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Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now.

Since I realized this, I am more meticulous when choosing what I do and don't do, there is no going back.

Hmm. The experiences that changed and benefited me most were least predictable. As a result, I try to manage experiences less, and choose the unknown more.

But in the spirit of what you've said, I try to avoid doing dumb, damaging, or boring things twice.

If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you will learn the things you never knew you never knew.

But can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

In all seriousness, I liked that line you quoted in the song. I wonder if there is a literary term for that repetition. It's not alliteration I don't think as the words themselves repeat.

Actually, it's not really repetition, since she's talking about the things you didn't even know were unknown to you.

polyptoton?

Or possibly antanaclasis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis

Epanalepsis?

Chiasmus?

Why are all rhetorical devices given such arcane names?

> arcane names

That's why they're magic! If people used these words every day they'd end up starting fires or summoning demons.

Rhetoric was invented in Greece

I think they're just Greek because we got them from the Greeks.

Camorepticus?

Scremaèlitude?

We're just making up words at this point, right?

Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death.

Pocahontas...

That's a good point. I'm a big reader - and I have lists of thousands of books I want to read. But one reason I semi-on-purpose still pick up random books that I stumble across and look fun, even if they're less "optimally chosen" by me, is exactly so that I sometimes stumble on things I would otherwise miss.

Or maybe just, like many readers, I love buying new books almost as much as reading them, and this is just an excuse to buy more... :)

For many things in life I try to find and loosely follow some ideal ratio of explore vs. exploit. For restaurants I've found 1:3 ratio works well - 3 times eating at restaurants I know I love, then the fourth time eating somewhere I haven't been yet. Usually the new restaurant doesn't live up to my favorites, but sometimes I find a new favorite.

That last bit resonates with me so much! In fact, there’s a word in Japanese for it - ‘tsundoku’! Ever since I stumbled upon it, I feel almost vindicated :)).

The funny thing is, I do the same with Audible books too, even if they aren't something I normally physically see. I just can't help buying books :)

>> I try to avoid doing dumb, damaging, or boring things twice.

As a parent I tell my kids: "Make lots of mistakes. Learn from them and don't repeat them; avoid the fatal ones". Then I try to remember my own words before I chastize them for their multitude of dumb decisions (teenage boys)...

To be fair, you have avoided the fatal ones. So at the very least you're not a hypocrite.

If someone is a current smoker and they eventually die of lung cancer, would you say that they avoided the fatal decision up until they died?

I mean, in the long we are all dead, but we have to say that there can be ultimately fatal decisions made in which the person does not immediately die.

We start aging, i.e. heading for death, the moment we are born. And with every breath henceforth. Some faster, some slower. So it is relative, in every sense.

The importance of embracing mistakes as opportunities for growth and learning

I just got into the habit of saying “yes” to pretty much anything. It has taken me on some wild rides indeed, and I am richer in spirit for it. It forged the bond between my wife and me - “shall we do a road trip across Eurasia?”, she idly asked, expecting at the very most a “maybe” - instead I grasped that nettle and applied for visas that day. Six weeks of utterly madcap adventure ensued. Since, I’ve found myself in an unending series of odd adventures of one variety of another, from fostering rare donkeys to… other stuff I’d be wise to not mention. Some episodes I would call ill-advised in the extreme, but all have been enriching.

There’s always a reason to say no, and it’s probably bullshit.

It also has the added benefit of uplifting others - it transforms their idle thought into something that actually happens.

Isn't this also just a form of survivorship bias? You wouldn't be posting this from prison for example.

Maybe at the end of the day simple platitudes only work for the lucky.

> > I just got into the habit of saying “yes” to pretty much anything.

> Isn't this also just a form of survivorship bias? You wouldn't be posting this from prison for example.

Note that "pretty much everything" is a proper subset of "everything" and could well be defined as "everything except the obviously stupid stuff that's highly likely to lead to bad outcomes", and this from a sample that's already biased in your favour -- e.g. the vast majority of places you can go in the universe would kill you instantly, but the vast majority of places someone might suggest going to, or offer to go to with you, won't.

If you filter out the "let's go see the Titanic in my home-made submarine" ideas, your odds are actually quite good.

Yeah, I have my limits - and while I have agreed to stuff that was in hindsight Quite A Bad Idea, the majority of my “sure, why not” moments have lead to the fantastic.

Well, by definition, if you have bad luck, you are unlucky.

But sometimes you can move out of a chain of bad luck events by doing something else and not repeating the same stuff while hoping for change.

> not repeating the same stuff while hoping for change

That infamous quote typically attributed to Einstein notwithstanding, really most of learning and progress is done by doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes.

It also requires a lack of commitments and a modest amount of disposable income.

The two go hand in hand - when I started agreeing to outlandish stuff, I was miserably running my business, commitments oozing from my ears, with barely two bob to run together.

Thing is, when you start saying yes to stuff, and start finding yourself in new places with new people, new opportunities present themselves. I am much materially wealthier now than I ever was when I worked for a living, partly due to income through new connections, partly due to a vastly decreased cost of day to day living by emigrating, and travel has become considerably cheaper as friends I made along the way make for happy hosts, or travel companions to split the cost of something outlandish with.

For example, I invested in an Australian I found wading in the mud at Aralsk, I befriended and helped out a PMC owner I met in Antarctica, and I robbed a Russian oligarch I met on a megayacht, in that order. All were lucrative. One of those falls into the “probably shouldn’t have” category (no prizes guessing which), but is still a “wait, I actually did that?”, and taught me more about myself and this strange world than I anticipated.

Time remains a luxury, but life is short, and easily squandered, so I spend it thoughtfully.

> It also has the added benefit of uplifting others - it transforms their idle thought into something that actually happens.

Hearty agreement, from the experience of both the receiving and offering ends of that gesture.

I don't think he is saying, don't be surprised, or have unique experiences. But don't sit and watch YouTube all day. You can curate your inputs to some degree, and limit just sitting and soaking in social media.

This is it, combined with the points brought forth by the parent. Like all things, a healthy balance seems to be the optimal strategy. Life’s a journey; good idea to plan but the people and places you find off the beaten path are often the most rich and rewarding.

There was a thread yesterday about closing public libraries, and this sentiment ties into that; open and free access to information is important, because a lack thereof causes people to become blinkered and close-minded, which in turn makes them more susceptible for populist talking points (that is, a populist politician or propaganda telling you there is a Problem; when people don't have factual information to the contrary, or even a mindset of curiosity ("is that actually true?") they are more likely to accept it).

Hence, book burnings, censorship, and suppression of free speech are problematic.

(That said, I also believe that free speech should be curtailed on platforms with large audiences)

I have a great appreciation for public libraries. I consider them to be one of the best examples of a public institution. They provide much more than just information. Everyone has the same access and privileges. They are just about the only warm, quiet, and comfortable space that isn't somehow exclusive or privately controlled. For someone without access to their own space (i.e. a stable home) they provide a place to find respite from an often hostile environment.

Libraries are a treasure that represent the best of humanity.

Having lived in quite a few different cities and towns, I've come to the conclusion that the quality of the library (i.e. of the space, atmosphere, and resources provided) correlates with the quality of the community.

As a student that can't focus in loud places and that had to live in a loud place... Gah.

With web or other searching, every 'platform has a large audience'.

One of the worst censor/suppressor of free speech is also the largest web search.

This is pretty trite if you stop to think about it. “Everything in your life that you experience has an effect on your experience of life.”

We all exist in the world, not apart from it, and no amount of exclusion or creation of “sterile spaces” will change that.

Expressions like "eat your vegetables" and "life is short" are also trite. But the purpose of folk wisdom isn't to shock and awe with fresh insights. The purpose is to remind people of what they already know to be true. That way we steer our behavior more towards the kind of life we want to live.

Your reply is simple, yet profound. Answers to the question of "why" must be understood.

Before retiring, I trained new hires, the age gaps were sometimes very interesting. The younger they were, the more they wanted to know. (obviously their experience level was pretty low.) I used adages to bring a point home when explaining a difficult concept. It worked every time.

the comments under this post exemplify: "one person's profound is another's trite"

Maybe "trite" wasn't the right word. More like a tautology.

I guess you could call it "folk wisdom" but it seems more like a restating of the obvious to me.

Firstly, I'd argue it's only a tautology when you phrase it in a particular way (and take some knowledge about how the brain works as "given"). The point isn't that the effect happens at all, it's about the degree to which even small instances influence who we are.

But more importantly, we are creatures of habit before we are creatures of intellect. Stating things like "you are the sum of your experiences" isn't necessarily to reveal new and profound information, it is to emphasize a fact of existence that can easily become overlooked or underappreciated. Especially as we get on in the years and more and more of our behavior is on autopilot. There is value in reminding people to look for potential blindspots and providing some motivation a more careful consideration of the aspects of your life that have become unconscious even if the message comes in a trite or tautological package.

It's like people who have been stuck for the past 5 years spending 2+ hours every day scrolling a social media feeds littered with bad news, snapshots of arguments, and fake representations of the world but can't make a connection between this maladaptive behavior and the growing sense of cynicism and existential malaise that's impacting their happiness. Sometimes it is helpful to hear this kind of stuff (assuming it actually gets through) even though it should be obvious.

>We all exist in the world, not apart from it, and no amount of exclusion or creation of “sterile spaces” will change that.

The surrounding reality in the world doesn't change but the gp was talking about deliberate curation of that reality.

Maybe another example using advertising to help highlight the difference:

- block ads during web surfing with PiHole and uBlock. <-- the curation perspective of gp y04nn's, "I am more meticulous when choosing what I do and don't do, there is no going back.

- no amount of blocking ads will change the fact that ads exist in the world <-- your perspective

Yes, you're correct that "ads still exist" but browsing the web without it is still a nicer experience.

I just don’t think it’s a good life strategy to obsess over every single piece of media that you may inadvertently consume. Use an ad blocker and avoid outright garbage, sure, but that wasn’t the vibe I got from the parent comment. Constructing this sort of sterile world always ends badly when you’re forced to deal with things from outside it.

As a general life strategy, I think it’s always better to “filter” rather than “block.”

I don't think it is trite: you need to remind yourself that the information you ingest will have an effect on you. If you're deeply informed about an ongoing violent conflict it will have a negative effect on your mental health as you'll watch a lot of violence.

I've been practising information hygiene for a while - if I can't change anything about problem X and it does not affect me or my family, should I be deeply informed about it? - and it has done wonders for my mental health.

Indeed. Although as with anything, moderation is key. Not too much, or too little. Listening to 4 hours a day of Tiktok or Youtube boneheads, probably isn't all that good for the average person.

(I'm not referring to intellectual videos, but instead just "some random person" that has amassed 10M followers because they .. well I don't know what they do, except market themselves well. Then start blathering on about literally the dumbest blather ever.

For example, taking medical advice from some guy living in a van, or taking scientific advice from some dude who doesn't even understand ... anything.

Populism to the extreme. Lookit me, I'm purdy, ergo my opinion on everything supersedes everyone.)

Well, why should I listen to a random person commenting on HN? ;D

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Having watched a lot of educational and scientific videos, I'm beginning to think there are diminishing returns, and they can be just as addictive and non-valuable.

Filling the day with any video's seems to have downsides.

I mean, then take ops advice one more step

>moderation is key. Not too much, or too little

Watching videos all day, even 'good' videos isn't moderation. Your physical body, therefore your mind suffers from lack of exercise.

Hard agree. I have really tried to make sure I spend most of my time reading high quality material these days. I realised my brain being saturated with a lot of drivel was actually having a notable impact on me. Much more than I expected.

Not if you approach it through epigenetics. :)

I don't think the blog post necessarily supports this view. You still have your free will.

Your past experiences also teach you what to ignore. You are free to do that to my comment. :)

Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free will it’s still influenced to some degree by our biology.

My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands.

Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though.

> “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me."

Yes I can, because I didn't choose to be angry either.

But would anger be reasonable? Of course not.

I disagree. But we’re not going to solve free will in HN comments. Personally I don’t think “free will” means anything or makes sense any more than “god” makes sense. It’s just a bundle of feelings that means something different to everyone.

> We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though.

Hmm, no we can't. And the few people who seemingly can do that, it's because their biology/environment allowed that. So kind of circling back to determinism. Free will is a myth that's used to lock people up.

If you slap someone in the face, we'll lock you up somewhere because we don't know if you'll do it again. It doesn't matter if there is free will or not. Society has decided to put annoying elements in a huge bastille and call it a day.

I'm going to nominally disagree with you, my genes are in total control and I must.

Free will is a matter of definition, and certain definitions, no matter how hard we try, can't be formulated as easily as one does in, say, Euclidean geometry.

So you can come up with a definition of the free will you don't have, let's call it "absolute determinism", and it has all sort of interesting criminal applications, beyond slapping people on the face (yes, who does that anyway?).

For example, you could use your[^1] absolute determinism to build a very advanced AI that relies on a pseudo-random generator with a fixed seed. Fallibility is the result of using stochastic search methods, and your AI shows it. In that respect and many others, your AI acts exactly as a human would because you programmed it that way. Yet, you have the strongest argument possible to affirm that the AI you created has no free-will. One day, the AI leaves a bunch of children mentally dysfunctional[^2]. But it has no free-will, all it is emanates from you. So you must be charged for the AI's crime.

Your lawyers come to court and state that you in turn have no free-will, that you are God's creature. The prosecutor brings a priest to say that God gave you free will. The judge says that precedent demands you be thrown from a high mountain, but it's feeling like a good day for a crucifixion. Of course, the trial is a shamble, a racket run by Sapiens' genes to ensure that they are passed down. And from that point of view, you committed the ultimate sin.

The way out? Submit to your genes, do what they tell you to. Believe in free-will.

[^1] I wash my hands.

[^2] Wait, did that happen already?

> my genes are in total control and I must.

That is not true. Your gene expression is influenced by experiences, and not just yours, but your grand-grand parents' experiences, too. See: epigenetics and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

> Your lawyers come to court and state that you in turn have no free-will, that you are God's creature.

Some say that lack of free will, i.e. determinism undermines moral responsibility, which in turns means that it conflicts with punishment and so forth. I believe that it ultimately does not matter; you can punish for the behavior alone.

If you believe in determinism, then it is likely you also believe in physicalist monism (“there is only the matter and consciousness arises/derives fully from it or is an illusion”).

Normally there is not much I can say to change your mind on that, but just note—there are other views, like idealistic monism, which unlock other possibilities wrt. free will, and which cannot be disproven or proven compared to physicalist monism (which cannot be proven or disproven either).

I'll just echo this, in that monistic idealism (especially, as a personal preference, in the declination of analytical idealism) is a worldview able to supersede the incongruous, untenable and for the most part, epistemically moot physicalism/materialism, which is sadly still considered the default mainstream worldview.

As parent said, many open questions and interpretations become relatively trivial under idealism, while preserving 100% of our scientific understanding and method.

Could you name-drop any analytic idealists? What would be in your opinion a good starting point?

Bernardo Kastrup.

I think the best resource are his books. He also has several online interviews. The guy used to work at CERN and ASML, turned to philosophy.

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/

A compressed version of the same material

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/ef-keytoe-analytic-ideali...

The PhD dissertation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iyoiJmWvSs

Enjoy the rabbit hole :)

The problem with any form of physicalism is that if consciousness arises from physical principles, then the vast majority of the universe consists of unobserved physical interactions. Does the universe really exist at that point? If it doesn't, how come I am here to experience it? If it does, it would be more likely that I am a disembodied boltzman brain than a human that evolved on earth, since there is no reason for the unobserved portion of the universe to not be infinitely large. You simply wouldn't know it.

If so, then it is also determined whether I believe in free will or not.

That is, I don't have the free will to believe in free will or not.

That is true, whether or not you believe in free will at a specific point in time is a result of your previous history (internal and external influences).

Who's this "society" and how has it managed to have free will?

If someone can't "decide" to slap their neighbor in the face and is determined to do that, why can't the same reasoning be applied to society? Society didn't freely choose to lock someone up, it was determined to do so.

Either way, face slappers and other annoying people get locked up.

> walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.”

Of course they could. Anger is a way for the body to react without choosing as a defense mechanism against the next slap. Either your biology would recognise the anger and step back, or the other person would punch you back, making you afraid to repeat what you did.

I’m not siding with or against free will, I just don’t think your example works to prove the point.

I’m not sure what the point is?

Why can’t I be angry? Surely you must see anger is and never will be rational (and also not free).

My anger at your slapping is as much determined as your slapping. I see no problem.

Free will arguments usually refer to these “justice requires freedom”-like arguments and I feel that’s not the case at all.

You can punish, you can feel anger. It’s all included. You cannot separate reactions, this one is free, this one is not. It’s a package deal.

There's free will in the sense that the system is so chaotic and complex that it's impossible to predict for us now at current technology levels, maybe never possible to predict, but I don't see anything in science that would allow free will to be a thing. We're complex automata in the end.

I think this is a failure in imagination not a failure in science.

Still, all these free will deniers are basing their worldview on the (radical) assumption that.

1. Everything has a cause 2. Everything is explainable 3. physical matter is all there is 4. Science can describe literally everything about the universe 4a. Corollary - things that aren’t describable by science don’t exist

All of those claims are unfalsifiable at best and demonstrably false at worst (depending on how hard you squint). Science is effective for repeatable experiments, but that’s not a guarantee that there aren’t events that are one-and-done.

I agree, but I have to admit that once we have to invoke mysterious one-off miracles and unknowable states of existence to explain something so radically basic like “free will” we have IMO gone off track.

This feels like a God of the gaps type argument and those give off a particular smell.

Those damn unknown unknowns keep mucking things up for us, don't they

> tongue and cheek

tongue-in-cheek

slap

Not really. We don't need an answer to the question of free will to react to anything.

Free will hasn't been disproven either. It's up in the air how much is undetermined, and how to define being "schakled" in the context of no free will. Even if we are affected by ourself and others, that does not prove a lack of free will.

> Free will hasn’t been proven.

Free will is something that we experience which provides extremely compelling evidence that it is true. Things don't have to be empirically proven in order to be true, if that were the case then empiricism itself would fail the test as it has never been established to be true empirically.

Existence of mental illness or troubles makes me doubt that.

What is free will when you are suffering from pathological procrastination, depression or addiction ?

If you accept the fact that, like in addictions, your brain chemistry makes you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol even when you know you’ll die from it and know it makes you miserable then how can you be convinced that you really control your normal behaviors ?

Why does anxiety makes me stay in my couch and antidepressants makes me want to go outside ?

I understand free will as a moral concept but at a biological level, i feel like it adds a lot of shaming and suffering to people who struggle to modify their behavior because science now knows that changing behavior is hard and impossible without physical modification of the brain structure.

> If you accept the fact that, like in addictions, your brain chemistry makes you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol even when you know you’ll die from it and know it makes you miserable then how can you be convinced that you really control your normal behaviors ?

Your brain chemistry is part of this will, though.

> science now knows that changing behavior is hard

I don't think science knows things. And while changing behaviour is hard, and much harder for some than others, it still doesn't mean that the total system that makes up your mind, including biological predispositions, is not your will.

>Your brain chemistry is part of this will, though.

But here's the thing, given enough knowledge that chemistry is deterministic.

Will seems to be one of those words we've created from deep ignorance, much like consciousness, and the more we learn about the world and ourselves the less our old views make sense.

I think you've just invented Victorian-era determinism.

What causes someone to suppress doing something they want to do, but have decided is wrong, even if they will never be caught? Or to do something they don't want to do, but have decided is right, even if no-one will ever know?

I would call that "will".

Could depression, or other mental illnesses, be the outcome of one's bad decisions (or failure to make decisions)?

> Could depression, or other mental illnesses, be the outcome of one's bad decisions (or failure to make decisions)?

Sometimes, the outcome of one's decisions (bad is an unnecessary value statement here. Was it a "bad" idea to start a restaurant that failed and made you sad? Cmon).

However, a huge swath of mental illness, including depression, is the result of environmental and genetic factors utterly outside your control. Your mom smoked crack when you were in her womb and somehow that's "the outcome of your bad decision?"

[dead]

> i feel like it adds a lot of shaming and suffering to people who struggle to modify their behavior

You just moved the shaming from "look they are lazy and don't move from the couch" to "they are lazy because they made bad decisions"

Possible in some circumstances. But also possible that they are the result of other peoples actions (example: emotionally abusive parents or partner)

If you have an emotionally abusive partner, and don't do something about it, perhaps depression is acting as a prompt for you to take action. Some part of you (your soul, say) knows better, and via pain (depression) is trying to shift you towards a better, more joyful, result. I believe we have an innate guiding system, and that this is how it works - move away from pain, towards joy.

You can fail to take action, you can take drugs to manage the negative situation more comfortably, but, if abuse is the underlying issue, a genuine change of circumstances is required.

It is important to listen to your body and mind, and for sure - make changes when things are bad. Staying with abusive partners is not worth it.

However it can take a while to realize the problems and manage to get out. This may have effects that last for a good while. People do not deserve abuse or the negative effects of such abuse, just because they technically could have made a change, or made it earlier.

Pretty bad prompt to take action then, you know, the thing that makes it harder and less likely for you to take action?

How do you know you experience it beyond a reasonable doubt? Thoughts and intentions just seemingly appear in consciousness, without any explanation as to how they arose. Feelings are like this too; we don’t determine how we feel, we are simply served them.

When experiencing a negative emotion, some people seem to believe they can ‘free will’ their way out of it by thinking positively or something there over, but that intention too is also just a thought that appears in consciousness. To decide what to think in a manner compatible with what most people think free will is would require you to decide what to think or feel before actually thinking or feeling it, which is not possible.

And when you think about the causality of feelings or thoughts, which are just neuronal signaling patterns/chains in the brain, it begins to appear much more mechanical than free will intention.

> How do you know you experience it beyond a reasonable doubt?

I have no reason to doubt my common sense experience.

> we don’t determine how we feel, we are simply served it.

No definition of free will that I have encountered considers it an absolute freedom from any form of determinism. We’re obviously influenced by our nature and external influences. For instance my emotional predispositions are largely determined and my thoughts are not entirely under my control but I do have scope to shape both my emotions and my thoughts over time by what I choose to focus on. I can choose to do what is necessary to change my behavior and to treat people differently than what comes naturally. I know all of this because I have done it, I have experienced it. No materialist philosophy of mind has produced any compelling evidence to contradict my experience of free will in this capacity.

I sort of responded to this idea in another comment, but again. How can you take ‘personal credit’ (as if you could have acted otherwise) for choosing to change your behavior? Isn’t that an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow?

> an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow

This seems to be an idiosyncratic definition of free will.

On the other hand, I think it's simplistic to equate picking options from a mental list as "free will". I think the point you are replying to is valid because if there's free will, it's not just "choosing from a list". The list itself (the options you present yourself) has way more impact on your behavior than what you choose, even. So the matter of the question is, do you have free will in forming a list.

> do you have free will in forming a list

This seems like a separate question. Having the power to choose doesn't mean you have every conceivable option in mind, nor that you have the power to exercise every choice, nor even that you like any of the choices.

There's a few things you can choose to do at any time. You can almost always choose to for example close your eyes and keep them closed. Why don't you do it? You have the free will to stop blinking but your brain doesn't pose you this question so you don't even consider it. But now it's considering it. I'm just trying to reduce your argument to the absurd, and probably doing a bad job, but I don't think you can separate the list of options that appear to you from the question of free will, to me it's paramount to what happens after, so if what happens after is what defines free will or not, the list has to be part of it.

Did the first particles that ejected from the big bang have free will?

> if what happens after is what defines free will or not

This sounds much too broad - I can't tell what it means. The things I listed are the normal constraints around how we define free will:

> > doesn't mean you have every conceivable option in mind

I think this is what you were exploring in your reply.

> > nor that you have the power to exercise every choice

I might choose to fly, but that doesn't mean that that is what will happen

> > nor even that you like any of the choices

I might be choosing between allowing myself to be robbed and risking being shot, but I am choosing within my horrible options.

> Did the first particles that ejected from the big bang have free will?

I don't think anyone's claiming they did, no.

Imagine there's no free will.

Whatever happens you'll end up crossing the road right now.

In one example, you absent-mindedly cross the road.

In another example a thought comes to you to get coffee, and you cross the road to get it.

In another example you consider not getting coffee, and going to the park instead, but end up choosing coffee because you feel sluggish.

If there's no free will, any amount of thinking before the decision doesn't prove there's free will. It's just more stuff that was also predetermined. You having an illusion of choice doesn't prove anything.

> You having an illusion of choice doesn't prove anything.

It's not reasonable to assume one's experience is an illusion without sufficient evidence which is a bar you haven't crossed. Therefore your argument begs the question.

I didn't say so. I said that having choices to make presented to you, if there were no free will, would be a valid state of affairs. Since it's possible that choices are illusions, you need to address how the choices appear to prove there's free will, it's not enough to say you consider different choices before acting.

>I have no reason to doubt my common sense experience.

That's why people thought the Sun moved around the Earth. I mean, it's just "common sense" -- you see the Sun in the East in the morning, and then it's in the West in the evening. It turns out "common sense" is not useful for understanding how things work.

Hrm? When I think of things I tend to see multiple possibilities at once, and then decide which I think is the most reasonable, and go from there. Similar for emotions. I'm well aware of my emotions but can control them. And I think not doing so would be quite a poor way to behave.

Perhaps it's that we all think in somewhat different ways, yet because our own mind is the only one that we will ever know - we simply posit that everybody else must think the same way, or at least quite similarly. For instance there's that weird datum that supposedly some huge percent of people don't have an inner monologue, at all. I find it extremely difficult to believe, but if it were true then it would certainly be much easier to understand how somebody else might not believe in free will.

> Hrm? When I think of things I tend to see multiple possibilities at once, and then decide which I think is the most reasonable, and go from there.

And based on what do you decide ? Probably your past experience, your knowledge, your education and your moral values. Which are all somehow environmental factors.

Of course. I'm not saying environment has no impact at all - that would be plainly absurd. I am saying that, in the end, the choice of what you do is up to you. Your experiences will influence, but they will not dictate you. I assume you'll appeal to physicalism here, but at that point we just end up getting into an unanswerable philosophical debate. So I would simply say that while what I'm assuming is not falsifiable, neither is physicalism.

I'm largely swayed by the 'conscious experience.' Presumably neither of us believe that if you make a program to add 2+2, that some entity suddenly pops into existence and imagines itself to be adding 2+2 only to then zip out out of existence. Where we may differ is that I don't think that changes if we go from adding 2+2, to instead sequentially carrying out arbitrarily more simple instruction.

Yet here we are - 'passenger' or 'driver' in a body feeling as though we have complete control over our own actions. I tend to believe what lay before my eyes. And so in this case, I am obligated to reject this as being an emergent property of complexity, or as a facade. Which, in turn, obligates me to reject physicalism.

Are you positing that you have free will but that those around you with less emotional control don’t? I don’t think your example is serving your argument; your brain is structured in such a way that you reason in a way that is unique to you, and others reason otherwise based on the structure of their brains. I don’t see how this grants you free will. You’re talking about feelings and reasoning as part of conscious experience and that’s, in my opinion, the end state of all of the neurological activity that pointed us to feel or think a certain way in the present moment.

The chain of causality that leads to thoughts and emotions in consciousness is completely determined by the structure and action potentials that propagate through our brain and nothing else, and this doesn’t leave room for some conscious agent in our brain also pulling levers and further modifying causality.

No, I am stating that we can control and change how we behave, which is largely the definition of free will. This is why even identical twins growing up in a practically identical environment will not end up identical. To continue with claims of no free will you end up needing to start appealing to some sort of a butterfly effect of environment. And while that claim is not falsifiable and probably never will be, I think such diverge is vastly more easily explained by simply people having agency and, in identical circumstance and even near identical genetics, being free to make different decisions.

> To continue with claims of no free will you end up needing to start appealing to some sort of a butterfly effect of environment.

The differences between the lives of even identical twins in the same environment are a lot more than a flap of a butterfly's wings. They don't spend every second of their lives together, so their experiences will differ quite a bit.

You already said it. "practically identical" is not the same as identical, which alrady explains the (butterfly?) differences. Miniscule differences actually add up...

The amount of possibilities you see might be influenced by your emotional state, and what you call "reasonable" might not be the same thing as other people consider it.

A lot of our reasoning are applications of observations and best practices rules that we are sometimes not really aware of unless challenged by circumstances or outsiders.

This is to some degree necessary - the outside world is too complex to fully model inside our minds. The most important things that we can only build approximate models about are other people.

How are you experiencing free will? You have no idea what your next thought will be, nor can you control it. You have the opinion that you have free will, but that doesn't mean it's true.

You can’t choose what you will think about? How do you get through the day? Are you just frequently blindsided by random non-sequiturs that derail you for hours? I routinely chose things to think about or things to concentrate on.

It’s not like all thoughts leap into my mind fully formed either. Hell, I edited this message before hitting reply.

Choosing is not free will.

You choose based on your past experience. If you know doing A is better than B, you didn’t choose A, it’s just that your brain already knows that A is the best option based on past experience or knowledge or beliefs.

Even if you choose the seemingly "worst" option B, it’s just that you know that new experiences can be rewarding so your brain is ok to try it.

And there is the extreme example : given you are in good mental health, you are totally, physically, unable to chose to kill someone (or even yourself) without a very important reason (to you).

Also, if the absence of free will at biological levels don’t make the concept useless at the society level. Accepting that environment, culture, knowledge and society have such an influence on us just shows the importance of shaping a good society.

Accepting absence of free will at a biological level can just makes us more empathetic towards others.

It doesn’t means society have to accept any wrong behavior from humans but rather something way more positive : society is ultimately responsible for individuals behaviors and have the power to change them for the benefit of everyone.

This is a lot of text to mean, “I’ve already made up my mind I can’t make any choices.”

Typing out such a long rambling reply was itself a choice.

> Typing out such a long rambling reply was itself a choice.

First sentence GP wrote is: "Choosing is not free will.". Did you choose to ignore what GP wrote when writing your reply?

Free will isn't about making choices, at least not according to any definition I've heard. After all, it is obvious that in some way we do make choices. As far as my understanding goes free will is, depending on the definition, either about choosing differently when all else is equal or not having a gun pointed at your head when making a choice.

Free will is absolutely largely about making choices. That’s not all of it, but denying that is silly, it’s goal post shifting from the ones who don’t believe in it.

> Free will is absolutely largely about making choices.

Free will largely isn't about making choices or having choices. It is largely about how/why we make choices.

Bacteria can move, thus bacteria have a choice of direction in which to move. Bacteria move, so it is making a choice.

If GP has free will just because they made a choice to write a reply to you, as you claim, then it must follow that bacteria also have free will. Am I wrong or do you think that bacteria have free will?

Responding to stimuli with a reflex is not a choice.

That just sounds like an arbitrary difference. What is the difference between a reflex action and choice action? Do animals have free will?

And what process do you propose decided to think “I chose my thoughts and what to concentrate on”?

Surely you must see this is problems all the way down.

Simply think about what you want to concentrate on, then concentrate on that until you get tired or physically can’t concentrate on it any more?

I would be shocked if I was the only one on HN who ever thought, “I don’t want to think about this right now, I want to think about <whatever>” and then stopped thinking about the first thing. In aviation there’s even actually training on division of attention and learning to prioritize and concentrate selectively. You evaluate the situation and classify things as “important” or “not important” then focus in the important stuff. Literally choosing what to think about in the moment.

You’ve never said “gotta concentrate on this now,” and then concentrated on it very hard? Everyone on here is going overly reductive and going into infinite regress as though that proves their point, but it’s Sorites Paradox. “Oh where did the decision about its importance come from? Well that’s entirely the product of your environment! Checkmate free will!” But it’s a lot simpler than that, in the heat of the moment if you don’t have time you tend to fall back to your training, but in other decisions - even when making a choice about what to think about - you can even hold a bit of a discussion with yourself, or lay out the pros and cons to decide what to do, evaluate them all and then choose.

You can absolutely choose to think about one thing or think about another. That’s its own sort of free will. As I read a lot of these comments I really pity the people who don’t believe they’re imbued with free will. It really makes me wonder about their lives and upbringing.

You are glossing over very fundamental issues here. If you want to be pragmatic about it, sure. Don’t worry about it. At the macroscopic scale this discussion does not matter and of course I can choose what to focus on, I hope we all can.

