2 ms·
I find that most of the things I read can be pretty effectively summarized in a single thesis sentence and a few additional sentences to generally describe how
by pessimizer 3y ago
I find that most of the things I read can be pretty effectively summarized in a single thesis sentence and a few additional sentences to generally describe how that thesis was supported. If you're only reading things that can't even be summarized in an abstract, you must be reading a lot of unopinionated biographies?
- jameshart 3y agoIf after reading an entire book you haven’t already internalized its main thesis, it’s probably not a very valuable thesis. But reducing a book down to a single thesis minimizes the takeaway value of the book, surely? Take a book like Gödel Escher Bach. Sure, that book has a thesis. But the value of having read that book is not captured in ‘strange loops are all it takes to create beauty, complexity and consciousness’ - all the different ideas that underpin that thesis are what makes it valuable. That book lives as a set of new connections and pathways between ideas in my brain. And I read it over 20 years ago.
- tsimionescu 3y agoThe vast majority of literature has much of its value in the way it is told, not just in the story it is telling. You can summarize Hamlet in a sentence or two, but that's not the reason it is still being read and performed 400+ years later.