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The author cites three mediocre pop science books and is dismayed that after a single reading, he finds himself unable to impress people at parties with his kno
by dawg- 6y ago
The author cites three mediocre pop science books and is dismayed that after a single reading, he finds himself unable to impress people at parties with his knowledge.
He says those books each take "6 to 9 hours" to read. Life changing books are read over the course of...well...an entire life. I have a small handful of books that I have read dozens of times. These are books with very big, and very old, ideas. They have defined my outlook on life, they give me inspiration and ideas in hard times. I have read them in important life transitions at every step. Real wisdom and knowledge comes from years of contemplation of big picture ideas. It's hard, and it's not the kind of thing that you do to look smart. Reading books is just a way of getting through life and trying to make sense of the world - for yourself.
- gjm11 6y agoI too am underwhelmed by the article, but I don't think it's fair to call the books he describes "mediocre pop science books". By way of reminder, they're Dawkins's The selfish gene, Kahneman's Thinking, fast and slow, and Diamond's Guns, germs and steel. These are definitely pop science books. Like any pop science books, they can reasonably be accused of simplifying their material, favouring a particular interpretation of science that can be looked at in different ways, etc. The underlying science is (like all science) fallible too. But all this is just to say that they're pop science books. That doesn't make them mediocre pop science books, and it seems to me hard to deny that they are all unusually good pop science books. It's not relevant for this purpose whether all the science turns out to be correct, nor whether Dawkins & Kahneman & Diamond let their own opinions obtrude too much; Matuschak's complaint isn't "I learned all this stuff and some of it turned out to be wrong", it's "I read these books and it turned out I'd learned less than I thought". It is relevant whether the books present a nontrivial amount of content, whether they're explained clearly and engagingly, whether the ideas in them are (or were when the books were written) at least somewhat unfamiliar to nonspecialist readers. On all those counts, all three of these books do well. So I don't think he'd have got better results by reading other less-mediocre popular science books. I also don't think the results would have been any better if he'd done the same thing with books on (say) philosophy, or history, or language. The problem is with some combination of (1) what he did and (2) what he hoped to gain from it, not with the particular books he chose. I do agree that there is a big problem with (1) and (2). If you actually want to learn something then you need to do more than read one book on it; and reading a good book (even if it's what you call a mediocre popular science book) once will do you some good but what it does for you won't be to enable you to expound in detail on its contents at parties.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoAnd in addition, regardless of whether or not they are or are not mediocre, they are all three incredibly influential and thus consequential. Brushing them aside with a sneer of "mediocre" and a wave of the hand doesn't do anything to reflect the power and impact of these books.
- blackbear_ 6y agoCould you share what those books are? Seems like they contain useful insights and others might benefit from reading them.
- jihadjihad 6y agoDo you mind sharing your small list of books that have so impacted you?