Books and lectures don't work

Try only learning things with books for 4 months and then tell me it doesn't work. I tend to notice that learning from books get a lot harder if I allow my brain to be flooded with whatever chemicals are released when I watch youtube or game of thrones. If I avoid those for a while, and avoid sugar etc, and if I work out every day and get enough nutrients etc, then my ability to learn via books is…

The very premise of this article shows how demented Western culture has become. The attitude of, “I invested 15-20 hours reading this book and, boohoo, I’m not a subject matter expert on the book’s topic” is absolutely insane. It takes a decade of serious work to really get a strong handle on a topic. Books aren’t supposed to teach you something to know, they’re meant to teach you how much you don’t know. Hopefully from that impetus one can go…

I think the author's fundamental misunderstanding is that most people, even people like himself who "take learning seriously" don't read popular non-fiction to learn. Most people read for entertainment. So you shouldn't be evaluating how much one learned from Guns, Germs, and Steel, rather, you should compare how much you got from Guns, Germs, and Steel compared to a TV show like Breaking Bad. So, to answer the author's question: what should be done about it? Nothing. The reasons why…

With an analog system like Zettelkasten, a single index card is used to scrawl brief notes for a book. Ideas are expanded in separate index cards, the ends of which are to publish new, synthesized works. I'm not certain a single index card could fit the entire length of Capital, or even every command from Absolute OpenBSD. So, there has to be some compromise over what notes to take and how much. That depends on the person's existing background and…