
How to Be a Know-It-All - diodorus
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/16/how-to-be-a-know-it-all
======
laxatives
On the flip side, this approach to learning means you know next to nothing
beyond the dozen first bits of terminology or buzzwords for each new topic,
much less the concepts. The moment you finally meet someone interested in
discussing one of these things, its going to be immediately apparent the basis
of your knowledge is a brief article/book or a weekend watching videos on
youtube. Furthermore, these are all going to be little self-contained
treatises without any prerequisites -- they are written for a general
audience, so you are completely limited to, as the article describe it, the
appearance of mastery to people who don't know better.

What's worse is that you seriously have to question the qualifications of any
single source claiming to be a valid resource for a wide range of topics. Even
if the individual course is written/taught by an expert, they are paid or
motivated by another entity with their own set of bureaucracy and
expectations. What works for learning tennis isn't going to produce the same
class format as what works for learning Film Scoring (I'm looking at you
Masterclass, for producing that joke of a class).

In my mind, the best approach to learning requires you to initially commit to
either a top-down or bottom-up strategy. If you want to master the topic, you
should go bottom-up; focus initially on theory and gradually more on
practice/experience. If you want to ramp up as quickly as possible, go top-
down and experience something for a more general audience to get a taste. If
you like it, you can keep pursuing that route or commit towards a more bottom-
up approach, which provides a higher ceiling albeit on a longer timeline. But
don't go to a general resource like the one in the article, go directly to the
expert's material, first-hand, for the raw, unadultered version.

~~~
chongli
_The moment you finally meet someone interested in discussing one of these
things, its going to be immediately apparent the basis of your knowledge is a
brief article /book or a weekend watching videos on youtube. Furthermore,
these are all going to be little self-contained treatises without any
prerequisites -- they are written for a general audience, so you are
completely limited to, as the article describe it, the appearance of mastery
to people who don't know better._

That's only if you insist on explaining things to everyone you meet. If you're
smart about it, you can quickly recognize an expert and take the opportunity
to ask them questions. I have had many discussions with experts in fields for
which I knew only the scantest of concepts and terminology. I begin by asking
questions and proceed to go deeper and deeper into the subject. It's amazing
how happy people can get when you show a genuine interest in something they
care about.

By arming yourself with a "Wikipedia summary" of each topic, you have the
starting point for very interesting conversations. Don't let the article's
title get to you. It's far better to be someone who is interested in
everything than it is to just "know everything".

~~~
laxatives
100% the objective is get the most out of experts given the opportunity. Its
completely unreasonable to be an expert in everything. But it can be difficult
to engage an expert if they aren't there to talk shop. Having the right
framework to even phrase a meaningful question often requires quite a bit of
context and prerequisite knowledge. If someone tried to strike a conversation
with me with vague, malformed ideas and buzzwords, I may respond with a semi-
scripted answer because I don't know this person and I'm not going to assume
their background is the same as mine.

Its completely unfair, but the way that first question is framed, depending on
that field, can demonstrate whether this individual is "in the club" and has
sufficient information to carry this conversation beyond the most superficial
layer. It would be nice have that fluency in many subjects, but browsing
wikipedia is certainly not the way to go about obtaining it.

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Top19
> “For the most part, the Very Short Introductions range from worth reading to
> wonderfully appealing.”

Cannot recommend this series enough. If you want to know the best way to be a
good citizen, to cut through the shroud of fake news, opinions, and context
lacking information, this is it. Any time I hear a term I’ve never heard
before on the news I go straight for these books. It started with
“neoliberalism” a couple of years ago, and recently “hermeneutics”. Also, I
began to wonder what does “Citizenship” actually mean? Not surprisingly these
guys have a book on it.

~~~
westoncb
Ack, what is "hermeneutics"!? I know it's a field of study and I get a little
what it's about (though I'd need to see some more concrete examples to really
get it I think)—but what baffles me is why people use 'hermeneutic' as an
adjective when they could just say 'interpretation' or something simpler like
that. Is there a legitimate reason to use that word? (aside from referring to
the field of study.)

~~~
dfabulich
In English, if you want to make a word sound fancy, and especially if you want
to construct a fancy compound word, you have to build the word out of Latin or
Greek root words.

"Interpret" has Latin roots. "Hermeneutic" has Greek roots. "Understand" has
German roots; doesn't it sound childish by comparison? (The word "childish"
has German roots.)

Historically, this was a way of signaling class and education to others,
especially in England, a country conquered by the Romans and then by the
French. Common folk couldn't participate in academic discussions because they
didn't understand Latin, and even those who could piece together some Latin
couldn't understand Greek.

