= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Risto_Saarelma comments on CogSci books - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (40)
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.
I think the current situation is that students still need textbooks to get up to speed on a new field, since the textbook takes the time to pedagogically explain the initial assumptions of the field which the practicioners don't take time to spell out in the articles they write. People already familiar with the field can come up with questions that have concise answers they can understand, so they can just google up the relevant articles and don't need to rely on books that much.