Lex Fridman's Reading Plan in Numbers | Hacker News Reader

Lex Fridman's Reading Plan in Numbers

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This is not much different than binge watching/consuming any cultural product.

Reading is still considered more high-brow than, say, playing videogames, and for the most part it is, simply because our species have been producing literature for quite some time, and we have a large amount of masterpieces and real gems.

But I've seen people reading dumb shit at a rapid pace, bad literature is not better than bad TV/Radio/Comics/Games/Youtube/Etc.

I hope that at some point we'll stop sacralizing things because they are old.

What about, say, studying for an hour a half a day? Would that be not so different from binging any cultural product?

If there is a difference, then what is it?

Do you mean specifically studying literature (in this case the books themselves, and their authors/period etc.) or trying to acquire knowledge from a scientific work?

In any case, I don't think that rushing the process is helpful, it might depends on individual factors.

I used to read very quickly as a teen, a trick to impress friends or to skim through boring books. I did not find it enjoyable, at all.

The nicest part about reading (for me) is the thinking part, when I stop reading and reflect on an interesting/surprising idea, taking the time to write mental or literal notes.

You're saying rushing. But where is the rush here? An hour a half a day. That leaves more than enough time to stop and reflect and go for a walk and write notes.

One hour a day is not binging then…

> I hope that at some point we'll stop sacralizing things because they are old.

The Lindy effect is in play though. People don't consider The Brothers Karamazov classical canon merely because it is 140 years old, because there were many other books published at the same time. There's typically a reason why particular works survive to have cultural relevance today.

In the same way house construction wasn't by and large more durable 700 years ago, but the houses from 700 years ago that still stand today are very sturdy.

Why are people saying Lindy over survivorship bias these days?

I think those two are related, but survivorship bias seems more random.

They are unrelated things. The lindy effect says the future lifespan is proportional to how long it’s been around already (The Bible writings have been around 2000 years, so it will probably be around for another 2000 years). Survivorship bias is saying that things that survive are representative of the whole sample (saying the The Brothers Karamazov was typical for literature of that period without other evidence would be an example of survivorship bias).

Similar but not the same concept. Lindy is that age predicts life expectancy for non-perishable items. Survivorship bias has nothing to do with the future.

I could have used survivorship bias in that post and lost little, but the implication is that Dostoyevsky is highly likely to have more staying power than a randomly selected novel published 142 years later.

A book a week is not difficult for anyone who enjoys reading and can devote even a modest amount of time doing it. Reading The Brothers Karamazov in a week is harder, but fine as a stunt. A ~300 page book in a week requires the average reader to read for about an hour a day. The equivalent would be running about 5 miles a day: hard if you don't like to run, a completely reasonable goal if you do.

The only weird thing about this, to me, is scheduling out your entire reading list in a sequence. For me, the joy of reading is in reading whatever I want to read next, or putting down a book to finish another book first. It would be like scheduling out your meals six months in advance, trying to predict what you'll want to eat for lunch on the third Tuesday in April. But, different strokes for different folks.

Yeah I fall into mood reading too but I tend to regret it because I postpone the more intimidating part of the canon that I'd probably really enjoy. I'm finally doing Count of Monte Cristo atm after having it stare me down the last... 5 years? I don't know if I would have ever felt in the mood otherwise.

I guess like your gym analogy, some people can just work out when they feel like it. Some need a schedule to stay on track (of which I'm guilty)

You could read some of these in a day, especially 1984, the pages just fly by. I was initially going to mock the idea, but they're actually quite well chosen for the task at hand. Surprised he hasn't already read some of these though, they're not exactly obscure. And that he hasn't read Player of Games is actually quite a shock, for a techbro, but I think Excession would be a better choice of Iain M Banks book, for him.

Sapiens is a waste of time, given it's subtle anti-human bent, completely bizarre for an anthropological text.

And Dune in a week. Good luck with that.

Could you elaborate on Sapiens' anti-human bent? I was going to get around to starting it soon.

It's hard to neatly elucidate, but what I find really strange for this ostensibly highfalutin mass-market enlightening text about the essence of humanity, is that it's been written by someone who absolutely hates the human race, and that comes across quite clearly if you read between the lines. Avoid it. There's better books and you already likely know much of the content.

I liked sapiens well enough. The middle is a bit of a slog, and I think he makes a few leaps in logic, but some cool ideas in there.

This was an interesting analysis. I noticed that it says 200 pages for Metamorphosis, my copy (W W Norton) is 126 pages of large print, including a forward and afterword. It's really a short story.

Also, though I suspect it evens out, personally my reading speed varies a lot depending on the author. Orwell, or ironically Kafka reads pretty fast. Something like the Brother's Karamazof (which I've started twice and failed to get anywhere with) I have to read way more slowly.

Yeah, I have the one included in the penguin classics edition which even shorter (54 pages). But this edition on Goodreads says 200. I wonder what font size they use :D https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/485894.The_Metamorphosis.

I feel you on restarting Dostoevsky, was using an audiobook and a list of characters at hand to reference and it still took me six times to get started with The Brothers K, without concentration the sounds would go into my head with no comprehension. IIRC there are way too many times where the author refers to different characters with the same title, like father and son are both Prince so hearing someone speak the parts differently helps a bit. I also have to pause when French is used to translate bits or do a lookup on the text with Gutenberg and translate it.

How far do you get with Brothers Karamazov? And which translation? I could hardly put it down once it got rolling.

I have the Constance Garnett translation (I'm not familiar with the options). I'm embarrassed to say that according to the bookmark I just found in the book, I made it only 40 pages in my last attempt. I feel like I would read it and just end up zoning out and realizing I wasn't really following.

That might be contributing. The Pevear translation is highly regarded. I researched which to read quite attentively, I found many who reported not being able to make progress via the Garnett translation found that the Pevear version opened the book up to them. I don't I like big dense works that feel like a chore, and I was really surprised how easy this read. I'm not sure what part you're up to, but it clearly picks up steam at a certain inflection point.

Software engineers can estimate the most arbitrary things like a popular podcaster's reading list for the year down to an average daily page count and monthly burndown.

dang, when you put it like that...

Later in the list he has Gödel Escher Bach - which seems unfathomable to read in a week to me. I used to keep this with me while I was working overnights - can't imagine you'd get much out of it if you read it in a week.

That said, my personal conspiracy theory is that he's using books he's already read as buffers for the longer harder books. If he doesn't really reread, and has read ~30% of the list already, it's much more reasonable.

I am so intimidated by that book. One day.

It's actually very readable

Would you recommend? Is it as good as the hype? I feel like it will be a long project.

Yeah - it's great. Though to tell you the truth, I didn't get around to finishing it. Got about half way - busy time in my life with new babies etc. Will tackle it again some time. It's a little like reading Alice in Wonderland mixed with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

This is silly. Anyone who's been to grad school can you tell that of course you can read a book a week, or more.

"But most critics accused him of posturing – that you can’t read those books at that pace," ... "I read [The Brothers Karamazov] in 2021 over 21 days (Sep 10 to Oct 1), and yeah, I don’t think you’d want to read it any faster than that, certainly not one week."

So most of "the critics" were right that this particular book shouldn't be read in a week? So weird to then read this framed as "I think Lex wins this one." Twitter is constantly quibbling and I don't care what books that guys reads, but odd to see this blogpost go to lengths to argue 'well actually he meant the average book on the list will take a week, not each individual book'

I can read some of those books in less than a week, so gaining ‘budget’ for the others. I don’t get the outrage over putting some more challenging books on the list.

I think that's more than reasonable to assume. I set a goal of a book a week, knowing that some will take longer some shorter. Same when planning projects for the year.

Why not assume the most reasonable thing? I think the dude even said in his initial tweet: "I'll keep adjusting the list".

Considering Lex’s website even says “on average”. Some books are short and will be finished quickly. Others will take longer. People just… need a reason to be mad and Lex really rubs some people wrong.

