> Dialogue forces you synthesize ideas into new statements and respond to challenges to those statements which is intrinsically more applied than simply reading

> Dialogue forces you synthesize ideas into new statements and respond to challenges to those statements which is intrinsically more applied than simply reading alone. Exactly! Talking about a subject helps organize it. > This is why I get into silly arguments on HN in the first place, gotta supplement that reading ;) Ah, the good old Feynman criterion. You don't understand something until you can explain it to a 6th grader or a HNer ^^ > Reading makes knowledge acquisition easier, but it also decreases the fraction of knowledge that comes bundled with expert 1-on-1. Experts are scarce, books are cheap. Also if a bunch of people read a book, it has the same content for everybody. So if people recommend a book and you read it you can be fairly sure that you all read the same thing. But if a bunch of people talk to someone, and they say oh that someone is great, but then they don't like you, or they are in a bad mood, or ... or, you won't really know what's up. (Recently happened to me with a recommendation to a doctor. I'm still fed up with how useless it was to spend money on that doc and how high praise he got.)