One is a serious scientific and a mind bending exercise in nature's ways, the other one deserves the title of pop culture. I cannot tell you the different beak sizes of Darwin's finches but I can tell you I've felt a void inside me after finishing the book and for a few years I thought constantly about the implications of the theory and saw behaviors around me that could be explained in terms of evolution, survival of the fittest and all that.

After you've read some serious books you won't ever say again that books "don't work". Schopenhauer said it better,

Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value.

I vehemently agree with the theme of your message, and of course the fine quote at the end.

But I have a non-trivial quibble -- please don't be too quick to dismiss Richard Dawkins' science writing. Keeping comparisons with the giant, i.e. Darwin, aside, Dawkins is one of the most eloquent science writers. On par with the inimitable Carl Sagan, dare I say.

A year or so ago I've read The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins (which, I gather, touches the same ideas from The Selfish Gene). He writes extremely poignantly about "cumulative selection", the "immortal gene", "adaptive complexity" (the particular property of living things that is replicable only by Darwinian selection) and many other riveting topics. Not to mention lots of fun and meaningful analogies related to various computer-related concepts (if you enjoy that sort of thing) and to the natural world, to explain DNA and related ideas (refer to "The Power of Archives" chapter). Also, have a gander at Science in the Soul, also by Dawkins, a collection of essays; FWIW, very much recommend it. Some fine writing in there.

(Note to self: Resume reading On the Origin of Species again.)

STEM educations generally don't teach you how to read properly. Not "read" as in turn letters into works into sentences into ideas. I mean "read" as in absorb what the author is saying, understand it, evaluate it in context and absorb these new ideas.

I had this kind of education, and I'm still pissed about it. It was such a wasted opportunity and so much wasted time. At least I learned this later on, but it was not easy.

You are right that tell is referring to Selfish Gene and Guns, Germs and Steel as "serious non-fiction tomes". These are pop-science books that are summarizing the actual serious non-fiction works that developed these ideas. And I actually like both those books, I think they did a lot to bring these ideas to the public, to people who wouldn't read about these subjects deeply and critically, they are made for regular people curious about a subject to do a surface read and get familiar with new explanatory frameworks.

How can one gain this kind of education?

This Shopenhauer quote is quite apt; thank you for the thoughtful response. One wondering: to what extent is information a prerequisite for insight?

What Shopenhauer is saying is that information and the storage of it in one's brain is not the goal of the lecture per-se. It is only useful as a medium to convey something more meaningful. It is useful in clearing up one's thoughts about the world, changing attitudes, raising up questions. Once you have a new question bugging your mind, it does not really matter who or what started the avalanche but only that it's rolling.

You can look at it from the point of view of modern sports. For me, at least, sport would mean having a good time, making new friends or spending time with old ones, forgetting about one's troubles, smiling and being happy about life. But sport as we know it today seems to have devolved into keeping scores and celebrating winners. That, to my mind, is akin to a information gathering activity without understanding what the purpose of it actually is.

Why would reading be better at conveying this info then video

Because you spend more time on it? My reading is definitely slower than youtube videos. And still a bit slower than most lectures.

Interesting, for me it's the other way around - I'd prefer to read because the videos are so slow; a transcript of a video can be read something like four-five times quicker than the video itself. Lecture videos can be listened with the audio sped up 1.5-2 times (though it really degrades the quality and can be hard to understand at times) but it's still much slower than reading the same thing, at least for me. I mean, the whole notion of proper sight-reading (without mental subvocalization) is because it's not possible to speak as fast as you can read.

Same here. Not only do I read faster than people speak, but I can skip around much faster through text than through audio-video, and if I'm reading electronic text, I can search it.

Physically attending a talk is still valuable for me because I have the option to ask questions during and after. I usually don't, but the mere act of trying to think of good questions or counterarguments keeps me engaged really effectively. Also, I'm far less likely to get distracted than if I was watching a recording.

Even with speed reading software I struggle with comprehending whatever I just read. I need to catch myself and slow way down if I'm trying to read something dense vs. a casual novel, otherwise nothing sticks.

There's less clutter and interference in the written word. It's just a dialogue between two people. One of them talks from his life experiences, like a grandpa, the other one listens, ask questions, wonders, like a little kid who doesn't know anything about life.

What does a video add to this dialogue? Only clutter, in my opinion. If it's a word for word reading of the original, then that definitely adds some value, but then you'd call that audio and not video. So I assume by video you mean moving images, and sound and tone and interpretation and change of pace and interruptions and "I'm waiting to be inspired moments" from you and "Here's a video with dramatic music on top of it. Are you amazed?" from the video producer. Adding splash doesn't mean the producer knows what he's talking about. Often times it's just a way of hiding the lack of understanding.

For a comparison, a good website doesn't need anything besides black text on a white background. A website that doesn't have anything to say will have to compensate with flashy tricks and will make you unaware of the fact that it has nothing of value to deliver.

You don't need any production values - just a recording of a great lecture. For me, it was easier to grasp basic linear algebra concepts from G. Strang's video lectures than from his textbooks. That is because, in a lecture, you get the text content plus intonation/pauses/stresses/all other nonverbal stuff, plus drawing on blackboard [1], plus physically pointing to various elements of equations etc.

In text, all that nonverbal stuff needs to be expressed in a text format (plus illustrations), which is a narrower channel and thus often the content gets technical, awkward and hard to parse. Studying math is perhaps the best example of this - if you have some basic math literacy, someone can convey a new math concept to you in a short conversation, while parsing out the intuition of the same concept from the textbook could possibly take you a couple of hours.

[1] In the textbook, you only get the final illustrations, while in lecture you can see him drawing them, and the specific way he does it conveys information in itself.

Because it requires more concentration, and you have complete control over the pace.

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