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> reading books This rhetoric is partly why reading gets such a bad rap. So many people put "reading books" on a pedestal, and cite random educational studies

> reading books This rhetoric is partly why reading gets such a bad rap. So many people put "reading books" on a pedestal, and cite random educational studies on how the mere act of reading stimulates the brain and is beneficial in itself. But 90% of the books in this world are fucking boring to downright garbage and not worth reading for most people. Telling people to read "books" is as helpful as advising suburban kids to go "places" and see them stay home after the fifth trip to Wallmart. Would a random kid be better off reading "Rich dad Poor dad" than try to fix the brake cable of his bike ? Should they read "The Boys from Biloxi" or go to a theater with their friends and have an actual social exchange with a real human ? Are the dozens of self help books pusblished every week better than their Substack equivalent ?

ethanbond 3y ago
They should definitely read whatever interests them so when they want to acquire useful knowledge (like what to do when the obvious brake cable fix doesn’t work), they have access to tons and tons of written material on that topic. It’s odd how you’re acting like you’re making an argument against the general imperative to read books, but your examples are people being requested to read specific books which may or may not be useful and/or interesting to the reader.
- djangelic 3y ago
  I agree with what you are saying. Much like a muscle, when you work out, you're not lifting weights so you can lift more weights later. Your general strength is higher, so most physical tasks are easier. Same for reading, if you practice reading books and enjoy looking at the written word, then reading developer documentation doesn't seem as intimidating which opens more doors for you.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    My counterargument would be about why you need to lift weights in the first place ? Some people like lifting weight, sure. But if your goal is to carry injured big dogs in your medical center, you won't be lifting random weights, nor doing generic workout. And you might not even do that in a gym, you could as well train with healthy dogs and get an actual feel of their weight distribution. For books it goes the same. Reading stuff that will actually help you and bring you closer to your goals will help a lot more than reading for reading. On the other side you'll be able to go through thousands of page if the subject matters to you, where reading dumb prose will kill your attention in matters of minutes. Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. But yes, just like workout, some people enjoy the effort in itself and like to feel the pain.
    - arkey 3y ago
      > Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. Of course not, but that's just a very specific edge case of "go read books". When I recommend for someone to go read a book, I consider it implied that they should find good, interesting and constructive books to read, not the opposite. I personally think reading is as objectively good for the mind as walking is for the body. Walking is objectively good and healthy for everybody and anybody, bar physical conditions and edge cases. However, you could go walk in weird ways in boring or dangerous and unhealthy places and that's not ideal, but who would purposefully do that? Same goes for reading.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  > like what to do when the obvious brake cable fix doesn’t work The interesting thing: those useful information probably aren't seen as "books" even when they're in written form. The obvious example is the repair manual in PDF on the brake maker's site. Or the blog explaining how they dealt with their vintage bike's brake cable. Of course that information is probably actually a youtube video (I refresh every single components of a bike with a toolkit from amazon and hours of youtube videos with Shimano's PDFs on the side) > It’s odd how you’re acting like you’re making an argument against the general imperative to read books, but your examples are people being requested to read specific books which may or may not be useful and/or interesting to the reader. You're right. I should be clear that I find the very premise of pushing people to do a category of activity pretty odd. I wouldn't tell people to "go watch internet videos" or "go study academics" or "do some sport". If I'm close to them, such a generic advice would be dumb, and if I don't know their life, I shouldn't be throwing random platitudes at them either. From that point of view, "read books" doesn't make any sense, and If I had to say something I'd come up with an actual thing that could benefit them. The same way I'm kinda wary of people explaining they read X books a month. This feels like they don't see books as individual items, but as a KPI, which is weirding me out.
  - prawn 3y ago
    I think it's a decent point. Maybe we generalise from "the sort of people who read books" suggesting it's something virtuous. Or we have certain books in mind (rather than trashy romance novels). Reminds me a bit of the idea of tea drinkers as some cultured ideal.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    You’ve snuck in another conditional: when you’re close to someone, correct, you shouldn’t offer imperatives like “read books.” You’d ideally be recommending books that are tailored to their needs and interests (which, remember, is not the same as your prior examples, which were specific books pushed on people regardless of their needs and interests). You’d be hard-pressed to find a single decent educator who disagrees with you, though it’s easy to come to the idea that you’re contrarian on this point. There are two factors: 1) educators have to suggest a small set of books for a large group of students due to the scale of mass education. AFAICT almost every educator regards this as a problem but it’s not exactly helped by views like “reading books is a dumb goal.” 2) when educators are talking about overall goals and policy, they obviously cannot say “well for person X we want them to read book X; for person Y we want them to read book Y, etc.” This washes out as “we want students writ large to read books writ large.” The overall objective is to build a baseline ability for every student to be able to find, navigate, and interpret information. A lot of our society’s information is stored in a particular format called “book” that is navigated differently from other formats. Despite the generic-sounding imperative to read books, it is self-evidently the case that the only way to achieve it is by meeting each individual student where they are in terms of both skill level and interests, so that’s what educators try to do. Again: this is extremely challenging in mass education environments! Other information formats should be and are also part of a good educational system, obviously, including manuals and instructional videos. I have clear memory of manuals and cookbooks even in my early education, which was low quality by US standards. Agreed re weirdness of # of books as a meaningful metric, and I suspect most educators would agree with us as well.
barrysteve 3y ago
I have tried fixing the brake cable on my bike (and other bike repair tasks), by using the myriad of youtube videos assigned for the task. It's actually quite difficult to hold a brake cable in tension, while forcing an old school front derailleur not meant for the bike into millimeter perfect position and at the same time pause/unpause/rewind a youtube video. It is honestly easier to put a book down open to the right page, in line of sight. It requires no interaction and book authors are forced to write instructions that can be understood primarily without pictures, so there's no pause/unpause/rewind mentality. Books engage the mental tools to infer what happens next from textual description, an ability videos degrade in the viewer. The implications of that effects decision making subtly. Books are also a welcome release from the trance-like state induced in consumers by most electronic displays. I agree most books are garbage (like most of everything), the filtering of low quality books has failed. In my limited understanding most of the great literature was written between the 1700s and 1900s anyway. Recent literature does not grant the broad understanding and height over the subject matter. It is somewhat problematic to rely on multiple youtube videos and find they all have 'small detail' gaps in their perfomances that exist because the video format is to train the user along a generic path of action. Those cracks often reveal a chasm of difference in understanding and in the end, the video is replacing turn-key parts and I'm angle grinding off a stuck cup and cone bearing, even though on the surface the problems look identical.
- bombela 3y ago
  > It's actually quite difficult to hold a brake cable in tension, while forcing an old school front derailleur not meant for the bike into millimeter perfect position Maybe you are missing the tension adjustment screws on the Bowden tube? You ajust the tension if the cable as close as you can with a pair of pliers with one hand, and a screwdriver to lock the cable in the other. The you use the fine adjustment screw to precisely align the chain over the cogs.
ldhough 3y ago
I think I see your point but 10% (or heck even 1%) of books being engaging and worthwhile is still more books than anyone could realistically read in a lifetime. Good books are a fair bit more accessible than good urbanism or rural activities are to a suburban kid (speaking from experience sadly), and I don't think people extolling the values of reading are suggesting doing it completely in lieu of other productive activities like fixing a brake cable (fwiw probably an activity better assisted by YT or maybe even TikTok than books).

ethanbond 3y ago

They should definitely read whatever interests them so when they want to acquire useful knowledge (like what to do when the obvious brake cable fix doesn’t work), they have access to tons and tons of written material on that topic. It’s odd how you’re acting like you’re making an argument against the general imperative to read books, but your examples are people being requested to read specific books which may or may not be useful and/or interesting to the reader.

djangelic 3y ago
I agree with what you are saying. Much like a muscle, when you work out, you're not lifting weights so you can lift more weights later. Your general strength is higher, so most physical tasks are easier. Same for reading, if you practice reading books and enjoy looking at the written word, then reading developer documentation doesn't seem as intimidating which opens more doors for you.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  My counterargument would be about why you need to lift weights in the first place ? Some people like lifting weight, sure. But if your goal is to carry injured big dogs in your medical center, you won't be lifting random weights, nor doing generic workout. And you might not even do that in a gym, you could as well train with healthy dogs and get an actual feel of their weight distribution. For books it goes the same. Reading stuff that will actually help you and bring you closer to your goals will help a lot more than reading for reading. On the other side you'll be able to go through thousands of page if the subject matters to you, where reading dumb prose will kill your attention in matters of minutes. Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. But yes, just like workout, some people enjoy the effort in itself and like to feel the pain.
  - arkey 3y ago
    > Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. Of course not, but that's just a very specific edge case of "go read books". When I recommend for someone to go read a book, I consider it implied that they should find good, interesting and constructive books to read, not the opposite. I personally think reading is as objectively good for the mind as walking is for the body. Walking is objectively good and healthy for everybody and anybody, bar physical conditions and edge cases. However, you could go walk in weird ways in boring or dangerous and unhealthy places and that's not ideal, but who would purposefully do that? Same goes for reading.
makeitdouble 3y ago
> like what to do when the obvious brake cable fix doesn’t work The interesting thing: those useful information probably aren't seen as "books" even when they're in written form. The obvious example is the repair manual in PDF on the brake maker's site. Or the blog explaining how they dealt with their vintage bike's brake cable. Of course that information is probably actually a youtube video (I refresh every single components of a bike with a toolkit from amazon and hours of youtube videos with Shimano's PDFs on the side) > It’s odd how you’re acting like you’re making an argument against the general imperative to read books, but your examples are people being requested to read specific books which may or may not be useful and/or interesting to the reader. You're right. I should be clear that I find the very premise of pushing people to do a category of activity pretty odd. I wouldn't tell people to "go watch internet videos" or "go study academics" or "do some sport". If I'm close to them, such a generic advice would be dumb, and if I don't know their life, I shouldn't be throwing random platitudes at them either. From that point of view, "read books" doesn't make any sense, and If I had to say something I'd come up with an actual thing that could benefit them. The same way I'm kinda wary of people explaining they read X books a month. This feels like they don't see books as individual items, but as a KPI, which is weirding me out.
- prawn 3y ago
  I think it's a decent point. Maybe we generalise from "the sort of people who read books" suggesting it's something virtuous. Or we have certain books in mind (rather than trashy romance novels). Reminds me a bit of the idea of tea drinkers as some cultured ideal.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  You’ve snuck in another conditional: when you’re close to someone, correct, you shouldn’t offer imperatives like “read books.” You’d ideally be recommending books that are tailored to their needs and interests (which, remember, is not the same as your prior examples, which were specific books pushed on people regardless of their needs and interests). You’d be hard-pressed to find a single decent educator who disagrees with you, though it’s easy to come to the idea that you’re contrarian on this point. There are two factors: 1) educators have to suggest a small set of books for a large group of students due to the scale of mass education. AFAICT almost every educator regards this as a problem but it’s not exactly helped by views like “reading books is a dumb goal.” 2) when educators are talking about overall goals and policy, they obviously cannot say “well for person X we want them to read book X; for person Y we want them to read book Y, etc.” This washes out as “we want students writ large to read books writ large.” The overall objective is to build a baseline ability for every student to be able to find, navigate, and interpret information. A lot of our society’s information is stored in a particular format called “book” that is navigated differently from other formats. Despite the generic-sounding imperative to read books, it is self-evidently the case that the only way to achieve it is by meeting each individual student where they are in terms of both skill level and interests, so that’s what educators try to do. Again: this is extremely challenging in mass education environments! Other information formats should be and are also part of a good educational system, obviously, including manuals and instructional videos. I have clear memory of manuals and cookbooks even in my early education, which was low quality by US standards. Agreed re weirdness of # of books as a meaningful metric, and I suspect most educators would agree with us as well.

barrysteve 3y ago

I have tried fixing the brake cable on my bike (and other bike repair tasks), by using the myriad of youtube videos assigned for the task. It's actually quite difficult to hold a brake cable in tension, while forcing an old school front derailleur not meant for the bike into millimeter perfect position and at the same time pause/unpause/rewind a youtube video. It is honestly easier to put a book down open to the right page, in line of sight. It requires no interaction and book authors are forced to write instructions that can be understood primarily without pictures, so there's no pause/unpause/rewind mentality. Books engage the mental tools to infer what happens next from textual description, an ability videos degrade in the viewer. The implications of that effects decision making subtly. Books are also a welcome release from the trance-like state induced in consumers by most electronic displays. I agree most books are garbage (like most of everything), the filtering of low quality books has failed. In my limited understanding most of the great literature was written between the 1700s and 1900s anyway. Recent literature does not grant the broad understanding and height over the subject matter. It is somewhat problematic to rely on multiple youtube videos and find they all have 'small detail' gaps in their perfomances that exist because the video format is to train the user along a generic path of action. Those cracks often reveal a chasm of difference in understanding and in the end, the video is replacing turn-key parts and I'm angle grinding off a stuck cup and cone bearing, even though on the surface the problems look identical.

bombela 3y ago
> It's actually quite difficult to hold a brake cable in tension, while forcing an old school front derailleur not meant for the bike into millimeter perfect position Maybe you are missing the tension adjustment screws on the Bowden tube? You ajust the tension if the cable as close as you can with a pair of pliers with one hand, and a screwdriver to lock the cable in the other. The you use the fine adjustment screw to precisely align the chain over the cogs.

ldhough 3y ago

I think I see your point but 10% (or heck even 1%) of books being engaging and worthwhile is still more books than anyone could realistically read in a lifetime. Good books are a fair bit more accessible than good urbanism or rural activities are to a suburban kid (speaking from experience sadly), and I don't think people extolling the values of reading are suggesting doing it completely in lieu of other productive activities like fixing a brake cable (fwiw probably an activity better assisted by YT or maybe even TikTok than books).