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The bullet point version extracted from the 4,474 words: 1. Seek Novelty 2. Challenge Yourself 3. Think Creatively 4. Do Things The Hard Way 5. Network
by aresant 15y ago
The bullet point version extracted from the 4,474 words:
1. Seek Novelty
2. Challenge Yourself
3. Think Creatively
4. Do Things The Hard Way
5. Network
- jacques_chester 15y agoPerhaps in meeting point 4, we should skip your summary?
- thaumaturgy 15y agoYeah, the TL;DR thing really grates on my nerves. Are we so miswired now that we can't take the time out to read 4,500 well-written words on a subject, and instead need it condensed to a list appropriate for Twitter? Is there really no other value in the entire essay other than the list items themselves?
- Groxx 15y agoAre we so not-interested in other things that we take several other articles' worth in time to read a single one, when a concise summary could get the point across just as well? Why stop at using 4500 words? Why not put it in an hour-long Youtube video, and not provide a description / transcription? Sometimes all you want is the shorter option.
- thaumaturgy 15y agoI have serious doubts about the value of an endless series of ever-shorter summaries in the name of consuming more information.
- jacques_chester 15y agoAnd indeed some summaries lack the colour, pathos and delight of the original. Here's a summary of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: * There was a republic. * Then there was an empire. * Christianity emerged. * The empire split up. * The empire declined. More or less factually what you might glean from Gibbon, but it lacks the sheer delight of that fascinating masterpiece of the English language.
- Eliezer 15y agoThanks! You saved me a lot of time there.
- rowaway1 15y agotl;dr summaries bad
- rowaway1 15y agotl;dr summaries bad
- jamesbritt 15y agoAre we so miswired now that we can't take the time out to read 4,500 well-written words on a subject, ... I'd love too, but there's a lot to choose from, so some guidance on what may be worth the time investment is invaluable.
- thaumaturgy 15y agoI hear you, but that way lie dragons. Ultimately, you will be the only person capable of deciding whether a particular thing was worth your time or not, and you can only decide that in hindsight, having experienced it. The finest accumulation of the greatest reviews of a work will not make up for the fact that you might glean some valuable tidbit from it that nobody else noticed. You also have to accept that you simply aren't going to ever be able to know everything about everything that you'd like to; you will have to make choices, pick and choose. Accepting that, would you then rather memorize a pile of summaries and tidbits and factoids, or would you rather take the time to read and consider a complete discourse on a subject? For example: I'm sitting here thinking about my argument and wondering if I'm really just full of shit, but then I suddenly remembered a bit of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", where Feynman talks about some of his experiences in Brazil, and how the teaching at the time resulted in students that had memorized everything but understood very little. And it strikes me that this relatively recent addiction to summaries is very similar to that kind of Brazilian education.
- Groxx 15y agoAn interesting comparison. Largely accurate, I think, but I do want to make a counter-point: reading a summary != memorization The problem with students who only memorize is that they are incapable of creation. They can answer a set of questions, but not use what they know to respond to something new. A summary, in the best cases (far from always achieved, of course), is all that is needed to get a thinking brain from zero to the conclusions the full text would bring you to. Any gaps can be logically deduced and filled through mental effort, ideally more quickly than it could be told. Especially if one already has experience in the area. Memorization, meanwhile, creates gaps, and provides no tools to fill them.
- wging 15y agoNot every summary is necessarily a TL;DR. Even for the most diligent reader, a cogent explanation of what exactly the author believes to be the most important information can help clarify and distill knowledge.
- Deestan 15y agoDepends on what you use the TL;DR for. For me, the TL;DR summary helps me get the gist of the article and then decide whether I should read the whole thing or not. If I just go ahead and read, and after 1200 words, the author promotes inhaling magnet dust or sleeping 4 hours each night as a way to improve intelligence, the entire article is a complete waste of time and I will be annoyed. The summary, as presented here, firmly places the article in my "read when I get home" queue.
