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My question is this- Would reading 200 books per year make you better off than whatever social media you read? I probably only read a handful of books every yea
by S_A_P 7y ago
My question is this- Would reading 200 books per year make you better off than whatever social media you read? I probably only read a handful of books every year, but I read hundreds if not thousands of HN linked articles. I think there is some sort mystique around books like they magically are all sound, enlightened content and other forms of reading are junk food for the brain.
OK, skimmed the article- The central theme appears to be that you are rotting your brain for wasting time on social media. What if instead of social media you read 200 erotic romance novels, are you better off?
- xamuel 7y agoI laughed out loud at "200 erotic romance novels" :) Of course you're right about that. But the conclusion should not be "continue rotting away on social networks", the conclusion should be "read 200 good books". Or even just 2 good books would be an improvement for many people.
- watwut 7y ago> Of course you're right about that. But the conclusion should not be "continue rotting away on social networks", the conclusion should be "read 200 good books". "Good book" is extremely subjective category. But I imagine that with such consumption, they would become boring and repetitive quickly.
- S_A_P 7y agoYou are absolutely right. Even 2 good books are a huge improvement, and reading quality should be the takeaway. I will even admit that my romance novels is a bit of a straw man, but I think what bothers me about articles like this is the amount of assumptions that go into it. Is social media the only reason they arent reading? If it went away magically would the world be better because we all read and gained knowledge? I will even backtrack a bit and say maybe this article is good in that it does the math of what is theoretically possible if you do reject social media. At the end of the day though someone has to want to do better to make this change.
- criddell 7y ago> the conclusion should be "read 200 good books" 200 books of any type sounds like too much time in one activity for me.
- dawg- 7y agoDescartes wrote that reading great books is like having a conversation with the greatest minds who have ever lived - and even at that, hearing only the absolute best of their thinking. I think it's a matter of filters. On Twitter where there is almost no filter, you will be reading almost exclusively garbage. You may just be better off reading erotic romance novels than reading unfiltered Twitter. HN is a little more tightly filtered, the quality of stuff posted is generally higher, and it's probably more worth your time. But it's hard to beat hundreds or thousands of years of filtering through the best thoughts of the best minds. When you pick up the plays of Sophocles or the writings of Cicero you know that people from radically different societies and ages of history have found wisdom and insight in their thoughts. So I think there is some "magic" in books in that they have had time to age, and that thousands of very smart people have found value there.
- steve1977 7y agoIf you would read 200 great books by the greatest minds, you would probably be done after one year.
- slg 7y agoDescartes lived in a time when most people couldn't even read and therefore the people who actually wrote books might well have been some of "the greatest minds who ever lived". Today almost everyone can read and almost everyone has the potential to write a book. So if we are talking about baseline quality, the magic of books has decreased a lot since the enlightenment. Today a book is just an indication of quantity of writing and not necessarily an indication of quality. And it isn't like the "great minds" aren't also on Twitter or writing shorter form articles. The quality is there too, it just might take a little extra effort to find it.
- j7ake 7y agoOne solution is to read books that have survived the test of time (e.g., Descartes).
- excursionist 7y ago