37 ms·

Reading is excellent cognitive training. Especially reading fiction. It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes.

Reading is excellent cognitive training. Especially reading fiction. It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. You get cognitive benefit as well as spiritual benefit from reading great fiction. Non fiction is also OK but generally less appropriate for reading cover to cover. Non fiction is great for just getting what you need and getting out. The way you learn physics, for example, is not by reading physics books, it's by solving problems. By experiencing the real thing. Reading fiction has self contained benefit. Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life.

dragontamer 5y ago
> It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. One of the biggest emotional hits to me was "Der Untergang", or "Downfall" in English (aka: Angry Hitler Meme movie). Spending 1-week in Hitler's shoes, with an incredible amount of detail / historical accuracy, brought me a huge amount of appreciation for what was going on during WW2, in a way that few other stories (be it reading, anime, movies, TV-series) have ever affected me before. Non-fiction, when done well, can give you a hugely different perspective on life. * Technically, you spend ~1 week in Traudl Junge's shoes, who serves as Hitler's personal secretary. But she was in the room when all major events happened: from Hitler's Birthday (aka: when the Russians started shelling Berlin), to the final defense plans, to the Goring Telegram, to helping Hitler write his final will / testament. To the planning of Hitler's suicide (which wasn't easy in the circumstances). To helping write the last will/testament to Goebbel + those events. To the escape from the bunker while surrounded by Russian troops. ----------- Since this story is "real", it just hits differently. Even though Hitler + Goebbel were probably the most evil people on Earth at that time... the perspective of "Downfall" was incredibly human. There's a story to be told here about the expectations of leadership, the stress of losing, the worries about your worldview going extinct, etc. etc. > Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life. I hope I'll never be trapped in a bunker contemplating angry Soviet capture/torture vs Suicide. But the story that contemplates the two choices really gives you an understanding of the final WW2 events much better.

dragontamer 5y ago

> It makes you step outside your ordinary reality and truly live in someone else's shoes. One of the biggest emotional hits to me was "Der Untergang", or "Downfall" in English (aka: Angry Hitler Meme movie). Spending 1-week in Hitler's shoes, with an incredible amount of detail / historical accuracy, brought me a huge amount of appreciation for what was going on during WW2, in a way that few other stories (be it reading, anime, movies, TV-series) have ever affected me before. Non-fiction, when done well, can give you a hugely different perspective on life. * Technically, you spend ~1 week in Traudl Junge's shoes, who serves as Hitler's personal secretary. But she was in the room when all major events happened: from Hitler's Birthday (aka: when the Russians started shelling Berlin), to the final defense plans, to the Goring Telegram, to helping Hitler write his final will / testament. To the planning of Hitler's suicide (which wasn't easy in the circumstances). To helping write the last will/testament to Goebbel + those events. To the escape from the bunker while surrounded by Russian troops. ----------- Since this story is "real", it just hits differently. Even though Hitler + Goebbel were probably the most evil people on Earth at that time... the perspective of "Downfall" was incredibly human. There's a story to be told here about the expectations of leadership, the stress of losing, the worries about your worldview going extinct, etc. etc. > Reading non fiction is only useful to the extent to which you can apply this information in your daily life. I hope I'll never be trapped in a bunker contemplating angry Soviet capture/torture vs Suicide. But the story that contemplates the two choices really gives you an understanding of the final WW2 events much better.