- pygy_ 15y agotl;dr summaries often address the 'what', but they neglect the 'how', which is often as useful to decide whether or not to read something.
- Jach 15y agoGo read How to Read a Book. The second level of reading is about skimming, picking up the general point of something, then deciding if it's worth a careful, analytical (and perhaps synoptic) reading. I don't think this article deserves it, so I didn't give it the full time to read everything, and since I've read other stuff in this area before, I think the bullet points really do sum it up.
- pygy_ 15y agoThe article focuses on the motivations behind these advices and how to apply them in practice. A big part of thevalue of the article comes from this and your bullet list fails to account for that.
- lurker19 15y agoOr How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read http://www.amazon.com/x/dp/1596914696 http://www.amazon.com/x/dp/1596914696
- rglover 15y agoI had absolutely zero idea what TL;DR meant until I saw it here and looked it up. I agree with you, this article was extremely well-written and I feel that just summarizing the key points doesn't really help you to understand what the author was trying to convey. It's unfortunate that we've trained ourselves as a society to participate in info-snacking (gorging ourselves on as many tiny bits of info as possible). This is why there's so much short-form content. As opposed to circulating great content like this article (and subsequently discussing it), we go out of our way to publish less-circumstantial lists ad nausea that make us feel like we've done/learned something.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago> ...info-snacking... Wow, this is going to be my favorite new piece of vocabulary for a while. It's perfect.
- nvarsj 15y agoI read the original 4,500 words, and I don't think it adds anything beyond the tl;dr. Most opinion pieces are terrible at being concise.
- FrojoS 15y agoI like the humor but I disagree. Its called an abstract and I'm glad that you can't publish any peer reviewed science paper without it. You can only read a mind blogging tiny fraction of all the information out there. Even in a narrow field of specialization its hard to read everything relevant. Whats better? Reading 10 articles in depth or reading 9 articles in depth and 10 abstracts? I'm pretty sure, the latter is better for point 4. I really wish, abstracts where standard for longer online posts. Maybe, there should be a field for abstracts in the HN submission form.
- FrojoS 15y agoI apologize, if the second paragraph sounds rude. That was not my aim. Now its to late to edit.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- adamc 15y agoNot indefinitely. Eventually you will likely run low on novelty.
- thaumaturgy 15y agoHmm. So, according to #2, I should be able to help increase my own intelligence by playing Sudoku?
- dcreemer 15y agoIn fact that exact strategy is specifically addressed in the article. The answer is yes, but only until you get good at it. Then you need to move on to something else.
- thaumaturgy 15y agoI know. I wanted to see if I could hook anyone into responding who hadn't bothered to read the whole article, because they read the summary points instead. I was hoping to make a point in a sneaky, underhanded way.
- craze3 15y agoIf somebody were to have read only the summary points and agreed with your post, you would have caught somebody who misunderstood the article because they didn't read it...but how do you plan to "hook" the people that skim articles and extract the summary points themselves? Aren't they just as susceptible to misunderstanding the content as well? I believe that summaries [and skimming] are definitely useful and do not detract from the spreading of information or the gaining of knowledge. In fact, I would say that they contribute to both.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago> Aren't they just as susceptible to misunderstanding the content as well? Yep! The only distinction between skimming and reading a summary is that skimming at least gives you the opportunity to spot something interesting, stop, and read it fully. I also wouldn't confuse speed-reading with skimming, so long as the speed-reading gleaned as much from the text as slower reading would. > I believe that summaries [and skimming] are definitely useful and do not detract from the spreading of information or the gaining of knowledge. In fact, I would say that they contribute to both. I disagree. I think that they are dangerous tools -- useful occasionally, but too easy to abuse. I'm being more vocal about it nowadays because "TL:DR" has recently become a "thing", and I'm concerned that larger numbers of people seem to be considering it acceptable to skip reading a 10-minute article in favor of reading a 10-second summary of it. Rather than debate that here though, I'd just point to my comments elsewhere on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563051 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563051