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Writing summaries is more important than reading more books
- charlie0 3y agoI've been using Obsidian recently and I can say it's had a big impact on my life. When I was younger I used to read a lot, but i hardly remember anything. Now, when I read something important, I'm sure to summarize it in Obsidian. I can remember it easier and even if I can't, I know where to go to find that information.
- syntaxing 3y agoYou can use llamaindex to load your vault and parse it to a local LLM (you can use openai if you’re comfortable with it). You end up getting your own personal search engine and it’s amazing. I really should finish my write up about it (also written in Obsidian)
- sendfoods 3y agoDo you know how this compares to [PrivateGPT](https://github.com/imartinez/privateGPT https://github.com/imartinez/privateGPT). I am honestly at the point of choice paralysis with all these new tools
- charlie0 3y agoDitto. There's so many llms out there now. Is there a website where these are aggregated and ranked? Man, I've been too busy to keep on top of these developments.
- syntaxing 3y agoIt's more or less the same exact idea! Use langchain, import llm and embedding model, and query against it. The repo you provided does the same exact thing but using llama cpp python as the backend. I opted to write my own custom llm class with using textgen as the api backend so I can use the gpu since its way faster. But with the new cuBLAS support on llama cpp, it's a game changer so you can use either now. I do find the llama cpp + cuBLAS about 25% slower compared to pure GPU which is really good for what it is. I get how there's so many choices nowadays and it's overwhelming but 95% of the repo you'll see just uses langchain. For the backend, llama cpp is your best bet minus the constant updates that break the quantized models. If you look for TheBloke on huggingface/reddit, you'll find all the best models. Look for the "ggml" ones which means its supported by llama cpp. But like I mentioned before, llama cpp has been doing so many model breaking changes so using TheBloke's models is your best bet because s/he updates really frequently. I personally prefer wizard-vicuna 13B, the uncensored one is pretty damn amazing.
- syntaxing 3y agoHere's some example output how fast it is running 13B on a 3090 with a Ryzen 9 5900X In [5]: output = llm("Q: Name the planets in the solar system? A: ", max_tokens=32, stop=["Q:", "\n"], echo=True) llama_print_timings: load time = 209.23 ms llama_print_timings: sample time = 11.39 ms / 32 runs ( 0.36 ms per token) llama_print_timings: prompt eval time = 209.16 ms / 15 tokens ( 13.94 ms per token) llama_print_timings: eval time = 1806.98 ms / 31 runs ( 58.29 ms per token) llama_print_timings: total time = 3033.91 ms In [6]: print(output) {'id': '', 'object': 'text_completion', 'created': 1684604167, 'model': './models/Wizard-Vicuna-13B-Uncensored.ggml.q5_1.bin', 'choices': [{'text': 'Q: Name the planets in the solar system? A: 1. Mercury, 2. Venus, 3. Earth, 4. Mars, 5. Jupiter, 6. Saturn', 'index': 0, 'logprobs': None, 'finish_reason': 'length'}], 'usage': {'prompt_tokens': 15, 'completion_tokens': 32, 'total_tokens': 47}}
- cout 3y agoWhy obsidian?
- charlie0 3y agoMainly because it's open source and has a ton of functionality. I can bring text docs, diagrams, spreadsheets, images, audio, and even video under one single pkm. Because it's an offline app, it doesnt have any of the drawbacks of the online proprietary solutions.
- LorenDB 3y agoObsidian is not open source. It's a widely held idea that is unfortunately false. Don't believe me? Try to find a repository for it. You can't. It's a shame, because Obsidian is kinda neat software (although I'm not the note taking type myself).
- dahves 3y agoNext step reviewing (rewriting) those summaries. Currently using Anki for this, anyone has success using other tools?
- Ozzie_osman 3y agoI love Readwise.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoI love Readwise Reader, and subscribed within a few days of trying out Reader Beta. Despite my best intentions, though, I've not started to turn my highlights into flashcards, or started a daily review habit. To GP: AIUI the workflow in Reader is meant to be (i) add to library, (ii) read and highlight, (iii) review highlights and create flashcards, (iv) review flashcards.