But then again, the addict also says he willingly chooses to drink another beer.. I’m sorry, I can’t let go. But I get your point and TBH I don’t really care either way. I just like to introspect and get at the bottom of things and then let go.

> You can’t choose what you will think about? How do you get through the day? Are you just frequently blindsided by random non-sequiturs that derail you for hours?

My tongue-in-cheek answer here is: Correct, badly, and it looks like the obsessive-compulsive desire to check social media and/or the news.

Choose to stop then? I mean social media that is - but seriously. Choose to say, “I’m not driven by my pleasure sensors” and do something hard for the sake of doing it - not for glory, not for nothing. Nihilism and predestination lead to some orettt dark places.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of the folks I hear advocating against free will (which is really a stance against choice and even our own consciousness at its core) have never had to make any real “no-shit” choices in their life with serious consequences. I don’t mean to sound like an ass, but I both pity and envy these folks. Obviously you don’t have control over a lot of things, but the idea that this is all on rails screams “I’ve never had to do anything that had any real risk to it.”

> Choose to stop then?

"""Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behaviour that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use often alters brain function in ways that perpetuate craving, and weakens (but does not completely negate) self-control.[1] This phenomenon – drugs reshaping brain function – has led to an understanding of addiction as a brain disorder with a complex variety of psychosocial as well as neurobiological (and thus involuntary)[a] factors that are implicated in addiction's development.[2][3][4] Classic signs of addiction include compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, preoccupation with substances or behavior, and continued use despite negative consequences. Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward),[5][6] coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long-term costs).[3][7]""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

I block some social media entirely, and I have to block rather than simply "choose to stop", due to the "compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli" and habituation to patterns "characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward)".

I can easily recognise the long term deleterious effects social media, especially when it comes to just being horizontal in bed, either needing to go to sleep or to get up in the morning, and wanting to open up a browser on my phone to check for replies rather than either of those.

> which is really a stance against choice and even our own consciousness at its core

The me of the id is not the same as the me of the ego, or the superego.

The me of tomorrow can curse the expanding waistline caused by the cake eaten by the me of today.

There is only one thing any of us can choose to do in any given moment while remaining true to ourselves; but which of the selves is truly "our"?

I know what addiction is, of course I’m aware that there’s a biological component. I quit smoking, I have many friends who quit drinking or doing drugs. It was incredibly hard, but I did it. Some of them did it.

I met a young guy while I was backpacking last year who was quitting heroin cold turkey. He was back packing to quit - he’d simply chosen to walk out of his home and go without heroin for thousands of km from the trail system by his home in France.

He was a nice guy - I wonder what became of him, but still, he chose to simply stop. I think you have a lot more agency than you think. Yeah, things cannot be undone, but you can definitely will yourself to change a great many things. It’s just hard and our body resists doing hard things.

I think another part is that materialism, determinism and science have (seemingly) given us great understanding and control of our environment and overturned lots of superstitious and erroneous ideas that society has. So if you accept materialism and determinism as the base of the universe and nature of things you naturally arrive at the conclusion that there is no free will.

I have a hunch that the universe is more complicated than that and might likely be beyond human understanding, but maybe that's just another superstitious belief. Regardless, we should keep using Science to explore because it is the best model we have so far and continue to use Philosophy to question things.

Personally I feel that I have free will and understanding of my emotions gives me more free will. Even if I am wrong, I prefer living in a non-free will universe and believing in free will than living in a free will universe and not believing in free will. In the former case that would just be my destiny, haha.

I agree at the universe being much more complex than we comprehend.

> Nihilism and predestination lead to some orettt dark places.

I think it's the other way around. Because as a society we believe in free will, we easily ignore the effect of environment on our choices. We let social media companies make their products addictive, because we believe that it's a choice to use them. If we ackwnoledged the fact that our choices are the result of our genetics and experiences, we could start creating a society that avoids such practices and would be a better place to live in.

Let's say you were addicted to social media and you never in your life have heard or read anything bad about it. No one has ever mentioned quitting social media to you. Do you think the thought to do so would come to your mind? Or is the "choice" to quit social media just a path carved into your brain by all the negative experiences you have had or heard about?

This is all just word salad though - you don’t have to ignore the effect of environmental conditions to believe in free will. Just because I was born to who I was or grew up where I did doesn’t mean that I cannot change things in my life. Seriously - it’ll be hard, but just try to change. I bet you’ll be surprised.

> Just because I was born to who I was or grew up where I did doesn’t mean that I cannot change things in my life.

False dichotomy.

What you can change, you can change. What you can't, you can't. Both exist, but not only those.

People can also want and seek help to change parts of yourself beyond your own control — to put the cookies beyond reach; to ensconce yourself in a monastery or nunnery to avoid being around those you're ashamed to fancy; to block the websites you can't resist typing in the URL for when half asleep.

And beyond that even; "thinking outside the box" isn't just a business cliché, there can be ways to change that were already possible, yet the mere thought had not formed and could not spontaneously emerge within a mind, yet when heard it is easy.

> Seriously - it’ll be hard, but just try to change. I bet you’ll be surprised.

If you made the bet to me, you would lose.

My main surprise in this life has been expecting to be able to change more, to resist more temptations, to have more self control.

At university, first year, we had a challenge. With appropriate safety gear, climb a telegraph pole, jump from the top to a trapeze. The teacher framed it in advance: "You'll think you can't, but you can. Remember that going forward, remember the voice saying you can't is wrong."

I climbed without fear. They had to tell me to slow down to keep the safety role taught. I expected it to be fine. I got my torso above the top… and my limbs froze. I still felt no fear, but my limbs were no more responsive to my desire to climb further and stand on the top, than when I have sleep paralysis. This was annoying, frustrating, but not scary. I came down by jumping sideways off the tower, and amused those on the ground by flapping my arms as if they were wings.

The lesson for me was the exact opposite of what had been intended by the teacher: I thought I could, but even without fear I could not.

Why are my expectations wrong in the opposite direction than you expect? Unclear even to me; perhaps because, by the standards I was raised in, so little even tempted me in the first place.

Let me introduce you to a little dopamine imbalance I like to call "focus control disorder", better known as Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder.

Think of it like having a preemptive multitasking scheduler that is unable to keep track of the state of the previous task.

Then I wonder if many of the most vociferous opponents of free will in these comments are suffering from that.

I also wonder if this sort of “free will is not real” sort of mindset comes from a world that’s removed all agency from them?

The whole debate around the existence of free will seems almost tautological to me.

I've heard it said that the concept doesn't even exist in many cultures and that its importance in western culture can be largely attributed to the need to justify the concept of 'original sin'.

For me at least, free will is a concept with no value.

Free will is more ideological dogma than a factual claim. From materialist standpoint it's untenable. And empirically we see that environment dominates thinking and behavior.

Free will is the foundation of most judeo-christian moral systems, which were inherited by liberalism. It's the justification for punishshing and rewading individuals.

It seems to work relatively well, but I find it very cruel.

> I find it very cruel

What's a better and less cruel alternative?

Trying to address the problems in environments that produce unwanted behavior. And help the individuals exhibiting such behavior to change it.

I find re-education, be it camps or not, a lot less cruel and effective than e.g. throwing people in prisons or killing them.

We already do this. "Re-education" (yikes at the word, but I see what you mean) is an attempt to get people to make better choices. E.g. to use their will to override their impulses.

Lots of answers about free will.

My criticism is that they all seem to make the same error, in treating the existence of free will as some sort of binary decision.

My view is that the more one's model is coherent with the underlying reality, the more options are available to the individual. The greater the selection, the more free will you have.

Eg, if someone pulls a gun on you, you may think you have no free will. However, if you have a gun of your own, you have a different set of options. Similarly, if you are a trained martial artist or hostage negotiator, you will evaluate your options differently - you have more options.

Put simply one doesn't know what one doesn't know. Most likely this will occur in the case where one is certain of one's 'knowledge' of something that is actually false, ie one is operating within a lie/fantasy and has been tricked. Here, one will have a constrained set of options and therefore less free will.

Maybe you have a different definition of free will.

But to me those examples are just knowledge. Regardless of how many possible options, the process of making the choice would be free will, if it existed.

Feel free to give your definition of free will.

My one is that one is more free if one is aware of the full scope of one's options. This is not an ephemeral idea, it is not related to the 'what might have been' aka the 'opportunity cost' of choosing. One's present awareness (and potential expansion of that awareness) has an impact on how free one is.

I mean, no one has a well defined definition of free will, much like the worlds intelligence and consciousness.

With this said having more knowledge expands your ability to explore the problem space of existence. Lets imagine that you are a single bit, you have the 'choice' of being one or zero. From an outside observer the problem space of the outcome is very predictable in the sense we know it's going to be a 1 or 0. Now, keep adding random bits and our ability to predict the outcome of any state drops dramatically very quickly. But that's choosing at random, what if most bit states are bit random at all? For example this digital creature we're talking about now is millions of bit states long set by a learning algorithm, it so advanced it has an internal Turing machine that can simulate potential outcome states far into the future when executing code. You would look at this and say "well, it doesn't have free will, it just has an incomputably large set of potential bit states" But an outside observer unaware of the programs nature and it's starting state (for example it's performing a Turing test against the machine) would probably think the entity has free will.

You are a very large set of states, because of this you cannot prove free will. You've reversed causality in your summary.

> Eg, if someone pulls a gun on you, you may think you have no free will. However, if you have a gun of your own, you have a different set of options. Similarly, if you are a trained martial artist or hostage negotiator, you will evaluate your options differently - you have more options.

In movies. In real life, 99% of the time if someone pulls a gun on you in close range with the intent of harming you before you have your gun pointing at them, then you are going to be harmed and your martial arts or gun is going to be useless.

Probably not much if any “free will”… Check out “Determined” by Robert Sapolsky [0]

[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/592344/determined-b...

> Your past experiences also teach you what to ignore.

"Everyone learns from experience. The wise try to learn from other people's experience."

Other people's experience you witness, directly or via delayed medium, is your experience.

Free will doesn’t mean that the decisions you end up making aren’t significantly determined by the experiences you had.

You have free will, but isn't there still such a thing as an information hazard? For example, you may have free will, but you still just lost The Game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

https://xkcd.com/391/

I don't know to reconcile the idea that Free Will as a concept obviously cannot exist (because the omnipresent Laws of Physics govern the movement of the particles inside my skull as they do all other particles), with the fact that it just feels so real...

> You still have your free will.

Highly debatable.

If we don't what's the point of debating it?

To satisfy the predetermined desire to debate it.

Monkeys are determined to argue, so they will argue about free-will, and wonder if they could have chosen not to argue, and then argue about that also.

Free will doesn't matter, there's a deeper level, which is, what is the meaning of all this, the universe, us, our place in it.

And yet we dance.

The point in debating is enjoying the debate, learning new things. What else is there to do?

Because our belief in it may influence our actions...

Free will is the experience of making a decision. If we define free will as the ability to make a decision independently of our current state (sensory input, memory, emotions), that's utterly asinine. Neither are you an unfeeling, unthinking slave to entropy, simply printing outputs. You are an introspective machine, which can ask itself why it made decisions and update its own internal state to make different decisions in the future. That's what "free will" is.

Debating its existence serves the same purpose regardless of its existence.

Do your past experiences lead you to do the next thing? If you could perfectly know my past, could you predict my next decision? Do I have free will in that case?

You only have free will in so much as what environments you put yourself in the long term. Our immediate actions are outside of our consciousness.

If we are not in control of our immediate actions, how can we have any sort of meaningful "free will"?

I never understand what people are asking when they debate free will. It's a brain's process. Everybody's got one. Your brain's process isn't necessarily lovely to you, and doesn't necessarily do what you (the brain process) admire, like, or prefer. It's subject to outside influence and isn't perfectly under it's own control, because it's a cranky machine and goes wrong a lot. Some parts of it conflict with other parts. It's slow, and bad at monitoring itself. What do expect, magic? It's still yours, however unfair it may be to be stuck with it. So you have free will, whoopee.

If consciousness (and choices, the output of consciousness) is completely determined by the brain's physical process, then there is no such thing as "libertarian free will" which is what people typically mean when they say "free will".

Metaphysical libertarianism. Yeah, by definition, that's not compatible with the view that everything is determined by physical processes. This is just people freaking out over determinism. I kind of see why. "I am a physical process" sounds like "I am controlled by fate and my choices are pointless". But a person is a process that can't see the future, and a process that experiments and discovers things. Choices are the deterministic process: the person determines things. I could repeat this several times in different words but I'd just be trying to placate a kind of paranoia that happens when people realise they're physical.

Why are you framing this in terms of placating my paranoia? I have no objection to my lack of free will, it does not bother me. It makes me more empathetic to recognize that others lack it as well.

So, let me get this straight:

You think metaphysical libertarianism is meaningful ("meaningful free will"),

You also think it's false (why, if it's meaningful?),

You aren't bothered by this,

And something vague about empathy. Is that like "it's not your fault, you had no free will"? So about blame?

But the function of blame is to manipulate people's choices, and that works even when we acknowledge that the choices result from physical processes.

> You think metaphysical libertarianism is meaningful ("meaningful free will"),

> You also think it's false (why, if it's meaningful?),

Why would we expect any coherent phrase like "metaphysical libertarianism" to be true simply because it contains meaning?

Looping Soup

I'd challenge this with a thought experiment. Imagine we put a group of toddlers on an island and somehow give them knowledge of language (and enough sustenance to survive), but absolutely 0 external input otherwise. These people, as they grow, would gradually develop their own views, values, and perspectives. Do the exact same thing on another island and you'd get entirely different results! One can see this very thing with the various isolated/uncontacted tribes.

Obviously our environment influences us, but we are largely a product of ourselves. And that aspect is what drives us to seek out the things we do. Which can then, in turn, make it seem that the things we seek out have turned us into who we are.

This thought experiment is deeply flawed as it assumes that what you propose is possible and the outcome would be as you suggest. I am not convinced that people can bootstrap themselves like this and that language itself does not contain views, values and perspectives.

Step one with someone locked or frozen-stuck in such belief-logic is that improvement is possible - which is part of developing psychological flexibility.

You'd have to pay attention and find any step forward possible for them to begin to enter the discomfort that is holding them back - which may be the biggest challenge of their lives up until that point.

Ideally though, as we're all sheep to some degree - which is exactly what this HN post is stating in a more sophisticated way, and attempting to warn for this - ideally there's a culture of practices that develop oneself, so you're just going along with the "herd" - that path hopefully not corrupted and led by bad actors attempting to send us off a cliff or into their totalitarian pen.

> that language itself does not contain views, values and perspectives.

Language itself does, in fact, very much contain views, values and perspectives. As an example, there are population groups that do not have a word for the color blue, and that cannot, in consequence, distinguish between green and blue objects. [0] [1] And that's an example that has been noticed throughout the world.

[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-even-see-the-colo...

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2023/how-blue-and-green-appeared-langua...

The claims in the first link, at least, should set off your BS detector. The colors they claim the group could trivially identify are very near identical in terms of 3d distance. By contrast, the colors they claim they could not determine the difference between are extremely far in 3d distance. It's objectively illogical. A quick search turns up that the claims are indeed false, and were fabricated by the BBC for a documentary. Here's [1] an email chain involving various researchers that worked on these experiments. The conclusion is that:

---

"The experiment shown in the documentary was a dramatization; the genuine color experiments done with the Himba, some years before, used a different sort of stimuli and a different experimental method; the stimuli shown in the documentary were modeled on those used by Paul Kay and others in experiments on other groups; but in all of the relevant experiments, the dependent measure was reaction time (in finding a matching color or an oddball color), not success or failure.

The BBC's presentation of the mocked-up experiment — purporting to show that the Himba are completely unable to distinguish blue and green shades that seem quite different to us, but can easily distinguish shades of green that seem identical to us — was apparently a journalistic fabrication, created by the documentary's editors after the fact, and was never asserted by the researchers themselves, much less demonstrated experimentally."

---

[1] - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18237

I did not do a full literature study of the claims of the article, as that was meant as an illustration of the point, and it was the first relevant link that popped up.

Whatever the alleged fabrications of the BBC might have been or not been for the Himba experiments, similar observations have been made for other groups as well, from Amazonian tribes, to population groups in Papua New Guinea, to Aborigines in Australia. And the MIT research link is discussing a very similar result.

