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Just read people you can trust. Why are you giving yourself all this busy work? Just make your own tree of material to read. You should have a couple dozen wri

Just read people you can trust. Why are you giving yourself all this busy work? Just make your own tree of material to read. You should have a couple dozen writers/journalists you admire, look at who these people read then start reading those people, then you repeat the cycle. Don't waste your time reading anything new, most new things are bad. Most ideas we struggle with, are ideas we have been discussing since the written record was invented out of necessity. Anything new worth reading will assuredly make your way to you if you are at all connected.

CuriouslyC 8d ago
If everyone followed this advice it would turn influencer culture to 11, rich get richer, with no "social mobility"
- shimman 8d ago
  No it really wouldn't. I like the authors Jeff VanderMeer and Peter Watts. They have had multiple interviews where they talk about their peers, who they respect from the past, and who they like in our current age. I have found maybe subsequent authors + journalists to read from these two. Try to think a little more critically here. If you can't trust the opinion of people you supposedly like, already established in their craft, who can you trust? Have no idea why you think this would increase influencer culture, but thanks for telling us all publicly how you interact with social media: in an sloppy uncritical way. My advice for you is to pull the plug and read books that are older than 125 years.
  - CuriouslyC 8d ago
    For everyone that you consider "good" there are at least a dozen people who are equally "good" but without the social proof. What you describe played out exactly in music and art pre-AI. The record exec and the gallery owner were the people you "trusted" who king-made and gate-kept what we saw based on what they thought was most marketable. > Have no idea why you think this would increase influencer culture, but thanks for telling us all publicly how you interact with social media: in an sloppy uncritical way. This is a personal attack that is unsubstantiated by what I wrote, read the guidelines and follow them or go elsewhere.
- xpct 7d ago
  I think we could agree that everyone already does this up to a point. This is basically just an exploration-exploitation dilemma, where everyone tries to maximize how much value they gain from the things they read, and a lot of people have strategies to pick what material to read. Reading trusted authors is likely to be valuable, but they may devalue over time. We don't know if our chosen authors maximize our value, nor whether exploratory reading does, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitation_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitati...

CuriouslyC 8d ago

If everyone followed this advice it would turn influencer culture to 11, rich get richer, with no "social mobility"

shimman 8d ago
No it really wouldn't. I like the authors Jeff VanderMeer and Peter Watts. They have had multiple interviews where they talk about their peers, who they respect from the past, and who they like in our current age. I have found maybe subsequent authors + journalists to read from these two. Try to think a little more critically here. If you can't trust the opinion of people you supposedly like, already established in their craft, who can you trust? Have no idea why you think this would increase influencer culture, but thanks for telling us all publicly how you interact with social media: in an sloppy uncritical way. My advice for you is to pull the plug and read books that are older than 125 years.
- CuriouslyC 8d ago
  For everyone that you consider "good" there are at least a dozen people who are equally "good" but without the social proof. What you describe played out exactly in music and art pre-AI. The record exec and the gallery owner were the people you "trusted" who king-made and gate-kept what we saw based on what they thought was most marketable. > Have no idea why you think this would increase influencer culture, but thanks for telling us all publicly how you interact with social media: in an sloppy uncritical way. This is a personal attack that is unsubstantiated by what I wrote, read the guidelines and follow them or go elsewhere.
xpct 7d ago
I think we could agree that everyone already does this up to a point. This is basically just an exploration-exploitation dilemma, where everyone tries to maximize how much value they gain from the things they read, and a lot of people have strategies to pick what material to read. Reading trusted authors is likely to be valuable, but they may devalue over time. We don't know if our chosen authors maximize our value, nor whether exploratory reading does, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitation_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitati...