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Comment by lawgimenez | Hacker News Reader

> “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that,” explains SBF. “I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.“

I don’t get the rationale behind this quote.

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It's something people that don't read books tell themselves. Same with the appearance of book-summary services or even speed reading.

The power of a book is how long you sit down thinking about the topics as much as the words on it. Anything that reduces the reading time will also reduce the thinking time which reduces the value.

Sure many modern books could've been shorter, specially the kind of pop-sci books most people read, but still I never heard this argument made by someone who's read any sensible number of books in their life. And if you're under, say 50-100 books, you haven't read enough for me to believe you understand how other people think.

This right here. When I read for recreation or work I read slowly. I like to take each sentence and paragraph in context of the whole piece. Sometimes I re-read sentences, paragraphs or pages when I think there is a significant enough idea there. I used to think I was a slow reader, but then I realized I am a careful reader. You definitely get a deeper understanding out of a piece of work when you read carefully than when you just process the words. I don't think it's possible to distill most books into a few paragraphs. It's as stark as the difference between knowing about something and living through something.

'I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.' -Isaac Asimov

That's a solid heuristic, but commitment to studying can cause you to get a lot of book summaries.

I mean, I've definitely read books where, after finishing them, I thought, 'if I'd read a one-page summary of this book instead, I don't think I would have gotten less out of it.'

But that isn't most of the books I've read.

To me, that quote just smacks of "I'm VERY SMART and have little to learn from others. Please summarize your ideas concisely so I may efficiently judge them."

Let me translate it for you.

"I am very skeptical of depth. I don't want to say that nothing is complex enough to require time to explain or understand... but I've never taken the time to really understand anything and look how rich I am. The fact that I'm so rich proves that there is nothing below the surface, and anyone doing real work or research is just wasting their time and deluding themselves."

My guess is that we find the rationale behind that quote if we get a list of books he has read. My guess is that it is heavy on light self-help books, in which case he might just be right about that segment. Of course if that is the case then it also says something about him if his reaction is to dismiss reading and writing books rather than seeking out a broader selection.

Particularly among self-help books, there are a lot of books that are about two pages of content, surrounded by 100 pages of pointless fluff and examples. People just aren't willing to pay for 5-page books, but if what you're saying is good enough they are willing to tolerate incredible amounts of filler and still rave about your book.

I guess that's what he's talking about, even if there are a lot of books where the length is more than justified.

The fact that Sequoia Capital thought this was a nice quote to feature in a puff piece tells you a lot about their deficiencies as human beings.

Now consider that every other member of the venture-capital class is just as greedy, short-sighted, and idiotic as Sequoia.

I don't claim to be in SBF's head, but the gist of the rationale for this type of thought is a hypercritical focus on effective usage of the limiting resource of time. Learning facts about reality is the only reason to consume text content; any purposeful reduction of signal-to-noise ratio is folly. Books should be blogposts. Blogposts should be bulleted digests. Maximize information density to minimize wasted time. Fiction is pure waste.

I feel like most people who have ever had that mental model of reading evolve past that type of thinking and settle into the "time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" mode of thinking by the time they reach high school (yours truly included). Not to mention one often needs to take a moment for newly acquired information to "settle", and language that's (loosely) bridgework between facts is what grants that moment.

> hypercritical focus on effective usage of the limiting resource of time

Article states that he spent lot of his free time playing games. Maybe he is just lazy to parse information.

People who don't read books might think that all you need to know can be summarized into blog posts. Unfortunately this mentality will prevent you from the cure: reading a book about a big idea that would definitely not compress down into book form.

he deserves jail just for that quote

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