
With Rifle and Bibliography: General Mattis on Professional Reading - jerryhuang100
http://strifeblog.org/2013/05/07/with-rifle-and-bibliography-general-mattis-on-professional-reading/
======
rkroondotnet
The idea that: "By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a
better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the
consequences of incompetence are so final for young men."

Is so utterly important when lives are on the line that it seems difficult to
refute, and I'd be interested to see someone try in fact, but let's take that
premise, and add to it: "Ultimately, a real understanding of history means
that we face NOTHING new under the sun." \+ "Alex the Great would not be in
the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our
leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying
(studying, vice just reading) the men who have gone before us."

Let's take a jump into the hacker news/YC/Lean Startup milieu and apply the
same lesson: You should learn from those who have gone before. Study their
decision making processes, study their customers, read whatever you can read
to find the people who have done what you are doing.

Chances are the business that you are creating (even if it is going to
"disrupt" some industry or another) is still dealing with the same issues that
have always been issues. It's going to have HR, marketing, leadership,
operations and a million other hassles that are similar to those that have
come before. Similar because people haven't changed that much.

If you are a startup person, working 100 hour weeks and learning by doing, you
should still find some time to read and learn from the mistakes and triumphs
of those who came before. Don't burn the investors cash relearning the lessons
that someone else already learnt, save your runway for iterating on the true
unknowns of your problem domain.

------
jmspring
This applies to our own industry.

For those of us that have been in it for awhile -- keeping abreast of what is
going on, reading about "new paradigms" and how they may just be new
incarnations of what we have seen before, continuous learning is key.

For those getting started, battle stories can be interesting and provide
insight.

Don Melton's blog - <http://donmelton.com> JWZ's blog - <http://jwz.org> The *
at Work series (Coders, Founders, etc.) Usenix archives on the subject of
choice

Are some that come to mind. Others are there, but it's been a long day and I
am a bit burnt.

What do others read for their history lessons?

~~~
stephen
Exactly--I'd love to read more about our industry, but I just can't find the
material.

It used to be going into Barnes & Noble was amazing, there were so many books
I'd find interesting.

Not that I by any means have mastered "every single book in B&N tech section",
it's just "yet another beginner intro to language XYZ"/etc. isn't fun to read
anymore.

And so many books (tech and otherwise) have so much fluff, and seem like they
could be ~1/4th the size with the same content. (Not true for every book of
course.)

------
jamesaguilar
I support reading, but it's far more important to learn how to distinguish
truth from fiction than it is to read a lot. Ironically, that's the one thing
that it's quite difficult to learn from reading.

You can see it easily on this site where there are so many people who can
argue eloquently and passionately for diametrically opposed perspectives on an
issue. Both sides can't both be right, even though a comment would in
isolation be more than enough to convince someone who was not skeptical. If
you can't distinguish which pretty words are the true ones, you'll be lead by
the nose by the guy who can put his words together best, which isn't
necessarily a great idea except if you're trying to learn to write and argue.

~~~
Swizec
> Both sides can't both be right

This isn't mathematics, this is the real world. Here issues aren't two-sided,
they are dodecahedrons and all sides are right.

~~~
jamesaguilar
This is a perfect example. Even though you have worded this eloquently, your
claim ("everyone is right, except in mathematics") is mutually exclusive to
mine ("in some cases, two people speaking against each other cannot both be
right"). Personally, I don't find your metaphor convincing. There are plenty
of cases where not all parties are right.

~~~
Swizec
We both used infinity haphazardly. You said both sides can't be right, I said
all sides are right.

The truth is, it's even more grey than that. Sometimes both sides can't be
right and sometimes some sides are not right. But the point stands, in reality
you rarely if ever only have two sides and rarely if ever is any side
demonstrably wrong in an objective way.

------
notaddicted
This is the same Mattis from (fictionalized) Generation Kill:
<http://youtu.be/fTXzcILPPp8> .

------
aklemm
Reading is fundamental! Outside history and military, another profound effect
reading has is that fiction can actually increase empathy in the real world:
[http://www.yorku.ca/mar/Mar%20et%20al%202009_reading%20ficti...](http://www.yorku.ca/mar/Mar%20et%20al%202009_reading%20fiction%20and%20empathy.pdf)

Between that and the general's words, how can one not spend any spare minute
reading?

~~~
mc-lovin
"In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as
the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled
for, along with two other important individual differences: the tendency to be
drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting for these variables,
fiction exposure still predicted performance on an empathy task."

This methodology is fundamentally flawed. There is no technical fix to get
around the fact that you cannot distinguish between reading causing more
empathy, or greater empathy causing more reading.

They are trying to measure the relationship between personality traits and
reading, and then claiming to control for personality!

