I think the author misses a big point, and takes a lot of words to miss it. A book exists as a subset of a language--it itself can be considered a language its

I think the author misses a big point, and takes a lot of words to miss it. A book exists as a subset of a language--it itself can be considered a language itself--the way the words interact and how they relate is more important than any particular within. Taking something out of a book doesn't meaning learning some particular order of symbols contained within--it's about learning the language and how all the symbols relate. You could even extend that to identifying that language in the future and generating it themselves as well. So you get content where the information density is very low, which happen to be some books. I hate to compare this article to, but essentially it's identified the idea of information entropy and still misses the fact that knowledge and understanding are not a bucket of facts but rather a model. The author spits this out verbatim but it's obvious given the language the author is using his understanding of this topic is very low. The author seems to be quantifying knowledge, but really it's quite hard to quantify knowledge in and of itself but rather it's important to judge knowledge in relation to other knowledge--hence information density. I think a lot of people simply read a book for the journey and not to take something out--and just because there's no conscious summary in their head doesn't mean they've not learned or that it's not changed their entire lives, in fact, since understanding by definition is an unconscious process. If learning well is simply absorbing knowledge quickly and retaining it then count me out--I don't want to absorb random facts and symbols which have no practical use in relation to the objects and symbols and things I use in this world. So the author misses the point of learning, and constructs a giant strawman (using a long-form argument, strangely) about how books don't "work" in the sense that they don't necessarily give you any knowledge at all! I agree, but I'll definitely still be reading them.