Why Books Donʼt Work (2019)
andymatuschak.org
andymatuschak.org
The reasons why textbooks work is because you don't just read a textbook. You go over the same information repetitively via exercises. And it's natural that a course is even more effective than a textbook. You can never ask a textbook a question for clarification like you can an instructor. That doesn't mean the textbook is bad, it just means that that a textbook + an instructor is better.
1. When asked about a particular thing from a particular non-fiction book (or lecture, or podcast), one might not remember the text itself, but one may have internalized the point without remember where it's from. I know somewhere along the way I learned how to write a structured program, and there might be certain sources I remember being useful, but a lot of what I learned I couldn't off the top of my head point to a specific reference.
2. In a large amount of my reading, I don't read to absorb knowledge, I read to remember the reference for later. I don't need to try to absorb a lot of knowledge if I can easily pull up a book, web page, or document on my computer later.
3. Most facts I can recall off the top of my head are usually not things I read in a book, they are things I read in multiple books (or read in a book and later heard in a lecture or podcast). That doesn't mean that books don't work.
4. The style of the author can also come into play. Some authors are capable writers - they do their research and put together a coherent book - but some authors just excel at writing scenes that are memorable. David Mccullough was one such writer - compared to other non-fiction books I've read, I feel like I am able to remember more details from his writings than other similar writings. I think St. Augustine is also in this category - he spent a large portion of his life studying rhetoric, how to just keep people interested in what he was saying. Whether one agrees with Augustine, anecdotally most people I've talked to about his Confessions don't have the same problem as the author has in his discussions about The Selfish Gene. But I think writers that can write at that level are rare.
The book may or may not be a great format for linear acquisition of knowledge or consumption of information. Neither is the traditional “album” necessarily the best format for taking in a musician’s work. Coming back to it, though, absorbing it again, can give shape to what you didn’t notice before. The familiar parts can carry the less familiar to your attention.
As a fiction example, I’ve read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series at least seven or eight times and each time expands my appreciation for its detail. Some re-readings have left me wondering how I had no recall of entire subplots, themselves new worlds of detail to discover.
I’m not dismissing the thesis of the article, there are disadvantages to the long-form book format. I’m not even saying more people should re-read more books. I’m just saying that the format lends itself very well to a tendency to revisit it.
It was interesting to read this part. I'm not sure if this is even such a valid assumption for non-fiction anymore, given what we've learned about psychology and how people use books.
People read for so many reasons that we're just starting to understand. Just a few examples:
- To be able to say they read that book, to a given person, or for a given social or technical process. "Have you read X?" "Yes, it was an interesting book" and done, purpose reached.
- To not be caught not knowing about things. In this case even "yeah, I recognize what you're saying--that's an idea from the book you shared with us" is easily enough.
- To soak in, rather than to learn (intuiting a concept vs. mapping it out, for example)
- To experience the energy/vibe/mood of the text; perhaps they are in an analogous mental state. I am often drawn to read computer programming books when I need to schedule or organize my daily work using logical if/then processes, for example.
- To exercise their subjective imaginative capacity, e.g. converting words to imagined examples, imagery, or experiences
- To limit their exposure to dopamine, for example picking reading from sets of other tasks like finger painting, or playing a group-learning game
- To express their identity, e.g. "I'm a big reader, look at these books I'm working on" when it may otherwise be in doubt, for example
And those are just some of at least hundreds that are broad enough to make useful categories which aren't too limiting.
With books serving this many capacities, IMO it's easier to see why the concept of books "working" can be broken in a given way. Especially "learning" which is one of the more historical cases, with books serving as repositories of knowledge.
But it also highlights senses in which one can say, "look, I'm not learning a thing here, and I know it, but I'm still reading this." IOW "books don't work" doesn't work in some important ways, and it could be that this is worth knowing, either for audience selection or other reasons.
Anyway, good ideas there, thanks for sharing.
Reminds me of the saying, “I can tell it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.”
For instance:
Academia is accustomed to publishing in the form of papers (e.g. pdf). This form has fixed margins, cannot contain animations or interactive widgets. Would publishing in an environment that allow for more flexibility be better for communicating their achievements and ideas?
I think it certainly would but we don't have a robust and time-tested format that allows us to carry scientific research in rich media across long periods of time, i.e. centuries or millennia. The simpler the medium the more robust it is to the erosive forces of time. So far, black ink on white paper is the winner here.
