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These neat brain hacks are basically self-therapy so kudos to the author for discovering one such technique and applying it successfully. Very likely saved mone

These neat brain hacks are basically self-therapy so kudos to the author for discovering one such technique and applying it successfully. Very likely saved money on an indifferent therapist, too. -- The following is NOT a knock on the author, I am simply sharing observations of some other types of people I knew a while ago: Some people just want to feel intelligent and that gives them validation so they basically sprint through 200+ books as some sort of a badge of honor. They then proceeded to claim they are "well read" and couldn't answer 3 questions about the plot about 5 of the books I've also read from their catalog. They hated my guts afterwards of course -- I dispelled the street cred they have "suffered" through -- and then they never called again but I was just left wondering why would you be forcing yourself to read books you don't enjoy and then you are only kind of moving your eyes through the pages without remembering or learning anything at all. Seemed, and still seems, counter-productive. Again, not a knock on the article author, just sharing something that came to me during the reading of the article.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
That sounds like the kind of people that gamify their life; reading X books per year, running Y miles, doing Z steps on their step counter, counting calories, quantifying sleep, working in 25 minute timed increments and counting how many you've achieved in a day, number of lines written, commits done, github contribution graph colour / activity streaks, etc. It's like. Maybe you should find a hobby if you need to gamify things to keep doing them.
- hshshshsvsv 2y ago
  Their hobby is gamification.
- strken 2y ago
  I count calories because I don't want to be fat again, having found fatness limiting. It has absolute nothing to do with meeting an arbitrary number and is not particularly gamified either. I need to track calories because otherwise I'll overeat. This is a bizarre take on goal-setting in general. Would you complain about people who negotiate a raise of X dollars? No, you understand that money has value. Losing weight has value too, as do cardiovascular fitness and getting enough sleep. "Maybe you should find a hobby" is not an answer to me not wanting to be fat. It's a ridiculous non-sequitur. How on earth do you expect finding a hobby to stop me having a heart attack or losing a foot to diabetes?
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    1. They are not complaining; 2. They are talking about people who take the "data-driven decisions" to the extreme, where some of the data either doesn't make sense or doesn't help at all. You kind of projected IMO. Their comment was absolutely not aimed at people like you who have a concrete goal in mind. They address people who constantly journal a ton of data about their lives (and not using most of it, but they wield the stress it gives them as a badge of honor).
    - strken 2y ago
      "It's like; maybe you should find a hobby" sounds like complaining, or at least criticism, to me. I read the reply as a straw man or weak man argument against tracking stats. I don't think there are many calorie counters, or frankly many book journallers or any of the other groups, who are doing it primarily for bragging rights. I reckon almost all of them are doing these things because they see real value in them, and some are incidentally bragging as well. The comment wasn't aimed at me, but it was aimed at a caricature or a handful of extreme examples often used to misrepresent people like me.
- watwut 2y ago
  Or they just dont have as good memory or simply did not found those parts to be worth effort of remembering.
bravetraveler 2y ago
I've encountered this often. Bookshelves are a red flag, change my mind
- hshshshsvsv 2y ago
  That's a poor way to look at the world. Also have no interest to change your mind.
  - bravetraveler 2y ago
    I don't disagree. It is a dim view. Yet, I have it for a reason. Thank you for participating I'm not actually calling for my mind to be changed. I want the readers I encounter to not be as they are. Yea, yea. Common demoninator. There are plenty I enjoy. I can afford this position.
- advael 2y ago
  This is a common reaction to a pervasive phenomenon Reading is one way people encounter ideas and learn, and so some people who read have a broad worldview and have absorbed the insights from books People start to notice this, or perhaps those people attribute some other success to reading books. Enough association of this kind makes reading books high-status Many people want to short-circuit this process to get status, so they optimize for reading a lot of books, or sometimes fake reading books People who fake reading books for status are shown ridiculous when exposed People who are allergic to and resent status nonsense conclude that bookshelves mean someone's a poser This is obviously ridiculous. Many people have bookshelves because they simply need to store some books The error committed here is, to me, a common one, overfocusing on the most salient case. I agree that it's icky when people do shit like fill shelves with books they've never and will never read as a status symbol. But are we really to assume that this is the most common reason to have a bookshelf? Or is it just the reason to which you have the strongest reaction, and thus stands out the most to you as a hypothesis? With some additional information about a person, one might be able to conclude this given the bookshelf, but it hardly seems like enough evidence to come to this conclusion by itself
