Wise in comparison. The other quantifiers are hyperbole.
The quote applies insofar as the field being studied is already somewhat mapped and investigated. Programming forums are ultimately more useful than tutorials and textbooks, talking to an author more insightful than reading the 200 page thesis, and having access to a community of intelligent synthetics is much more valuable than having access to a library.
talking to an author more insightful than reading the 200 page thesis,
Find the right books, and it'll probably be far more rewarding than talking to an author, simply because of the information density and better organization that you can get in written form.
An hour of reading Hennessy and Patterson's excellent book on CPU design will teach you a hell of a lot more than six hours of classes. I speak from recent quantitative experience here, which is where I got those specific numbers. The exceptions to this rule are local: particularly hard-to-understan...
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.