It should be noted that Lex listens books in audio format as he mentioned many times in his videos. So, the analysis is interesting but doesn't take into account audio vs text format as also listening speed. Like I mostly listen fiction books at x1.5 or x1.75. E.g. in 2022 I read/listened 71 books. About 50 of them were fiction. So, I listened and the rest non-fiction that's more useful to read and make notes.

That's true, though I think I actually read faster than I audiobook, despite listening at between 2x and 3.5x most of the time.

I just have far more time to listen than to read, so 95% of my reading is done via audiobooks.

I don't know why people think this list is so crazy. When I was in grad school, I usually took 4 courses per semester. Each of them would require us to read about 100 pages per week. No one though it was an insane idea.

This discussion also reminded me of a guy on YouTube I used to watch - The Completionist. Every week he completes a single video game. Fully completing a video game can take way, way, way longer than finishing a book (especially if it's an open-world game or a game that includes a multiplayer mode), but in minds of a lot of people those two are completely incomparable.

I like how the article is saying how it's doable and more defending someone with such a reading list. I'm not a big fan of fiction myself and almost exclusively stick to non-fiction (history, biology, engineering, and technology related topics) but would advocate someone trying out this list or similar. The books mentioned are pretty standard core in my opinion. My SO reads a lot and is a member/host of multiple book clubs so good for folks who are into this. I'm ambivalent about this being based off Fridman, would folks react differently if it was Paul Graham or some other known figure?

That's a good point, maybe I should remove the last part. I don't even know they guy. I just don't like seeing people being discouraged from reading ambitiously, no matter who they are. Especially when the numbers add up just fine.

I like Nassim Taleb's point about Lex's reading list.

That you can only get a very shallow understanding of the text going this fast. I think it's a reasonable criticism. If shallow breadth is Lex's goal, then it's fine. But if any sort of deep understanding is required, then going fast won't work.

source: https://forall.social/@nntaleb/109626986647565519

But is an hour a half per day too fast? What pace would you accept? At least for me, I don't feel like I'm getting only shallow grasp.

I feel like reading books at a very rapid pace is kind of like going to film/music/art festivals and trying to catch everything. In the end, you'll have some very memorable ones, many you'll remember, but also a lot of stuff you'll barely remember a week later.

What pace would you recommend? 40 pages a day seems more than reasonable?

Yeah, I mostly agree that, as a plan to read in 6 months, the list Lex provides is reasonable, if a bit snobby.

It's the "do each one in a 7 day period" that is silly (I say, having read 13 books in December and ~45 last year)

I dunno, when doing roadmap planning at work we often simplify to make the planning easier, micro adjustments don't add that much value. A book a week is a simple plan to steer towards.

"A book a week" is more or less my annual goal (that I meet sometimes and don't meet sometimes). The issue isn't that. That's a good goal. The issue is regimenting it and saying "we start the new book on Sunday and finish by the following Saturday" (which is more or less what Lex says). That part is weird and ruins the whole thing, because you can no longer take advantage of averages and assume things will mostly work out. It seems that he's relaxed that in the blog post now, but that's what he started out saying (https://archive.is/MxKIt), and it was stupid.

Fair enough, you're right he did originally tweet "Start on Monday, done by Sunday". But to be fair, in the very same tweet he wrote "I'll keep adjusting the list".

Besides all that, any good reads queued up for Jan?

My queue for the month is

    1. Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (which I'm about 15% of the way through)
    2. The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
    3. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (last year's Booker prize winner)
    4. The Trees by Percival Everett (a Booker prize shortlistee)

And then I'll try to finish up the Earthsea cycle (I have Tales and The Other Wind left). After that, I'm not sure, and who knows how far beyond January that will take.

Oh I freaking LOVED the farseer trilogy. It gets better and better until a big wow. I did a lot of the booker+booker internationals in previous years but found them too hit and miss (mostly miss) for my tastes and decidedly switched to classics. Curious how they end up for you, I havent read this. I'm a big fan of Le Guin though, have you read her masterpiece short story "The ones who walk away from Omelas'"?

