"I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting.
If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book?
To make us happy, as you write?
My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary.
But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were being driven into forests, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." [2]
"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns."
I don’t know if I’m taking Kafka too literally here, but the books that I read that bite and sting probably fall into two categories. Things that are cynically written in bad faith and things that are hopeless and callous. Torture porn bites and stings, reading hacky partisan politics bites and stings. Anything that makes me feel stupider after reading it bites and stings.
The things that I think that he wants to say, the inconvenient truths, the things that make me see the world in a whole new way, that challenge everything I believe in. Those things fill me with joy and wonder they are just so few and far between.
Maybe the thing he’s getting at is the existential dread? The truth that nothing you do is meaningful? The staring into the abyss? In which case maybe in moderation, but I fundamentally disagree.
in a sense I wonder, if this is what he means, what a weird way to view life, that those things that challenge you are negative.
I think he is ultimately saying that you should be emotionally vulnerable, and you should read things that break through that inner barrier that we all put up. Reading a good book is like making a connection, and becoming emotionally invested in that world and the ideas within it. Turning that last page and knowing that its all over can be a heart-wrenching experience as well. I know I've experienced this indescribable feeling of loss or even grief almost after reading a good book.
That could also mean reading biographies of others lives, love stories, things that challenge your world view and things that are a little above our skill level. There is value in being willing to challenge your own beliefs (if they can't be challenged with a new understanding or new knowledge, then they aren't so much beliefs as they are a doctrine to be followed) and being willing to be emotionally vulnerable.
Oh god no, that’s definitely in the cynically written in bad faith hacky partisan politics category. Maybe it just hasn’t aged well, but I couldn’t get through it.
This is (to me) a strange comment. I assume it refers to the fact that some right-wingers have latched onto Orwell. But that happened long after his death.
Orwell was a British Socialist, and the people he's attacking in the books are totalitarians, whether fascist or Stalinist. So it's neither bad faith nor partisan unless you count anti-totalitarian as a party, though I guess hacky is in the eye of the beholder.
"1984" is a quintessential example of literature that challenges and provokes, embodying Kafka’s idea of a book that serves as "the axe for the frozen sea inside us."
A lot of positive change can from works of philosophy.
Thats things that just knock your world view around for a brief moment in a almost confused-joyous-understanding. Make question your intuitions for a little bit.
"If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book?" --
That's the authorial feeling of self-importance making itself visible.
Why read the book?
Because it might be enjoyable, a pastime, something that makes us dream, reflect, cry, or connect some dots in our lives through a parallel representation of feelings or ideas.
There are many reasons, and the "blow to the head" will not and should not be the main reason, especially for older people who have seen some water flowing under the bridge and see the shock factor as artfully constructed and therefore much less provocative than the author intended it to be.
Made me check and Google translated it about the same. No unexpected comma or awkward driven into the woods (by whom?), punch is a punch (blow is more generic), but awkward duplication of "one".
> I believe that one should only read books that bite and sting one. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a punch to the head, why do we read the book? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we had no books, and if necessary we could write the kind of books that make us happy ourselves. But we need books that affect us like a misfortune that hurts us greatly, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were to venture into the woods, away from everyone, like a suicide; a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I liked the ChatGPT version better. The repeated "one" is paticularly jarring and not a stylistic feature of the original (which has man...einen, two different words reasonably translated as "one"). "Misfortune" is a more literal translation than "disaster", but in the context that it greatly hurts us, I prefer the latter. And I'm pretty sure "wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden" is closer to being cast out or driven away than just going for a nice sylvan walk. The passive voice there is faithful to the original. The comma after "disaster" is the only part I don't like in modern English.
Cast out vs going out into the woods can tip it over I suppose. Don't know German well enough myself to say but checking word by word it didn't have the being driven out vibe. But it's interesting that the difference is almost nonexistent.
I think you should only read books that bite and sting you. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a punch to the skull, why are we reading it? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we didn't have books, and we could write the books that make us happy ourselves if need be. But we need books that have an effect on us like a misfortune that hurts us very much, like the death of someone we preferred to us, like pushing us into the woods, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
A useful habit that I've begun to follow with more complicated books—especially when reading them out of personal interest—is to actively avoid taking notes or worrying about background material on a first read.
I've recently read and greatly enjoyed a historical fiction novel called "Augustus" written by John Edward Williams and published in 1972. On the surface level, it's about the events of the life of Augustus Caesar (better known in the book as "Octavian")—but on a deeper level, it's about the rarity of longtime friends in life, and dealing with aging and one's mortality. I put the novel off for a year because I thought I had to read a non-fiction historical account of Augustus's life first, as I thought I couldn't appreciate the novel without doing so, due to the unfamiliar character names and events. But one day, I just decided to try it out—and I found myself naturally remembering the character names and events without special care in reading the novel.
Similar experiences have been reported by people engaging with various forms of media. I've seen readers take copious notes on the novel "Infinite Jest," which has a reputation for being a difficult read, only to burn out. In contrast, readers who have finished the novel said that they didn't need to take notes, and that the story began to make sense simply by reading more.
I've also seen a similar pattern from subjects as academic mathematics, where some learners spend too much time on textbook explanations instead of working on the textbook problems, to subjects as relaxed as computer role-playing games, in which some players end up dropping these games due to a perceived need to take notes to understand the story, before they can get immersed in the game's world.
I think a lot more understanding and enjoyment of various subjects can be attained by being comfortable with confusion for a while. While note-taking has its place in understanding a subject, I've personally found that immersion is the most important factor for understanding.
I finished Infinite Jest without taking notes. I definitely missed a lot of stuff but I loved the experience and it ended up being one of my favorite books.
I think Infinite Jest is a great example for this sort of thing because I later realized that I had completely missed the entire main plot. By the author:
> There is an ending as far as I’m concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an “end” can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occurred to you, then the book’s failed for you.
Nothing converged for me at all and yet I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I’m still not quite sure what to think of that.
Aaron Swartz (yep, that Aaron Swartz) wrote a great essay that explains the ending and main plot in clear language:
But I don’t think I got any part of that plot by reading the book. It’s all hidden and disjointed, and there’s so much interesting stuff at the surface that you almost don’t even care to go deeper.
If you ever get the urge to read Infinite Jest again (which I highly recommend—a second read is easily more enjoyable than the first), the Infinite Jest Wiki includes some page-by-page annotations that are nice to have on hand.
https://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/in...
Probably overkill to look up every little thing (and most of the annotations are just defining SAT-worthy words anyway), but I liked having it around when a random word/phrase would make no sense and it turned out to be a vintage shaving cream brand or some bit of Boston-ese.
And it's free of spoilers, so friendly enough to first-time readers, but I do think a first read is best with no notes or supporting material or anything. Other than two bookmarks, lol.
+1 for re-reading. I’d also suggest the audiobook as an alternate form that is differently accessible. Certainly it’s easier to follow some of the changing perspectives as the narrator does a good job of voicing differently.
The best thing about reading(and finishing) Infinite Jest is that you are not sure. Not sure if the book has ended, not sure about anything. I've read and listened to multiple interpretation of the book. But that is what makes it a different experience(because of varying perspectives)
Infinite Jest seems excessively long and I haven't worked up the motivation to read it yet, but his short stories / essays in Consider the Lobster are excellent, including the titular story which is about a lobster festival in Maine. And looking at the comments in this thread, seems like he had some kind of fascination for fairs and other touristy things.
I have no research to back this up, but I think the need to understand everything may result from low self-esteem. Specifically, when not knowing something, people with low self-esteem may feel stupid. To eliminate this feeling, they† focus on learning. It is a good adaptive mechanism, especially compared to maladaptive ones like avoidance behaviors. A potentially better one is learning not to derive self-worth from how much we know or how others perceive us.
† Some of them, not everyone, on average, etc. Also, different people have different motivations. Not everyone who has a curious mind has low self-esteem. People are complex.
This made me think of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, where you find yourself thinking “I need to look some of this stuff up, it’s becoming hard to know if I understand it all”, but that is part of the satirical commentary he wanted to make - it’s very meta, very good, not knowing all of the esoteric references is the exact point.
Foucault’s is amazing. It’s a great story, but it also delivers a visceral experience that really mirrors what the characters are feeling. One of the best “medium is the message” books.
I think that property is essential to really good books. The running of Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli is a long boring slogto read. The trek up Mt Doom is agonizing.
The transformation of writing from the awesome kids tale of Sorcerer's Stone thru the awkwardly adolescent middle books to the powerfully adult writing and plots of Deathly Hallows is such a effective parallel to the kids growing up.
I see so many comments about taking notes while reading. I didn't even know that was a thing. I'm not even sure if I would want to do it, because it would interrupt the reading. My own personal belief (which I came up with just now) is that reading novels should be a smooth relatively easy affair. Because I read simply for the fun of it. This may not be the case with academic books however. I just, start reading.
I have in fact stalled on books before though off the top of my head only SICP and Anna Karenina come to mind. I'll reattempt both of them in the near future. Stalling on SICP was probably due to me not having the sufficient math background, which I'm slowly working on fixing. The post you wrote gives me hope.
There's a possibility that I've been doing things the wrong way all these years.
First read, I don’t take notes unless I’m familiar with the material. At most, I’ll mark interesting passages. But I usually pause after each or every two chapters, reflecting on the concepts.
I don’t take notes with fiction books, but I pause whenever I can’t give it my full attention (interruptions, some other tasks, tired).
I think taking notes while reading fiction would be relatively unusual (outside fields like literary criticism), but taking notes while reading non-fiction is quite common, especially when grappling with denser material.
For example, I kept extensive notes while reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The work assumes you're internalising as you go along, which is somewhat inescapable given the nature of the material. The author can't stop to re-explain some finer point of Aristotle's every time it is engaged with in the subsequent two thousand years.
Pausing to take notes helps one reflect on the material and solidify their understanding, but also gives them a quick reference later if necessary. I just use my phone's Notes app, to keep the barrier as low as possible.
Fascinating. My first response to your opening paragraph was horror - how on Earth could you hope to really internalize and learn from a textbook without taking notes on it? - before realizing that you were (mostly) referring to fiction or entertainment media. In which case, yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you - don't do anything to pull yourself out of the story, remain immersed and (if it's a well-structured work) it will start to make sense to you.
I did take notes throughout my first playthrough of Elden Ring, for instance, and started enjoying it a lot more once I stopped!
> A useful habit that I've begun to follow with more complicated books—especially when reading them out of personal interest—is to actively avoid taking notes or worrying about background material on a first read.
I recommend using those little sticky tabs instead. If I come across something I want to look up later, or want to come back to for whatever reason I use one on the page itself to to highlight the line, and another at the top so I can find the page again. By the time I'm done reading it might be full of those little tabs but it doesn't really slow me down in the moment.
Agreed. I used to struggle with remembering all these names in novels, but recently came to terms with the “dysnomia” by drawing parallels between reading fiction with hearing anecdotes, where capturing the rough dynamic and vibe is more important than remembering characters; confusing names is venial if the confusion is part of the experience.
If you enjoyed Williams's Augustus, do give Stoner and Butcher's Crossing a read. I "enjoyed" them even more than Augustus. Enjoyed is in quotes because they are both emotionally devastating -- Stoner more so than Butcher's Crossing. I didn't feel like myself for a week after reading Stoner and a decade later I still often think about it.
I read Stoner a month ago, and just finished Augustus. Both are among the best books I have read this year, so far at least. I’ll be picking up Butcher’s Crossing soon but needed some lighter reads in-between :)
I will admit that there is some level of joy in finding previously unnoticed angle or joke on re-read. Every few years or so I find one such gem in Pratchett's books. It does make me smile. I don't think I can emjoy Infinite Jest or Ulysses that way.
For non-fiction, I will admit that it is hard for me to take that advice. I am currently going through a historical analysis book, which in itself covers a complicated topic and references tons of source materials, which now I feel almost obligated to add to my reading list. And for harder subjects, it feels like I get lost on the foundational materials if I don't take notes.
I’ve recently moved to Europe and found myself surrounded by hundreds of famous galleries, which are essentially the main entertainment here.
I started visiting them and looking at classical paintings, little by little googling what it was and why. It turned out to be so exciting!
Now, a year later, I can say for sure which of the women with a severed male head in their hands in the painting is Judith and which is Salome. And I understand much better how people lived in these parts before, and why they live the way they do now.
Therefore, I completely agree with the author of the article - sometimes you need to plunge into the unknown, and this unknown will reward you.
I’m afraid to imagine how many discoveries await me in museums of contemporary art.
As an artist and technologist living in Europe, I am glad to see a comment like this. It's refreshing. An open-minded and incremental approach to culture can be incredibly rewarding.
I can relate so much! Went to Uffizi once, I wondered why so many people were lining up to get in because I had zero clue about art at the time, after deciding to actually take a look in the museum with audio guide, I spent almost 4 hours in Uffizi though I didn't have many clues about lots of them, I was just trying to "feel" the pieces, years later, I finally started to read books about art and suddenly I had this amazing realization of "wow isn't that art that I've seen before?" then it all makes sense now, it's one of the best feeling ever, now I usually just go checkout museums, venues or whatever it is because I know even though I cannot appreciate the art at the moment, some day in the future I'll be glad that I take the chance to look at it.
The article title reminded me of when I was young and used to read Byte Magazine. Byte used to cover a wide range of topics, and could get quite technical, but the big thing that is vastly different to today is that you would get a monthly digest of articles that were selected by the editors, not by yourself. And I used to read it cover to cover. There was a lot I didn't understand, but also I feel like I gained a wider knowledge than if I only read what I was interested in, and many times the ideas that I was exposed to turned out to be useful much later in life.
Some of them ended up being distractions too, like playing with hardware, or writing a compiler, but it was all very interesting.
Byte magazine was a terrific publication. There's nothing similar in print these days that I'm aware of. Certainly, Byte couldn't be accused of dumbing down the content to reach a wider audience, unlike many of today's supposedly technical magazines. I learned a lot from Byte and experimented frequently with the knowledge and understanding I gained from Byte.
I had a huge complex in my youth , I simply couldn’t read as fast as my peers. Now, I realize that I was going too fast, and by slowing down, taking my time and reading slowly I could absorb more, and understand, and I had this amazing ability to never forget anything I did read (at least for an extended period of maybe 2-3 years). I realized over time that going fast isn’t for me. Better to go slow absorb, digest and ultimately retain more would get me where I needed to be. Never did well in school in terms of grades but ultimately I got better and better doing a masters and actually got sponsored to do my PhD. Many years I read but could not understand, but ultimately it was the joy of reading slow that got me further than the joy of reading and not understanding.
I do this for my media consumption. I take breaks, never trying to finish in one go. I also pause intentionally when pause occurs (chapters in non-fiction books, series episodes. And I don’t mind revisiting the material, especially if it was good. As for music, I treat it like a soundtrack, focused albums (and a few playlist) listening, falling back to silence when my attention is needed on some tasks.
When I was about 14 years old, my parents saw my interest in electronics and computers and went to a university professor they knew and purchased 6-7 books on various topics. (Mostly electrical engineering and some programming)
They were designed for 2nd or 3rd year university students, and they were way wayyyy beyond me, but I used to read them, over and over, and slowly parts of them were becoming clearer to me, even the bits I didn’t understand (at all) must have been going into my memory because later when the concepts started to click, then the connections were being made.
It took me years, I read the books many times over and over all through my teens. Reading books I don’t understand has become a lifelong joy for me, just yesterday I got my subscription to “Advanced Materials” and I have thousands of articles to read!
Same but for computers. As a child I got the engineering books for the 6502 from my father ( he was a power engineer).and they were like a foreign language. But I persisted and read them over and over like I was trying to decode an ancient cipher. And like you, eventually they became clearer and my understanding flourished. Such a cool experience.
I fondly remember seeing the integral symbol and having no idea what it meant, and no internet to check. I remember thinking to myself “This must be important if it’s in this book” and just memorising without understanding. I still write x^(p/q)==q//(x^p) as my goto graffiti!
I do like some "hard" fiction like the Stephenson mentioned in TFA, as well as Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, but my mind immediately went to some of the harder technical writing I've enjoyed - The Art of Computer Programming; SICP and other Lisp texts, math books, etc.
I once spent a very pleasant short vacation on a beach on Lake Michigan reading Peter Gabriel Bergmann's "Introduction to the Theory of Relativity," finding pleasure in gradually unraveling the notation, the mathematics, and the ideas, in a quiet and beautiful setting.
It always surprises me when I meet engineers who don't enjoy reading technical books, but different strokes and all that. It takes a kind of patience and persistence to unravel a technical text, which can be its own reward if you're not trying to solve a specific technical problem at the moment.
When i started reading the Common Lisp Reference Manual i knew neither English nor Lisp. When i finished it reading it for the first time, i learned English better. I read it again 3 times, then i started learning Lisp.
Don't leave us hanging, what happened at the end of the beach on Lake Michigan?
Jokes aside, I do the no note taking on the first read thing as well. Because I like reading, I do sometimes skip the problems in technical books the first time round, but I'm consciously aware it's a form of procrastination when I'm doing it.
My very first was Naive Set Theory by Paul Halmos. Way over my head in 7th(?) grade but my first intro to math beyond pre-algebra stuff.
Lately I've enjoyed, but did not finish, the Joy of Abstraction by Eugenia Cheng, on category theory. And there was a differential geometry book whose name I have forgotten but whose exercises I really enjoyed, because I could do them in my head while riding the bus, just by thinking about them.
I'm not particularly well read on mathematics (had a lot of math in college, hardly any since) but I would like to circle back to reading more at some point.
Related to "I don't entirely understand what I just read, but I loved it" from the article - some time ago (I'd say it's been years now), there was a submission on HN (at least I believe I found it on HN, though I'm not 100% sure) about rules for critiquing art (again, I'm not 100% certain, but this is how I remember it). Unfortunately, I think I didn't finish the whole article, but at the start it said that if you want to critique art, you have to understand that:
1. There is art you love that is also actually good.
2. There is art you don't love but is actually good.
3. There is art you love that is actually bad.
4. There is art you don't love that is also actually bad.
If you know which article I'm talking about, please let me know. I've been trying to find it on and off for what seems like years now.
But also, who knows if it is true? And why only books and not everything we have done in life? And why should Ralph Waldo Emerson, assuming the quote is his, know more about this than anyone else?
The hours of history classes in elementary, middle, and high school, when we discussed the Roman Republic and the Empire and before that the Egyptians and the Assyrians and memorized the names, perhaps formed and made us, even if we do not remember a single date, only the names of Cleopatra and Caesar, and we could not find the location of Carthage even if our lives depended on it. Or maybe they did nothing to most of us, which is the more parsimonious view.
When I was a child, a whole debate emerged about the risk of developing a violent personality after watching movies and reading comic books in which violence and gore were shown quite freely. As far as I know, this development of a dangerous, antisocial personality never happened, because, dare I say it, we can distinguish fact from fiction, and everything we ingest, food or media, is modulated by our history, family, genetics, culture, and friends and enemies.
This reminds me of the recent "Neuromancer" discussion here on HN: The early cyberpunk writing style, and especially that of William Gibson, made extensive use of unexplained technical terms. The story was occasionally hard to follow. But that was part of "cyberpunk", at least initially. If you were really about to read a report from a different possible world, you also wouldn't understand everything. In reality not everything serves some central plot. There are always superfluous details, and (especially for fictional settings) things that are hard to understand for the outsider.
I remember reading, a few years ago, Amazon reviews of the 1990 William Gibson/Bruce Sterling novel "The Difference Engine". Apparently most people expected a normal novel, just with a "steampunk" setting, so naturally they were disappointed and complained about the book being confusing. That's because it's a cyberpunk novel. Which is a literary genre, not merely a setting like steampunk. (The latter term didn't even exist when the book came out.)
I remember Stanisław Lem (an SF author well-known outside the English speaking world) said approximate this about historical novels: Historical novels have the advantage of depth, they can reference a world that is much more complex than required for their plot, they can set themselves in the deep complexity of actual history -- whereas fantasy and sci-fi books must always rely on their own made-up world, which almost necessarily looks flat and shallow in comparison, even if it seems spectacular on the surface.
I really came to understand this when I read Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". All the historical details are so intricate that they are almost impossible to match by a novelist writing about a fantasy world or the far future.
This is, perhaps, also why The Lord of the Rings is such a great fantasy story, and why most other fantasy stories fall short in comparison: Tolkien didn't just write a novel. He invented a fictional language first, then an elaborate fictional history around it, and the Lord of the Rings is really just a small part of this story near the end. When reading the book, you constantly read allusions to "historical details" about things that happened thousands of years ago in Valinor, Beleriand, Númenor, in certain ancient wars etc. These "superfluous details" are occasionally hard to understand (except if you read Tolkien's posthumous "Silmarillion", which his son compiled from fragments) but they approximate something like the depth that usually only a historical novel can achieve.
> All the historical details are so intricate that they are almost impossible to match by a novelist writing about a fantasy world or the far future.
This is a thing game designer / writer Ken Hite always says [1], and he's absolutely right. If you dig deep enough into even the most boring corner of history, you will find more interesting details than any person could possibly invent. And if you base your creative work on an exciting part of history that people are familiar with, you have huge advantages.
I started reading the original edition of Don Quijote in Spanish with two years of high school Spanish under my belt. Ten years later, I finally finished the first book.
Same! It was such a wonderful book (both volumes) and in Spanish I found myself absolutely laughing out loud (and I don't think I ever did that in my life).
I spent so much time on "Road to Reality". I was mostly confused, but then every once in a while something would click and it was mind blowing. Now I'm going back through linear algebra. I'm also looking at the hardest book I've tried "Moonshine beyond the monster" I'm trying...
Wouldn't it be better just to slow down? They're not books that can't be understood.
edit: I've spent years reading some books. Sometimes I stop and realize that the words are just washing over me; I backtrack until I'm at a place that I've understood the path I took to get there. I go forward again, maybe realize that I'm actually missing the background to go farther. If I've been fascinated up to this point, I find another book that will give me the background. I may come back to the original book a month later or ten years later. The other material may obviate the need for the original book altogether, or even give me contempt for the original book.
This seems more like somebody who doesn't speak French reading French books, and claiming that imagining the sounds that might be made from the sight of the words in the book leads them to some sort of transcendence. People write to be understood. I read to understand. I'm not just checking off things and trying to come up with a review filled with vague evocative metaphors that I can impress people with at a party. There's an obsession with appearances and presentation rather than actual engagement. Associative dream logic in the place of understanding. Why not just meditate on the cover painting and say you read it?
I’ve recently started reading The Iliad. I find it challenging because characters can be referred to by a variety of different things, even within the same paragraph or two, so it is challenging to follow the conversation or who is being discussed.
I’ve taken to asking ChatGPT to summarize chapters and key characters within the chapter after I’ve finished each chapter and it helps give me feedback as to whether what I thought happened was what indeed happened. It’s also given me little contextual tidbits that are helpful and apparently would have been known to audiences of the time but for me would have gone unappreciated.
It’s helpful, though I think I’d prefer an annotated copy over ChatGPT so I have realtime information as I read without the lag of finishing a chapter first (or added friction of stopping to search and starting again)
Thank you. Putting my thoughts into my comment made me wonder a bit more about the translation I am reading which is Butler’s translation included in the Great Books of Western Culture. It apparently is a somewhat weak translation when compared to modern ones and so I might switch to something modern to see if that helps.
With Homer, which translation you read can make a huge difference for the reading experience. Older translations tend to be far more purple and ornate, while recent translations, like Emily Wilson's, are far more straight forward with a more restrained diction and helpful translation notes and introductions. It's all really a matter of degree, though.
I'm halfway through Neal Stephenson’s "Baroque Cycle" and it's absolutely delightful but it sure requires frequent dictionary/Wikipedia consultation, at least for me.
This ability to look things up on the fly is why I love ereaders, despite the newproblem of finishing one book on my TBR list and having bought more than one book referred to in the first book. A divergent sequence of books I fear.
I think there is a limit. If it's a topic you can look things up about (Maybe something technical where you haven't read the prerequisites.). The initial example from the article is interesting, in that you can learn so much about history with the looked-up context, but you can still follow and enjoy the books without it - you will just not know which characters and events were real! I think you will probably remember the history better this way with a fun story-context than wrote memorization, which I believe is a point of the author.
Some material, I feel like I am too stupid for, or my brain is wired so differently from the author I will never make sense of it. Examples: Gravity's Rainbow, and parts 2 + 3 of The Divine Comedy. (Granted, the latter is full of parts where looking up contexts and references will help, but I am not sure what to do with the former; there are rare sections where I can gain a purchase on events transiently, but it mostly passes through without absorption for reasons I don't understand).
Gravity's Rainbow is downright abstract at times, but if you use a guide like this [0] then you can move beyond trying to figure out what actually happens and really enjoy how Pynchon twists language and sentences into incredible images and scenes. Some of it is, for lack of a better term, downright fantastical rather than literal.
For the divine comedy I can recommend the Robert Durling english translation. Each canto has a large section of notes which give all of that context and various interpretations in condensed form. Really excellent stuff.
The problem here is that hell is exciting and heaven is dull. I enjoyed the John Ciardi translation of hell a lot and purgatory in a sort of academic way and couldn't make progress thru heaven.
A appropriate difficulty level is where you understand enough of the book to enjoy it, but that there are parts that are just beyond your reach so you can grow.
There seemed to be several meetings in this room superimposed on one another, and they cannot be sorted out. To sort them out would have been to destroy their effect, however, for they achieved syntheses of their several aspects and became the true meeting that never really took place but which contained all the other meetings in one theatrical unity.
> ..On first read, yes, it’s nonsense, but this is the experience of experiencing Lafferty. He doesn’t make any sense, until you decide, and you must decide, that he does. Then, suddenly, he becomes a genius. Read the paragraph again. What’s he talking about? Today, you might realize he’s predicting Zoom: a main meeting full of individual nonmeetings taking place in chats and side slacks that together constitute a constant and overarching supermeeting! Tomorrow, it’ll sound like something else entirely.
I read the Baroque Cycle almost 20 years ago and have to say I enjoyed every bit of it, the relatable characters, the circle of life and the science was amazing.
I am sure there were parts that went completely over my head but it felt good to sit down open the large books and dive in.
Thanks to the poster, it's about time I re-read the series.
I feel like the idea of understanding media has, for many of us, become a prison. The purest version of understanding is kind of a personal relationship to a piece of media. A relationship you form while engaging with it that enlivens your life and has the potential to broaden your horizons. But we live in a moment where it's very popular to talk about "the right understanding of media"[1] and therefor everyone begins to need to explain their relationship to every piece of media to their friends.
The bare experience of reading The Baroque Cycle completely stuffed full of historical references you don't understand is kind of its own immersive experience in a less media-rich climate. You kind of get a sense what it might be like to have no access to education and run into like, Leonardo da Vinci or whoever. But then it comes time to explain that experience to someone else and they might think you were silly for not just looking the names up.
I just think it's too bad. I once almost broke my wrist snow boarding, but my friend wanted to finish the day so I hung out in our car. The medics had given me a dose of percocet[2] for the pain and I had just started Neuromancer. Finishing that book in that hot car, slightly high, has both erased all of "what happens" from my mind and left me with this kind of indelliable feeling of what it was like to be reading the book. I didn't understand it and feel all the better for it.
[1] I think it's very easy to understand why people want to set others straight on points like this, even if I don't like the ecosystem it creates.
[2] I think it was percocet? Though it seems odd that I would be given a dose of narcotics for a bad sprain.
Strange to me so few comments, none based on my skimming mention either, 1) reading code, 2) shakespeare.
There's levels of reading. Sometimes you skim, sometimes close read. Sometimes you read to glean something about the author, sometimes for pure enjoyment. Different codebases have to be read in different ways. Shakespeare can be appreciated without "getting it" just enjoying the meter and an occasional bit of word play. You can see cool programming tricks without grokking the entire codebase.
Read, reread, get what you want or need. Come back later on if you find there's more value. There is no right way to do it.
You'll get my copy of The Integral Principles of the Structural Dynamics of Flow, by L.G. Claret, when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. I may never ram-chaw a partial chim set, but damned if I'm going to fear bolts, quams, squalcrats, or (especially) barms.
I know he’s well regarded on this site but I’ll espouse my own experience with Cormac McCarthy books. Blood Meridian is nearly impossible to get through without some kind of version of a “urban dictionary for the old west” at hand, but the lurid language draws you in constantly. The beauty of language, I think, lies in the absolute specificity of a word. One that could only exist at a certain point in time, and his books are filled to the brim with language like that. Is it dense? Yeah absolutely, but it makes your arm hairs tingle, some of the writing he employs.
I get the point.
Only a few days ago I watched the restored version of "Jeanne Dielman,...", to its full length of 3 hours and 20 minutes. Nothing happens in that movie, absolutely nothing at all, except for the registration of a housewife's daily routine and a few conversations with her son. Until the last quarter of an hour.
You start with boredom, wanting to stop and forget all about it. But then curiosity kicks in, and you learn to appreciate the innumerable small details.
There are also books and movies which don't even have plot, or where the plot isn't very important, where the journey is the destination. An example is the film Amarcord (1973).
When I was 11 I was attracted to the cover of a book that showed some boats sailing on a terraformed Mars.
Reading Blue Mars, the final book in the series, at age 11 totally blew my mind. Not only was I already scientifically inclined, so Sax's explanations of the world and descriptions of materials science really expanded my 'scope of the possible' (even if a bunch of the high tech stuff was hand wavy), this book also contained their constitutional convention which rolls on for a whole bunch of pages about the different government systems and some of the impact these power structures can have.
At 11 I had no conception of what an anarchist is or socialist or communist was (The wall had fallen 7 years earlier and China was a flea bite) but it populated my 'potential space' of how all these words and concepts I barely understood were related to each other, which made it a hell of a lot easier later in life to have some grounding in which they had been discussed
I love that whole series but when I reread it now I am like where are all the Chinese and Indians in high tech science? Folks from Africa? It's a very California in the 1990s sort of multinational scene.
If works do not test you or bring new ideas, then what is the point of reading them in the first place?
Uncomfortable nonfiction is like eating your vegetables. There is much disquieting history and knowledge that must not be ignored.
Mainstream mass public education will not teach curiosity or imbue anyone with ambition or initiative, it is something one must cultivate on their own.
Life isn't some contest where we only need challenges. Pleasure is a fine part of creation.
And I had some wonderful teachers in mass education who inspired me quite a bit on the virtue of curiosity and striving for what exceeds my grasp. I don't know what you mean by ambition but for me it has been trying to do each thing with focus as well as I can and to attempt to live a life of openness and love and hard but fulfilling work. The rewards of life accrete in the moments, not in the external rewards (I enjoy external rewards but they are definitely frosting not cake.)
When I saw the article I thought of The Baroque Cycle which I finished a year or two ago and am currently working up the courage to tackle it again. Pleasantly surprised that it was the first series mentioned. I'm thinking of trying it this time on Kindle so I can look some things up without leaving the book.
This is how I felt listening to the audiobook of Infinite Jest over the course of many months. Who was that person again? What's going on? Doesn't matter, it's something to listen to.
There's a fine line between "I don't need to understand" and "I have no idea what's going on". At some point it becomes unworkable and you have to give up.
This reminds me of a (half-remembered) quote from Joe Strummer about reggae songs - the words are so hard to understand that every time you listen to them you understand a little more.
I love reading books that I don't understand and not understanding them. As long as I know there is something there, which I could either look up what others have pieced together online, or reread carefully myself. Funny thing is looking that stuff up or figuring it out is optional, I still enjoy the read where I'm in the dark enough that sometimes I move on. And look back fondly on the book. Gene Wolfe books are very good for this style of reading.
I feel guilty mainly when I run into someone else who says they love the book, and I am totally unable to have a meaningful conversation about it because to be honest I didn't understand or retain much from it. And I end up looking like a poser a lot of the time I'm sure, and maybe I am in some way. But I still read and enjoyed it!
I find that some of the books i don't understand come to me very slowly over time. I'll just have some insight one day and out of the blue I'll think "oh like that one thing in zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance", 20 years after i read it (or similar).
As for looking like a poser - most people will respond well to "tbh I didn't really understand what I read, tell me more and I'll keep it in mind if I revisit" (or "help me understand this other thing I have some concrete memory about", etc). Some jerks will scoff or dismiss you, most people I've encountered are pretty open to a good discussion even after it's been revealed.
I understood some videos really well on the first watching, but some videos on the same technical level were like- "what?... Ooh, maybe that's okay... Oh... Yeah". Total discomfort.
It's the areas of Math where you already have decent groundings, you will find that you can take more with you from 3b1b.
Same with Feynman's Lectures. If you are a smart person but no formal background in Physics, they are fun, sure. But you read the same lectures as a Physics undegrad in your Junior or Senior year, your 'return' from reading those lectures goes up five-fold.
Is there a path (short of going through a Physics undergrad curriculum itself) to enjoy and get more 'return' from Feynman for someone without formal Physics background? Any recommendations of books to read prior to undertaking Feynman?
There are many more things you can do that will be enjoyable to you.
Going through a Physics undergrad makes you do things you otherwise won't do. Those things, done over 3-4 years for some thousands hours transform you in no small way.
While you are doing this, you are reading Feynman, and it hits you on a completely different way. You also begin to read between the lines, and you start to apply those kinds of tools to other areas of Physics that aren’t explicitly mentioned in the Lectures.
But it's not something that you need to chase and they are neither unique set of things available only in the Lectures and nowhere else.
Just do something or read something where you are better suited to get 'returns'.
For books that you don’t understand much about and can get daunting/painful reading it, you should use the table of contents and read the most interesting one first, then the next..
This reminds me of something that I heard once from a Chinese teacher. I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but he was definitely on to something: In the West, it is assumed that it is the speaker's job to make himself understood to his listeners. In the East, it is the other way around.
In recent times, it seems like we've gotten even more extreme. The speaker or writer must not only spoon-feed the understanding, they also have to provide the motivation and the entertainment. Which I find sad, because some things you can't get unless you go to the effort of extracting them yourself. (See many reproducible psychology findings about retention being highly correlated with depth of processing, for example.) It's like the information equivalent of highly processed food.
I find myself falling into this trap on sites like this. An interesting but difficult article will be posted, I won't immediately know what to think or where I stand on the topic, and I'll flip to the comments so that I can get some part of the collective to tell me what to think and how to feel about it. Which is also sad.
In paintings, it is known that the viewer can get out more than the painter put in. It used to be the same with writing, but it feels like that is becoming more rare and less acceptable. If a reader can't follow the argument, it's automatically the author's fault and a waste of the reader's time. Heaven forbid the reader might need to exert some effort and grow in the gleaning.
I read this comment before the post, and now I feel bad.
I watched a spy movie from the 1960s recently with someone. We got 20 minutes in before she was confused about why the movie is just about a depressed drunk who lost his job in a spy agency, before my movie-watching accomplice looked up the plot of the movie on Wikipedia. Spoiler alert, there's a twist, and the movie didn't tell the viewer that.
It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs.
I also strongly suspect you watched "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". If you enjoyed this movie and the way it is narrated, please do yourself a favor and watch all the BBC mini series from the 70ies/80ies based on John Le Carré books, namely "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "Smiley's People", and "A Perfect Spy" (or read the books, John Le Carré is an excellent writer, and "A Perfect Spy" can be compared to works by Dickens). You usually have no clue what is going on, and only learn about it later.
I think these movies are attempting to put you in the position of a spy, where you need to pay attention and infer motives from actions, and actions from motives.
The IPCRESS File is probably my favorite in the genre of cold war spy thrillers. It's slightly more on the fantastical side of the spectrum, but still so good it makes grocery shopping interesting.
The camera work is just brilliant, with many shots taken from angles that emulate covert surveillance, yet still managing to beautifully frame the scenes. Since this is implied, but never spoken, some reviewers seem to have missed this aspect, and just though they were shooting scenes through building windows for the sake of it.
Second this. IMHO Richard Burton and Alec Guinness give stellar performances in these shows/movies. I would also recommend the Len Deighton series Game, Set, Match with Ian Holm. You need to watch to the end to figure out what's going on.
> It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs.
So why should you keep on watching a movie where nothing happens just because, in the end, it _might_ be that there is a twist? I do see the more general point about ever shorter attention spans, but in general, it's probably a good thing that we have enough options to entertain ourselves in order to not having to take these gambles.
“Nothing happening” can be as impactful and meaningful as a scene full of action.
I personally like to know as little as possible about a movie before I watch it, aside from genre. I want to experience the story as the creators intended, and at times this includes being completely in the dark. The transition from “wtf is going on?” to understanding is where the payoff resides.
Every movie you watch is a gamble, even if you read the Wikipedia page first. And it is possible to get a general understanding of the reception of a movie without having to know anything about the plot itself.
> it's probably a good thing that we have enough options to entertain ourselves in order to not having to take these gambles
Different people watch for different reasons. I personally think it’d be incredibly boring to stop making gambles on potentially interesting movies.
"It's interesting that modern movies have to make you think you understand something, before they pull the curtain back and reveal there's a twist. Otherwise people will get disengaged and stop watching before the twist occurs."
I agree with this. For a particularly insidious example see the latest Star Wars series, the Acolyte, by Disney.
Well, I have watched 5 episodes so far, still waiting for the twist. So far I think the Acolyte is pretty dull. My girlfriend checked out after episode 3. Your comment fills me with hope!
So this is just storytelling 101...you don't have to give up the whole story but it does have to be engaging in the meantime...before the _big reveal_. Five dull episodes is not good storytelling and you're probably going to end up disappointed.
The book and the movie are quite rough, raw and extradry - i don’t mean this in a bad way. The mood reminds me more of eastern productions like tarkowsky (stalker) and the like.
Also called "stale beer" spy fiction to emphasize its lack of glamour and that settings like dive bars are more common in it than fancy casinos and cocktail parties.
I work in academia, and the pessimistic/cynic standpoint is that university is not about teaching, but about filtering. Making a lecture "fun", comprehensible, or even "innovative" may not have the desired effect of improving the level of understanding among all students, because a fun and easy course is a worse filter than a hard course.
Personally I always learned the most in courses that were very hard and had a nerdy teacher/professor who did not care at all whether you could follow the stuff on the blackboard / in the presentation. Theses courses required work on your own: you had to read the actual literature again and again to even remotely understand the topics on the weekly exercise sheets, or to pass the exam. This "learning by yourself" lead to a much deeper understanding than just memorizing some concepts from a streamlined lecture.
If you're putting in all of the effort to make the material make sense to you, what is the role of the educator? If the way to learn things is to read a book a bunch of times, what value does my tuition money get me? A syllabus? The ability to ask questions of a possibly poor communicater?
The cynic answer would be: a highly standardized and comparable filter and testing environment. A more realistic answer: you are guided through and exposed to topics, motivated by exams, and in the end you will have proof that you understand the topics you received grades on. You also have - often direct and personal - access to top-level people in your field.
I am in my fifties, a software engineer, and I am enrolled in a masters program for mathematics and really learning at a ferocious rate compared to my job, where I can alternate learning with using what I've learned.
For me, learning a lot is very worthwhile. Not everyone shares that goal for education of course.
That last sentence sounds snarkier than I meant. For instance,for all my classmates they are enjoying the learning and also trying to make a career out of it somehow. Different altogether than my fun based curriculum
Often the sequence of topics will be deeply significant once you are up to speed. Also for really hard work, knowing someone that knows the material is going to grade your homework is (at least for me) extremely motivating to do my best to master the material. Also office hours- periodically I get stuck trying to prove false things due to careless reading, and the professors are quite good at backing up and asking why I am trying to prove something they know to be false.
As with many human activities it is startlingly easy to fool oneself and so things involving a more experienced person can help. Grading, code reviews, peer review, certifications, etc.
my Chinese teacher supplied me with this supposedly ancient piece of Chinese scholarly wisdom: read any book a hundred times, and its meaning will be obvious.
i have found this to work amazingly well -- particularly with poorly written technical papers.
your comment also reminded me of this one time I was hanging out and watching the Matrix (for the 100th time probably) with a film maker friend. and he was pointing out to me that American film editing guides you with a rather heavy hand on where to look on the screen, whereas European films did little of that and the viewer has to search for what to pay attention to in a scene. after he showed me the editing techniques it all made sense, and explained why i could mindless follow hollywood movies, whereas watching an european film i'd get lost if not paying attention.
> American film editing guides you with a rather heavy hand on where to look on the screen
There are notable exceptions, and I think the most commercially successful US director who largely ignored this advice was Francis Ford Coppola. In the "Godfather" trilogy, nothing is spelled out. You are not guided to anything. If you miss a minor detail in some scene, you are on your own, and you might not be able to follow the plot to the end.
aka ‘intensified continuity editing’ which is the modern evolution of the ‘Hollywood style’. David Bordwell out of UW-Madison did a lot of work on this.
I find a similar trend with education in general. Some states have phased out programs for gifted students.
Instead, many of them aren’t stimulated enough and end up going down a troubling path (worst case) or they don’t really reach their full potential during those formidable years.
Teachers are expected to make the content match the lowest denominator, outside of the occasional exceptional teacher
And so many of those programs were absolutely horrible.
I had a lot more homework than my peers and was expected to act more mature. Sorry, but we were all the same age as other kids - we didn't deserve a higher workload (as kids and teens) and we should have been expected to act our age.
It was pretty common to make fun of others for not keeping up well enough (struggling not allowed) or for appearing too smart (Not me, but a family member).
Some school systems completely separated gifted kids from 'regular' students. By high school, it was obvious that this created some issues communicating with a broader range of folks.
There is more than one way to make sure gifted kids get challenged - you don't necessarily need a special class for gifted kids.
And you'll need to provide proof for the last one. It is true that they do teach so that the test scores are good - and since funding and jobs are tied to that testing, other things are going to go down. This isn't really making content matching the lowest denominator, though.
Mine was great. It had a normal amount of homework, a smaller class size (which was a happy but unintentional accident), and accelerated four years into three. We shared electives with the rest of the school and socialised widely. I was bullied pretty badly through my pre-teen childhood and the program provided a way out of that, which in turn taught me how to interact with a group of people who didn't physically and emotionally abuse me for social gain - something a lot of people take for granted.
Which is to say that anecdotes are of course going to be mixed.
