Sorry I did not explicitly mention parallelism and continuous (re)integration. I am always reading between 2 and 4 books in parallel—often, in the case of non-fiction, books extolling opposing viewpoints. Also a mixture of media, print, video, F-F-t-F conversations, and Web.
It is the tapestry, not any individual thread or local motif, that is valuable to me. When I do synthesize/coalesce into a stable opinion on some topic, e.g., my antipathy to AI and LLMs, it has a deeply entangled root ball. AI: Minsky, Simon, Winograd, McCarthy, Rumelhart, Dreyfus, Gabriel (https://dreamsongs.com/Essays.html#AIWinter), and my own work (first two professional publications were in AI Magazine and my Ph.D. thesis focused on human cognition). glen: I doubt, please correct me, that had you not laid a foundation with your history of reading books/print media, you would be anywhere near as successful integrating your 'non-reading'. davew On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote: > I actually land almost exactly opposite to Dave. Descent into > authoritarianism is *caused* by reading and the lack of reading > facilitates egalitarianism. That's an overstatement, of course. But > Dave did it first. 8^D > > As Marcus (unintentionally?) implies, inductive learning relies > fundamentally on this sequential beatdown ... a firehose (or maddening > drip, drip, drip) of entrainment. What saves us from the entrainment is > parallelism (?) ... parallelity (?) ... interruptibility (?). When/if I > do read books, I read them in parallel. It used to be a steady stream > of 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction, where fiction was reserved for evening > when my mind goes numb and it doesn't matter that much if I habitually > read entire pages without comprehending them. Non-fiction in taxis, on > planes, at lunch, focused efforts, etc. And I simply can't > overemphasize the fecundity of doing that. In every case, the 2 books > fed on each other, cross-pollinated. > > The same is now true with my not-reading reading. I'll stop in the > middle of an essay on anarchism to dig back through a podcast on a Q > anon meme. Or stop in a neuroscience article and go look up some > Jungian archetype I thought I smelled from some sci-fi show. Etc. > > This world-integrating task switching inoculates (I claim) against both > lefty and righty authoritarianism. Whereas the more time you spend > consuming 1 narrative (e.g. all the Curtis Yarvin material or > whatever), you begin to think in terms of that 1 narrative. True, for > voracious readers who can consume Ulysses in an evening, there's little > risk of entrainment. But for us rabble with low cognitive power, > task-switching is better than the sequential beatdown. > > On 11/7/24 09:00, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> Gemini, Copilot, and Chatgpt all give responses like this: >> >> < It’s hard to pinpoint an exact number, but the data likely encompasses the >> equivalent of hundreds of thousands to millions of books' worth of text. >> This figure includes a mixture of genres, lengths, and types of writing, >> from novels and technical manuals to academic articles and historical >> documents. The aim was to capture a broad and varied perspective, rather >> than comprehensive coverage of any single source type or genre. > >> >> *From: *Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West >> <profw...@fastmail.fm> >> *Date: *Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 7:55 AM >> *To: *friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com> >> *Subject: *[FRIAM] Reading >> >> several people made comments about people not reading much and glen >> mentioned he has read maybe 2 books this year. This triggered me, a lifelong >> addicted bibliophile. >> >> I started reading (comic books with/Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land/ and >> heroes like Lex Luthor) a couple of hears before starting school. I maxed >> out my Weekly Reader Book Club order every week during grade school. Weekly >> trips to neighborhood book store for 20-25 cent paperbacks (mostly science >> fiction, but a hell of a lot of non-fiction popular science books as well). >> A simple mention in a TV show, /Outer Limit/s, prompted a library trip to >> check out and read Kant's /Critique of Pure Reason/, My freshman year at >> Macalester required buying and reading over forty books—mostly monographs, >> not textbooks. I have read just over 10,000 books in my lifetime (a >> significant percentage being fiction—mysteries and science fiction). Until >> the past decade, I had subscribed to at least two local papers and one >> national paper. Before they descended to junk, read Newsweek and Time every >> week and subscribed to at least six-seven different periodicals (a lot of >> them computer journals). When I >> encountered a mention of Graeber, I bought and read one, then all, of his >> books (/Dawn of Everything /is, IMO, a really important book with insights >> that could inform much of the socio-political discussion on this list). >> Whenever anyone on this list mentions a book, I am on Amazon with seconds >> ordering it. When I attended FRIAM at St. John's, I visited the bookstore's >> new books table and always left with 3-8 books; every week. >> >> When speaking at professional conferences I always ask how many people have >> read 1-2 computer books this year. and most of the audience raises their >> hand. How many have read one book other than a computer book this year—less >> than half the audience. How many a fiction book—four or five people. >> >> Alan Kay once said, /"If you do not read for pleasure, you cannot read for >> purpose."