Eventually, these "fancy" words stuck, especially in English academia, and now
we all have to use them if we want to sound academic.

~~~
csa
While most of what you say is true, there might be a bit of embellishment in
the "common folk" part.

Education in much of Europe has its roots in the church. The lingua franca of
the Catholic Church was Latin. Therefore educated people knew and spoke Latin.

Many Greek words were borrowed into Latin from Greek, so Latin speakers would
know those, too. Other Greek words made it into English via other languages
like French and Arabic. I think I'm leaving out a Greek component, but I can't
remember what.

In short, for a long time, being educated meant you knew Latin because that's
the language you were taught in, and Greek kind of went hand-in-hand with the
Latin and Latin-learning context of the church.

~~~
Retra
There's also a massive influence of Greek thinking that is pervasive in
western education from the lineage of Thales, Plato, Aristotle, etc. These
people basically founded the tradition of non-trade non-hereditary learning in
the west.

Naturally, they spoke Greek and so it comes through in things like geometry
and philosophy quite strongly.

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julienchastang
Funny. I just started reading these Very Short Introductions in the last year.
They are a bit like "Que sais-je ?" series in France. I really like these
small books that are bit like extended wikipedia entries, though the copy
editing could be a little better to catch typos and whatnot. My favorite so
far, "Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction Book by David Catling". I am
currently reading a VSI on the Silk Road. I have not been disappointed with
any so far.

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harigov
I can't believe no one mentioned "Crash Course" channel on youtube. It follows
a similar very short summary format (usually of 10 mins in video length) and
it is very well made. I learned so much about history, geography, and science
from that. It used to take up most of my evening TV time.

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rcdmd
There's a touch of irony to this, but the best title list to the Very Short
Introductions series is here--
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Short_Introductions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Short_Introductions)
. The book titles are "$TITLE: A very short introduction"

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bhaumik
Diderot's Encyclopédie has been a beaitful binge read.

See entry for 'Philosopher':

[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-
idx?c=did;cc=did;...](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-
idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0000.001)

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komali2
Anybody have a recommendation to how to read from the "Very Short
Introductions" series via an e-reader (kindle)? I'm searching San Francisco
Public Library and Northern California Digital Library via the Libby app but
can't find it in series format, and the wikipedia page [1] doesn't list titles
but instead lists "topics," making it difficult to find, for example, the Very
Short Introduction on the topic of "Classics" (the first?).

I guess if I have to I will buy the ones I'm interested in on Amazon, but I
prefer to check out books from a library rather than purchase them, because
otherwise costs adds up fast!

EDIT: Looks like here's a concise list, with some sort of purchasing option,
but still not sure about e-format
[http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/series/VeryShortIntrod...](http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/series/VeryShortIntroductions/)

EDIT2: On oup.com, there is a tooltip for "ebook" that says "This title is
available as an ebook. To purchase, visit your preferred ebook provider."
Looks like purchasing on Amazon is the only way. Shame as they clock in at
6-10 bucks a pop (12 if you don't have prime? not sure why it shows a crossed
out 12$ for me), would add up very very quickly if you wanted to tackle a big
chunk of the series.

EDIT3: The box sets don't seem to be a deal on Amazon (if you already have
prime? Still don't understand prime prices). They are 30.75USD for 5 books
that are 6.15USD each. So, it appears to me that the best option to read these
books on an e-reader is to purchase them individually on Amazon when you find
ones you're interested in.

[1]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Short_Introductions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Short_Introductions))

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touisteur
The book "The Know-it-all" by A.J. Jacobs was a great fun read a while back,
on a similar topic. [https://www.amazon.com/Know-All-Humble-Become-
Smartest/dp/07...](https://www.amazon.com/Know-All-Humble-Become-
Smartest/dp/0743250621)

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SilasX
Sorry if this is too snarky, but...

Anyone get a kick out of The New Yorker telling you how to quickly get up to
speed on a topic? Since they pretty much wrote the book (er, magazine) on how
to take forever to get to the point? I mean, if I absolutely have to know the
fashion sense and mannerisms of the key players in a field, I know to go to
them first...

~~~
komali2
Ironically, I can't find a link to a master list of the stories they're
talking about.

EDIT: See my other comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15444991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15444991)

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twic
If this is all a bit earnest, you may prefer the Bluffer's Guides:

[http://www.publishinghistory.com/the-bluffers-guides-
wolfe.h...](http://www.publishinghistory.com/the-bluffers-guides-wolfe.html)

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fataliss
I already knew all that!

~~~
agumonkey
This is not how you should do it.

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jknoepfler
The hard-cover encyclopedia died before its time. This is an interesting
innovation on the idea of a consumer encyclopedia, with longer entries and
curated subjects.

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Rzor
The irony being that this piece about a series of basic books extends too much
on trivia; seven paragraphs was enough.

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martin1975
crap.. I thought this would be about imbibing large amounts of alcohol. Then I
figured it involves reading. Never mind.

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Sir_Cmpwn
What's the New Yorker paywall workaround?

~~~
_rpd
Click the 'web' link under the main link then clickthrough via google.