- veryfancy 3y agoDerek Sivers does this and has a section of his site with all his notes: https://sive.rs/book https://sive.rs/book Great source of interesting reads, too. So some potential prosocial utility there, too.
- mathgeek 3y agoFor context, this article is specifically referring to reading for comprehension (not for pleasure).
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoI don’t see why it wouldn’t apply to both? I just finished crime & punishment and could see how this summary strategy would help better understand the book.
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- bowsamic 3y agoI couldn’t disagree more. For me it’s much more important to have a broad knowledge and gain retention and comprehension by repeated readings of books I enjoyed. Writing summaries might be good, but certainly not at the expense of not reading as many new books
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoAlongside this, I enjoy condensing the summaries down into their base ideas, which I put into a Zettelkästen.
- counternotions 3y agoInspectional reading is one of the key limitations for me when reading books on the Kindle. I need to be able to quickly flip around from toc to glossary and between chapters. There’s still too much friction for that with the ebook format.
- jameshart 3y agoWell it really depends what your goals are, right? What kind of books are you reading, to what end? I personally struggle to think of any book I have engaged with which I got value out of, that could be meaningfully summarized in a couple of hours. The author was an expert on the subject and they only managed to summarize it down to a few hundred pages - if there was only a couple of pages worth of ideas in there presumably they would have just written a blogpost.
- ghostpepper 3y agoI feel like this works a lot better with a typical nonfiction novel, and not eg. a reference textbook.
- jameshart 3y agoWhat's a nonfiction novel?
- jonsen 3y agoCould be an autobiography.
- jameshart 3y agoAn autobiography is not a novel, because it lacks the fundamental aspect of being fictional. There is such a thing as an autobiographical novel, but that is not nonfiction. Because novels are, by definition, works of fiction. The closest thing to a ‘nonfiction novel’ is probably the historical novel, which is a fictionalized historical account… but I’m not sure why such a thing would particularly be suited to this summarization methodology.
- jonsen 3y ago"Fictional narrative: Fictionality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion. ... Several novels, for example Ông cố vấn written by Hữu Mai, were designed to be and defined as a "non-fiction" novel which purposefully recorded historical facts in the form of a novel.": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel#Defining_the_genre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel#Defining_the_genre
- jasperry 3y agoStrong agree from me, though what I do is less involved than the article. I normally just take a few per-chapter summary notes in an org-mode outline, in a filename that starts with the year I read the book. Recently I started creating my own topic index with pointers to which books I found certain insights in. I know I could generate such a thing automatically with tagging, but I enjoy manually curating my index.
- sailorganymede 3y agoPretty much what I do as well. I got a Notion account with links to all sorts of things from useful timestamps in videos to chapters in books and docs. It’s been incredibly helpful in contextualising my information when I gotta go out and actually do something.
- paulcole 3y agoI’m at 47 books read this year so far and mostly disagree with the author of the article. When you find a book that’s worth summarizing, do it. But I get exposed to many more ideas (and find the ones worth thinking about more) simply by reading more. Also, I just like reading. My goal isn’t to have some kind of personal knowledge base to prove how much I’ve comprehended to myself.
- mrits 3y agoIf getting exposed to a lot of ideas is the goal then spending your life on this site and reddit would be the way to go.
- paulcole 3y agoI do that quite a bit as well. But generally the ideas here and on Reddit (including the ones I share myself) are pretty lackluster.
- bowsamic 3y agoNot in my experience. The knowledge here and on Reddit is shallow and does not explore any topic in depth. Theres a reason why Hegel took 1000+ pages to develop his logic. You can never get exposed to the full idea
- pessimizer 3y ago> My goal isn’t to have some kind of personal knowledge base to prove how much I’ve comprehended to myself. The reason many people accumulate wealth is to spend it, not to stare at it insecurely. It goes without saying that knowing more things expands the number of things you can do.