That languages influence how you perceive and see the world has been well studied and is well documented.

I do not think the actual experiments demonstrate this. The experiment the BBC demoed probably would, but it was fabricated. The actual experiments just demonstrate a pretty obvious aspect of learning. If you tell somebody who doesn't play chess all the names of the pieces, and ask him to tell you which is the rook, he's going to be slower and less accurate at it than somebody who plays chess. But there's not some huge epiphany like you can show him a collection of 5 bishops, 1 rook, and him be unable to tell which is different. It's no different with colors, or any new term.

I have personal experience with this, learning Russian. They don't have just blue, but rather a term for dark blue and one for light blue. It's hardly some eye opening thing - it's basically sky blue vs ocean blue. It's obvious and easy, but obviously I will always be slower than a native on a quiz of which is which for reasons that have nothing to do with the colors. Vice versa, compare our speeds in English with 'sky blue' vs 'ocean blue' and I'd be back to winning.

A common trend in the social sciences is creating experiments that aren't designed to challenge one's hypothesis, but confirm it. The publication bias against negative results is probably necessary, but also turning a lot of soft science into a facade.

Giving a knowledge of a language is a _huge_ external input, intertwined with culture and life experience of the language teacher.

And the smaller the external input we give to this group of toddler, the more they will resemble a violent pack of chimps in the end. Unlikely to develop their own values and perspectives.

why "violent pack of chimps" instead of free-loving bonobos?

Off topic but it seems that bonobos are not that peaceful compared to the chimps.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2426678-peaceful-male-b...

Interesting, thanks.

"However, Gisela Kaplan at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, says she found the paper extremely frustrating and that the word “aggression” is being misused.

Chimpanzee groups are ruled by one dominant male, whereas bonobos are ruled by females. Competitions for dominance and mating rights in bonobos shouldn’t be confused with aggression, says Kaplan. “There’s more pointless violence in chimpanzees and humans than in other species like bonobos,” she says."

Well, again - I think the isolated tribes are a good example. Two different examples are the Sentinelese and the Nukak. The former are actively hostile and violent to any outsiders, with very few exceptions, while the Nukak were completely peaceful and receptive since their first contact. These isolated tribes are largely a mirror into the past that give us a view of what humanity, in all of its diverse forms, might have looked like long ago.

In any case you also have an ancestor issue. The views, values, and so on that we take for granted simply did not exist at some point. Yet, here we are.

These tribes aren't isolated in true. Over 1000s of years, they have interacted with world outside and formed a generational wisdom and values. If 100 years back British/French came and enslaved some members, the behavior is expected.

No true Scotsman, eh? There's no reason to think these groups have had any contact with the outside world, beyond the fact that at some point they obviously diverged from whatever common ancestor we all share. Both are extremely small groups living in similarly extremely isolated locations - Sentinelese in an isolated island, Nukak deep in the Amazonian interior, far from rivers. And the Nukak's population has been decimated by common disease since they made contact, further suggesting 0 exposure to even other local peoples.

I am not a historian. Andaman and Nicobar (neighbor of Sentinelese) is occupied / use as naval base by outsiders for >1000 years. None of the Cholas, Europeans, Japan ever contacted/impacted them seems highly unlikely.

Contacts tended to be recorded. You can read ships logs now going back hundreds of years, often with illustrations. There's not a whole lot that happens in most ship voyages, so things like running into a weird group on an isolated island would absolutely have been recorded in immense detail. Of course I can't prove, beyond any question, that they weren't contacted, but there's 0 evidence to suggest they were, and immense evidence to suggest they were not. For the Nukak this is at least as true as well.

You're rolling a die and claiming the result was dictated by the die. All outcomes are probabilistic.

Though there's a shocking amount of convergent evolution.

Where do you see this convergence? From my perspective, the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis [1] suggests that the current breadth of humanity started from a migration from around 50,000-70,000 years ago. To get from a group that would have probably been quite homogeneous, to the extreme diversity of basically every single thing we see today - physical, ideological, cultural, etc - in such an incredibly short time frame, would suggest to me that even the briefest of moments apart sets us all on radically different courses.

Humans, relatively to most animals, also have an extremely slow generational time, which I think also further emphasizes this divergence. If we assume a low end generational time of just 20 years, even that is as few 2,500 generations, hardly a blink in time on a normal evolutionary scale.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_moder...

The books I've read have a say in this. Rutger Bregman concluded in his Humankind - a Hopeful History that deep down human is pretty decent. So I'm thinking the turnout would be rather similar in different communities.

I was kinda impressed with Bergman once the book came out so I took nine copies to Finnish MP's to share. Unfortunately they were not too interested in the humane message the book told

I would agree that humans are pretty decent in tiny communities. Scaling beyond that they are absolutely unquestionably horrific monsters. Without any doubt. And those communities are not ready to punish their own community for those horrific deeds they comitted.

I take a slightly different perspective (while sharing a similar final perspective) on the community issue. Rather I think individual choice drives people to communities that they, at least broadly, align with. So you end up with communities that are not only overly permissive towards their own, but also overly critical of those outside of it. But then as those communities grow large enough divisions start to form even within the like-minded community itself, and eventually you get a division there (that often ends in an internal conflict), and that community divides again, almost like a cell splitting into two new cells. And then the process starts to repeat once again in these new cells.

Add in cells merging every once in a while, and you have the abbreviated history of humanity in one paragraph.

>overly permissive towards their own, but also overly critical of those outside of it

aka: tribalism.

Small changes accumulate and lead to divergence.

Even if you could make the toddlers physically identical, you can't place them all in the same point in space and always see, hear, touch the same things.

Add randomness inherent in the current understanding of (quantum) physics and you'd need a strong convergence mechanism for your experiment to prove what you're saying.

> Obviously our environment influences us, but we are largely a product of ourselves

Even a brief look out your window will convince you this cannot possibly be true.

How many people have a different religion than their parents? How many Christians from Iowa have kids that decide they're actually Hindu? Just about zero.

Can you tell where someone is from based on how they dress? Heck yes. If they were making up their mind on their own you couldn't.

The likelihood you'll go into the military is far higher if other people in your family are in the military. 1% of Americans serve at all. But 60% of people who serve have an immediate family member (parent or sibling) who serves.

We could go on endlessly.

The idea that we're largely a product of ourselves is absurd. How many top physics were born in Eastern Europe be Africa? Do people in Africa genetically hate physics? No. But you're largely a product of your environment.

Ibn Tufail reached the same conclusion using the same metaphors 900 years ago in his Philosophus Autodidactus.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayy_ibn_Yaqdhan

Probably the most important work of Arabic philosophy.

The same will happen if you take two identical double pendulums and give them an as identical push as possible. Minute differences in initial conditions and in the environment can lead to arbitrarily large differences in outcome, while everything still being wholly deterministic.

We really have little idea how much our character and behavior is formed by experiences and how much by our DNA. Though pretty clearly, early experiences generally have a larger effect than later experiences.

Apparently Frederick II (the Holy Roman Emperor) tried it to see what was the innate language that people speak, but the toddlers just died.

> you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life

That's only the mental aspect. Physically, you are also what you eat and how often you exercise.

Right, but (not) changing what you eat and how often you exercise is also heavily dependent on mental aspects.

And vice versa. Your mental function won't work optimally if you're not fit.

Right! You are your body. Not just your mind.

> ..am more meticulous when choosing what I do and don't do..

There are plenty of books and other resources that speak to the power of "no". To the phrase I quote above, yes you need to have a good 'diet' of what you put in your mind. Some junkfood is ok, mostly junkfood is not.

A quote that has shaped me is: ""The less time one gives to the newspapers the better," he replied. "Do you like books on travels?"" by Hector Malot on his book En Femille (Nobody's Girl)(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27690/27690-h/27690-h.htm)

Btw, others write about ads. We can only (perhaps) avoid some on the internet (ad-blockers, NoRoot Firewall on Android devices and block certain IPs/URLs) but there are many ads we don't block, in movies (product placement), posters on bus stops, etc.

Fun fact: Apple doesn't allow its devices to be used by "baddies", so if you see an actor holding/using an iPhone, and you are not sure if they are Nice or Evil, chances are there will be a last-minute-twist and that actor will be/become Nice.

I have realised this a while ago and this made me hate advertising even more.

Particularly sudden advertising in youtube videos, it really feels like some kind of rape of the mind.

This is missing the understanding that there is a lever to mitigate what you describe above that I believe likely everyone, or close to everyone, is able to develop through practice.

Four factors that are party to this mechanism of not "being what you eat" are: - developing attention and aim, - self-awareness/emotional regulation development [which will clear past trauma and allow you to 1) be processing fully int he present moment or 2) extrapolate and prophesying-predicting into the future more accurately], - developing a dynamic weighting process, and - honing your judgment, compassion, and forgiveness practices - as any logic for judgements you apply to others, that logic is also applied to yourself - whether you realize it or not, and will weigh you down - depress you and can increase your baseline stress and anger levels.

The above will raise your vibratory frequency from the patterns of thoughts and beliefs of yourself or others, which if they are negative then they will knock you and keep you down [and/or require unnecessary and excessive energy to trying to prop yourself up with active motivation]; keeping you at a lower vibration - where like attracts like.

I do however do everything to avoid very low quality content - that we could call candy - like advertisements, however avoid may be the wrong word - I consciously act for high yield outcomes and quickly respond consciously to note when an unavoidable ad is present - and arguably am good at not getting distracted by them or go into a studying mode to analyze them to see what tactics they are deployed; ultimately they are a waste of time and can cause a misdirection of attention, but the consequences are far worse than that.

There are many very effective and efficient practices to help with all of the above - natural medicinal as well as things like yoga as a framework.

This reads like a scene from Silicon Valley. Good for you my man, but what does that have to do with being shaped by one’s experiences?

The TL;DR would be that you can regulate-manage how, how much, or if you are shaped by an experience.

And understanding this and factors that help or factors that may make you more prone or fragile, make it more difficult to regulate, is valuable knowledge as well - such as if you're high in conscientiousness and/or negative emotion ["neuroticism"] - and further knowing if that's the case it usually merely means it will simply to take to master than the average, so then to learn to be more patient with yourself.

P.S. Are they still producing new seasons of Silicon Valley?

The tools you're using to regulate and manage your experences also come from your experiences. How you understand them comes from past interactions and comparison with other positive and negative experiences.

There is sure an inate part and I don't intend to redo a nature vs nurture debate, but you still need an environment even to express your nature, so I'm not sure what you are really getting at.

All true.

What I'm getting at is people need to get exposed to the knowledge and practices, if they are to potentially benefit from the tools and support available.

So that first starts by somehow gaining an adequate level of attention from them, a certain level of interest, and that often occurs due to something occurring that leads to an impetus that causes them to stumble and journey to discover where they otherwise have learned to avoid.

1) Love what you said here and ingesting this may have changed my outlook on things.

2) Couldn't help but think of this quote from Kamala Harris that has been of recent memery. :P

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Plus of doing them in that sequence and in their particular context. No wonder there is nobody in the world alive today or from the past or future who understands the world in the same way as you do.

I think everything is ultimately net positive if you strengthen and condition the way you internalize all the sensory exposure.

To me, the risks are being overwhelmed by internalizing too much at once, and the opportunity cost of having a limited amount of time to take things in to your senses.

Influence is a very nuanced thing so I don't want to sound too black and white here, but I think it's like a brainstorm session. You take what you like best from your senses/inputs/etc

That’s a nice sentiment, but I don’t think it can reasonably be applied to most people. Consider the kids brought up around gang culture and taught to sling dope in middle school. Is that experience a net positive for them?

Yes, it can be net positive. Ill clarify a bit, because text is easily misunderstood. I would not assume someone is a "bad" person just because they grew up around gang culture and drugs. I am talking "positive" in terms of understanding the world and determining the type of person you are proud of being. I'm not saying everything is enjoyable. I think our brains are capable of recognizing good things regardless of how much bad exposure we've had. That's more what I mean by net positive, not that everything we do is net pleasant

If there's "no going back" doesn't that imply you don't have free will and therefore you can't really choose what you do and don't do?

If you want to read it literally, no. They can't "go back" without deciding to do so, which would be continuing to choose what to do.

If you read it as the common English phrase "there's no going back", no. It's just a thing people say in place of something more dry like "I will continue doing this for as long as I feel I should which I currently think is a long time or forever but saying that would be a bit ridiculous".

You can choose what you do, but you cannot choose what you want to do. Choices are usually heavily biased by who and what we are.

Even more important might be the realization that most of it is not within your power to control. You didn't come up with the vast majority of what's shaped you.

> I am more meticulous when choosing what I do and don't do, there is no going back

And whom you surround yourself with in both professional and personal life, whom you listen to as an authority on topic XYZ. Work has massive effect on our personality long term. There is no way to separate those 2, so its smart to anticipate things before you realize that decade(s) in some toxic place dragged you nanometer by nanometer into some dark pit.

> at one point in your life it was processed by your brain

I'm pretty sure my ADD brain fails to do that on a regular basis.

> Since I realized this, I am more meticulous when choosing what I do and don't do, there is no going back.

It's important to have critical thinking

The idea that you can understand what experiences produce what behaviours is as much crazier than the idea you can manually tune the weights of gpt4 and get better results.

You are precisely the continuous difference of everything else.

There is no You.

Exactly. That poignant realization that (you == void). It's a hollow existence, I mean, a single pointed one, it feels like a dimension of dimensionless, am I zero or everything? Both? Ugh, compare me not to other for I am in all things as other. Oi vei, turn the damn thing off, it's spewing nonsense again.

> at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made

I believe this is called subconscious mind

I prefer Logos personally.

this isn't really the same

you read something impactful that changes the way you think, your mind will stay changed even if you don't remember the actual reasons or point made, but advertisements, news, etc. will not change the way you think, they are just noise

I have tried very hard not to realize this, to avoid making the mistake that you have.

What is the mistake that parent has made?

Information is tricky that way, it's like food your mind consumes on sight.

There is a subtle difference to that than what the author was trying to say in his blog.

The thing is when we read, particularly in growing years, the expectation is that we would remember most of things from the book and apply it somewhere else, ex. in a discussion "...agree, the same I gathered from this excellent book that I read couple of years back...".

And frankly, I'm bummed by it still. I read a lot but when certain situation comes I cannot remember things & facts vaguely, even though I had finished 300 pages of that page turner in one night.

Karma

Very close to "I am a product of my environment"

You are a product of how you process and interact with your environment.

Be alert, situationally aware.

Process actively, notice and distill patterns.

Try things. Push the environment.

Which also reminds me of "You are the average of the few people you interact the most with".

I don't think it's quite that close. There is still a distinction between being a product of your environment and being influenced by your environment.

My HS college prep English teacher, who was one of the best teachers I ever had, put it this way: "Garbage in, garbage out." His point was that it simply isn't rational to believe that you can read nothing but National Lampoon, Mad Magazine, or the county newspaper and become a great writer. You have to read, digest, and breathe the air of the great works of fiction and literature and allow it to do its work in influencing your prose style, cadence, and structure.

It's as if life was tokenized and fed to an LLM

I'm going to add "Can AIbros survive 5 seconds without mentioning LLMs in irrelevant conversations?" to my list of unanswered existential questions, alongside "Is time travel possible?" and "Why did Bodhidharma come to China?".

That’s why I never started to watch horror movies.

you are your long term memory,

just like an artificial neural network in training mode :/

Exactly. That's what I also thought the last time someone brought this up in these forums (couple of years ago). It's a hint to the structure of the brain and also the mind (we can observe it at the consciousness level in ourselves and others, too). Algorithmic (von Neumann) computers/programs do not usually exhibit this; but neural networks do.

If we are good readers, a book helps up achieve better generalization (in the machine learning sense). That's its main contribution not the specific facts it contained.

Yes, humans are entirely predictable; that's why i deliberately act random sometimes, to prove I am aware of this predictability, albeit this is still predictable.

Agreed. It is a profound realization once you grasp it. There are genetic factors and then the overall sum of your experiences. What you read, what you watch, what you listen to on the radio, who you hang out with, what you do for a living, what organizations you belong to, what family life was like as a kid...etc. It all adds up in little ways. I try to keep this in mind when raising kids.

In hindsight, my father and mother-in-law listening to Rush Limbaugh everyday was probably not very good for them. It is a small sample size, but I can remember as a kid how negative and angry the program was and how it certainly didn't put my father into a good mood and how it was kind of like a mind virus. I try to be more aware of advertising and propaganda, but it isn't easy. You have to be vigilant as even the news will use clips out of context. I'm not just saying conservatives are guilty of this either, but am using an example from personal experience.

I actually realized recently that this is probably the underlying phenomenon behind "how is my phone listening to my conversations to show me ads/articles?"

The other day I was thinking about LLM aggregation and in my internal dialogue used the example of "aliens built the pyramids" as a fringe theory that would be picked up on if tuning for other associated fringe positions by LLMs at places like Gab.

Later in the day I saw in my news feed an article on "how were the pyramids built?" (One of my interests is Egyptian and LBA Mediterranean archeology, so on topic.)

At first I thought "how the heck did it read my mind?"

But then as I thought about it more I remembered that usually my go to example of a fringe position is flat earth. So why was I suddenly using pyramids as the example in my internal dialogue.

What must have happened was that I initially saw the article headline in my feed in passing and didn't consciously register it, but when I was reaching for a fringe position example had been primed for that, and then only after having consciously been reflecting on the topic actually noticed the article in my feed.

Which IMO is a much more alarming explanation for the phenomenon - that my thinking was being written to a degree by my feed - than that my phone was somehow listening in on things or reading my mind.

It reminds me of a graffiti artist in NYC who used to write graffiti about how in reading it he had effectively graffitied your mind.

This is why your attention is so insanely valuable. Everyone thinks they're immune to advertising, yet people keep paying billions and billions of dollars to show something on your screen for a few seconds... because like it or not, it works.

I've been using ad blockers and not watching TV for so long that I have very little ad resistance. Whenever I use someone else's computer that doesn't an ad blocker, it makes me wonder how people live like this.

I'm so bad at handling distractions that I have to turn the radio or music off to make a left hand turn.

I often wonder how friends back home in Texas can believe the things they do, say the things they say... and then when I visit and we sit around to watch a game and I see how many ads many people are exposed to every day, I start to get it.

There's some version of it anywhere you go, for every social and political leaning. I tend to be somewhere between liberal and leftist, but I used to be a lot more extreme and absolutist in my views, and I can pin it directly to mindlessly taking in memes and messages targeted straight at my biases and preconceptions. Even having "good praxis" is no vaccine: someone somewhere is looking for a way to radicalize or profit from your perspective.

You probably get this, but every so often I meet someone who thinks they're a good person because they live in the right state or follow the right media. And that could be Fox News and Texas as easily as it could be MSNBC and New York.

Words are literally spell(ings), you see, we've trivialized casting spells. In the past being enchanted was a negative semantic relation, now, everyone wants to be enchanted. What type of world is the world where everyone is a magic user casting spells without their awareness of such? Our world.

"Sure, we're trying to hack your brain to enrich ourselves at your expense, but it's traditional."

Without advertising in the world, it'd be a much poorer place. Advertising exists for more than a thousand years and it's the only way for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.

Except the advertising industry of today is akin to mental manipulation. It's less about letting you know what the product can do for you and more about getting you to buy/pay for it.

It's easy to make a strong argument when it's also woefully incomplete. :P

If all advertising were just abstract economic information that a service or product existed with certain features at a certain price-point, then we're left with a whole bunch of inexplicable mysteries, including-but-not-limited-to:

* Why would there be some expensive messages that lack any of that economic information, such as those which show a succession of nice things (that aren't being sold) closing with a brand-name the viewer is already aware of?

* Why would senders deliberately seek to ensure that the same person sees the same repeated message multiple times, even after they declined to purchase the first time and their situation wouldn't have changed?

* Why would any info-packets be crafted to make previously-neutral viewers experience fresh fear and dissatisfaction?

* Why would someone spend unnecessary money on funny mascots or catchy music?

* Why would (where not illegal) the product have a time-limited discount that wasn't actually time limited nor discounted?

You can answer all the questions with the same answer (quoted from my comment above):

> Advertising exists (..) for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.

Your questions are just requiring more sophisticated answers that will all boil down to that. What you say is "unnecessary funny mascots or catchy music" is brand awareness which is still "letting other people know I exist and I can sell them stuff - I hope they look me up later or remember me when they are at the shop". The others are similar. One might have distaste for the manipulation but then your problem is with people, not advertising. A slimey sales guy does as much or more manipulation without needing to buy ads.

I agree that a good salesperson manipulates people too. Instead of trying to compare how much manipulation is done by salespeople vs in ads, I think it's worthwhile to consider how the manipulation is performed.

Both ad and salesperson will probably attempt to make us feel some emotion - best case without our conscious awareness of it. The tools an expensive ad has at its disposal seem to me much more effective in evoking emotion; visual stimuli, carefully crafted music, decades of psychology research, etc. And while we've had a chance to evolve strategies against human to human manipulation (doors, perhaps, and various subtle triggers of distrust), the ad environment is a very recent development.

I agree investigation is worthwhile. As an adult, being aware of techniques like fake sense of urgency or scarcity, playing on your maslow needs for belonging and self-actualisation etc are things you should be aware, to develop a better sense of "smell" for bullshit.

I don't think any of this is new though, I'm pretty sure the local Roman seller of beads and nice dresses did the same things to their customers on the posters they put on buildings and the cries they shouted in the square, or olive oil salespeople using gladiators to have spectators buy that specific kind of olive oil. You can look these examples up because they are real.

The technology and mediums change, but human emotions and our reactions to them change on a scale of many more years than only a few thousands.

Thats an interesting point about the age of manipulative sales strategies! I didn't consider it. And I agree with your position that emotions change over a rather long timescale.

In fact that's exactly why I'm concerned about the speed of technological development in psychology and data science. I fear that it's no longer salesperson vs consumer. Now it's salesalgorithm and a large chunk of the behavioral science academic efforts vs consumer. The power that the producer wields is increasing at a much faster rate than the emotional awareness of the consumer.

My perpective is influenced by the Center of Humane Tech's positon. The people behind 'The social dillema' documentary and the 'Your undivided attention' podcast. Manipulative capabilities are increasing FAST. And I believe that this speed of change is unprecedented.

I call what you are describing "informational" advertisement, and indeed it is totally fine. However most modern advertisement is not trying to inform but rather to convince, using a variety of psychological tricks to manipulate viewers into a specific position. This is totally not okay.

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Advertising is carte blanche mind control.

Markets and products can easily exist without advertising. In fact, they're better. You go to markets, and you have curators. Advertising outside of a market should be not only illegal but culturally frowned upon as a root ethic.

> Markets and products can easily exist without advertising

Source needed - seeing I don't know any company that doesn't advertise in some shape or form. The ones that I found that claim they don't, actually do advertise and use the "we don't advertise" as further advertisements. By definition I think it'd be hard to find companies that truly don't advertise, so maybe you know of some that are successful but don't do it?

I'm not a fan of Tesla but to give credit where it's due, I have never seen an advertisement from them. The closest thing I have seen is branded chargers, which is also a functional display of their brand (you need to know if you can use the charger or not).

There are also tons of small companies that have no advertising. Think one or few man shows that operate on word of mouth, and are not looking to grow.

What would you consider Elon's constant posting about Tesla on social media qualify as?

Not marketing/advertisement.

Source: history.

Sometimes I play Rocket League, where I'm intensely focused on the playing field and not paying attention to anything else. I'll have some random song or phrase in my head the whole match, just there in the background. And then there will be a pause in the action, and I'll for (what I thought was) the first time, look at the names of the other players long enough to actually read them, and there it is: one of them has a name that prompted that song or that thought in my head. I had no idea. I thought I was 100% focused on the action in the game, but those names influenced me anyway.

Responding to something in your visual field unconsciously is very reminiscent of split-brain studies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

>I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

I heard those quote for the first time about 4 years ago. I had often been a bit disappointed with myself for not taking more notes while reading, or reviewing what I read in a way where I could be one of those people to bring up quotes and concepts, citing back to the original source, with freakish accuracy. This quote made me feel better about simply reading, getting whatever I get out of it, and trusting that I’ve gained some perspective, even if I can’t cite all the sources that built my perspective on a topic.

> simply reading, getting whatever I get out of it, and trusting that I’ve gained some perspective,

This is the way to approach it, particularly in these times when knowledge is so vast and there is so much to read. The principle to keep in mind is "Knowledge for Knowledge sake."

But what has happened ever since Industrialization is the focus on output (for a Economy). Hence everything is supposed to be done for a job/money/fame/etc. which i believe is detrimental in the general case.

> particularly in these times when knowledge is so vast and there is so much to read.

I come down on the other side of this. The implicit assumption here is that more is better, but it's like drinking from the firehose.

> The principle to keep in mind is "Knowledge for Knowledge sake."

The other position is that knowledge is only useful if it lets you do something that you couldn't do without it.

If you're gaining knowledge for the pleasure of gaining it, and I see no need to justify why one would do this, then whether you read deeply or read widely doesn't make much of a difference.

But if you want to do something with that knowledge, the approach you take should be informed by what you want to do.

> The implicit assumption here is that more is better,

No, that is the assumption that you are making and not what i meant. It is an undeniable fact that today we have a far far greater amount of Scientific and Technological Knowledge (sheer Data without making any value judgements) than in any time in the past Human history. Our Society's dependence on Science/Technology has also increased exponentially since the beginning of Industrialization thus forcing us to know/learn more and more. Also see my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40154158

> The other position is that knowledge is only useful if it lets you do something that you couldn't do without it.

This is a very limiting viewpoint which is what the posted article and my comments are arguing against. The utility of some knowledge may not be apparent at its inception but may turn out to be of utmost importance when other fields have also developed so everything can come together into a greater whole. A good example is how Materials Science revolutionized Civil Engineering in the building of man-made structures.

> If you're gaining knowledge for the pleasure of gaining it, and I see no need to justify why one would do this, then whether you read deeply or read widely doesn't make much of a difference.

The justification has to do with getting exposed to a greater amount of concepts/ideas and not necessarily understanding/assimilating everything. Here reading widely does make a difference.

> But if you want to do something with that knowledge, the approach you take should be informed by what you want to do.

Only in the specific case when the end-goal/knowledge is clear eg. Engineering. Many a time in scientific research one does not even know the utility of something until sometime in the future when things align correctly. A great example is "Number Theory" which G.H.Hardy thought useless as a practical discipline but which has turned out to be indispensable in today's information technology (in cryptography etc.) centric world.

> It is an undeniable fact that today we have a far far greater amount of Scientific and Technological Knowledge

I don't dispute it. What I dispute is the implication I believe your proposing, which is "there is more knowledge, and therefore we need to read broadly and not focus as much on deep understanding". If that is not what you mean, please correct me since I don't see what other implication you mean.

> The utility of some knowledge may not be apparent at its inception but may turn out to be of utmost importance when other fields have also developed so everything can come together into a greater whole.

I don't disagree. But to apply this knowledge later you need to have remembered about it, and writing notes (which is where this discussion started) absolutely helps with this. I'm arguing for writing down the concepts that you found important or interesting at the time, not a synopsis of each subchapter.

> The justification has to do with getting exposed to a greater amount of concepts/ideas and not necessarily understanding/assimilating everything. Here reading widely does make a difference.

But reading widely only makes a difference to the degree that you do assimilate the content and that it changes you.

> Many a time in scientific research one does not even know the utility of something until sometime in the future when things align correctly.

Except we are not talking about doing scientific research (where I agree getting more knowledge is the whole point). We're talking about reading other people's work to get something out of it. And, especially, in this context there is a trade-off between "just in case" knowledge and "just in time" knowledge.

> which is "there is more knowledge, and therefore we need to read broadly and not focus as much on deep understanding". If that is not what you mean, please correct me since I don't see what other implication you mean.

I did not say "not focus as much on deep understanding". I am only talking about exposure to all sorts of concepts/ideas. When the time for application of knowledge comes, depth will be achieved as a matter of course since it becomes a prerequisite. Reading broadly and widely for knowledge (so to say to get a map of the terrain) is different from reading deeply for a specific objective/need and has to be cultivated consciously.

> But to apply this knowledge later you need to have remembered about it, and writing notes (which is where this discussion started) absolutely helps with this. I'm arguing for writing down the concepts that you found important or interesting at the time, not a synopsis of each subchapter.

I think maybe you are confusing my comments with somebody else's and meant this as a reply to somebody else? I have not mentioned note-taking in any of my comments in this thread.

However, In past HN threads to do with note-taking, i do argue for the benefits of this discipline but in the context of this thread i am only arguing for "Reading broadly and widely" (with/without note-taking).

> But reading widely only makes a difference to the degree that you do assimilate the content and that it changes you.

No, mere exposure and fuzzy understanding is many a times good enough. Assimilation can be superficial or in-depth as needs dictate. What Reading widely/broadly enables is to see interconnections/interplay between various subjects the very existence of which you might have been unaware of earlier. This is particularly true in today's times where there is so much knowledge that it is impossible to go deep into everything.

> Except we are not talking about doing scientific research (where I agree getting more knowledge is the whole point). We're talking about reading other people's work to get something out of it. And, especially, in this context there is a trade-off between "just in case" knowledge and "just in time" knowledge.

I was using the example of "Scientific Research" since it is the classic textbook exemplar of knowledge before utility. But the same idea is also applicable to reading various subjects. It is also the case that "just in case" knowledge will generally always trump "just in time" knowledge. As an example, you can write software without knowing anything about predicate logic/formal methods. There is no "just in time" to acquire this knowledge unless you happen to work on projects where they are needed (a very small percentage). But if you were to study this "just in case" and even if you don't use it rigorously the very act of knowing it will allow you think about program construction in a whole new light which will give you superior insight and increase your effectiveness/productivity immeasurably.

> I did not say "not focus as much on deep understanding". I am only talking about exposure to all sorts of concepts/ideas.

This discussion started because the person you replied to was saying "[I was] dissapointed with myself for not taking more notes ... This quote made me feel better about simply reading, getting whatever I get out of it".

You replied "This is the way to approach it, particularly in these times when knowledge is so vast and there is so much to read."

This response, to me, appears to be based on the assumption that because there is a vast amount of knowledge available, one must read more of it and keep up with it simply because there is more of it.

> I think maybe you are confusing my comments with somebody else's and meant this as a reply to somebody else? I have not mentioned note-taking in any of my comments in this thread.

See my comment above, this started with the person your replied to talking about giving up on note taking while reading.

> What Reading widely/broadly enables is to see interconnections/interplay between various subjects the very existence of which you might have been unaware of earlier.

I would counter that one does not see the existence of such connections with only superficial understandings. For example, most undergraduate students struggle, even after many courses, to connect the expected solution to a problem set up for them; to say nothing of being able to draw connections between subjects.

Yes there is great value in being able to go between many domains and to tie them together, but it is not immediately obvious why this would be more valuable than digging deeply in a smaller number

> This is particularly true in today's times where there is so much knowledge that it is impossible to go deep into everything.

See my point from above about the lack of imperative for reading more simply because there is more to read.

> if you were to study this "just in case" and even if you don't use it rigorously the very act of knowing it will allow you think about program construction in a whole new light which will give you superior insight and increase your effectiveness/productivity immeasurably.

I agree that you can't study something "just in time" if you don't know that it exists. The issue is that a great many things can (or claim to) "give you superior insight and increase your effectiveness/productivity immeasurably". You don't have time to learn about all of them. And when choosing to pick what to look at next, I argue that searching for the thing related to your current problem is more valuable knowledge than a that which you get "just in case".

> This discussion started because the person you replied to was saying "[I was] dissappointed with myself for not taking more notes ... This quote made me feel better about simply reading, getting whatever I get out of it". You replied "This is the way to approach it, particularly in these times when knowledge is so vast and there is so much to read.

No, you seem to have conveniently ignored the particular phrase of the parent's comment to which i was commenting, to wit; "simply reading, getting whatever I get out of it, and trusting that I’ve gained some perspective," It is right there at the beginning of my comment and i am expanding only on this sentiment and nothing else. Hence i am not sure where you are getting your other assumptions from. If i had wanted to expand on note-taking i would have explicitly called out the parent's relevant phrases which i did not.

> I would counter that one does not see the existence of such connections with only superficial understandings.

Hard Disagree, you can definitely see some connections with even "superficial" understanding however fuzzy/incomplete they might be. For example, i can tell a programmer to think of the types of his program variables as a set and the variable itself ranging over the collection of values in this set. Next i can tell him to think of his logical conditions using these variables as logical predicates establishing a mathematical relation between various values amongst the above sets. With just this "superficial" knowledge of Sets, Cartesian Product, Relations and Predicates he can now see a connection between Mathematics and his Program enabling him to come up with better and more comprehensive Pre/Post conditions and write "correct" code.

> Yes there is great value in being able to go between many domains and to tie them together, but it is not immediately obvious why this would be more valuable than digging deeply in a smaller number

This should be obvious by now; you are increasing the size of your "known unknowns" and hopefully decreasing the size of "unknown unknowns".

> You don't have time to learn about all of them. And when choosing to pick what to look at next, I argue that searching for the thing related to your current problem is more valuable knowledge than a that which you get "just in case"

Of course Time/Energy are limited and universal constraints on everything a Human can do; that is not an argument. If you are working towards something specific, your study should be targeted but not necessarily limited to it. This is where "Reading broad/wide" is needed. As an example, you have loads of Web programmers today who limit themselves to only using higher level frameworks/libraries to write distributed apps but have no clue (not even "superficial") of the underlying TCP/IP stack. Having some idea of the application layer HTTP protocol and its interactions with the underlying TCP/IP stack is a must for any distributed app developer but because things have been abstracted and encapsulated so nicely many don't even bother getting a "superficial" knowledge of these fundamental technologies thus severely limiting their effectiveness troubleshooting when things go wrong.

Who has knowledge though? Is the acceptance of this or that thought of another person's 'knowledge'? Are you filling up on knowledge or nonsense?

This is where your Intellect's "Power of Discrimination" comes into play i.e. you are the decider on what is "Knowledge" or "Nonsense" for you. A good example is "Organized Religion".

I still encourage you to write though. Writing has seriously transformed the way that I think. I refer to my notes very often too.

Writing is a powerful learning tool also. I am often surprised that programming books and other learning materials don’t encourage writing and note taking, outside of an academic environment.

Just the act of writing an idea or a concept down helps to instil it in your mind, helping you either remember it or continue conceptualise the material you are learning about.

Reading, learning, doing and writing it all down is a powerful combination to accelerate learning, at least in my experience.

I still write a fair amount, I just don’t write book reports. The environment I find comfortable for reading isn’t conducive to taking notes that would be needed for writing later.

If there is a particular passages that really stands out I will note it down. I have a little collection of those (and other quotes) I sometimes read through.

I use a blank paper sheet as bookmark and carry a pen, so that I write down important notes from the book content on the bookmark. Afterwards the book is - ideally and dependent on the content - condensed to one sheet, that I can refer to later. It also helps with retaining the content.

I’ve tried this with an index card once and quickly filled it up. As I ran out of space I found myself question if someone was card worthy, which was a distraction.

I also tried writing in the margins on a book. I don’t like writing in the book due to it losing a lot of ability to shared after the fact, or if the book isn’t mine it’s a non-starter. That said, it was a very different experience, it was more like having a conversation with the author.

I may need to experiment more to try and find something that works.

I have also not found a great way to take notes while reading books, but most of my reading is on my computer right now. That makes digital note taking the obvious choice, and space isn't really an issue in that case. My way of deciding what to take notes on is by simply asking myself: could I want to remember this in the future? If the answer is yes (it usually is if I even considered asking it) I make a note of it. The note minimally contains a reference to the source, and some links to related topics. The links to related topics allows me to discover the note in the future by referencing the backlinks on those topics.

I recommend looking into the Zettelkasten method for note taking, if you are not already familiar. It is originally used with index cards, so you might find it to be a useful way to handle taking notes on index cards. I use a Zettelkasten-inspired digital note taking system called Org Roam. The thing I like the most about Zettelkasten is that it minimizes the effort for getting your ideas out of your head. You can worry about organizing the ideas after you have them laid out in front of you.

I use Obsidian at work to organize and plan. When looking up ways to effectively use that I stumbled down the Zettelkasten rabbit hole. It’s a little too involved for my needs. It seems like it might be good if I was doing research to write a book, but is too involved for my daily life. I can see where taking and organizing the notes would turn into a hobby, which is enough of a problem for me already.

I’ve considered reading on the computer, maybe I should actually give it a try.

> I’ve considered reading on the computer, maybe I should actually give it a try.

I should note that I haven't actually gotten into a workflow where I read ebooks and take notes. Most of the reading I do is documentation for systems I program with. I take tons of notes on documentation so I can easily find what I need again in the future.

> I found myself question if someone was card worthy, which was a distraction.

I think having a whole sheet might help. It's not enough to copy everything, but enough not to get sidetracked. Also, you might write down a reference to a page and 1-2 keywords only, or a couple of keywords describing one's own thought regarding a piece of content + a page reference.

You could try searching for "Post-it Flags, 200/High Volume Desk Grip Dispenser"

* They remove cleanly, if you're worried about permanently marking up or defacing a book.

* They are easy to write on (I've mostly used EF nib fountain pens).

* Best of all, since they are color-coded, you can invent your own scheme (e.g. blue == "I should revisit this", yellow == "my top N favorite quotes from this book", etc.)

Edit: to add another point

* They are large enough that you can write a decent sentence in there -- the "page flag" size might be a tad too small for that (but thanks to the EF nib, I often find myself using different-colored flags).

[dead]

How do you know that writing has improved the way that you think? By what metrics did you come to that conclusion? If someone else showed you that by writing their transformed thinking reduced their quality of life, would you be less prescriptive to others?

It would be quite sad if metrics were the only acceptable means of conveying personal experience.

I have never experienced people telling me I have a good memory before I started my current writing habit. Within the last few months I have noticed 3 or 4 times people have made remarks about me having a good memory. I don't think that I actually have a much better memory than I used to, I think I have just offloaded so much that was occupying my brain into my computer without fear of forgetting it, that I am able to allocate a lot more memory towards things people actually notice.

I also believe I spend much more of my mental capacity on reason rather than recall. I think I have gotten slightly better at reasoning due to that, just going off how I feel when I try to reason about things; I feel more lucid than I used to. Trying to "remember" things is really more of a mechanical process for me than it is a mental one. I think of some keyword that is vaguely related to the concept I'm interested in, and then hop around the hyperlinks and backlinks in my notes until I find what I'm looking for.

Sometimes I will start this process to find a spot that I want to start writing a new note, only to discover that I have actually written the note already! That is always a trip when it happens.

By what metrics

Before they started writing regularly they were just a Zambit and look at them now. And who knows, you could make beebman following their method.

"prescriptive" is a strong word to apply to an _encouragement_.

I'm pretty sure it's my ADHD causing me to have horrendous memory issues but I have read so, so many books since I was a kid. Have tons of favorites. Stuff like the entire Wheel of Time series, things like that.

I can barely remember anything but vague events and characters. Like, my favorite book is Canticle for Leibowitz which I've read multiple times but I couldn't even tell you the main characters name other than he's a priest-type of character and what the general book is about.

I guess one benefit of that is that I can read the same book over and over and over again but like you said, it feels so strange/wrong that I can't remember so much more.

Reading more complicated things like G.E.B., Michel de Montaigne, etc is practically pointless for me, I won't remember any of the theories/quotes and it feels practically useless to even go through. By the time I'm on chapter 5 I've probably forgotten 1-4.

> where I could be one of those people to bring up quotes and concepts, citing back to the original source, with freakish accuracy

If you cannot retrieve a few timeless (to you or in general) quotes/concepts/dialogues and a few trending ones (trending in big or small circles) - there is some amount of info/tasks overload going on.

Also I think we find people who can "bring up quotes and concepts with freakish accuracy" cool for some reasons.

Cal Newport talked about this in his podcast. Just taking a book and going in is really important to reduce the friction.

Reminds me of an old Arab tale (paraphrased, from memory, translated):

Once upon a time a man wanted to be handed the title of a poet, so he went to the king of poets at his time, and asked him to give him the title of a poet. The king of poets asked the man, "Do you memorize tens of thousands of the best poetry?", the man said "I do not", the king of poems asked of him: "go memorize them then come back to me". The man went to a faraway isolated monastary, spend a couple of years memorizing the poems, then came back to the king of poets shouting in excitement "I've memorized the tens of thousands of poems! Can you hand me the title of a poet now?". The king of poets asked of him "Now forget them".

Only after years again spent in the monastery forgetting the poems, was the man given the title of a poet.

(Side note: this story also kinda remind me of LLMs, and how they kind of "memorize" text initially but the more data is poured in the more they "forget" the exact texts)

I find this tale quite interesting. Could you please point me to its origin or name?

A corollary of this idea that also the bad stuff that you read leaves a trace, and not necessarily a good trace. To continue the food metaphor: like junk food there is junk reading and while it may satisfy some need it is all informational empty calories and transfats. Which brings up a subject I pondered many times: to go on an information diet. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.

In this context, I often refer to the essay by Rolf Dobelli, titled Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet.

It can be found on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20130117104220/http://dobelli.co...

Actually Dobelli was the one who got me thinking about this. I tend to agree with him, although eschewing all news is a bit too extreme to my taste. I tried scaling back my intake by switching from a daily paper to a weekly paper, but one has to have tremendous discipline to avoid the news of the day on the internet. Especially if the internet is your job, like it is for me.

I 100% concur, it's not easy.

I block / filter most of the news sites I might wander to mindlessly with uBlock, and even filter out DOM elements that have certain keywords.

I also found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events to be a good alternative for daily news without the nonsense.

Chiming in as someone who's been doing this. Haven't watched a TV news program since 2020.

The only thing in 4 years that I "missed" (which it turns out actually means "was delayed in finding out about to a degree that other people actively comment on it") was the recent escalations in the middle-east.

And even that I was only about 24 hours behind.

You really miss nothing, particularly with the amount of passive news we ingest via social media. (I also have a fairly minimal social media diet.)

Can you provide a link to the weekly paper please

I applied the same thing to my media dieting - I have made a conscious effort to sort of curate and eliminate certain pages and news sources.

This orange site I have mixed feelings about though.

Could you share? What are the media outlets that passed positively your elimination? And you are still using them?

Since the "good" stuff can also leave a bad trace, and there is nothing to measure (remember, it's there even if you don't remember it), how would you approach the diet composition?

one of the most popular things in modern society,'modern music' (whatever that means)is not different from 'junk food'.. 'Modern music' is to your brain what junk food is to your body! Modern music with its repetitive beats optimized to give you a brief 'dopamine' have a similar effect on your brain as junk food does on your body!! in the same way that junk food provides a quick burst of pleasure but lacks nutritional value, modern music offers instant gratification through repetitive beats and catchy melodies while offering little to no informational value to the brain . .... "junk food", "short videos", "porn" and "modern music" these things are all designed to give you a brief dopamine rush ;)

Meditation would probably help a lot with that diet. Not just reduce your informational intake, but also live mindfully.

I guess one start might be to avoid the comments section on HN ;)

Is this actually true? I know the text sounds really nice. Also citing nicely crafted words from famous poeple helps.

I guess roughly, this is right. But there's more to add. I have a brain with a certain configuration. This configuration is partly genetic and partly environmental. The environmental part has been shaped by every sensory input so far, including all the books. However, some books resonate well. They make me think about the topic weeks after finishing them. Other books don't resonate at all. My brain's is not fit for them. It just ja sequence of words (e.g., the books my high school literature teacher made me read).

I guess humans aren't a ANN that treats every training sample equal. Our brain has a mechanism to put more or less weight on sensory input given previous input. Some ideas are utterly confusing and don't stick at all. I think this happens a lot when people of different religions or political camps interact.

I think everything you're saying is correct, but doesn't discredit what the post says. I think even books we don't necessarily resonate strongly with can have small, hidden impacts on our behaviour and thinking. They might give us an example of what a person does in a certain situation, and we internalise how we might respond in a certain situation. In this I think it is kind of similar to an LLM, where we kind of predict what our response to something should be, drawing from our past experiences on an abstract level.

I think books we do resonate with can have a larger impact for the reasons you mentioned, but I think they all have an impact.

I like to think of books as planets, and you're a spaceship. If you're not paying attention, as you graze a planet it'll slightly alter your course. Maybe in perceptibly so. If you are aware of it and resonate with it, you can kind of use its gravity to swing you into a different direct -- presumably onto a direction you want to go in.

Almost everything we do, everything we hear, everything we see, everything we experience etc.. they all have an impact. And while books do shape our thinking the statement "You are what you read" is nothing different from the hyperboles/metaphors "You are what you eat" or "You are who you associate yourself with" etc.

>Our brain has a mechanism to put more or less weight on sensory input given previous input

I've always liked to say "free will isn't your current decision, but your previous one"

"free will is your current decision (possibly influenced by) your previous ones" ?

At the end of the day, you are still making the choice, even if you are using your previous experiences. As in you would still have the option to disregard your previous experiences and arbitrarily make a new decision.

One form this takes is that, even when you forget the details, you retain the general shape of the subject matter. You might not remember all the details about XYZ, but now at least you know XYZ exists: your internal map of the world is expanded and corrected, even if parts are a bit fuzzy.

Well put! This is exactly why i tell people to always get a book on any subject that catches their fancy and browse them at the very least. Many parts will be fuzzy if you are not using/working with them but that is no excuse for not knowing about them. Once the mind is exposed to various concepts/ideas it automagically stitches them into a coherent whole without you being conscious of it.

A good way to think about it is the description of Mycroft Holmes by Sherlock Holmes;

"The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant."

There's a trick when reading nonfiction: read the table of contents, then flip ahead and read the entire index. You now have a good understanding of what topics the book covers, and where in the book they are. You can crank through a stack of 10 or 20 books and get a good sense of which ones are really worth reading. 'Half of all knowledge is simply knowing where to find the knowledge.'

Also read the last page of every chapter, and you can avoid 90% of the fluff if it's non-fiction.

Authors start with a short draft that is only juice and then add spam to make it into a book. That initial juice is the summaries of chapters that you find on the last page or two. The initial part of the chapter is just fluff and examples to drill the point down because they think you need 10 examples for each concept in order to justify paying as much for a blog post as you would for a book.

Thank you for commenting this. I can imagine this being supremely useful, especially if you decide to go ahead and read a book and it tells you much more than you would've guessed :) (either the titles/index are bad, or the content is good)

Some authors even put fanservice in the index.

Yes, and because you now know it exists, and you later look it up again if you need the specific details. Which you otherwise wouldn’t know to do

> the goal of a book isn’t to get to the last page, it’s to expand your thinking.

I would apply this to fiction books too. Some people consider reading fiction books a waste of time.

But fiction books too can expand your mind by exploring ideas that may not be possible in non-fiction books or exploring the same ideas but in a way that non-fiction books cannot achieve easily or at all.

As a kid, when I asked an uncle why he was always reading, he said "we read to know we are not alone". I don't know if he was quoting someone else, but I took it to mean that there are things that we think privately and don't share in any other medium but fiction. Not in conversation, film, etc.

We've all had that moment when reading fiction where we instantly recognise something and think to ourselves, 'huh, so I'm not the only one!'

For this reason, I think that fiction is an invaluable aspect of human communication.

I exclusively read nonfiction until I had a traumatic event happen to me. After that, I read fiction nonstop for several years. Fiction was the only thing that could help me process it. (Note: not escape the trauma, but help me process it. Nonfiction was too clean, black-and-white, etc. Too simple. Fiction presented a world of uncertainty and doubt that I could live through and thus reflect upon the traumas I had undergone.)

" In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."

-Mortimer J Adler

I think this quote applies too.

The way I've heard it phrased is "Non-fiction teaches us about the world, fiction teaches us about ourselves."

Do people really consider reading fiction a waste of time? I’d love to meet someone who says reading Mark Twain or Toni Morrison or Vladimir Nabokov is a waste of time. Actually … I don’t think I’d like to meet that person.

There are definitely some forms of fiction that are less enlightening than others, but even the “lowest” forms are generally time better spent than scrolling the internet or watching random TV channels.

One approach I like is to relax and read the book quickly the first time, don’t take notes or anything. If it’s good, read it again (and again periodically). If not, don’t.

