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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

"Obsession"? The author is perhaps noticing that some people take this literally:

“I just sit in my office and read all day.” - Warren Buffett

Are people really taking this literally? Maybe they are, now that you at least get the impression can sit in your office and surf the web all day. You know that a lot of "journalists" actually do that, and that's why they're so shallow and prone to groupthink.

A real journalist, and a real investor, goes out and talks to people, and finds the information that hasn't made its way onto paper or the web yet.

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This is a truly bizarre article. It builds up a complete strawman of like "some people believe/advocate that you should do basically nothing except read," and then tries to knock it down by showing that Warren Buffet... traveled a good amount? And had friends?

That ("strawman") was my first reaction. Then on thinking about it some more, I realized that maybe a lot of folks ("journalists" as I put it) actually DO think you can just read, especially with the pandemic and the internet. Isn't everything on the web nowadays?

No it's not. So maybe this is a worthwhile article after all.

> Isn't everything on the web nowadays?

> No it's not. So maybe this is a worthwhile article after all.

Shit, not even all written material is on the web. Nowhere close! Records and books alike. It's typical to hit a wall when researching on the web, beyond which one cannot progress without actual, paper books, or a visit to some particular physical institution or library, often only one step past Wikipedia's reference list for a topic, to give a sense of how shallow the Web's coverage of many topics is. Sometimes, even those first-tier references are only available on paper, without so much as an e-book available.

Yeah, it rubs me the wrong way, and I'll admit it might be because I value (perhaps overvalue) reading.

Part of what bothers me is that he lumps together all "reading" (in his defense, often defenders of reading do the same). If you're reading and not thinking, not asking questions, hell even just not vividly visualizing fiction, then yeah, "reading" won't be much better than TV.

And yeah, you can read too much; you can do too much of anything, which is why I feel strongly that the vast majority of people spend too much time consuming media in the form of TV/streaming and Internet, and not enough time reading well researched books/papers and thinking about them.

The "reading" I (and I suspect others) would recommend is:

    1. Find really good material.
    2. Read it deliberately, with an active mind.
    3. Act on that material, let it change your life.

> Part of what bothers me is that he lumps together all "reading" (in his defense, often defenders of reading do the same). If you're reading and not thinking, not asking questions, hell even just not vividly visualizing fiction, then yeah, "reading" won't be much better than TV.

Oh my god, there a few surer tells that I ought not engage a person in conversation about books than their identifying very publicly as a capital-R Reader. Especially if they're wearing or carrying something with a pro-reading message—"READING IS SEXY", "READ!". I don't get why reading, in particular, is like that. Fans of blockbuster films or Hallmark holiday movies don't go around putting bumper stickers on their car that read "FILM LOVER" or wearing shirts that read "WATCH MORE MOVIES".

To be clear, I absolutely and genuinely love all kinds of total garbage in a variety of media and it is entirely fine to enjoy that kind of thing—I just don't get why those become part of an I'm-a-Reader-and-that-matters-a-whole-bunch identity with reading, but not with other things.

Eh, I think the conclusion is a bit silly, but given that the article is mostly supported by real quotes, I still enjoyed the read.

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