4 ms·
The problem is, if a book fulfills all your 4 criteria it's extremely unlikely its "wisdom" hasn't become common knowledge. No surprise = no information. A tru
by auganov 6y ago
The problem is, if a book fulfills all your 4 criteria it's extremely unlikely its "wisdom" hasn't become common knowledge. No surprise = no information.
A truly life changing book would need to have been ignored or misunderstood by the world at large. But most such books will obviously be junk so I'm not sure there's a simple way to discover the good ones.
- cafard 6y agoC.S. Peirce said that plain English common sense was basically reheated Aristotle. Is there no information in Aristotle?
- auganov 6y agoIn the context of learning some valuable already revered wisdom I don't think you'll find much of it. Now in a general sense there will be a lot of things you didn't expect in any book. So tons of information but not the kind you're looking for. The most interesting thing people who read Marx bring up is how he's been mischaracterized or had some ideas misattributed to him. Which doesn't interest me all that much.
- loughnane 6y agoEven if such wisdom had indeed become common knowledge (which I doubt, but don't have time to draft a proper response), just being exposed to a piece of information doesn't do much for the individual. As I said above the goal isn't to stack up books and be briefly exposed to many ideas, but rather to have some ideas become a part of you. Or, put more pithily, it is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you'll be when you can't help it.