Saturday, December 27, 2014

Paul Graham: "How You Know" - How Reading Trains Our Mental Models

Paul Graham essay,

"I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them? [...]

Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why."
I think he's right. I think it also helps to review books. Even the books I think are bad are worth reviewing. Books that are bad can even be worth reading. It was important to see how terrible The Outsiders book was, because competitors like it so much.

No comments: