
It’s Okay to “Forget” What You Read - sus_007
https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/its-okay-to-forget-what-you-read-f4ef1c34cc01
======
roceasta
_> So read always from authors of proven worth [Seneca]_

Absolutely. The few authors that I love the best are streets ahead of the
rest. Reading other authors is for me really just a search for the Next Big
Thing. As time marches on, re-reading old favourites rises in value relative
to reading new stuff, on average.

 _> Though our eyes may pass over all of the words and our hands may flip
through all of the pages, what we read is never the entire book_

The idea that reading is encompassed by the eyes zig-zagging down the page
like a raster scan is an example of the 'bucket theory' of the mind, as Karl
Popper put it. This is where knowledge supposedly pours into the brain
passively via the senses. Which is a fallacy.

 _> If I read for pure pleasure, what harm is there in forgetting?_

This is also the reason I've never seriously tried to _speed read_. Perhaps
I'm mistaken about this, but why wolf down an expensive meal? There's nothing
to be lost from optimising pleasure since it derives from the meaning i.e.
from the true content.

 _> When we read, certain notable phrases, concepts and ideas [...] stand out
more clearly from the others._

Oh yes. This is the _Searchlight Theory_ of the mind, where our attention is
continually homing onto the most interesting or semantically useful bit of
whatever we are doing.

~~~
djur
It makes me think of Darwin's journals, where you can see him picking up on
useful little tidbits from the stuff he's read and observed. His reading of
Malthus was a major influence on his development of natural selection theory,
but it's not like Origin of Species is a Malthusian tract. Exposure to other
people's thoughts helps create our own thoughts.

There's a great many scientists and philosophers who were wrong about things
but who provided the structure and patterns necessary for later thinkers. From
Plato and Aristotle to Smith, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud...

~~~
DavidSJ
Interestingly, Wallace was also inspired by Malthus in his own co-discovery of
evolution.

------
shock
For me the following quote from Paul Graham's essay has struck a chord: _For
example, reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they
happen, using the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get
compiled differently at different points in your life._

It's changed how I read books. I used to feel that if I needed to re-read a
book I did something wrong the first time – now I read a book again after some
time just to get a different perspective of the book. It's the same thing that
happens the second time you watch a movie: you notice details that you missed
the first time around.

~~~
jakubp
I also noticed this with books. My impression is that the same book can be
called "great" by one person and "boring" or "uninteresting" by another, and
it says really more about those people in relation to the book at that point
in their lives, than about the book itself. It can show you what developmental
stage these people are in.

For some, reading a simple book on emotions will be a game changer, while for
others it will be stating the obvious and they won't even read more than a
chapter or two, deciding that the book was too basic or even "bad".

I've developed a habit of buying and beginning a lot of books, but many I
discard or set aside for the future. Few books seem "too basic" for me, with
many I sense that their time is yet to come, or their utility at this point in
my life is unclear.

BTW I have the same experience with movies; some of them have a great number
of really interesting detail that I often miss the first time around.

------
tpeo
This reminded of a nice little book by Pierre Bayard called _" How to Talk
About Books You Haven't Read"_, which actually dedicates part of itself not to
books which the reader hasn't actually read, but to those which he might have
forgotten. Unfortunately, I've forgotten much of the rest of the book, so I
really can't say much more about it.

Still recommend it, though.

~~~
ams6110
Talking about a book you haven't read shouldn't be too difficult. Just ask a
lot of questions and pursue the interesting answers. Convincingly passing
yourself off as having read the book when you haven't, is probably more
difficult, but would depend on how deep the discussion gets.

------
kiba
Eh, you still forget 90% of everything you ever read, or just plain learn, and
that includes the models you get from reading books about the crusade.

If you want to retain anything in more than vague details, you need to
intensively practice and study.

That is not to say you should practice and study everything in intense
details. There's only so many hours to practice being a world class programmer
and then something else.

It's fine to be an average driver, an average cook, average almost anything.

But if you want anymore than an average result, you're going to need to invest
more than average effort.

~~~
nxc18
If you're reading books for the details, you're doing it wrong.

Read books for ideas. You can always look at the book for reference when you
forget the details.

I despair for the people who are taught that learning is about memorizing
facts. Ideas are far more powerful than facts and a heck of a lot harder to
lookup.

~~~
kiba
Learning is certainly about memorizing, whether that's facts or ideas or
skills.

~~~
dwaltrip
Learning is about changing the way we think and perceive. This is not best
done through memorization.

Facts are important, however I would argue that the different
conceptualizations of ideas and the relationships between them are far more
important.

~~~
coldtea
> _Learning is about changing the way we think and perceive. This is not best
> done through memorization._

Unless it has left a permanent mark in our memory, there's no "changing in the
way we think and perceive".

~~~
kazinator
Very next sentence after the quoted material begins with "Facts ..."; i.e. the
comment is about the memorization of facts specifically (perhaps the same
thing we call "rote learning"), not about "memorization" being any kind of
enduring state change in the memory.

------
replicatorblog
I used to stress about this until I came across this quote:

“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

Even if you don't have a photographic memory, reading changes our perspective
in important ways.

