Synthesis: Reading is overrated in normal intellectual circles and slightly underrated among our gingered-up maximisers.
On fiction, I seem to remember Rob Wiblin saying “Fiction is a non-rational means of persuasion: beware.” But I can’t find the tweet.
On nonfiction, I remember my shock the first time I saw a false claim in a pop science book. They just don’t check very hard. They probably check less than newspapers, famously untrustworthy. Arguably I never recovered.
In my day the philistine/maximiser move was to read textbooks, and while this mostly doesn’t capture the poetry / phenomenology you’re pointing at, it’s a hell of an improvement on podcasts.
Synthesis: Reading is overrated in normal intellectual circles and slightly underrated among our gingered-up maximisers.
On fiction, I seem to remember Rob Wiblin saying “Fiction is a non-rational means of persuasion: beware.” But I can’t find the tweet.
On nonfiction, I remember my shock the first time I saw a false claim in a pop science book. They just don’t check very hard. They probably check less than newspapers, famously untrustworthy. Arguably I never recovered.
In my day the philistine/maximiser move was to read textbooks, and while this mostly doesn’t capture the poetry / phenomenology you’re pointing at, it’s a hell of an improvement on podcasts.
Yeah I remember Rob’s thought—I think it might be a fb post?