This gives natural spaced repetition on the good stuff, and also you pick up different things in subsequent readings.

This is close to what I do sometimes (and I should be more disciplined about doing it all the time, TBH). I'll often read a non-fiction book once, at a leisurely pace, no notes or anything. Maybe I'll stick a few page flags in to highlight things that really stand out to me. Later, if I deem it worthwhile, I'l re-read the book and take notes. After that, I'll re-read my notes and try to consolidate my thinking and distill out the most important elements into a separate notes document. And on rare occasions, I may later re-read the original book a third time and refine my notes even further. If I'm reading a group of books on a related topic, I may open a new document and then read/re-read my earlier notes on each book, and put the synthesis into the new doc.

The biggest problem with all of this is simply that it's very time consuming. But when doing a pointed, intentional "deep dive" into something specific, I've found it to be effective.

This is a great way to frame a shift in perspective around what we consume, but just to add some nuance to this: not only should we be thoughtful about the content we consume in a similar way that we are thoughtful about the food we consume, but we should also be self compassionate.

Sometimes we want to eat those Chicken 'n' Waffles, just like sometimes we go on a trashy TV show binge! It's just a small thing that serves as a comforting release, and we shouldn't let the guilt overcome us!

Even "comfort food" (or the equivalent) can expand and exercise your thought.

I read a ton of what even I consider "fluff". Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, adventure, horror. Novels that get unceremoniously lumped under "genre fare".

But even if the primary motivation is entertainment, I can honestly say that from a young age, reading lots of anything exposed me to new ideas, ways of thinking, and perspectives.

Even something as simple as spelling and vocabulary seem to come a lot easier, if only due to having seen so many words written out over time. I remember being a kid and never really having issues with spelling or knowing most words because I'd at least run across them already.

That's not to say reading more "serious" material is useless. It just isn't an either/or question.

This is relevant not only in the context of books and blogs, but also for the shorter forms of reading that we do more often like HN or Reddit comments, tweets etc.

One way to think about it is that reading on the internet, no matter how casual, is like scattering seeds on the soil of your mind. Some of these seeds will grow into trees and influence your actions and decisions, whether you're aware of it or not.

Like all things, the effectiveness of the above depends on a good balance i.e. distraction by simply jumping amongst topics vs. concentrated thought on any one idea at a time. They are not the same.

In Hindu/Buddhist philosophy there is a concept of "Samyama"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samyama) and "No-Mind" (one aspect - https://thetealetter.com/japanese-tea-ceremony/mushin-discov...). What this means is that when you are reading/working/etc. on something, your mind is completely occupied with it to the exclusion of everything else. Even if that activity is of only a very short duration your mind is completely possessed by it and when it ends, your mind drops everything to do with it and moves on to the next activity to occupy itself completely. This is the basic idea behind meditation/mindfulness/etc.

Nowadays, I'm re-reading books that left a mark on me.

It's not uncommon to discover that some clever ideas I thought I came up with have been, in fact, read in a book. Humbling.

The thing is, you cannot get to that point by following productivity hacks. It's true that most divulgation books can we summarized in 2 pages. But the way good authors present the same idea again and again, through different examples and viewpoints is what remains in your brain.

I love reading as much as anyone, and probably finish on average, 100 books a year, but - I’ve gradually become skeptical of the idea that books are an ideal format for acquiring and retaining knowledge. I’ve written a few little comments about this in the past [1] but I’ve been meaning to explore the idea further. I originally began thinking this when I realized I could only remember a handful of details from books I had spent hours reading.

The short version is this: there’s nothing inherent about the format of a book that makes it ideal for learning. It is mostly a historical consequence of the fact that scratching symbols onto stone or paper, then replicating that paper/stone is easier to develop than recording and playing back audio or video. Human beings spent thousands of years using languages that were purely spoken ones, and writing is a fairly recent thing historically speaking.

If somehow it became possible to record and play back spoken language thousands of years ago, writing might have never become a widespread thing at all. Even today, speech is how the vast majority of the world uses language. Let’s not forget how influential the book form has been on thought, from the Bible to the Quran, etc.

And so if you brush away the mystique and legacy of books and think about what an ideal learning format would be, I think it would be quite different from a book. Probably it would incorporate audiovisuals, spaced repetition, and some form of storytelling.

All of this is about reading for information, not for pleasure. But I don’t primarily read fiction for information in the first place.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20940944, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319599, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38095507, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39521964

I find that I learn more from books than any other medium. I think it's because of the process of writing a book. It takes extreme dedication, passion, and a deep knowledge of the subject. Most books I've read have been reviewed by multiple experts and their content is presented in a structured and comprehensive way. Authors spend a significant chunk of their life writing a handful of books, many books you read are someone's greatest life achievement.

If the same amount of time and care were put into, say a YouTube video, I'd prefer the video. But that's very rare. My reading is 100% informational however, so I am biased in that regard.

I agree with you, maybe books are not the ideal format for acquiring knowledge.

I read a lot of fiction books, mainly classics for pleasure. And what I found unique is that only in books I have access to the interior monologue of the characters, their thoughts, and on some occasions, direct access to their "stream of consciousness".

I love it, and I discovered that some characters (but in reality it's the authors) have a similar process of thought, and some others do not, and notice and sense things differently ...

Yeah the funny thing is that the result of my realization above, is that I end up reading much more fiction - and appreciating fiction more than nonfiction.

There is a general assumption, I think, that fiction isn’t really worth reading and that serious people only read nonfiction. I don’t think I could disagree more. Really good fiction is entirely its own unique thing.

Fr people who believe fiction is useless have a very shallow view of life. Fiction is about the human condition.

Do you rather read a tutorial or watch a YouTube video?

Personally, I find reading is a much more interactive activity. You can seek, you can skip, you can summarize, you can repeat. Innoway, it is much closer and deeper than a conversation with another person. And definitely much closer than a video audio recording of that person, which is more like a speech than a conversation.

I would make a distinction between YouTube videos and a video, the format itself. YouTube videos tend to be even worse than reading when it comes to information access and retention. Videos, the format, on the other hand have the potential to be significantly more memorable than text, when you consider the fact that a video is a combination of images and audio. I am not familiar with research done on video, but there is a ton of research showing that images help memory considerably (the “picture superiority effect.”)

Which is a long way of saying that memory-optimized video content would be very different from YouTube videos.

I agree. I have done a lot of devouring podcasts and youtube videos over my years. I used to read a lot before that. Now I have dropped a lot of the audiovisual stuff and started reading more. The fact that reading requires more of my attention, that I find myself rereading things, annotating things, etc makes it a much better learning experience. The only thing that may be better is an in person classroom since it involves interaction.

This is why blocking and muting (especially "mute words") are essential on social media. You have to be intentional about the diet of language you feed your brain, just as you have to be intentional about the diet of food you feed your stomach.

I thought for the longest time I could tune it all out, that I was calloused. It's only in hindsight that I see how much of the toxicity I willingly looked at deeply affected me. Mostly because I started believing that everybody was like the worst, loudest people on the internet and believed what they did.

Why not just get rid of social media? That’s what I did. Well, I have a hackernews account but that’s it

There is a lot to be gained from social media, once filtered. It's not all bad.

I think there is lots to gain from Wikipedia, but increasingly social media is being gamed and politicised and manipulated. For me the cons outweigh the pros heavily. I don’t even read the news.

I feel incredibly free and happy with basically no online presence. Best I’ve ever felt.

All I need is Wikipedia, hacker news, and a couple of books. Coding and coding books gives me all I need.

Next step is to buy some GPUs to get away from hosted LLMs and start running them locally. Then I am truly free and information dense and self sufficient

do you watch YouTube videos?

Increasingly less. I’m giving away my tv tomorrow lol. I realise YouTube is just as bad with its influencers

I think this is the wrong take. A discerning reader can read all manner of crap and know its crap. It can even learn how to avoid doing the same styles of mistakes in the future by reading it. So it affects you, but in unpredictable ways. Not like you're trying to say like "read bad things -> become bad".

To give you a specific example (lets not call it crap this time). I've read more communist literature than I can list right now and I'm a social democrat and think Marx is full of flaws and communism is a hugely flawed economic system.

You are shaped by what you read, but not in the basic "you'll agree with what you read".

That's not my argument and I don't think it's the article's argument either. "You are what you read" doesn't mean you agree with what you read any more than "you are what you eat" means you'll turn into a potato chip.

My point is more like, do you want to devote a bunch of your thinking time to arguments about communism or politics in general? Maybe you do and that's great, but I very much don't. I've thought about politics plenty in the past and formed my opinions already. I'm not a politician and don't care to evangelize my political beliefs. I have very limited time these days and I want to spend that time thinking about other things. Things that matter to me.

I follow people who post useful and interesting things on those topics. However, those people also frequently discuss politics. And although I know those posts aren't why I follow those people, seeing them constantly makes them impossible to ignore. I end up spending time thinking about stuff I know I don't want to spend time on, even later when I'm not reading it. So I mute the words "liberal", "conservative", and a whole lot of others. Now I can follow those people but still spend my time thinking about the things that matter to me instead of politics. And over time, that literally changes my brain.

I've always believed that two things will broaden your horizon - travel and reading.

If you don't have the means or the time to travel then your next best option is reading.

We need to qualify what we mean by “travel.” Airline pilots, stewardesses, and other people that travel a lot for work or other purposes do not necessarily have the “broadest horizon.” I think we should use another term to mean “experience other cultures and ways of life.”

The same can be said about reading. Reading the entire One Piece manga series is not necessarily gonna broaden your horizons.

I those those people you mention would see it more as "commuting" and not the colloquial definition of "travel".

True, also they are doing a job. Most of them are only there for a couple of days before they are off on their next flight.

Not sure what the schedules are nowadays, but my uncle was an airline pilot with KLM and had a schedule which was 5 weeks work, 4 weeks off. He did that for about 20 years.

e.g. the movie Accidental Tourist

Exactly. We "need" to qualify that, but I don't think we really can. And that's the problem with all such grand generalizations.

There was a point in my life when I was very self-conscious about the fact I haven't really traveled by some people's standards. It kinda gave birth to that silly desire to "compete", to mark as "visited" as many countries as I could. And, I mean, traveling sure is nice, there was some void I filled doing that. But it was much quicker than I could expect, that this contest of sorts became totally meaningless, and I found out that I cannot even tell how many "countries" I visited.

First off, if the only time I was in a country was a long time ago on some guided tour, it somehow feels dishonest to me now to say I've "been there". I feel like I need a refresher for it to actually count. Like, otherwise it's as good as seeing a movie. Right?

Then, the mere saying that "I have visited a country" became kind of meaningless. What does it mean, to visit France? Nice is very different from Paris. Spending a couple of weeks in Alpine mountains (technically in France) kinda isn't what people mean when they say they've been in France. So, how much of it I need to see to say I've traveled France?

Ok, probably it makes more sense to count cities. But what does it mean to visit a city? Do 6 hours in the downtown while I wait for a connecting flight count? Do a couple of days meaninglessly wandering the city count? Does a work trip (which I mostly spent in some office and in some hotel) count? Does spending several night drunk and high in Paris count "visiting Paris" same as walking famous museums and such? What is "better"?

Maybe I should rather limit my accounting to specific places, like offices, restaurants, museums? Like, instead of saying that I've been to Paris, should I say "I've been in Louvre"? By the way, how many days do you need to "see Louvre"? How long do I have to stare at each paining for it to count? Does it count at all, if I have no fucking idea what I'm staring at, and there's nobody to tell me, why it's significant?

I don't want to sound cliche, especially in that way, but, honestly, I cannot even say that I'm completely familiar with the city I've been living in for the most of my life. There is not a "good enough" degree of "visiting a place". It doesn't exist. Your "traveling" isn't necessarily more meaningful than airline pilot's "traveling" (or "commuting", as another person in this thread tried to insult them). And there is no such thing as "experience other cultures and ways of life". Experience your life and culture first and then come back to talk. (I wish to add "in the next life", but it's not like that "next life" of yours can be totally identical to the one you live now, even if it is spent at the same place, so I guess you'll have to experience it first too.)

I wanted to also say a couple of things about reading the books, but this post is excessively large as it is. So, to summarize, all these "horizon broadening" contests are just vain and meaningless. Do whatever you want, read or visit whatever you want, and don't feel inadequate if you don't.

You don't necessarily have to travel far to experience the benefits. People seem to assume that distance is the main point but the main point is actually just exploring and experiencing new things.

I learned this during Covid when I started taking walks in the city I live in (Berlin) and realized I had only explored a tiny part of it in the fifteen years or so I have lived there.

You're fortunate that you live in Berlin, what if you lived in a cultural wasteland?

I think they compliment each other.

Someone who has read about the history of a place before visiting is likely to get much more out of it than someone who just visits and admires the sites. For example having knowledge of Roman roads and bridges is going to enhance your experience if you are fortunate enough to come across one on your travels.

Given the choice between one or the other, ultimately, I would go with reading - you can travel so much farther and more broadly in your mind.

One thing here that I disagree with is that there is a major difference between things that you know cold and things that you need to refer to external memory to refresh your recollection. Studying something closely and repetitiously enough to know it by heart makes the knowledge more useful. It also provides you with a sort of navigational buoy or pylon that acts as a referent for other important pieces of knowledge.

Mass media (electronic media in particular) tends to encourage the user to seek many shallow impressions that do not always leave deep and permanent marks. So, any single impression doesn't leave a big mark or define your character. But deeper study into a single topic or work does have a profound effect on who you are.

Having kids has made me realise that how your parents treated you and how your siblings treated you probably plays a bigger role than anything else (maybe apart from genetics, I'm amazed at how much my kids personalities have differed from birth)

This gets to some of the difference between human intelligence and LLM training. The machine remembers everything verbatim (plus a vector representation). Most people have faulty memory but somehow make a deeper encoding of the impact a book or life experience had. Agree there is some analogy between vector encoding vs the mind’s representation — but it’s a loose analogy. LLMs and search etc are useful tools for sure - but definitely don’t have anything like human level deeper (yet faulty) intelligence. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious… cheers

The machine doesn't remember everything verbatim.

I think that Emerson quote is just one big cope.

The books you read make you as much as you want them to make you. You get out of them what you put into them. If you're consuming books but not able to recall much from them, then you're not putting enough into them.

I especially don't like the Emerson quote because of how consumerist it is in its sentiment. It's a self-soothing license to passively consume and relieve oneself from any obligations to work to derive deeper substance from what they consume.

I've saved a link to more or less every thought-provoking article I've read since the last 12 years (first in Evernote, and now Obsidian). I have two notes, one "links", the other "article notes", that's just a bare minimum note-taking system for stuff I read on the web. Both notes are huge, and undoubtedly contain many tidbits of advice, perception shifting ideas, or "subjectivity merges" (https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/books-are-subjectivity-me...).

One of my project ideas now that has been building in my mind is, 12 years on, to go back and re-read and re-evaluate many of these links, and do a short write-up on how I've been influence by this article or any explicit choices that I've made in my life that could likely be attributed to it. I think this would be fascinating from a psychological/neurological POV but also a really cool chance to reflect on how I've changed/grown as a person.

I found “How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read” by Pierre Bayard to be a fascinating look at how we remember and fail to remember what we do and do not read. (Yes, I read it.)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-to-talk-about-books-you-ha...

Books, generally speaking, have changed my life for the better. I curate my reading list and only mindfully read what is beneficial to me.

The more I practiced mindful reading, the better I got at many things (from work, finances, to friendship and marriage).

I can attribute this to what seems pretty obvious - apply what you learn or think deeply about it to understand its meaning to you.

How do you pick what to read? Is it based purely on interests or areas you feel behind?

This is really an interesting article as well the blog itself, I admire it!

One interesting finding that I never seen in any blog is the notes part (https://notes.jim-nielsen.com/) where the author shows the notes he collected from various sources with his comments.

This one (https://notes.jim-nielsen.com/#2024-04-15T0822) from The Node.js Documentary, especially his comment, is outstanding:

  A big company is like a giant ship that has to start making its turn a mile before the actual turn itself. Whereas the community is comprised of thousands of small, distributed boats that can make (in contrast) hairpin turns.

