3 ms·

People Who Don't Read Books

16 points by johntfella 3y ago

mif 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231024033221/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/kanye-west-sam-bankman-fried-books-reading/672823/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231024033221/https://www.theat...
tayo42 3y ago
It sounds wild, but here I am reading books, unemployed, can't get a job, burning through savings. Maybe I should stop reading? Can I really judge? I'll finally get rich?
- gregjor 3y ago
  Getting rich as a goal probably has little to do with reading. What you read matters, not just how much. All of the how-to-get-rich books distill down to nothing.
sycamoretrees 3y ago
Little more than an article for Atlantic readers to pat themselves on the back with. By the way, I get the sense the author isn’t as wise as he imagines himself, either. His catty obsession with Kanye West’s mental break and his seeming Twitter addiction makes me think he himself is certainly “wildly estranged from genuine wisdom or the humility with which erudition tempers facile notions of invincibility” (his words, not mine). (What an incomprehensible sentence - perhaps reading too much has turned him into a walking thesaurus?)
- gregjor 3y ago
  Ad hominem. Not incomprehensible to anyone who reads.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > an article for Atlantic readers to pat themselves on the back with Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on reading books? The article is congratulatory. But I think it's proxying for intellectual curiosity and attention span. > What an incomprehensible sentence Is it the vocabulary? Because it's a grammatically-simple sentence.
  - sycamoretrees 3y ago
    I read quite a bit, actually. But I don’t go around making others feel bad for being supposedly intellectually inferior to me. > is it the vocabulary? Because it’s a grammatically-simple sentence. Yes, the vocabulary. Throwing a bunch of low-frequency words together doesn’t make a sentence more refined or its content more insightful. It’s just pomp, really. As someone else mentioned, yes this is an ad hominem attack (although, maybe this is forgivable insofar as I’m calling out hypocrisy and claiming he’s in no place to put down other people - which I believe is the sole purpose of the article. If it’s just to say that reading is good, well, uh, duh. No need for a whole article about the benefits of education.)
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > I don’t go around making others feel bad for being supposedly intellectually inferior to me The author balanced this by clarifying that it "is one thing in practice not to read books, or not to read them as much as one might wish. But it is something else entirely to despise the act in principle." > it’s just to say that reading is good, well, uh, duh Did we read the same article? It's pointing out that folks who virtue signal about not reading are raising a red flag. It's not disparaging people who don't read, but who publicly praise themselves for not reading and go on to denigrate those who do.
      - sycamoretrees 3y ago
        If that’s what the article is about, then I just don’t really see the point. Literally who cares what SBF and his ilk have to think about literature. If the article is simply an appeal to common sense, or an effort to convince others to educate themselves, maybe there are better ways to get the message across than regurgitating five hundred words on theAtlantic.com. They publish this stuff for their self-conscious “literati” audience to eat up.
actuallyalys 3y ago
I wouldn’t describe it in such overwrought terms, but I do agree that going out of your way to dismiss virtually all books suggests arrogance and closed-mindedness. (As opposed to simply not reading books.) That being said, I’m not sure rejecting all books is particularly widespread so it does feel a bit like preaching to the choir and like sycamoretrees mentioned, letting Atlantic readers feel superior.

16 points by johntfella 3y ago

mif 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231024033221/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/kanye-west-sam-bankman-fried-books-reading/672823/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231024033221/https://www.theat...

tayo42 3y ago

It sounds wild, but here I am reading books, unemployed, can't get a job, burning through savings. Maybe I should stop reading? Can I really judge? I'll finally get rich?

gregjor 3y ago
Getting rich as a goal probably has little to do with reading. What you read matters, not just how much. All of the how-to-get-rich books distill down to nothing.

sycamoretrees 3y ago

Little more than an article for Atlantic readers to pat themselves on the back with. By the way, I get the sense the author isn’t as wise as he imagines himself, either. His catty obsession with Kanye West’s mental break and his seeming Twitter addiction makes me think he himself is certainly “wildly estranged from genuine wisdom or the humility with which erudition tempers facile notions of invincibility” (his words, not mine). (What an incomprehensible sentence - perhaps reading too much has turned him into a walking thesaurus?)

gregjor 3y ago
Ad hominem. Not incomprehensible to anyone who reads.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> an article for Atlantic readers to pat themselves on the back with Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on reading books? The article is congratulatory. But I think it's proxying for intellectual curiosity and attention span. > What an incomprehensible sentence Is it the vocabulary? Because it's a grammatically-simple sentence.
- sycamoretrees 3y ago
  I read quite a bit, actually. But I don’t go around making others feel bad for being supposedly intellectually inferior to me. > is it the vocabulary? Because it’s a grammatically-simple sentence. Yes, the vocabulary. Throwing a bunch of low-frequency words together doesn’t make a sentence more refined or its content more insightful. It’s just pomp, really. As someone else mentioned, yes this is an ad hominem attack (although, maybe this is forgivable insofar as I’m calling out hypocrisy and claiming he’s in no place to put down other people - which I believe is the sole purpose of the article. If it’s just to say that reading is good, well, uh, duh. No need for a whole article about the benefits of education.)
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > I don’t go around making others feel bad for being supposedly intellectually inferior to me The author balanced this by clarifying that it "is one thing in practice not to read books, or not to read them as much as one might wish. But it is something else entirely to despise the act in principle." > it’s just to say that reading is good, well, uh, duh Did we read the same article? It's pointing out that folks who virtue signal about not reading are raising a red flag. It's not disparaging people who don't read, but who publicly praise themselves for not reading and go on to denigrate those who do.
    - sycamoretrees 3y ago
      If that’s what the article is about, then I just don’t really see the point. Literally who cares what SBF and his ilk have to think about literature. If the article is simply an appeal to common sense, or an effort to convince others to educate themselves, maybe there are better ways to get the message across than regurgitating five hundred words on theAtlantic.com. They publish this stuff for their self-conscious “literati” audience to eat up.

actuallyalys 3y ago

I wouldn’t describe it in such overwrought terms, but I do agree that going out of your way to dismiss virtually all books suggests arrogance and closed-mindedness. (As opposed to simply not reading books.) That being said, I’m not sure rejecting all books is particularly widespread so it does feel a bit like preaching to the choir and like sycamoretrees mentioned, letting Atlantic readers feel superior.