  - 2y ago
iszomer 2y ago
I have a coworker that describes exactly this behavior. Most of the (young) people I know who engage in dialog with him immediately regret it and find ways to end it without feeding into his superiority complex but I think it is his way of validating himself which I most often find entertaining and comically pretentious.
systems_glitch 2y ago
I have an aunt like this. Additionally, she'll argue that you've misunderstood the book when she can't remember plot points :P
jeeva 2y ago
I feel like there's a distinction between _learning something_ from reading a book and remembering plot details. I am awful at remembering names and characters from books. I'm all good while I'm reading them, but if you asked me "What did you think of John's situation in $BookX" I would find it hard to answer. That said, it all goes into the gestalt jumble of ideas that is me. I'll say that I mostly read comparitively low-effort fiction that people rarely "test me" on, so it possibly matters less.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Ah, but I am not talking about memorizing stuff, I am really talking about things like "Hey, I forgot what was the backstory of the villain of the book #2 in series X, what was he about?" and then the person proceeded to award me with an empty stare, followed by a hostile one.
  - watwut 2y ago
    If that backstory was not interesting to that person it is likely they will forget immediately after reading. I mean, your own premise is that you forgot too, the stare is hostile because they know the exercise is dishonest.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Nope, it was a very nice positive meet of 8-9 people and I had no goals or agendas, I simply asked because it was long time ago for me. The person projected very hard and I realized I struck a nerve post factum. It was a classic case of being misinterpreted due to the other person's own insecurities.
botanical76 2y ago
I think it's worth mentioning some people have differing ability to memorize passively. I can thoroughly comprehend, interact with, and enjoy a book but I won't really remember details after the fact. I can put in extra, additional effort to commit it to memory, but this is much slower, and generally removes the fun, so I've reserved this for assessed reading. I think it is an adequate heuristic for many people that if you don't remember details about a book on your bookshelf, you haven't properly engaged with it. But I think it is not universally true. As another data point, I also never remember the lyrics to my favourite songs unless I study them line by line.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  I am very similar to you by the way, and I was mostly talking about just having a recollection of the plot and the main characters / villains, not minutiae.
afpx 2y ago
one-uppers battling one-uppers I’m guessing it’s perverse outcome of our species being a trophy species, that being educated is now considered pro-social, and that people have to compete against the world instead of just the few dozen in the tribe.
watwut 2y ago
Yeah, if you literally quizzed me on books I read and then acted I am liar just because I dont remember plot point I would dislike you too. I forget plot points of things. It does not mean I did not read those books or did not watched the movie. I hated this test via memory of uninteresting or unimportant plot point in school too. Almost no one is able to remember whole books after first reading. That proves exactly nothing. You experience them as you read them.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  That's fine because I did none of the things you said. I legitimately asked them about stuff I forgot because I read those books like 15 years ago. And it wasn't details, it was major plot points or character backgrounds.
latexr 2y ago
I don’t know you or the people you talked to, so it’s entirely plausible that you’re 100% correct in your evaluation. Or that you’re projecting feelings into other people. If someone “hated [your] guts” and “never called again”, I invite you to reflect if they truly got mad because you “dispelled [their] street cred” or because of the way you approached the subject. Especially if that happened multiple times. A conversation requires more than one person and the “3 questions about 5 books” sounds awfully like “oh, you like Nirvana? Name three of their songs right now”. You could ask what they thought about the book, which ideas resonated with them or didn’t, instead of making them answer a pop quiz of shame. Maybe you’d find out they give importance to different things than you do. Or maybe they didn’t pay that much attention to those books because in a sea of 200 others, they didn’t shine bright enough. Perhaps they have a different set of 5 books where they could tell you every detail. Again, I don’t know you or the other people so it is entirely possible they were the assholes, I just want to make sure that you’re sure.
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  >You could ask what they thought about the book, which ideas resonated with them or didn’t, instead of making them answer a pop quiz of shame. “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

That sounds like the kind of people that gamify their life; reading X books per year, running Y miles, doing Z steps on their step counter, counting calories, quantifying sleep, working in 25 minute timed increments and counting how many you've achieved in a day, number of lines written, commits done, github contribution graph colour / activity streaks, etc. It's like. Maybe you should find a hobby if you need to gamify things to keep doing them.

hshshshsvsv 2y ago
Their hobby is gamification.
strken 2y ago
I count calories because I don't want to be fat again, having found fatness limiting. It has absolute nothing to do with meeting an arbitrary number and is not particularly gamified either. I need to track calories because otherwise I'll overeat. This is a bizarre take on goal-setting in general. Would you complain about people who negotiate a raise of X dollars? No, you understand that money has value. Losing weight has value too, as do cardiovascular fitness and getting enough sleep. "Maybe you should find a hobby" is not an answer to me not wanting to be fat. It's a ridiculous non-sequitur. How on earth do you expect finding a hobby to stop me having a heart attack or losing a foot to diabetes?
- pdimitar 2y ago
  1. They are not complaining; 2. They are talking about people who take the "data-driven decisions" to the extreme, where some of the data either doesn't make sense or doesn't help at all. You kind of projected IMO. Their comment was absolutely not aimed at people like you who have a concrete goal in mind. They address people who constantly journal a ton of data about their lives (and not using most of it, but they wield the stress it gives them as a badge of honor).
  - strken 2y ago
    "It's like; maybe you should find a hobby" sounds like complaining, or at least criticism, to me. I read the reply as a straw man or weak man argument against tracking stats. I don't think there are many calorie counters, or frankly many book journallers or any of the other groups, who are doing it primarily for bragging rights. I reckon almost all of them are doing these things because they see real value in them, and some are incidentally bragging as well. The comment wasn't aimed at me, but it was aimed at a caricature or a handful of extreme examples often used to misrepresent people like me.
watwut 2y ago
Or they just dont have as good memory or simply did not found those parts to be worth effort of remembering.

bravetraveler 2y ago

I've encountered this often. Bookshelves are a red flag, change my mind

hshshshsvsv 2y ago
That's a poor way to look at the world. Also have no interest to change your mind.
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  I don't disagree. It is a dim view. Yet, I have it for a reason. Thank you for participating I'm not actually calling for my mind to be changed. I want the readers I encounter to not be as they are. Yea, yea. Common demoninator. There are plenty I enjoy. I can afford this position.
advael 2y ago
This is a common reaction to a pervasive phenomenon Reading is one way people encounter ideas and learn, and so some people who read have a broad worldview and have absorbed the insights from books People start to notice this, or perhaps those people attribute some other success to reading books. Enough association of this kind makes reading books high-status Many people want to short-circuit this process to get status, so they optimize for reading a lot of books, or sometimes fake reading books People who fake reading books for status are shown ridiculous when exposed People who are allergic to and resent status nonsense conclude that bookshelves mean someone's a poser This is obviously ridiculous. Many people have bookshelves because they simply need to store some books The error committed here is, to me, a common one, overfocusing on the most salient case. I agree that it's icky when people do shit like fill shelves with books they've never and will never read as a status symbol. But are we really to assume that this is the most common reason to have a bookshelf? Or is it just the reason to which you have the strongest reaction, and thus stands out the most to you as a hypothesis? With some additional information about a person, one might be able to conclude this given the bookshelf, but it hardly seems like enough evidence to come to this conclusion by itself
- 2y ago

iszomer 2y ago

I have a coworker that describes exactly this behavior. Most of the (young) people I know who engage in dialog with him immediately regret it and find ways to end it without feeding into his superiority complex but I think it is his way of validating himself which I most often find entertaining and comically pretentious.