- paulcole 3y ago> The reason many people accumulate wealth is to spend it, not to stare at it insecurely Yes and the reason many people accumulate wealth is to stare at it insecurely. What’s your point?
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- pmarreck 3y agoChatGPT will do this. But also, try quizzing yourself about what you’ve read the day before. I bet the retention is slim.
- janalsncm 3y agoSure, ChatGPT can do this. Just like you could drive a car over a marathon route. That’s not the point though, the point of summarizing is to force yourself to understand. It’s the journey not the destination that’s important.
- blackbear_ 3y agoWell said. And, in other words, while ChatGPT can summarize it for you, it cannot understand it for you.
- pmarreck 3y agoShould I also hand-write the summary?
- aprinsen 3y agoWhen I've done them, I always feel like I benefit from reflective practices like these. Does anyone have tips for successfully building reflection into one's life? In the mean time I'll reflect on it.
- grugagag 3y agoJournaling is a good bet
- LegoZombieKing 3y agoI have been meditating for a few years now and recently decided to start building some custom meditations into my routine. I had a meditation for when I get out of the shower that helps me reflect on the day ahead. One that I listen to before work to let me put down distractions and think about what I want to accomplish today. Then I have one for after work to help me relax and separate my work mind from my home mind. I created these with the help of ChatGPT, and an AI TTS, and audacity to put it all together. I could have voiced it myself, but I found that it distracts me from the meditation when I think about my own voice. Here is a sample one that I use to get out of work mindset: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r65gi7tk4str2h7/After%20Work%20Meditation.mp3?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/r65gi7tk4str2h7/After%20Work%20Med...
- Swizec 3y agoHere’s a really good trick: Read a book then find the nearest victim to excitedly tell all about what you’ve learned. The back and forth conversation is even better than writing it down. If you really found the book useful, go write a summary after that conversation. It will be a much stronger summary and also way easier to write.
- dmotz 3y agoI built a tool for myself for the purpose of grokking ideas from books called Emdash [1]. Over the years I've collected reams of highlights from books and articles but until recently, rarely reviewed or absorbed them. The core of this app uses on-device ML to show related passages with similar ideas from other books you've read, and I find that going broad and exploring concepts from different angles really helps in comprehension. I'm testing out a summarization/rephrase feature backed by LLMs that you can try in the demo. In HN fashion I'm trying to build this openly and gather feedback to see what works. I'd like to push this further in the active direction the article mentions with something like a Socratic dialogue mode where you're nudged to re-explain and examine ideas. If anyone uses this thing/has feedback, let me know. Source is available too [2]. [1] https://emdash.ai https://emdash.ai [2] https://github.com/dmotz/emdash https://github.com/dmotz/emdash
- callistus 3y agoThis is really neat!! Love how you have a sample library for one to experience how using emdash is like.
- packetlost 3y agoI would really love for something like this to be integrated into Logseq
- rahimnathwani 3y agoI tried 'related' with a couple of passages. For the first passage, the first result was a good semantic match, but the rest were a little too far off. For the second passage, the results were amazing. Perhaps for the first you just didn't have any more snippets that were closer? Are the related snippets taken from a selection of snippets you created, or from the full text of other books? A nice workflow might be to select a passage I'm reading in a book, and then see related passages from other books. But that requires I have DRM-free ebooks, and that these have already been chunked and indexed.
- dmotz 3y agoYes, the demo mode is a random subset of things I've highlighted and it's heavily weighted around certain topics and sparse on others, so that's why some passages don't have the strongest semantic matches. You're right that it would be nice to see things in situ as you're reading, but it would seem that most e-reading experiences are locked down. I appreciate the feedback!
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- thenerdhead 3y agoIt may be more important to the author at this point in their life, but that will likely change with time.