Omelas is fantastic. If you enjoy it, I'd recommend NK Jemisin's broken earth if you've somehow avoided it.

And yeah Booker and Pulitzers are hit or miss, I choose carefully and don't try to do the entire shortlist.

Maybe he _re-reads_ a lot of these classic books. Then he can go through them faster.

I speculate that he had read Brothers Karamazov in Russian (his mother tongue) before).

I find it sad that reading levels are so low for so many people that they consider this totally outside the realms of possibility.

Would love for the table columns to be sortable

There was a post here recently about an html table sorting library someone wrote https://www.kryogenix.org/code/browser/sorttable/

Just dont hotlink to it

Nice one, I'll look into that next time, cheers.

he talked about starting mondays and ending fridays, but the analysis is counting weekends. strip those away and the numbers are way off. he also talked about doing a weekly review for each book, not something you can keep up if reading one of the books takes you over a month (21d per op, over weekdays)

His original tweet he explicitly said "Start on Monday, done by Sunday"

No technical / scientific books though. I wonder if they also ingest a lot of them.

Yeah, I do. Lot's of technical stuff for work, plus various MOOCs. Working through FastAI and Deep Learning on Coursera atm plus some math stuff for fun.

Why are we gossiping about someone's reading list? Why is this on HN?

If you ignore the context, it's an interesting list and analysis of how long it might take to read. I thought the same as you clicking on it, but reading it changed my mind

Is this gossiping?

If you're going to speed-run masterpieces why not just watch the movies.

But given Lex's flexibility with the truth I suspect his plan wasn't serious anyway.

What speed reading? 40 pages, or an hour a half, a day hardly seems speed reading. What pace would you accept?

Agreed.

He is presenting the list as "too be finished by X date", which within itself sort of implies trying to do it quickly, or at least that he is taking time into account while reading.

But it's not unreasonable that he make it through this list and enjoy everything. Half an hour a day really isn't much.

Phenomenal and related mini-doc on the subject of reading time and frequency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIW5jBrrsS0

I should also add, page count is very much so dependant on font size.

Yeah font size, but also just the work itself. If I'm reading epic fantasy I'll fly along. If I'm reading Wuthering Heights I'm crawling. I think it evens out.

> But given Lex's flexibility with the truth

Sigh. Ok, hit me. How is he flexible with the truth? By talking at length with people from all political sides? What an unacceptable form of interviewing!

It was pretty sad when I saw Lex Fridman tweeted Elon Musk to volunteer to run Twitter. How delusional can one be?

https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1604624131626090497

Its not "Alex Fridman"

Lex prioritizes eyeballs over truth. He knows what he's doing, it's just not exactly the character he portrays in his interviews.

Lex is the undisputed King of Cringe. Most of the stuff that he comes up with himself is IAm14AndThisIsDeep level. Also his voice has tendency to put people to sleep.

He has really good guests on though. Not sure how he pulls them, but somehow he does...

So I'll continue listening to the Lex Fridman podcast. Just wish they changed the host, but probably not gonna happen.

In one of his interviews he mentioned a side-project he has - a Twitter-like platform for better human conversations. Maybe this volunteering was just an effort to implement his ideas on the Twitter directly.

His statement on Ukraine was quite something to behold. He condemned Putin's invasion in exactly 7 words - "I condemn Vladimir's Putin invasion of Ukraine".

And then immediately proceeded to condemn US interventions "in 40 nations" and "many studies finding that US is culpable for an unfathomable number of civilians deaths". Of course, his life dream is to interview Putin (as stated a few times on Rogan).

https://youtu.be/jRQAG77ifzE?t=120

He's a weird guy, twisting himself into pseudo-impartiality doesn't make someone interesting. I'll concede his guests are pretty good and varied but even Rogan has great guests and he doesn't do weird stuff like this.

He's just a grifter, I don't know why HN falls for his schtick. I have liked some of his guests, but come on.

I wouldn't say he's a grifter, but his career was basically made by the "enlightened meathead" circuit (Joe Rogan), in which his milquetoast views appear interesting. I agree that he gets good guests—not sure why—but if I wanted to listen to a philosophy grad student fumble through ideas I have other avenues IRL for that.

