Brad DeLong over at his Substack:
In my prime, I would read perhaps 150 serious books a year. I would skim over parts that did not resonate, but would still absorb a good deal as I skimmed. I would focus on the themes and passages that resonated. I would think about them. I would then go off and argue with the author, or at least with a spun-up sub-turing instantiation of the author in my imagination. Figure 5 hours per book. 750 hours per year building my own cognitive capacity out of a total budget of 24 × 365 = 8760 hours per year, it was time worth spent.
Well, now, we are not such as once moved heaven and earth, but what we are, we are.
I am down to perhaps, half of that: 75 books a year, 1.5 a week, of which 40% are re-readings to remind me and refresh my parasocial acquaintance with my intellectual magisters and adversaries. Half of this gap comes from lower energy. Half of the gap comes from time being absorbed by reading and watching other things. Of those, perhaps half of which are things that are worthwhile.
There is a definite loss. There is a great sense in which deep reading and substantial continued engagement builds one own cognitive knowledge structures in an important way. Thus this feels like a gap in my personal information processing life that I should try to repair. The natural way to repair it, of course, is to see whether MAMLM technologies might be useful. Could they create a document, a document that I could then spend an hour with, that will present to me summary points and then focus my attention on passage in the book that I would have focused my attention on had I read it? And might I then be able, by having that document thereafter, quickly refresh my recollection?
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.