= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
AnnaSalamon comments on Use curiosity - 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 (62)
Is there a tradeoff?
For example, suppose that after choosing your next book you read the cover and the table of contents, took a guess about what was inside, and then spent ten minutes jotting down questions you hoped it might help you answer, before reading it. Would make your reading better?
I'm not advocating "stopping all the time to do background research". More like, making sure your brain is alive, and you're bothering to ask questions, notice potential updates, etc. Because for me, it's easy to go through life (including reading) partially zoned out.
Well, what I tried to convey is that for quite a bit of my non-fiction reading, I don't have too many specific questions beforehand. Say, I pick up a book about Neanderthals. My main question might be something really general, like 'how does this fit in with my general understanding of homonid evolution', but apart from that, I'll just read it. For any questions that I have, I usually check some other sources.
So, I was not really opposing the usefulness of goal-oriented reading, just that for quite a bit of my reading, my goals are not very specific. When I have some specific goal in mind, of course asking questions is a good way to structure your information-soaking process.
Anyhow, for my next book (or probably when deciding what to read next), I'll try to follow your advise, let's see if it helps me to read more effectively.
But you can broaden the questions as well.
Looking at Neanderthals/hominids:
How does this relate to the understanding of art, creativity, madness, motherly love? The notions of greed in children, in adults, in a capitalist economy, and how does that relate to the regulation of markets, conflicts of interests, incentivization and moral hazards? How does this relate to the notions of religion/theology, race, climate tolerance? How does climate tolerance relate to the social structure of Californians, and what does air conditioning mean for society going forward? How does early hominid tool use relate to our ability to drive cars, use computers, integrate robotics with human life, and parkour?
Obviously one can get lost in mindless ramblings of curiosity. But if you make an effort to be constructing an overall fabric of "how things work", you have a reason and a direction for your curiosity. It combines being mindful with entertainment. Over time you create a your own grand unification theory (not specific to physics, mind you), and you have a framework into which you can easily slot new information (or update existing).