This is great. A few years ago I read a book a month and too this day my thinking is still guided a lot by a lot of those books, but I stopped doing it because it was taking so much time in the amount of notes I was taking and I just don't have the time anymore.

But i've started to get back into it, realising that I don't need to take notes, because I rarely referred to them anyway and jus listening to audiobooks is engaging my mind in these topics in ways I might be able to fully grasp at the time and the idea that I need to leave with a notebook full of ideas after the end of a book just isn't true.

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

> The present is the past rolled up for action and the past is the present unrolled for understanding. —A&WD

Ever re-read a book you once read a long time ago, only to find your view of it has fundamentally changed in some way? Perhaps you identify with different characters in a story, or your understanding of the author's arguments is entirely different. It's a strange experience, since it's the same book - but you have changed, and so the book has become a kind of time mirror that shows those personal changes reflectively.

(It was Albert Camus' The Plague for me, revealing something of a transition from hopeful idealism to rather jaded realism).

This is going to come off as esoteric or metaphysically based. However, that is not my intention. I base the understanding of simple and/or complex ideas/theories on context alone. Meaning, much can be extrapolated if you simply philosophize the workings of a given system rather than detailing how the system is actually deployed/executing.

Example - if all matter we interact with in our world (and manipulate) is essentially compiled in different formations but derived from the very same essence of building blocks. . . then every living organism and inate object is inherently linked together somehow, someway.

The same goes then, for human experience (and thus a reflection of material basis and external fields applied). If a ferromagnetic material (iron) is capable of becoming ferromagnetic permanently and also capable of existing without, then not only is the inherent expectation of matter to transform from one form to another; external experiences applicably experienced result in the same manifestation.

But once again - If you happen to concede the notion that all things in the physical universe are essentially built from the same blocks, then so are the experiences of humans as well and as expected would appear to be connected in some way as well. Meaning, the experience affects the subatomic or quantum levels, thus changing quantum properties resulting in a formal change to the underlying building blocks (genes, DNA copy, etc). That's my take.

To me, this OP is just an example of exposing this on a philosophic level.

You might find the "Samkhya" school of Hindu Philosophy relevant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya

Thank you for linking. Very much appreciated.

Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams goes into this subject and describes how one processes all experiences during sleep through dreams.

Everything gets connected and stored away. Repeated every night. The knowledge you have gets connected with the new information you receive. The more knowledge you have the more valuable new information gets. At some point there is simply very little new information about a topic and the topic bores you.

I like to point out our first language is usually the best example. We remember where or when we learned very few of the thousands of first-language words we know. Yet, there they are, waiting to be recalled. Sometimes this is called "white knowledge," after white noise, meaning it's there, hidden, indiscernible, until you strain your senses to retrieve it.

This goes both ways: the understanding of what you read is constructed from the worldview you contextualize it with.

This is how we are able to use ambiguous language, also known as "Context-Sensitive Grammar". We provide our own backstory (context) that provides a Just-In-Time unambiguous definition of each ambiguous word or phrase.

There is a lot of excitement around LLMs, because they are capable of doing something with Context-Sensitive Grammar. Unfortunately, that something is not equivalent to the arbitrary disambiguation that we do using context. The core feature of an LLM (with respect to natural language processing) is that it never defines anything. Instead, an LLM blindly provides whatever text it deems "most likely to happen next", all without ever associating any text to any meaning. We wrap this process in "training", which hopefully guides common interactions in the direction we want, but that is never a guarantee.

Is the Internet a great enabler or is it holding the majority of us back?

Does this mean I'll never escape the influence of those decades of corporate email?

It might be both ?

I like to believe the internet is a great enabler when it comes to finding or accessing information, unfortunately discovery has become progressively worse for a long time now.

The internet is also a massive distraction as Sturgeon's Law applies fully, and certain participants optimize for capturing attention with low value content. It definitely holds us back, and leads to multiple adverse outcomes.

imo, engaging with the current day Internet must be done carefully as it's not all good, some days that works better than others.

I would argue it's not an either-or. The Internet enables us to share the information that's most relevant/efficient, and it makes this information so accessible that the opportunity cost for NOT accessing it is increasingly high.

  But how had I come to believe in this idea in the first place? A
  combination of my own experience and other things I'd read.
  None of which I could at that moment remember! And eventually
  I'd forget that Hilbert had confirmed it too. But my increased
  belief in the importance of this idea would remain something I'd
  learned from this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it.
  Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even
  if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your
  model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program
  you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.
  
  The place to look for what I learned from Villehardouin's chronicle
  is not what I remember from it, but my mental models of the
  crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege warfare, and so on.
  Which doesn't mean I couldn't have read more attentively, but at
  least the harvest of reading is not so miserably small as it might
  seem.
  
  This is one of those things that seem obvious in retrospect. But it
  was a Surprise to me and presumably would be to anyone else
  who felt uneasy about (apparently) forgetting so much they'd
  read.
  
  Realizing it does more than make you feel a little better about
  forgetting, though. There are specific implications.
  
  For example, reading and experience are usually "compiled" at
  the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time.
  The same book would get compiled differently at different points
  in your life. Which means it is very much worth reading important
  books multiple times. I always used to feel some misgivings
  about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together
  with work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a
  sign you did it wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase
  "already read" seems almost ill-formed.

https://www.paulgraham.com/know.html

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Reframing inevitably in the direction of AI, this also expresses the difference between, for instance, pretraining and retrieval in LLMs. People expect large models to memorize the dataset and are frustrated when it doesn't, even more so when it does but only partially and not thoroughly enough to rely on. But pretraining data : large models as books : people, building a world-sense that is refined and augmented through fine-tuning (for people, specialized training) and retrieval (for people Google searches, Stack Overflow, etc).

People complain about the extent to which we anthropomorphize GPT-class models, but I gain just as much from backporting the analogies that work for LLMs to my own experience.

The advancement in AI and LLMs with decent context windows is a usecase I am excited about for all of this.

Because I can read a book without taking such a huge amount of notes, which makes it easier to stay with those ideas and quicker to read and then I can load a PDF of the book into an LLM and chat with it about the concepts in the book, use it to produce notes, or discuss ideas that were in it and ask it to cross reference it.

It also makes it easier for me to come back to it several months later, I find that this can be better than my notes, as if i remember something from a book that is now relevant, can be loaded into an AI and ask it about that specific part and the quotes that are relevant.

With regard to the Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote, it is likely that he never said or wrote those words.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/20/books/

I could never put it words like in the article, but I always thought this was true (not just to books, but to all the inputs). Many times in my life, I have remembered obscure stuff from a random movie or specific parts of a conversation that I had many years back. Similarly with books, I can't recall it completely, but the sense of it is something that easily pops up.

Now I have started taking advantage of this using Anki. Whenever I read something having a particularly interesting or thought-provoking idea, I find a way to create flashcard(s) out of it. Now I am able to recall these things more often and many times they have guided me in my life or helping out friends.

I like to think of this like fine-tuning LLMs. When you fine-tune an LLM it doesn't pick up and memorise all of the training data. Rather it adjusts its weights/perspectives based on the content trained on/read.

Surprised nobody has linked PG's short piece on the same topic: https://paulgraham.com/know.html

Common current computing can greatly ease the effort to "remember" what have read, written, thought, learned, etc.

E.g., to help "remember" I have a general purpose file that I read/write with my favorite text editor and with some surprising statistics:

Date started: September 2nd, 2005

Number of entries: 8412

Number of lines: 60,436

Number of bytes: 4,736,380

Really simple. Works really well.

A little laptop computer handles this file for zero apparent effort.

Of course, a lot more can be done, e.g., something like everyone having a Google just for their own life, but it is shocking how much can be done with just the statistics here.

Plain text is the most durable medium for knowledge management. Let everyone else commit knowledge suicide by PowerPoint, SharePoint and such.

I agree. As I explained to my sister in law, I try to stay with just plain text. Pushed to something else has me tempted to scream, say loudly enough to blow down trees for a radius of 20 miles.

I'm hackernews

My biological father once claimed he was "totally immune" to advertising; I nearly fell over dead that instant with laughter.

Roger Ailes, Edward Bernays, and William Randolph Hearst applied similar principles, leaving lasting influences on the course of American history: one bent a hundred-fifty million Americans towards a retreaded version of the Nixon ideology, one made cigarettes appeal to women and had democracies overthrown for fruit companies, and the latter decided how to spin the news, became a Nazi, and nearly convinced America fascism was a "good idea".

I don't see how any human alive, unless they lived under a rock, can reasonably trace the origin of any of their beliefs or preferences. So, I must conclude beliefs, preferences, and ideologies are more or less arbitrary because most people don't spend metacognition effort on analyzing their formation or their change.

I realised this some years back, after an advise that if you find reading hard, read faster. Don't spend too much time understanding each word and line. Good advise

That will only work if the author also rushed to write the piece. Understanding is more desirable than finishing a book.

I'd take issue with your first sentence. The most challenging task is to distill a difficult topic into something that can be quickly understood. That inevitably takes time. When I write rapidly and unreflectively I often make readers confused.

Same thing is true about all your other habits: your thoughts, your food, your friendships, your music, what you buy and so on.

Tell me your habits, I will tell you who you are.

This is why I don't read.

Try writing a poem. Mine were so obviously regurgitations of past material consumed that I realized that to output anything original, I had to develop an individuality by starving the creative neurons, so to speak.

Of course, this is only restricted to fields where one would like to produce novel output. You're free to read academic papers, etc; But if you want to write original sci-fi, start by not reading sci-fi.

No, You have quite the wrong idea!

Novelty is not born in a vacuum devoid of input. It comes from internalizing/assimilating a whole lot of concepts/ideas only after which can you manifest new things from it.

In Martial Arts (also applicable to other fields) there is a saying;

In the beginning the student knows nothing and hence can move freely but not effectively; as he starts learning he is confused/all-mixed-up and cannot move freely nor effectively; but finally when he masters the movement, he has internalized it and hence can move freely and effectively.

In philosophy too a "Master of Wisdom" is said to revert to "the original child-like state" (but with the knowledge of the world in hand).

I often notice that reading a book will sometimes change my active vocabulary in subtle ways. Influx of NIH-thoughts is very very valuable.

Nietzsche said something similar, I believe he advocated picking 100 books and just reading them deeply, thus curating by not reading every junk book that came along. But can't find the quote where he said that, or his list.

Does anybody have a link to Nietzsche's reading list? It seems it is hard to find things on the internet lately.

And you read what you find in great aggregators:

https://bookmarks.reviews/

https://www.nybooks.com/

https://www.perlentaucher.de

I'd argue the reverse is also true: you can remember books perfectly and not integrate their teachings.

Depending on where you are in life, a book can model, confront, polish, and/or destroy (no always a net negative) your core principles – either passively or intentionally, by taking notes and rereading.

This reminds me of finetuning LLMs vs using RAG:

In RAG you "know" what the model knows and it's easy for it to give sources - you literally give it to the model in the prompt.

In finetuning, the model learns something, but it might not be able to reproduce it perfectly later on. But it's models have been changed.

This is just a convenient excuse, just like this

> Education is something you have even if you don't remember anything

Though the professor's test is just as poor quality as the whole blog's conversation where intellectual exercise is compared to remembering breakfasts

What about people that don’t read at all? Are they nothing?

"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them." - Mark Twain

They're illiterate, which is a tragedy.

Unless they grew up in a culture of oral history, in which case they may know a great many things.

i don't mean to alarm you, but i think you're failing the literacy test

Although the common definition of illiterate is unable to read and write, at least one dictionary also defines it (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/illiterate) also being used as having very little or no education or/and showing lack of culture.

I suppose we could abstract this to "you are your experiences, even if you don't always remember them."

The anecdote at the end of the post expands it to what we hear/learn in general.

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There is some irony hidden in the remark that his wife sent him the inspiring quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, that compares books to meals having eaten.

I read a lot of being a good programmer, but I am far from one, so perhaps this is only true in some circumstances. ;)

I often wonder how much free will I have in my political opinions.

Are they simply a time weighted average of the media viewpoints I consume?

Your body is what you eat and how you use it. Your mind is what you read, hear, and how you apply it.

I got a hunch that a free will is related to both self-control and self-awareness

We are just weights of an LLM.

Guess that makes me part mysterious novel and part forgotten grocery list.

except when an AI does it they call it "copyright violation"

Replace AI with the words “a very large computer program run by extremely rich entities” and it now makes sense.

human can't experience it whole of internet like ai.so it is a very bad comparison.

we cannot even experience the whole of our bodies AND brains

so I contend it is not such a bad comparison

Garbage In, Garbage Out. It really is that simple.

What if we become who we are in the dreams we forget?

Paraphrasing McLuhan:

"We become what we behold"

That and the constant feeling of deja vu

You might want to get that checked out. Occasionally mis writing a memory is pretty normal. Constant deja vu is usually an indicator of bad stuff happening in your brain. Like busted hardware.

There's an even more profound truth here. You are what you experience, even if you don't always remember each one. You are a constellation of experiences. Consciousness is the consensus mechanism that stitches them together to make you.

This can sound like spiritual woo-woo but that's the distillation of a pretty good scientific model. More here: https://saigaddam.medium.com/consciousness-is-a-consensus-me...

you are what you read, you are what you eat... it goes on and on :)

Just like any other LLM.

Yes. So much this.

the emerson quote just hits so hard and true

Not really buying it. I mostly liked the same type of books all my life. I read a lot out of my comfort zone and I never particularly enjoyed it, nor do I think they impacted me much. I read what I am, not the other way. Maybe others are more influenceable.

*open-minded

Citation needed. Assertions without evidence.

If I read something with a critical eye, it’s not the content that shapes me, but the way I engage with the text. Otherwise, every conspiracy theory I read about would shape and change me.

I don’t buy it at all. Effective learning[1] is about effortful recall. Things that you just read have a transient learning effect. But the common way of cramming is done through this transient means because it is a simple strategy for unstructured/otherwise busy students and it works until the exam (but not much after).

And you are… maybe in the sense that it always remains in your unconscious. But what use is that? Memory and learning is about being able to pull things out of the subconscious (unconcious?).

Look at any serious craft or activity where people have to learn things. They learn by doing. Doing things as realistically as possible is better. And doing-learning also transfers to talk/read-learning (discussing how to do something). Meanwhile talk/read-learning does not transfer to doing-learning as much.

Frankly our culture overrates book-learning. By a long shot. This might not seem the case because now frequent long-form reading can be regarded as a practically monastic activity, what with all the stupid alternatives we have at our disposal. But book reading and learning hardly ever directly translates to practical learning.

This attitude (of Emerson’s) sounds like Behavioralism. That you’re whatever input you have processed. I find Chomsky’s Nativism and Rationalism to be more compelling. Consider a socialist who reads 500 liberal think tank pieces. He’s more likely to either be as socialist by the end or more (double-down effect).

> I have to constantly remind myself of this. Especially in an environment that prioritizes optimizing and maximizing personal productivity, where it seems if you can’t measure (let alone remember) the impact of a book in your life then it wasn’t worth reading.

This for sure is a problem if you have set some goal of reading one book every week. But that goal is borne out of that exact same Optimization Mindset. Most people don’t fret over how many Good Words pass by their eyes in a year.

[1] the book Make it Stick

I'm with you there; you'll need some recall even when reading. You can't learn a new domain when the previously introduced concepts, vocabulary, or equations are inaccessible because you can't remember them.

I can usually tell which programmers read man pages (generally RTFM) and which don’t. And I still `man ln` more frequently than I’d like to admit to make sure I get the argument order correct.

> Consider a socialist who reads 500 liberal think tank pieces. He’s more likely to either be as socialist by the end or more (double-down effect).

Rhetorically assuming this is truth, he’s also a socialist who has a better grasp on the liberal perspective. He’s a different socialist than his comrade who’s never bothered to explore liberal writing.

> Rhetorically assuming this is truth, he’s also a socialist who has a better grasp on the liberal perspective. He’s a different socialist than his comrade who’s never bothered to explore liberal writing.

You read Emerson less narrowly than I did. And on a second read I see that I misremembered it (it wasn’t about how you are what you read).

> > I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

My paragraph was more addressed to this:

> It’s a good reminder to be mindful of my content diet — you are what you read, even if you don’t always remember it.

This mirror relationship is not the case. You are not what you read. You are affected by it but you don’t become more like it.

test

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