My daughter is in gifted.
She still has a regular home room class that she is in 80% of the day. Gifted is treated as an elective where they have a class or two that is small in size and more intellectually stimulating (or so they say, I don't sit in there and have nothing to compare).
No extra homework...they don't give homework at all nowadays.
Because of how fragmented the United States school system is, your experience will definitely not be applicable to everyone. Heck, even the county next to mine does gifted differently.
It definitely isn't uniform in the US - it isn't even uniform in schools near each other.
Schooling systems between countries are very difficult to compare. I just learned that some UK schools have gifted and talented programs and funds, for example.
In some ways this supports the point, in others it's the exact opposite.
He says spoonfeeding information to people in bite-size chunks is like processed food and it should be hard, but you're saying that information should be spoonfed to 'smart' kids in exactly the right level of difficulty or they'll wreck their lives.
Possibly it's like the concept of flow, where the standard suggestion is that things should be not too hard and not too easy, in order to keep your attention, interest and focus.
But philosphically, that's just 'spoon-feeding' information in bite-size chunks like processed food, it's just varying the size of the bite to suit the level of the reciever, which again is exactly what he's saying is bad.
Eventually everyone is tested. I have received perfect looking resumes and cover letters, then you get the person on a call and they are… hopeless. It’s very sad. Who pushed them so far? How did they get the credentials? Who wrote and edited their materials?
Eventually the “rubber meets the road” so to speak, and all of the lies and gold stars and platitudes don’t count for anything.
There are certainly people like that, but there are also exceptionally smart people that just absolutely suck at selling themselves, and you might unknowingly decided the same way in case of both.
It’s very hard to fairly evaluate someone. E.g. I had interviews where I 100% know more than one of my interviewers on the specific topic (not bragging, my knowledge is ain’t a high bar), and that gap in this unusual direction made the process very awkward and strange.
I have only gotten jobs because of people I have worked with before. I have written all kinds of software for all kinds of systems and products but I just don't come across as smart on a first meeting. And to be fair I almost invariably like to chew on a knotty problem for a few days turning it over in my head till I get a feel for it, unless I have already solved a very similar problem; but I only want to solve novel problems. Old problems in software should be solvable easily. The current interviewing process would not hire me unless I had already worked with the deciders before.
> Old problems in software should be solvable easily
I keep telling people who interview me that this is what APIs, modules, and frameworks are for. They capture good solutions to problems and allow us to move faster and build better software. If they are rude to me I tell them that I thought they were an e-commerce business and should not be solving basic problems in Computer Science.
Oversimplification is bad, but there is a reason why Western/US universities are so much better at teaching students.
Imagine your professors and textbooks werent there to teach you, but they were there to show off their knowledge or to prove you that you know nothing.
A very known problem in my country is that a professor is not making a lecture to teach you something or to explain you something, the professor wants to show off his knowledge - that he is the king and you are a nobody.
Then you get unreadable textbooks full of big words (sometimes you think authors dont grasp them)... which are just plain student unfriendly.
I remembet that I had borrowed some statistics books from USA - and they were easier to read in English than the crap I had in my own language. They were easier to read and easier to understand. No big words. Just explanations and examples.
On a side note, they taught us physics with English abbreviarions. When most students didnt know English.
Think you are in 5th grade and they nake you memorize things like:
d = s x t
You have to figure out that it is distance, speed and time.
Note that those abbreviations have nothing to do with the local language. Also why even use abbreviations? Lazy teacher (AND lazy textbook) could have used full words at least. In own language, not English.
Most people from US dont realize how much easier you have. For starters you dont spend a lot of time learning English as a foreign language.
Then the non-Americans can get books that are written to teach you something* not to show that the author is great.
(* although now I think most textbooks are written for profit).
Indeed, the truth often lies somewhere in between.
It sounds like you might not have been studying to become a mathematician but had to take a statistics course as a requirement for your degree.
In such scenarios overcoming vague and complex teachings can indeed feel incredibly cumbersome, often resulting in a negative overall experience. However, when it comes to topics you’re passionate about the situation can be quite different. While exceptions exist in every field passion can make certain teaching styles more tolerable.
For instance, I taught myself programming at the age of 13 and I vividly remember struggling with OOP. It took me 2 months to grasp it, but I persevered.
English is not my native language and I was quite poor at it in school. I began learning English on my own because there were far more programming resources available in English than in my native language. I was terrible at math and finished high school with an E in math. Fast forward a few years I developed an interest in algorithms and theoretical computer science because I wanted to understand how compilers work. I spent months learning to comprehend mathematical symbols and notation, reading numerous resources that assumed a solid mathematical foundation which I did not have. I persevered because I was genuinely interested.
Making learning too difficult isn’t helpful, but neither is making it too easy. Like most things, it really depends.
I think this has more to do with budget. In many countries, professors are not paid specifically to write books, but if no proper book exists in the local language then they sort of have to do it one way or another. It usually ends up as some hodgepodge document, each chapter written by a different professor - whose are experts at their fields, but not at book writing!, which is a specific skill. Some or better at it, others absolutely suck. Then they just print it some way without any lecturing, unification of styles, references and use it as the course book, because they were sorta forced to.
In English, there is competition and people with actual experience can publish books, which will be used by multiple universities, if it becomes famous than multiple generations of students from multiple universities and years have criticized it making the nth version better, etc.
This is very different from the budget solution my med university (of which 4 exists in this language alltogether) could reasonably come up with.
Nonetheless, there were smaller topics, documents, chapters which easily surpassed the same found in any English language book, especially in mathematics (the Soviet block used to be famously good at mathematics, so the level was much higher than the west’s), for these small gems it does worth speaking obscure languages.
"Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out."
Oh, it is a book about stereotypes. Well, as a german it seems I have to get straight to the point, I do not think, thinking in stereotypes this broad is helpful for communicating.
If you would like an answer to that, then I would suggest reading the section titled "Being open to individual differences is not enough", and perhaps the quoted passage in the later section "Tasting the water you swim in".
You're probably less "German" than she thinks you are, and more "German" than you think you are, but that's not incompatible with what she says. Don't mistake the blurb for the content. I agree that the blurb is a bit obnoxious, but then, its function is to appeal to (or piss off) someone enough that they'll pause and consider buying the book (maybe if only to prove how wrong it is).
I have not read the book but I have heard the author speak on the topic, and in my opinion she adequately addresses your complaint. I personally still find her message a bit oversimplified, but isn't that what we're talking about? That's what you have to do in order to get your readers/listeners to understand what you're trying to communicate!
Or do you? As in the original article here, there can be benefit to reading things where the author doesn't try to make it easy. Perhaps they put down the messy truth in disconnected fragments, or they pile up lots of examples that don't quite fit any simple orthogonal dimensions of explanation. Such compendiums incorporate deep insight to anyone willing and able to put in the effort to derive it for themselves. Let the reader figure it out by meditating on them, or rereading them 100 times, or trying them out in practice, or whatever.
Thanks, that is a more nuanced perspective, so maybe I should give it a try.
"You're probably less "German" than she thinks you are, and more "German" than you think you are"
Possible. I am definitely "german" in many ways. I positivly associate with the "thinker and philosopher" tradition. But I hate beer culture.
But I also still have a unconscious deep rooted believe, that only german engeneering is good. But when I notice that, I stop with "wtf? I know that is BS". Those are the stereotypes I want to get away from. But when other people see me mainly as "german" - they push me into this role.
Did you read the beginning of the book or just read that one quote? The first chapter on a story about meeting etiquette in Chinese business culture is actually quite insightful. It certainly resonates with me a least. I wish I had a manual so I knew how to behave in a meeting with people from different cultures. We are not all the same and there is no one size fits all way of behaving in a meeting.
There are no doubt interesting anecdota inside, that might be insightful and there is no doubt some truth to some clichés, but I seriously doubt a box so big as "asians" has much value.
And even for "small" boxes like "germans", there are for example great differences between east and west germany (seperated by the iron curtain and different systems for over 40 years) - but more so for the older and less for the younger generation. Etc.
So reading in general about cultural differences when meeting someone from that culture can be surely be helpful - but in my experience it is not useful for taking such advice by the letter.
The alternative to considering "asians" or "germans" is probably not understanding each person's cultural background individually but rather putting everyone in a single "world" box. Which is the biggest and most useless one of all. Once you have a good understanding of a typical german you can of course zoom in and get more detail, but if you refuse to learn about germans in general then that's going to make you less understanding of both an old person from east germany and a young person from west germany, not more.
There is also the alternative of treating humans as humans first, if you don't know much about them, except their looks and their passport nationality.
And not assuming one has these and those traits, because they look "asian", but were raised in the US for example.
I know I met many people from many backgrounds all over the world and my thinking in boxes default mode, was never really helpful, but often very wrong. So it is good to know what some common traits are for a person from a certain cultural background, but not with the assumption that the individual in front of you is in fact like this. That can also offend people.
For example some cultures do not like to shake hands. Germans usually do, but personally I also don't. So just be conscious and try to read body language, would be my advice. And in case of doubt, asking a person on the side and not in front of everyone usually works to work around missunderstandings.
> There is also the alternative of treating humans as humans first
No there isn't, that's the same thing as just putting everyone in the "world" box. Which tends to boil down to just treating everyone like a member of your own culture (since most of the people from the world you've met are from your own culture), and ends up being worse.
> - then there is the more specialized interface with your local countrymen
If this is a good thing then surely it's good to do the same for other countries and regions. Occasionally there will be an individual from one of those countries/regions who is more like the average human than like the average human from their country/region, sure - but that's also the case with people from my local country.
> Or do you talk around here, like you talk with your peers around you? Would you know I am german, if I would not have disclosed it?
I am extremely conscious that HN is an American cultural space and one has to talk in specifically American ways to avoid getting downvoted or worse. It's not remotely a "neutral world human" way of interacting with people. If you came to my country I would hope you wouldn't act like you were on HN, there's already enough American cultural imperialism here as it is.
You are right, that in many political topics, american culture is dominating here. But I don't think it is true for technical topics. And many people here, including the moderation in my perspective, try to keep it as neutral as possible.
And the way to talk about technical things - to the point, no personal attacks, no ambiguity if possible, but clearly articulated - this is the way I also try to communicate in international settings.
Well, the differences between western cultures are less pronounced, but I do think that knowing, say, Chinese etiquette when meeting mainland Chinese people is essential to not come across accidentally as rude. There are significant differences there, and natural body language does differ with culture.
Nonetheless, I agree with your general point/sentiment.
"Chinese etiquette when meeting mainland Chinese people is essential to not come across accidentally as rude"
For sure. And I read up about any culture I visit the first time. But chinese are quite different from mongolians and thais for example. So my issue was especially with "asian". This term is allmost meaningless to me, as it puts billions of different people in one basket.
Alternatively, by doing what you suggest you embed stereotypes into the person which may then need to be undone, which is harder then starting from a blank slate.
This is how we get to harmful (even if well intentioned) ideas like “Asians are good at math”.
What you think the book is, and what it actually is, are very different.
It is not about stereotypes for judging someone from another culture. It is about how to think about other cultures so that we won't fail in stereotypical ways when we have to function in those cultures. And how to understand and resolve common conflicts that happen between businesses from different cultures.
> Well, as a german it seems I have to get straight to the point
"The Joy of Reading Books You Don't Understand"
It seems you didn't even try to understand The Culture Map, and opted for a strawman.
> I do not think, thinking in stereotypes this broad is helpful for communicating.
You're trying to use it as a cookbook. If you instead see it as a dictionary to be used when someone you're interacting with isn't behaving the way you had expected, it will make more sense. We can still be unique flowers with a wide variance, even if cultural regions have shifted medians.
"If you instead see it as a dictionary to be used when someone you're interacting with isn't behaving the way you had expected, it will make more sense"
Well, to be honest, I doubt that. By now I have read some examples from the book and the way he uses nationality in absolute terms and placing them on scales is deeply offputting to me. So far I often experienced situations where people behaved differently, than what I would have expected - but I do not recall any situation where placing those people on mathematical sounding scales would have explained their reactions better. With some thinking and asking they all could be explained and resolved in a normal way. To me the whole thing sounds like something that sounds good and easy on first glance - but falls apart when you look deeper. The author as a "international business expert" likely knows his way around different cultures simply by experience - not because he makes cultural meassurments in his head. But he made a goodselling book, so good for him. And good for you that you find value in it. I don't. So maybe I "didn't even try to understand The Culture Map" - or maybe I just have a different opinion.
Culture correlates strongly with nationality, you are throwing away a very powerful tool just for an ideological reason.
And no, often it is too late once you have already made the mistake, first impressions matter and you massively improve your chances if you take their nationality into account. Sure they might take your nationality into account and adapt to you instead, as you say that often works for you, good, but some people actually wants to learn to adapt to others.
"but some people actually wants to learn to adapt to others"
Yes. And I said I don't want to learn by fixating on nationality. Not that I don't take it into account.
And the quote above from the cover already talks about "asians". Even less meaningless. Not completely meaningless, but allmost. And all I read about the book seems like strongly fixating on nationality. Maybe it goes deeper at some point. I only judged from what I read. And I am aware of the potential irony given the topic, but so far I think, I understood enough.
I have not read the book but I have heard Erin speak, and I do find the high/low context dimension to be very powerful in explaining a great many things. I don't see how it applies all that well to this one, though, other than perhaps explaining one way in which something can come across as dense or cryptic. Specifically, you could use it to say that a text is embedded in the context in which it was written, and so for example what is not said can speak louder than what is said.
But I don't see how it explains differences in what is expected of a listener/reader/learner. I may very well just be missing it.
As Erin explains in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYfhTC9lIQ, the question is how much context the speaker can assume that the listener has. In a low context culture, the speaker assumes that the listener doesn't have much shared context. And therefore it is on the speaker to be explicit. In a high context culture, the speaker can assume that the listener will fill in a lot from that shared context. And it is on the listener to do so.
I am all for the "western" side, where the speaker has to provide the understanding, motivation and entertainment, especially in the modern day where information is easily accessible. It doesn't mean that no effort should be expected of listeners, more like unnecessary effort should be minimized.
An example of unnecessary effort would be using a foreign language listeners have no particular interest in learning. Personally, I would rather have my math class in a language I am at least fluent it, so that I can focus my attention on the math and not on the language. I also like my teach when they have an understanding of the psychology of learning, so that I can learn more effectively. Entertainment and motivation is part of it. It is spoon-feeding, but that's also how you get people to focus on the heart of the matter.
At higher levels, it becomes less of a consideration, not because it is unimportant, but because at high level, knowledge itself becomes scarce, so you'd be lucky to find someone who really knows his stuff, even if he isn't the best at making it easy for people to understand. So the listen can spare some effort as it is the only way to get that knowledge.
In the old days, knowledge in general was scarce so it made sense to tip the balance in favor of the speaker as you'd be lucky to have a knowledgeable speaker at all. But now, almost everything is a few clicks away on the internet, and the entire point of having a speaker is to present the information is an easily digestible manner. If you want to go "the hard way" you can do it by yourself, papers, textbooks, etc... are everywhere on almost every subject at almost every level, even more so if you embrace piracy.
As for painting, or meaningful art in general, it is also part of the artist job to guide the viewer, not just dump a random idea on canvas, this is just lazy (on the part of the artist). Leave some clues leading to the big idea. Think like a puzzle. Puzzles are designed to be challenging, but they also involve guiding the player so that in the end, they can solve a more difficult challenge than they would have been able to with no help.
Another thing to consider is that in a speaker-listener relationship, there are usually more listeners than there are speakers, so it is more efficient to have the speaker spend the effort being understood than having the listeners spend it understanding.
I didn't intend to claim that the "Eastern" way is unconditionally better. I'm just used to the Western way of thinking, so it's a novel perspective that I keep finding applies in more situations than I expect.
Making things understandable is good. It's just not always the right thing to optimize for. Which is very different from saying that complexity is always better. Or as you said it:
> It doesn't mean that no effort should be expected of listeners, more like unnecessary effort should be minimized.
If all the information that needs to be conveyed is in the material, then making it accessible, understandable, and digestible probably is most important. Again, as you said:
> it is more efficient to have the speaker spend the effort being understood than having the listeners spend it understanding.
But it's kind of the difference between a sack of gold and the proverbial Golden Goose. For some things, you can't get all the benefit at once. As someone else here brought up with the idea of reading a book 100 times, some books/lectures/whatever give you more, and something different, every time you go back to them. It's like you need to incorporate the previous pass into your head before you can peel back a layer and grasp the next one down. It's a weird experience; with the same Chinese teacher I mentioned, I've many times had the experience of re-listening and hearing something totally different than I remembered. I sometimes doubt that I've ever listened to that one before. I think partly that's because the information is not coming just from the material, it's coming from the interaction between my mind and the material, and my mind is changing all the time. (Not necessarily for the better, but I'll leave that aside...) So I disagree that this applies universally:
> But now, almost everything is a few clicks away on the internet, and the entire point of having a speaker is to present the information is an easily digestible manner.
It really isn't. A lot of stuff is, so much that we get overwhelmed and blinded by it to the point that we assume that it must cover everything. But some things are not out there, or at least not out there for easy picking. Nobody has yet been able to write up such a clear and accessible description of how to ride a bicycle that someone could read it and then ride off on a bike their very first time. And that's the rule, not the exception, even with cerebral subjects like calculus or programming or whatever.
It's not the difficulty that provides the extra value; you're not going to communicate more by making it artificially hard (as with your foreign language example)[1]. What helps is getting the learner to process more deeply, or apply the knowledge, or practice, or "use it in anger", or compete with it, or whatever way you want to say roughly the same thing. Our brains are not landfills of facts that benefit from the more you dump into them. They are coordinated systems of knowledge and behavior, where truly adding to one place requires adjusting everything else a little or a lot to accommodate.
[1] Actually, you might, but only because it slows the reader down enough for things to sink in. Any other mechanism would work as well, and a mechanism that adds something else to the mix like tests or reviews is going to be overall more effective and efficient than artificial friction.
The important thing I take away from this comment is that before you choose what to read, it's crucial to be able to identify which readings contain the most useful and valuable takeaways that are worth the effort of reading them. It's true that modern mental models of reading and writing train us to only seek out the stuff that's easy to read, but the real problem is that there's so much to read that we have to prioritize, leading to a tendency to read the easy stuff because it's a guarantee you'll get something out of it. Then there's a sort-of market dynamic leading to the success of the easy stuff and the dismissal of the hard.
If that dynamic means that we miss out on the readings that are truly transformative, we've lost. So perhaps the strategic differentiator between readers is to actually have a really powerful theory of prioritization, and useful mechanisms to prioritize (such as the curated references of a good university course or a social network that shares only the most important resources, regardless of how difficult they are to understand).
> If a reader can't follow the argument, it's automatically the author's fault and a waste of the reader's time. Heaven forbid the reader might need to exert some effort and grow in the gleaning.
I've experienced the receiving end of this a couple of times on HN. I once posted a blog post and it was extremely obvious that the detractors (who, despite toxic being a bit of an overblown word now, were being toxic and breaking HN rules and got away with it) hadn't even read perhaps a third or less before getting angry in the comments.
I don't care if people don't like the suggestion but I believe blocking should be implemented.
If this is true in general, it might have been a factor in why the scientific and technological 'revolutions' of the so-called Enlightenment occurred in the West.
the problem is how much shite there is out there to read through. you could read all the monad tutorials in the world but it won't help until you start using them yourself. (admittedly I'm going a step further from your point, not against it).
however, I'd say if I can't understand what an authors trying to say, it makes more sense to find one that I can understand first, and then go back to the more abstruse one.
with Poetry, the onus is still on the reader to get something out of it, even in the west.
I recently read "Pale Fire". (without the preface and Nabukov's commentary). I enjoyed it thoroughly, without understanding a lot, which is fine.
You'll see this often on the Internet: proof? Proof? Citation? Boy, no one's going to do any work for you. If you believe the wrong thing, the consequences are your own.
In fact, only people with no better use for their time will spend their time teaching you. This means you're being taught only by people whose time is worthless or for whom it is useful for you to believe in something.
If you're not paying for the knowledge, you're not the customer, you're the product. I never elucidate for those beneath me in understanding. I only discuss with peers.
Perhaps the only capable person I know who does different is Taleb but his pleasure appears to be in calling someone "imbecile" after proving them wrong.
I only wish for people to take a "little bit" of a charitable interpretation of my comments. Lot of time they simply find one little gap, wrong wording, etc and just run with it and dismiss my entire comment. I do it too, sometimes, but I like to think I do it for a reason.
Alas, we're all humans: greedy, and biased towards our own views.
Precisely. They usually come to you with misbelief and intentional miscomprehension. I don’t think it is worth convincing someone of the truth if they insist on finding a way to believe a falsehood. Let them believe.
Jokes aside, I find that this sentence makes much sense, especially in the context of online forums such as HN or Reddit:
In fact, only people with no better use for their time will spend their time teaching you. This means you're being taught only by people whose time is worthless or for whom it is useful for you to believe in something.
Because there are plenty of people who just enjoy explaining things or helping others understand, and to say the only two reasons for that behavior is that their time is worthless or they have an agenda is myopic.
Not only is it inaccurate, it is insulting to the person teaching you. Have you never been on a popular HN thread where a known expert in the field, someone who’s more productive and knowledgeable than you, provides context? But somehow because they did you feel it justified to call their time worthless? Well, certainly I’d regret wasting my time on someone like that and I’d hope the other readers were more appreciative.
What the OP is calling a “better use of time” I’m reading “more selfish use of time”. Maybe, just maybe, the person spending their time teaching others doesn’t consider their time worthless, but they manage it better and thus have some moments to share their knowledge. Or maybe they enjoy doing so. This is not a hard concept for those not affected by such a superiority complex they claim there are others “beneath [them] in understanding”.
I will agree that it is big yikes. But I will, at least kind of, agree that you are more likely to meet more arm chair scientists than you are scientists and actual field experts online in this fashion. Though, obviously, there are actual scientists and field experts around. The issue, as always, is how to differenciate them from the not-so-obviously fake ones as a layman.
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I recently read 100 Polish books in 100 consecutive days to see how much of the language I'd learn (I also listened to the matching audiobook of each book). To make meaning of the text, I relied on quick look-ups, context clues, and the audiobook's narration (inflection, pacing, etc.). At first, I hardly understood anything and didn't know any Polish vocabulary, but somewhere around book #50, I started recognizing words and phrases and even experienced language automaticity.
Many language experts say you should be able to comprehend about 90%+ of the vocabulary in your target language when you read, but I think that's completely unrealistic. Read as if you're fluent now, even if you don't understand a word of it. You will eventually learn!
For those interested in my experiment, I wrote a book about it called "BLITZED: What I Learned Reading 100 Books in 100 Days in My Target Language": https://a.co/d/0bKrjq44
Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit, Marx's Capital, Foucault's work, von Neumann and Morgenstern' Game Theory, and the Perl 6 Apocalypses and Exegeses from the early 2000's.
Deleuze is so overrated(although I am personally biased against everything that came out and was concurrent with Mai 68 in general). I don't know if you read it in French, but in French the only "French Theorist" worse than Deleuze/Guattari is Baudrillar(for how bad the concepts are).
IMO the most interesting one from that era is Clouscard.
I'm dismayed that no one so far has brought up a point that's begging to be made in these sorts of things.
While the point of the article has _some_ merit, there's also another equally valid contrary argument to be made.
Just because a book - however storied & fabled - exists out there, does not mean that you should strive to find some meaning, import or significant cogitable thought when one is not clearly and immediately present.
There's a whole industry of writers that exist to exclusively furnish meaning to the lofty thoughts of some distinguished authors, that that was simply never meant or not present in the authors own words. Sometimes the authors themselves invite and regale in this kind of festive chicanery. Sometimes not. But this sort of thing - far more than useful or warranted - does exist.
In other words some works of writing often fiction but not necessarily are just elaborate exercises in getting away with balderdash.
It pays to remember the enterprise of getting published in the past has not always been equitable as is the case today.
A virtual nobody off the street couldn't expect to even get his manuscript read by a publishing house, much less get published even for a limited run. So if you were already reputed or privileged or had the blessings of a wealthy house of patrons who bankrolled your previous works, you were more widely published and translated.
In other words far too many mediocre works of the past still get top billing, than they rightly deserve largely because no one called out their bullshit.
Yes, sometimes if you don't understand the author that is because the author never had the intentions of being understood in the first place or did not have much to say of value or import, however fleeting or ethereal or unyielding to lucid language, the authors thoughts were.
HN should buck this trend and not join in adulation.
> Sometimes the authors themselves invite and regale in this kind of festive chicanery. Sometimes not. But this sort of thing - far more than useful or warranted - does exist.
Why does art and the attempts at interpretation thereof have to be useful or warranted? Festive chicanery sounds delightful to me. I would like more of that in my life, please.
> In other words some works of writing often fiction but not necessarily are just elaborate exercises in getting away with balderdash.
> In other words far too many mediocre works of the past still get top billing, than they rightly deserve largely because no one called out their bullshit.
> HN should buck this trend and not join in adulation.
Do you have some concrete examples of works that fit these claims?
"I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book? To make us happy, as you write? My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that hurts us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like if we were being driven into forests, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." [2]
[1] Brief an Oskar Pollak, 27. Januar 1904. , https://homepage.univie.ac.at/werner.haas/1904/br04-003.htm
[2] Literal translation by ChatGPT. Original:
"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns."
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