~~~
Vinnl
This is both a blessing and a curse. I'm always afraid that I will read false
or unreliable things, actually recognise it for what it is, but still have it
linger in my brain enough that I will believe it in the future...

~~~
emodendroket
In fact a number of psychological studies have found that people will remember
false information as true if you tell it to them and then immediately explain
it is false. At least that's how I remember it. :)

~~~
rwnspace
I really hope that the other direction gives the desired result.

~~~
emodendroket
That seems doubtful.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
_“However, for the man who studies to gain insight, books and studies are
merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As
soon as a rung has raised him up one step, he leaves it behind. On the other
hand, the many who study in order to fill their memory do not use the rungs of
the ladder for climbing, but take them off and load themselves with them to
take away, rejoicing at the increasing weight of the burden. They remain below
forever, because they bear what should have bourne them.”_

As comrade Schopenhauer put it (
[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/301471-however-for-the-
man-...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/301471-however-for-the-man-who-
studies-to-gain-insight-books) )

Later, Wittgenstein echoed that item -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein%27s_ladder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein%27s_ladder)

~~~
sodumb
Schopenhauer was not a socialist.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Picked up that habit from P.G.Wodehouse's comrade Psmith.

A harmless affectation. No real socialism involved.

------
ridgeguy
Books are like lovers. They change you, even if you don't recall the
particulars.

~~~
dredmorbius
I've quarrelled extensively with both.

------
Maultasche
I think it was interesting how it was talking about getting different things
from the same book at different points in your life.

That's certainly how it went for me with the Silmarillion. I read it at 16
just after I had come off of reading Lord of the Rings and it was extremely
boring. I read it again at 30 and I found it to be quite interesting. The book
hadn't changed, but I had.

~~~
criddell
I've also found that to be true with movies. When I first watched Jaws 15
years ago, I thought it was boring and slow. I recently watched it again and
loved every minute of it. The dialog, characters, and building tension was
fantastic. I almost felt like I could smell the beach and the boats.

~~~
guftagu
I have watched Apocalypto 3 times with a difference of 3-4 years. Each time I
felt I was watching a completely different movie. Last time I watched it I saw
it as a masterpiece in film art.

~~~
criddell
Yeah? I need to put it in my queue and give it another try.

------
perilunar
Well that's a relief. They are talking about books, but I suppose it applies
to all the time we 'waste' on HN and other news sites too.

~~~
zeep
that's one reason why I really like
[https://archive.org/](https://archive.org/) and other similar projects

------
tw1010
If you want to learn how to program, surely you would go asking the software
engineering community how to do it? But rarely do we pay attention to how the
people who're serious about reading and writing say you're actually supposed
to read. I thought I knew how to read a book. But then I read the Well-
Educated Mind and realized that I had went about it all wrong. English majors
read books way differently than most people do. It is crucially important for
retention and understanding of a book to actually write down thorough notes
about it.

~~~
kentt
Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm going to check it out.

~~~
sn9
Just from looking at the description, it seems to cover the same territory as
Mortimer Adler's _How to Read a Book_.

I'd read Adler's book first, but reading two different presentations of what
might be the same idea is better than reading only one.

------
emodendroket
I should hope so or I'd need to stop reading.

Incidentally, Sherlock Holmes never said "elementary, my dear Watson."

------
stonelazy
Everywhere when there is a context about reading.. Ppl talk only about
physical books, doesn't the same ideology apply for an article that you read
online.. Be it HN articles? I even forget from what I read in HN.

~~~
CPUstring
It depends. When you read, you're approaching a well to drink the knowledge
therein. When you're approaching a place that streams- HN, reddit, twitter-
you're approaching a river.

You approach rivers and wells differently, and so you probably forget books
and "flow"-based articles differently.

------
krishicks
On re-reading books:

The first time I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace I found myself
unable to determine what was Important for much of the first few hundred
pages. None of it made sense and I couldn't figure out what The Point of the
book was. I kind of read the pages but didn't really take any of it in.

The second time I read it was a completely different experience: those first
pages immediately made sense, and I derived a sense of pleasure in reading
them that I didn't have the first time around.

~~~
tw1010
Tangentially, I've had a similar experience when teaching myself some areas of
pure mathematics via books. The first time around I had a hard time figuring
out which theorems were significant and worth more attention than others. The
second time around the most important ones were a lot more obvious.

------
jugg1es
That information reshapes your brain is something I think that most of the
people on this site and reading my comment understand. Johnny 5 said it best -
INPUT

------
JankyTurtle
A lot of comments in this thread make it sound like if you're not going to
perform rote memorization of what you read then it's not worth reading at all.
Learning is more than memorization. To simply write-off all knowledge as just
regurgitating facts is exactly what's wrong with the modern education system.
Read for the sake of reading, explore new ideas and grow.

------
alborzmassah
Honestly, this makes sense to me too, but what scientific evidence is there of
reading creating/affecting mental models for people? The article seemed like a
lot of opinion, but not much evidence.

When I listen to audiobooks or read for personal development or business, I
make an effort to apply things I've learned from the books to derive value.

------
mkalygin
I noticed that if I read a book, I don't understand it immediately truly
deeply. Some sort of analysis happens and then after few months or even years
my mentality becomes different and I start to think in a different way. So it
takes time to build a different mentality by reading books.

------
brango
Wasn't this story on here last week?

------
mxschumacher
I posted this 5 days ago, why does HN not pick it up as a duplicate?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15111163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15111163)

~~~
sctb
Sorry yours didn't get any attention! It's mostly up to chance, so the
software lets through resubmissions of earlier posts that are too old to save
but didn't get any discussion.

~~~
mxschumacher
Maybe the time stamp on the original post should just get updated in case of a
re-submission of a previously unsuccessful post. The community deserves to get
information quickly and there should be only one thread per post to avoid
redundant arguments)

------
petra
Or maybe, just maybe, non-fiction books(not textbooks) are a terrible medium
to learn anything, in light of what we know of how memory works ,and in light
of various knowledge management technologies, which don't work terribly well
with books ?

And books only exist because they are the lowest common denominator for
someone to share an idea, and they are a good form of entertainment, similar
to facebook posts ?