Agreed, although as far as grifters go he's far from the worst one. But getting worse lately and fairly rapidly.

The biggest mystery in the universe: how does he pull all these guests?

> twisting himself into pseudo-impartiality doesn't make someone interesting.

TBH my impression is that his interviews come off as a couple of college guys smoking joints and talking about the meaning of life. I never got the appeal. Yes, he does get some really great guests, but I wonder why some of these people would agree to these interviews?

> I wonder why some of these people would agree to these interviews

He's currently the 12th most popular podcast. Great exposure for anyone to go on his podcast.

I don’t think you’ve heard too many of his interviews then. He will sometimes go into pot-mode meaning-of-life stuff but that will be for a few minutes in a several hour long interview.

If someone is an expert in a niche technical field and would like to talk about it for several hours to a large-ish general audience, what other show would they go on?

I started listening to some of his podcasts because of the guests. I don't find Lex that interesting at all, I also think he's not the best person at leading a discussion with how many tangents he goes on, although he is good at coming back off them. And he is quite good at letting the guest just talk. I never enjoyed Rogan's podcasts because it was as much about him as it was the guest.

I just stick to the less political podcasts and they're fine. I quite liked his one with John Carmack and his one with Todd Howard.

Ex-russians, who (or whose parents) left Russia, seem to have some kind of romantic connection to the country, they have never been to (or been there when they were young, thus "sun was shinning brighter, grass was greener, trees were taller, and the ice-cream was tastier"). They read old russian classic literature, watch soviet movies, and imagine the better Russia it really is not.

Lex in his interviews many times speaks about Putin as of a leader who loves his country and thinks about his people, which has barely any connection to reality, unless Russian TV and other country's media, cleaned up of any dissidents, are been consumed.

> Ex-russians, who (or whose parents) left Russia, seem to have some kind of romantic connection to the country, they have never been to (or been there when they were young, thus "sun was shinning brighter, grass was greener, trees were taller, and the ice-cream was tastier"). They read old russian classic literature, watch soviet movies, and imagine the better Russia it really is not.

Is is bad though? Not forgetting your roots is a good thing. Nothing wrong with being proud of your heritage.

> Is is bad though? Not forgetting your roots is a good thing.

It is absolutely good thing. Culture, language, roots are definitely worth cherishing. Though you should not build an illusive and false picture of the country it is today.

> People are allowed to be proud of their heritage.

Sure, but better not to follow propaganda, which uses that heritage to build a basis for war while manipulating history.

> Though you should not build an illusive and false picture of the country it is today.

I'd argue everybody does that, it's exceptionalism. It's a natural response to being in a group. A tribalistic behaviour you can observe with countries, but also political parties and even k-pop groups. FWIW exceptionalism is mostly associated with one country in particular, but it's not Russia.

> Sure, but better not to follow propaganda, which uses that heritage to build a basis for war while manipulating history.

I wholeheartedly agree, but you should not underestimate how difficult access to non-propaganda is for everyone in the world. When you believe in propaganda, everything else looks like propaganda.

Which interviews are you talking about? He repeatedly talks about the horrors of the Soviet Union. Did you see his interview with Fiona Hill? Didn’t seem pro-Putin to me at all. Of course he sees Putin, just like everyone else, as a human being and not a monster.

Yes, he should only condemn wars and murders that aren't from our side. Those shouldn't distract us from the actually important wars that really matter. Sure, millions died, and literally no one has been held responsible for those deaths and wars, but "whataboutism" is even worse

I find it absolutely unbelievable that you find any amount of fault with both condemning the invasion of Ukraine and also finding extreme fault with the million+ deaths that the US is directly responsible for in the past decades.

Who wouldn't want to interview Putin? Suggesting that it wouldn't be interesting to talk to one of the most powerful and influential people on planet is just ridiculous posturing. Talking to someone isn't an endorsement of their actions. Some of the most meaningful conversations that have happened in history happened involving someone who is objectively terrible.

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