Rain comments on Rationality Quotes - September 2009 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: thomblake 01 September 2009 03:06PM

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Comment author: Rain 01 September 2009 10:57:48PM 7 points [-]

You won't gain knowledge by drinking ink.

-Arab proverb

Comment author: Rain 01 September 2009 11:24:04PM *  2 points [-]

Maybe it needs further explanation? Ink being the object with which books are created, and knowledge put down for others to use, you must be careful to avoid using that object directly and believing you have gained knowledge from it.

The blog post itself isn't the great insight, nor is the Reddit software it's running on, or the comment system, or the upvoting and downvoting. Insight can only come from the mind, and understanding the words and how they all link together into the idea being presented. The idea isn't in the text; it's an abstraction of the human mind.

Perhaps better summarized as, "Don't just read: think."

Comment author: Rain 02 September 2009 12:04:24AM 4 points [-]

Alternatively, "Put down the RSS feed and go learn something."

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 04 September 2009 04:41:04AM -1 points [-]

I don't see the connection. The point of the original quote is that the medium is independent of the info it carries. You're quote says the opposite: one particular medium (RSS) is incapable of carrying info.

Comment author: Neil 02 September 2009 02:49:04PM 1 point [-]

Puts me in mind of this passage

...philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow—it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of “work,” that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to “get everything done” at once, including every old or new book:—this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 September 2009 07:27:32PM 0 points [-]

Better still when this kind of deep reflection doesn't turn out to be mindless trance or faithful chanting.