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Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

That’s true for most mass market crap but that’s a low bar because it’s all just escapism in a different format. Books still have a much higher signal to noise ratio and information density than all content short of academic textbooks or courses (and I’ll die on that hill).

Sapiens is a good example of that kind of mass market crap. I’m currently reading After the Ice by Mithen and The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow which are much better attempts at pop-academia takes at early human history. Even just the notes section of those books is a goldmine for sources that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else outside a dense textbook.

Now with AI it’s easier than ever to stick to the good (nonfiction) stuff. Ask it for book recommendations and then ask it to search online for criticisms/reviews of their accuracy. I used to double check the sources for the reviews but never found any broad strokes inaccuracies.

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> That's true for most mass market crap but that's a low bar because it's all just escapism in a different format.

Well one could make the same argument for other sources of media.

As far as SNR goes, I think you're overextended there too. A good science video on YouTube can communicate information through diagrams and animations that only textbooks even try, and animations often work better for me than long winded paragraphs of explaining something.

I think arguing whether one spends time reading a book vs watching a YouTube video is a silly exercise. The more important question is what book/video one is reading/watching.

So from the perspective the GP's point that books have a more than deserved reputation for being a better way to spend your time has some validity imo.

> Sapiens is a good example of that kind of mass market crap.

I think Sapiens is an interesting case, because, in my situation, I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed it so much that I started to question everything I was hearing and spent at least twice as many hours checking what the author said than listening.

To the point that now I completely forgot the content of the book, but learned about so many things that I would probably had no reason to learn about without the book. So it acted as a gateway with me. Meanwhile I know of other people who took it as gospel and are now living with a polarized mindset.

IMO this kinda illustrates my point about cultural cachet. Going down a Wikipedia-driven rabbit hole doesn't have cultural cachet. Looking up sources from a prestigious book does have cultural cachet. But they are sort of the same activity?

"[The Dawn of Everything] suffers from serious shortcomings: the authors’ commitment to an excessively idealist view of historical dynamics, their use of rhetorical strategies that misguide their audience, and their resultant inability to account for broad trajectories of human development."

Source: https://zenodo.org/records/5907061

>the notes section

Why not just browse Wikipedia if notes are what you're after?

> After the Ice

Thank you for that recommendation! Looks great.

FWIW here's a critique I found based on a quick Google search: https://reddit.com/r/Archeology/comments/1ksaqw9/after_the_i...

I wonder if it makes sense to just avoid reading anthropology books until the field settles down a little more.

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