~~~
aklemm
I'll let you take that up with the authors. Until it's settled, we can all
just reflect on whether reading stories has helped us, personally, better
understand and empathize with others.

~~~
mc-lovin
"I'll let you take that up with the authors."

That's a fairly flippant way to deal with my criticism. If you post a study
here, it's fine if you haven't read it, but you shouldn't pretend that
anything that's been published is infallible.

~~~
aklemm
It's flippant, but also completely honest. If mc-lovin of HN is correct that
this study should be ignored and possibly retracted, then he should email the
authors. Telling me about it does no good. Your original comment may be 100%
accurate, but it really doesn't take away from the insight the study talks
about. Your comment would have been more useful if you had a counter-argument
about reading and empathy, but you only offered an unfounded criticism.
Really.

~~~
mc-lovin
The argument you are making is basically an argument from authority, which
would be fine if you understood the nature of the authority in question, but
you do not.

Peer reviewed journals contain a lot of garbage. Whether this should be the
case is irrelevant. There are plenty of people on HN qualified to both judge
and understand the study and my criticism of it. If you cannot understand my
comment or for some other reason are unwilling to comment on its substance,
that's fine, but there is no reason to dismiss it out of hand.

Also, there is a fundamental flaw in your logic. You keep saying that it
irrelevant whether the studies methodology is valid or not, and yet this is
the only evidence you give for your position. You say that I failed to give a
counter-argument, and yet I directly addressed the only argument you gave for
the relationship between empathy and reading, namely that study.

------
guelo
Too bad the whole war was an immoral travesty based on lies and at the behest
of oil companies and Israeli interests.

~~~
nwj
Many (my self included) agree it was not a war we should have fought.

But implying that the reason we went to war was primarily because "oil
companies and Israeli interests" wanted us to -- that's just intellectually
dishonest. The path into Iraq was so much more complicated than that and
simplifying it in such a crude way makes it more likely that we will repeat
those past mistakes again in the future.

~~~
shn
I agree with you. Although what he said is correct, saying in such a crude way
unfortunately helps it ridiculed and disqualified easily which leads to the
repetition of it. Unfortunately not by mistake but in consequence of poor
communication like that which results sheer encouragement of conspirators to
try again for another war.

------
vanessa98
What do you do to continue learning and to continue improving in your craft?

Keep building things. That's really the only way I know how to learn
something. Reading books doesn't really do anything for me. I have to see
something applied in practice, on my own, before I can really internalize
something and grow.

~~~
josephkern
The issue at hand, was the General's use of reading as a way to ensure the
things he is in charge of building (Marines), do not go to waste. Long in the
making, quick in the breaking.

> I have to see something applied in practice, on my own, before I can really
> internalize something and grow.

This skill, reading, takes a while to develop. Understanding what is said and
not said, and what it means in context takes practice and deliberate thought.

Learning while building works well only when your effective materials cost (as
in software) is zero.

------
Turing_Machine
Is one of his tips "make sure to use a tiny, marginally-legible sans-serif
font in a layout that wastes 2/3 of the screen?"

------
logjam
"We have been fighting on this planet for 5000 years and we should take
advantage of their experience."

Lessons in _better tactics_ ain't the most important learning to draw from
that reading, General.

~~~
jeffcouturier
We've also been fighting for much longer than 5,000 years. It sounds like the
General is a young-Earth creationist which, if true, doesn't give me much
faith in his intellectual capacity.

~~~
jeremyjh
Its an article about _books_ about war.

Have you read any good books from 6,000 years ago lately?

~~~
will_work4tears
Except he doesn't say "we've been recording fighting for 5,000 years," he says
"we've been fighting for 5,000 years." There's no ambiguity there, unless
you're delusional.

~~~
PakG1
Today I learned: even allegedly smart posters on HN can be unable to
understand context.

~~~
ctdonath
There is an odd phenomenon prevalent on the 'net: the presumption that a short
blurb written with a small audience and particular point in mind should,
somehow, contain encyclopedic completeness to every conceivable objection any
twit may conjure up, no matter how ill-informed or tenuously applicable.

------
pasquinelli
skimmed it.

------
will_work4tears
He thinks we've only been fighting for 5000 years? Is he a Young Earth
Creationist or something?

~~~
PakG1
I think he is talking from the perspective of civilizations waging organized
war. It would make the most sense, given who he is and the lessons he hopes to
learn. Let's not put thoughts into his mind or words into his mouth that
aren't necessarily there.