- chrisweekly 3y agoTiago Forte popularized the idea of "Progressive Summarization", which starts with extensive highlighting, then rounds of progressive refinement, ie bold key phrases and concepts in a given passage, then later review those and summarize in your own words. Strong approach for retention and comprehension...
- karaterobot 3y agoIf you're trying to answer questions, the even more advanced tactic is to read more books, but only read the parts that touch on your question. That's why god invented the subject index. Reading every word in order is not for people who have specific questions to answer, but for pleasure, or for learning the basics.
- wenc 3y agoIt’s not worth summarizing every book. I took a course at UChicago on how to read a book based on Mortimer Adler’s book of the same name, and the takeaway is that the first reading of a book should be a quick one (table of contents, skimming, dipping into pages). Only after a book is shown to have promise are we then to engage in deep reading which not only involves summarizing but also syntopical reading, which is to read other books around the same topic. One thing that has really helped me is to scribble notes in the margins and to write a précis after every chapter, then a précis on the inside cover of the book to summarize all my chapter précis. Finally all good books should be read twice or more. Good reading is rereading. This is a hard rule to follow because nobody has time to read the same book twice but the truth is you can’t understand a book deeply on first reading because you don’t have the lay of the land and the benefit of retrospection. A rereading helps you focus on details missed the first time around. To be honest though, very few books meet my bar of my willing to reread them.
- travisporter 3y agoThis may be cultural but I just cannot bring myself write in a book even in pencil. post-its notes for me this is a great idea if I have the discipline
- wenc 3y agoI had the same problem but my instructor told me: a book devoid of scribbles is a book that hasn’t been engaged with deeply. If you have to, buy two copies of a book — one for display and another to scribble in, knowing that you’ll truly own the scribbled copy because you won’t be able to sell it. Post-its work. For me I use a mechanical pencil.
- njarboe 3y agoScholars from the middle ages wrote on the edges of their scrolls and codexes. Some of these notes are very interesting and useful to scholars. In elementary and primary school most are taught not to write in books because they have to be used for decades, but there is a long tradition of taking notes in books. They are very inexpensive now compared to the past and when you write in the you leave a little extra something for posterity.
- chubot 3y agoI totally agree, and surprised it's a bit controversial here. I understand that reading for pleasure can be different than reading for comprehension But I lean towards reading for comprehension. I have a wiki which includes all the books I've read. The good ones get their own wiki pages with the main things I learned, and other notes. A key point is that I don't take notes while I read. I only do it LATER -- because if you can't remember what to write down for a few days, then you probably won't retain it, and it may not be worth retaining. ---- As a specific example, when thinking about this -- I wonder if anybody has read "The Signal vs. The Noise" by Nate Silver? I remember reading it because a friend had a copy. Many years later, off the top of my head, I can't remember a single thing in that book. Question for other readers: can you remember a single thing from it? I think maybe it's because I kinda knew most of the stuff in that book? I will refer to my notes. On the other hand, I've been re-reading Antifragile by Taleb, which I first read in 2012 I believe, and it struck me how many things I absorbed unconsciously from that book, which I didn't ascribe to it. For example I remember talking about "hormesis" during COVID, i.e. small errors and stress. And also I took up some light weightlifting because I thought it was a good complement to bike riding. i.e. having 2 different kinds of exercise --- edit: Just went to back to my notes on Silver's book (finished January 2014). Surprisingly I was extremely positive on the book -- I said the writing was engaging, it's well-sourced, very good set of topics (weather prediction, earthquakes, terrorists, poker, basketball, financial markets), and novel insights Though the funny thing is that I didn't say what the actual insights were. The only one was the importance of knowing when you don't know, which I also got from Taleb So maybe I should go back to that book and see if I still think it's good, and if there were insights I didn't get elsewhere It's funny perhaps that my perception of the book has been clouded by Silver's reputation. I think he has been criticized for "predicting the present" and of "horse race coverage", and I think that's true now. But back when I read the book, I probably had a much more positive impression of him!! Very interesting
- tsimionescu 3y agoI'm guessing a large part of the controversy is related to the fact that reading has many different aspects. Possibly the article is referring to the same kind of reading you're referring to - technical books on various real-world topics. However, it's much harder to see the value in doing anything like the article is suggesting for literature. Is there really much to gain from writing a summary of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, or of a book of poetry? Is that even the right way to engage with the material?