systems_glitch 2y ago

I have an aunt like this. Additionally, she'll argue that you've misunderstood the book when she can't remember plot points :P

jeeva 2y ago

I feel like there's a distinction between _learning something_ from reading a book and remembering plot details. I am awful at remembering names and characters from books. I'm all good while I'm reading them, but if you asked me "What did you think of John's situation in $BookX" I would find it hard to answer. That said, it all goes into the gestalt jumble of ideas that is me. I'll say that I mostly read comparitively low-effort fiction that people rarely "test me" on, so it possibly matters less.

pdimitar 2y ago
Ah, but I am not talking about memorizing stuff, I am really talking about things like "Hey, I forgot what was the backstory of the villain of the book #2 in series X, what was he about?" and then the person proceeded to award me with an empty stare, followed by a hostile one.
- watwut 2y ago
  If that backstory was not interesting to that person it is likely they will forget immediately after reading. I mean, your own premise is that you forgot too, the stare is hostile because they know the exercise is dishonest.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Nope, it was a very nice positive meet of 8-9 people and I had no goals or agendas, I simply asked because it was long time ago for me. The person projected very hard and I realized I struck a nerve post factum. It was a classic case of being misinterpreted due to the other person's own insecurities.

botanical76 2y ago

I think it's worth mentioning some people have differing ability to memorize passively. I can thoroughly comprehend, interact with, and enjoy a book but I won't really remember details after the fact. I can put in extra, additional effort to commit it to memory, but this is much slower, and generally removes the fun, so I've reserved this for assessed reading. I think it is an adequate heuristic for many people that if you don't remember details about a book on your bookshelf, you haven't properly engaged with it. But I think it is not universally true. As another data point, I also never remember the lyrics to my favourite songs unless I study them line by line.

pdimitar 2y ago
I am very similar to you by the way, and I was mostly talking about just having a recollection of the plot and the main characters / villains, not minutiae.

afpx 2y ago

one-uppers battling one-uppers I’m guessing it’s perverse outcome of our species being a trophy species, that being educated is now considered pro-social, and that people have to compete against the world instead of just the few dozen in the tribe.

watwut 2y ago

Yeah, if you literally quizzed me on books I read and then acted I am liar just because I dont remember plot point I would dislike you too. I forget plot points of things. It does not mean I did not read those books or did not watched the movie. I hated this test via memory of uninteresting or unimportant plot point in school too. Almost no one is able to remember whole books after first reading. That proves exactly nothing. You experience them as you read them.

pdimitar 2y ago
That's fine because I did none of the things you said. I legitimately asked them about stuff I forgot because I read those books like 15 years ago. And it wasn't details, it was major plot points or character backgrounds.

latexr 2y ago

I don’t know you or the people you talked to, so it’s entirely plausible that you’re 100% correct in your evaluation. Or that you’re projecting feelings into other people. If someone “hated [your] guts” and “never called again”, I invite you to reflect if they truly got mad because you “dispelled [their] street cred” or because of the way you approached the subject. Especially if that happened multiple times. A conversation requires more than one person and the “3 questions about 5 books” sounds awfully like “oh, you like Nirvana? Name three of their songs right now”. You could ask what they thought about the book, which ideas resonated with them or didn’t, instead of making them answer a pop quiz of shame. Maybe you’d find out they give importance to different things than you do. Or maybe they didn’t pay that much attention to those books because in a sea of 200 others, they didn’t shine bright enough. Perhaps they have a different set of 5 books where they could tell you every detail. Again, I don’t know you or the other people so it is entirely possible they were the assholes, I just want to make sure that you’re sure.

r2_pilot 2y ago
>You could ask what they thought about the book, which ideas resonated with them or didn’t, instead of making them answer a pop quiz of shame. “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson