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I love reading as much as anyone, and probably finish on average, 100 books a year, but - I’ve gradually become skeptical of the idea that books are an ideal fo
by keiferski 3y ago
I love reading as much as anyone, and probably finish on average, 100 books a year, but - I’ve gradually become skeptical of the idea that books are an ideal format for acquiring and retaining knowledge. I’ve written a few little comments about this in the past [1] but I’ve been meaning to explore the idea further. I originally began thinking this when I realized I could only remember a handful of details from books I had spent hours reading.
The short version is this: there’s nothing inherent about the format of a book that makes it ideal for learning. It is mostly a historical consequence of the fact that scratching symbols onto stone or paper, then replicating that paper/stone is easier to develop than recording and playing back audio or video. Human beings spent thousands of years using languages that were purely spoken ones, and writing is a fairly recent thing historically speaking.
If somehow it became possible to record and play back spoken language thousands of years ago, writing might have never become a widespread thing at all. Even today, speech is how the vast majority of the world uses language. Let’s not forget how influential the book form has been on thought, from the Bible to the Quran, etc.
And so if you brush away the mystique and legacy of books and think about what an ideal learning format would be, I think it would be quite different from a book. Probably it would incorporate audiovisuals, spaced repetition, and some form of storytelling.
All of this is about reading for information, not for pleasure. But I don’t primarily read fiction for information in the first place.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20940944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20940944, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319599, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38095507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38095507, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39521964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39521964
- JacobiX 3y agoI agree with you, maybe books are not the ideal format for acquiring knowledge. I read a lot of fiction books, mainly classics for pleasure. And what I found unique is that only in books I have access to the interior monologue of the characters, their thoughts, and on some occasions, direct access to their "stream of consciousness". I love it, and I discovered that some characters (but in reality it's the authors) have a similar process of thought, and some others do not, and notice and sense things differently ...
- keiferski 3y agoYeah the funny thing is that the result of my realization above, is that I end up reading much more fiction - and appreciating fiction more than nonfiction. There is a general assumption, I think, that fiction isn’t really worth reading and that serious people only read nonfiction. I don’t think I could disagree more. Really good fiction is entirely its own unique thing.
- helboi4 3y agoFr people who believe fiction is useless have a very shallow view of life. Fiction is about the human condition.
- leobg 3y agoDo you rather read a tutorial or watch a YouTube video? Personally, I find reading is a much more interactive activity. You can seek, you can skip, you can summarize, you can repeat. Innoway, it is much closer and deeper than a conversation with another person. And definitely much closer than a video audio recording of that person, which is more like a speech than a conversation.
- keiferski 3y agoI would make a distinction between YouTube videos and a video, the format itself. YouTube videos tend to be even worse than reading when it comes to information access and retention. Videos, the format, on the other hand have the potential to be significantly more memorable than text, when you consider the fact that a video is a combination of images and audio. I am not familiar with research done on video, but there is a ton of research showing that images help memory considerably (the “picture superiority effect.”) Which is a long way of saying that memory-optimized video content would be very different from YouTube videos.
- helboi4 3y agoI agree. I have done a lot of devouring podcasts and youtube videos over my years. I used to read a lot before that. Now I have dropped a lot of the audiovisual stuff and started reading more. The fact that reading requires more of my attention, that I find myself rereading things, annotating things, etc makes it a much better learning experience. The only thing that may be better is an in person classroom since it involves interaction.
- acureau 3y agoI find that I learn more from books than any other medium. I think it's because of the process of writing a book. It takes extreme dedication, passion, and a deep knowledge of the subject. Most books I've read have been reviewed by multiple experts and their content is presented in a structured and comprehensive way. Authors spend a significant chunk of their life writing a handful of books, many books you read are someone's greatest life achievement. If the same amount of time and care were put into, say a YouTube video, I'd prefer the video. But that's very rare. My reading is 100% informational however, so I am biased in that regard.