This is really interesting. As a child I loved reading and I think I know why. It's the only way to acquire more information about the world at scale. As a lit

This is really interesting. As a child I loved reading and I think I know why. It's the only way to acquire more information about the world at scale. As a little child I grew up in a home the grounds of which had tropical birds (mynahs, hoopoes, massive eagles) of all sorts, snakes (vipers, cobras, pythons, garden snakes) of all sorts, cows and scorpions, peacocks and fish. So there was no shortage of real life observation of the world but the variation you encounter in a book is far broader. I'm grateful for my parents picking out so many books for me and helping me learn to read because it unlocked a huge world with no horizon. And when you're young all this learning doesn't feel like work. I remember being excited to remember my tables, or to know trivia like the capitals of nations, and so on. Bizarrely, I was terrible with the exact placement of events in history and consequently hated it. And a fun game I'd play with myself was the idea of figuring out things without remembering it. When did X happen? What is a Y? And I think that was possible because I read the things I read when young. And I decried rote memorization. It was obviously intelligence that gave me this ability. Looking back now that's funny because it's my good memory and all the things I shoved into it that did the trick. Hurray to indulging children's curiosity. Also, it's been illuminating following your blog, Jake. I check it every time I see your username. But I've recently gotten back into reading things through RSS so I'm glad you've got one.