- flerp 3y agoHaha. This was special. The goal is everything. Gone is the road.
- LorenDB 3y agoI strongly disagree. I read for enjoyment, even when I'm reading a more educational work; I don't wish to ruin my enjoyment by making myself summarize every book I read.
- donutshop 3y agoI disagree with this. Reading for the sake of summarizing takes the joy away from reading itself. I don't know anybody that'll read just because they want to read more books. If I wanted to read summaries I would just read from Coles notes or Sparknotes, but both are essentially me just skimming headlines, and not getting to the juicy bits of the materials.
- cosou 3y agoI don't think that this author's point is that we read for the sake of summarizing, per se, but rather that the act of summarizing forces us to engage more thoughtfully with what we've just read. It's that engagement itself that enriches our understanding of the book. By all means enjoy what you're reading while you're reading it!
- o1y32 3y agoThat's the problem here -- for many books you don't need to develop a deep understanding of the book. Even for books in programming language, I may pick up a book because I am interested in the design of the language or a certain pattern of writing code, not because I want to use the language in the production or master the language, in which case understanding and thinking about pieces is good enough.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIf you had a different purpose for reading the book, presumably you'd summarize it with that purpose in mind, depth where you need it, omission where you don't. If you don't care to write that summary down... well that's kind of a separate thing.
- bottled_poe 3y agoAny idiot can see that a summary is a blurred lens over the original content. Not much more to say, it’s just sad.
- teodorlu 3y agoNo, don't summarize. Remix! Write about your own ideas! Your mind is a living collection of your own ideas, and a history of their significance to your prior life. Not a dead library of pointers to other dead libraries. Books are great. But you shoudn't outsource your brain. The learning happens when you think for yourself. Reading is good. Thinking about what you've read is even better. But don't stop with the summary! Go further. Apply it to your context. Try it, it's fun.
- brudgers 3y agoI don’t disagree. I think this article isn’t written for people like me. What I mean is I f someone is already remixing, they’re already writing about what they read and probably don’t need advices from articles like this because they already read differently from what the author imagined. On the other hand, the article encourages people to write about what they read outside a formal academic context, and most people don’t have that habit. To put it another way, writers don’t need rationale to write. But writers are not the target audience.
- 221qqwe 3y agoIMHO realistically for most people the ratio between "your own ideas" and everything else should be like 5% or so. If you're exceptionally gifted maybe up to 20%.. (unless you're writing fiction)
- teodorlu 3y agoIf you mash together two ideas, is the new composite idea yours? I'd say it's yours. In that frame, there are lots of ideas. Lets assume there are 10 000 known ideas. Then there's 10^8 combinations of two ideas, and 10^12 combinations of three ideas. That's a lot of ideas, even for the internet! I bet not all of them are named. And different people are going to frame ideas differently. I also believe trying to form your ideas in reference to existing knowledge is a great way to learn existing knowledge.
- molly0 3y agoWriting small summaries weekly (or daily) about what’s on your mind or what you’ve learnt is the simplest and most powerful way of self development I know of.
- Rufbdbskrufb473 3y agoDo you review what you've written at a later date or is the value gained just in the initial writing?
- molly0 3y agoI read it, yearly, but the main value for me is probably identifying what I need to do/understand in order to “get to the next step” of whatever I’m currently trying to do.
- theusus 3y agoIn a nutshell the author is talking about Zettlkasten
- the_af 3y agoSuch a proccess- and goal-oriented approach to books doesn't resonate with me at all. Such a mechanical, soulless way of thinking about reading! Is this for technical, self-help or startup/entreprenurship books? Sure, maybe this works. I read a lot for fun though. Most of my reading is like this. The books I read are not about "answering questions" and I don't need to "optimize" my reading in any way, either to summarize them or to "process" as many books I can in a year. It's not a contest. It's about the joy of reading.
- OmarShehata 3y agoI had a similar reaction to a lot of the language in this post, but I think there's something to it here that is still valuable even for just the joy of reading. For me it's important that I am paying attention as I read. I used to rarely re-read books, and have started re-reading my favorite ones, and it's often surprising to me how many interesting ideas I missed, or maybe just forgot about. I enjoy talking to friends about books too and I find that helps me explore the ideas more deeply. I've recently started trying writing up my takeaways for books I've enjoyed, partially as something to send friends to talk about with or try convince them to read the book too so we can talk about it. I think the caveat here is that it's totally valid to not do any of these things if you are enjoying whatever process you have. I just appreciate being exposed to this idea because it's increased my enjoyment of my own reading.
- cptaj 3y agoTotally agree. Although there is something to be said for having better retention as it will only aid your enjoyment of future reading on the subject. I recommend getting drinks with friends and telling them all about the interesting stuff you read.
- loughnane 3y agoThis nuance gets missed in most conversations about reading. I see there are motivations to read a book: 1. For fun 2. For information 3. For understanding If reading for fun, do what suits you… there’s really no wrong way. Like food, whatever suits your tastes is best. If reading for information (eg on tactics in some battle or HR practices in some form when you are already broadly acquainted with tactics and HR) then there are tips for extracting essential points that apply to most everyone. Likewise when reading for understanding (eg having no conception about how war works and trying to grok it). Some books can be read in each way, other books only in one or two. In any case, making broad claims about “how to read better” without appealing to one of these modes usually sparks disagreement.
- cptaj 3y agoIf you don't enjoy writing summaries, I recommend just getting drinks with your buddies and telling them about the interesting stuff you read. I do this regularly and it works great.
- dandarie 3y agoFor what?
- davidthewatson 3y agoIndeed! Learning is the three R's: Reading, wRiting, and Rumination. This piece on completing the learning loop through summaries resonates with me so strongly, I just hit print. Sadly, I didn't read Pirsig until a close friend recommended it to me. It's taken me years to grok. I find this summary to be among the best summaries ever written: http://www.butler-bowdon.com/robert-m-pirsig---zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html http://www.butler-bowdon.com/robert-m-pirsig---zen-and-the-a...
- asdfman123 3y agoThis may be true in certain cases, but I think with any form of self improvement, the most effective thing you can do is something that you’re going to stick to. If you can stick to a rigorous reading and writing program, yes, that will give you the most rewards. But even reading 20 minutes of lightweight fiction before bed every night is much better than nothing.
- BlueBall 3y agoRelevant: https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/linux_literature/toc_id/1-1-17/s/228 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/linux_literature/to... Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took thousands of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. -- Dave Barry
- jrm4 3y agoI can't speak for others, but for me this headline and idea is exactly and perfectly wrong, so I suppose I just want to reach those for whom this generates unnecessary "guilt" or something like that. As a voracious reader, I've personally found that I got the most out of books when I stopped trying to summarize and highlight. I very rarely do either anymore. I realize that what happens is sort of a Darwinian "survival of the fittest ideas" in my head, often subconsciously. Once I relaxed and decided, "If the stuff in this book is good enough, my brain will keep it FOR me" both my satisfaction AND utility of books increased dramatically. (which is to say, it's not that I never write anything down. It's that if I do, it's not tied to the book, but to the "thing" or "topic" that I'm interested in, with a reference TO the book)
- mdp2021 3y agoIt strictly depends on the category of the book: Insightful → process subconsciously; Informative → summarize. -- Update: yes, it is not just a matter of texts. The annoying snipers that infest these boards should summarize as a general practice: this will help them with an exercise in thinking, expression, so that maybe one day they will also be able to formulate and present an argument. And stop abusing the freedom they should not be granted.
- marcosdumay 3y agoIf it's informative, you can't really summarize. Summarizing is the act of throwing most of the information away. If it's informative, you have to read and take your conclusions. And if you later decide to use the information for different conclusions, you'll have to read it again. It's little wonder that informative texts don't usually come in the form of books.
- carlmr 3y ago>If it's informative, you can't really summarize. Something can be informative, but still longer than necessary. A lot of non-fiction books could do with 10-50 pages, but marketing wise they won't sell because people feel they don't get enough for their money. So the authors are prone to extend the contents to an amount of pages people are willing to pay for. Let's say 200.
- ubj 3y agoI realize there are different opinions about this article, but I personally agree with the overall idea. Learning is about recalling information. The more you practice recalling a fact, the more the memory "sticks".[1] Writing summaries is an effective way to both 1) identify the most important information, and 2) practice recalling it. [1]: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
- esafak 3y agoI prefer to say it is about understanding, which is closer to summarization, or having a model. A parrot or even a computer can recall blindly.
- JenrHywy 3y ago> Learning is about recalling information I think this is the core of what people are arguing with. I think people assume that if they fill their heads with facts, they'll end up like Tyler Cowan (or pick any other amazing-recall public intellectual). It's more likely that you end up like Will Hunting - ready access to facts but with no particular insight of your own.
- a_c 3y agoNot everything have to be in a false dichotomy. No need to think too much. Just relax and have fun.
- emrah 3y ago> read fewer books but take the time to write summaries for the good ones The odds of finding good books goes down if one reads fewer books. Taking suggestions from others is not a good substitute for finding one's own "good ones". If I find that a book I'm reading is not good for me, I start skipping, first a few parapgraphs, then a few pages, then a whole chapter and so on, to see if it gets better. And I'm even prepared to stop reading it altogether if it doesn't get any better. That gives me more time to find and read better books.
- quickthrower2 3y agoMore importantly do the exercises - make up some if they are not provided. Summaries are useful for 2 years time to ease you back in I would say. I learned so much in Karpathy’s NN course I feel I need to summarize to avoid forgetting much of what I learned even though I did the exercises. I might then re-embed (ha) the knowledge by playing more with the nets to get more tacit experience.
- calf 3y agoSummarization is actually a less effective learning technique, according to Dunlosky and other literature in cognitive learning science. Dunlosky recommend other techniques namely "practice testing" and "distributed practice". So I guess those more powerful (and time consuming) techniques are worth using if the book is worth learning thoroughly, whereas summarization and outlining, etc. are less mentally challenging/effortful techniques but still somewhat useful, just empirically less proven to be very effective.
- amar-laksh 3y agoI never heard anyone say that we need to summarize, and/or note sections and quotes movies and shows. I just want to enjoy my books as I read them. That's it.
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- kristianpaul 3y agoThis article is short. They might be right about summaries.
- silcoon 3y agoNo it's not. What's more important is slow reading and give time to your brain to reason about the book; the form in which is written and why that, what are the messages that the writer want to send with it, how I will act if I'm the protagonist and so on. For non-fiction the best thing I do is underline the parts that I find more helpful.
- jordanmorgan10 3y agoTo each their own, I love summarizing books. I have a template in Day One to do a personal "book review" for each book I finish (yes, High School me is gagging at this thought). I even setup a Siri Shortcut to pull out all of my Kindle highlights to stick in there: https://twitter.com/JordanMorgan10/status/1303702536935870465?s=20 https://twitter.com/JordanMorgan10/status/130370253693587046...
- electroagenda 3y agoTwice? Four times say others? I have kids. I can hardly read and enjoy a book once....
- SpaceManNabs 3y agoSQRST. Taking copious notes and summaries isn't necessarily the first step. You need to know if it is good! Don't want to write down bad notes and think they are good when you forget and come back too.