billswift comments on CogSci books - Less Wrong

5 Post author: xamdam 20 April 2010 02:11PM

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Comment author: taw 21 April 2010 12:21:18AM 0 points [-]

It probably won't make me terribly popular around here, but I'd say books have lost their informational function, and these days are used primarily for signaling sophistication.

On nearly any subject, you'll get vastly more useful knowledge from googling than from reading any book.

This argument doesn't apply to fiction or to entertainment-value non-fiction - only for sources of serious learning. Linear non-interactive format is simply horrible at getting knowledge anywhere, and brains are great at filtering this out.

Comment author: billswift 21 April 2010 07:32:59AM *  1 point [-]

From my blog last year http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/04/web-is-still-not-adequate-for-serious.html

The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor. -- John Allen Paulos

And

Most pages are very shallow; many others are too narrow for learning, though decent papers for those already knowledgeable in field for research. Too much emphasis on new results, but most new results are wrong, many of the rest are incomplete.

I also followed up, and discussed Robin's comments, including "Until you've read and understood textbooks, why bother with anything else?", in http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/04/overcoming-bias-and-learning-from-www.html

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