"During each tutorial session, students are expected to orally communicate, defend, analyse, and critique the ideas of others as well as their own in conversations with the tutor and fellow students."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system
"Dharma combat, called issatsu (一拶, いっさつ, literally "challenge"[1]) or shosan[2] in Japanese, is a term in some schools of Buddhism referring to an intense exchange between student and teacher, and sometimes between teachers, as an occasion for one or both to demonstrate his or her understanding of the Dharma[3] and Buddhist tenets. It is used by both students and teachers to test and sharpen their understanding.[4]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma_combat
"Chavrusa, also spelled chavruta or ḥavruta (Aramaic: חַבְרוּתָא, lit. "fellowship" or "group of fellows"; pl. חַבְרָוָותָא), is a traditional rabbinic approach to Talmudic study in which a small group of students (usually 2-5) analyze, discuss, and debate a shared text."
Sure, peer learning scale fairly well AND if one peer know can probably successfully transmit with a bit of supervision to spot and correct eventually transmitted mistakes and sure try teaching something is a nice way to self-test their own knowledge and so decide where to go from the current state to know more, but such models IMO are very slow and works only in very well crafted environments where nearly all peers have already a certain cultural background and a bit of habit. Something I do not see much present in the real current world.
Books just need printing capacity, logistic, reader interest witch are much more present on scale: printing books does not means a dedicated industry, printers and binders can works for various kind of papers product for much of the industrial processing. Logistic it's the same.
However analyzing the "network effect" of such models might be very interesting.
Books are VERY good, of course if well written, to share knowledge, not to improve someone profits, of course, topic specific. Of course they are a single package of something, they are not meant to be "games-books" or other things. So books are not universal for anything and anything. But they are the best way to transfer most of human knowledge in an asynchronous and distributed manner.
Audio books, videos might be superior for some cases, but a fairly limited set of cases. Song are also very valuable but for an even smaller set of cases. And no, knowledge can't be measured like a liquid to be drink, similarly we can't "give culture" like some modern schools stating targeting high culture peaks but really targeting formation of Ford model workers to be useful idiots in the classic Greek's sense state.
Most of the time I can remember at least the broad strokes. I can tell you that Guns, Germs and Steel is about how physical geography matters in the development of civilizations. (That book also introduced me to cargo cults, a concept I think about a lot.)
But gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve is about. Not even the title—I don't know what "the swerve" is referring to at all. My degree is in Humanities so it was right up my alley but I've completely forgotten that whole book.
It starts by telling me that (non-fiction) books are something that I never thought they were in the first place -- a means to linearly and completely copy information from its author, to the page, to my brain, in one pass. (Does anybody actually think this of books? I think not, myself.)
It then proceeds to tell me why it's bad at doing that, then gives examples for how lectures are also bad at it, but how lectures combined with textbooks, office hours and better structure can be turned into something much better (all suggesting we're leading towards "how to fix books") only to conclude that books are just fine as long as we don't think of them the way that I never thought of them to begin with.
Books are not one thing. Even non-fiction are not one thing. Some books on, say, mathematics or software engineering or even a specific programming language, are written to imbue the author's personality or inject humor, others are intended as a reference, and some freely mix a range of voices throughout.
This is how books are, have been, and SHOULD continue to be. Few people pick up a reference book with the expectation that they will read it front-to-back and become an expert in one pass - that isn't its purpose. Similarly, few will pick up a "beginner's guide" book and leave as an expert, but they WILL likely pick up the "beginner's guide" and "reference" books together and be able to use them in conjunction, over time, to learn a topic. Books are searchable and readable non-linearly, and repeatedly, in accordance with the learner's own needs, pacing, and supplementary methods (as the author describes).
This is how books work, and they DO work. That a learner needs to find a set of habits across multiple mediums to learn is how learning works, and is not a repudiation against books anymore than it is a repudiation against pencils or pens or paper.
Hidden within this article are really great, thought-provoking ideas around learning and how best to do it, but needlessly sacrifices books to do it. This IS a great "how to make learning better" article, that should have been approached as such by its author.
But blogposts presumably do?
you work -- the work is the thinking you do
if you do the thinking you'll be able to answer the questions
It really just reads like the author discovered what Marshall McLuhan was onto.
TL;DR the content isn't important, the medium is.
I still personally think books are the highest quality material you can have in your information diet given how long they take on average to create AND consume.