/ An exaggeration perhaps, but a valid observation. >> >> My last three or four years teaching, I was not allowed to mandate any books >> for any class. I could recommend one text book. >> >> The year i spent teaching high school in Las Vegas, NV; not one student, >> outside of 'honors/AP' courses had read even one book in their entire 4-year >> high school career. >> >> Books are not the only medium of course, but I am deeply suspicious of the >> value of much of what is consumed from on-line and mass media sources. >> >> I would attribute any descent into authoritarianism, any demise of social >> order, and any succumbing to existential threats on humanity to nothing more >> than the massive ignorance of the vast majority of people who do not read. >> >> davew >> >> On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, at 8:29 AM, glen wrote: >> >>> I would guess the majority of those who voted for Harris also don't >> >>> read. Or, maybe it's better to say they don't read the same way we used >> >>> to read: https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/the-future-of-reading >>> <https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/the-future-of-reading> >> >>> >> >>> I'll admit that I rarely read books anymore. I think I've read 2 this >> >>> year. The overwhelming majority of my reading is journal, magazine, and >> >>> news articles. And I spend a LOT of time listening to podcasts and >> >>> video essays. Granted, my only social media is Mastodon. Though I do >> >>> try to post to Instagram sporadically. I just have no idea why serious >> >>> people still use eX-Twitter. I mean, WTF? >> >>> >> >>> All this stuff plays an important role in "how democracies die". And my >> >>> guess is we'll learn less from the deep thinking book writers or >> >>> essayists and more from attempts at network analysis across media like >> >>> TikTok, Telegram, Signal, Discord, & SimpleX. There was this (good) >> >>> article on Graeber in the Guardian: >> >>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit >>> >>> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit>. >> >>> And despite it tweaking my old philia, it just reads so empty to me >> >>> now. A stroll through .5TB of leaked chat logs is much more exciting >> >>> these days >> >>> (https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-election-interference >>> <https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-election-interference>). >> >>> >> >>> On 11/7/24 02:16, Sarbajit Roy wrote: >> >>>> "> ..,The people who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt or >>>> Levitsky and Ziblat ..." >> >>>> The people who voted for him don't read... >> >>>> >> >>>> We have a similar problem in India, the great semi-literate masses have >>>> been handed cheap smartp[hiones with cheap data plans so they are >>>> connected 24x7 to the Matrix. >> >>>> >> >>>> On Wed, Nov 6, 2024 at 2:04 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net >>>> <mailto:j...@cas-group.net> <mailto:j...@cas-group.net >>>> <mailto:j...@cas-group.net>>> wrote: >> >>>> >> >>>> I woke up today and saw the horrific news on TV that Trump has won >>>>again. It is incredibly bad on many levels. It is bad for the environment. >>>>The world will not be able to stop global warming without the U.S. It is >>>>bad for Ukraine as well. To me it feels like the end of civilization and >>>>democracy. The people who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt >>>>or Levitsky and Ziblatt. Or do not care. >> >>>> >>>> https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/ >>>> >>>> <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/> >>>> >>>> <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/ >>>> >>>> <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/>> >> >>>> >> >>>> I was wondering how this is possible. If we define populism as an >>>>ideology that presents "the people" as a morally good force and contrasts >>>>them against "the elite", who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving >>>>then this could be a reason why Trump is so successful. He is good at >>>>populism because he is corrupt and self-serving himself, and uses >>>>projection to accuse others. >> >>>> >> >>>> >>>> https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378 >>>> >>>> <https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378> >>>> >>>> <https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378 >>>> >>>> <https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378>> >> >>>> >> >>>> >> >>>> What do you think? Why have people voted for him although they know >>>>what kind of person he his? Are we doomed now? > > -- > ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. > / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. 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