...let's talk about books.

I just read a comment on /. that moved me to realize something I've not really thought about before, and that is after reading some books, or maybe just written works, I feel smarter than I did prior to reading it, as the contributor to a book review discussion did.

How can this be, or is it just a sense of personal gratification, or fulfillment being poorly characterized?

This might get into heady territory (yeah, no surprise huh?), but I think it's the kind of heady that many of you here have something to say about. I kind of want to hear it, as this will be a morning commute thinking topic for me for a while.

[and that is where I do a lot of it, BTW! Stuck in the damn car, me, the radio blatering on, or blarign tunes I've heard way too many times, I tend to wander down some thought road, sometimes surprised at where it takes me. This thread is like that, -->I hope!]

We have raw intelligence and we have learned things. Maybe the best way to put this is we all can learn stuff, but what we do with it might be a factor of how much raw smarts we have.

I have always believed smart people rub off. Thought exercise:

Let's say we've got an ordinary person. Not someone others would characterize as smart, but not stupid either. Just ordinary.

If that person is raised by morons, and learns a lot of stupid things, others will see them as some kind of moron with potential... or maybe just another moron. In any case, the perception of how smart they are would be less smart than they actually are, given they don't see some exposure to non-morons.

On the other hand, this person is raised by geniuses. They learn lots of very smart things, and would very likely appear smarter than they are, because of the behaviors they have captured.

Is this person smarter then?

Maybe raw intelligence is the ability to evoke new behaviors. We all can learn stuff though, and we all can learn enough to leverage the understanding brought to us by smart people.

In particular, the real question is, what if one of those smarter behaviors is how to learn, or how to think, or something along those lines.

Wouldn't that then be a case for a person literally becoming smarter after having had to process some smart thoughts from others?

I know in my life, I've picked up some ways to reason that help me get through some tougher stuff than I would have thought possible otherwise. Have you guys had a similar experience?

Have you gone the other way? I'm sure I have.

If so, let's talk about it. I'm just curious to explore this idea that we could be smarter from reading a book, as opposed to interacting with people.

Books???

Huh. I didn't know anybody still used those things...... ;o)
*laughs*

Last one I read:
"Steal This Computer Book #4.0" Wallace Wang. It is a book about hacking, sort of in a similar vein to 2600. Unfurtunately it's *really* Window$-centric, which (I suppose) must be the reason for the two long chapters about security. Interesting stuff really, but could have gone a bit more into depth about Linux. ***.5 (out of five)




On the other hand--
"The Best Of 2600" has been calling to me lately.......

2600 is just excellent. I still read one, from time to time, when I see it.

See you Moto...

Happy trails, where ever you land.

I enjoyed both of Obama's books. I highly suggest reading them.

I am currently working on _The_Fair_Tax_, which my brother gave to me for my birthday. I also have the Edward R. Murrow biography, _Murrow:_His_Life_and_Times_, which I have never managed to finish reading. Making progress on books takes discipline!

Of course, not all books are authoritative. However, a great strength of books is that they tend to present ideas in a longform manner that fosters the notion that the different pieces of information within the book can be brought together toward a conclusion or conclusions that may be "greater than the sum of the parts."

By comparison, the Internet--and chiefly the culture of message boards--tend to present ideas in a much more haphazard way that seems to emphasize the anecdotal over the search for anything authoritative. Internet discourse tends to have this dangerous postmodern idea about it that it may not be possible to draw conclusions from a collection of facts because the conclusions are either subjective (i.e. everything is really opinion) or the world is too complex for generalized conclusions to be valid.

I don't like that idea either.

IMHO, it's clear that conclusions can be made. This form of conversation is no different from any other. Text, speech, does not matter. Words are words, so either we can conclude something, or we can't.

Given our history, it's clear we can, so non issue.

Just read a fantastic book by Dexter Filkins (NYTimes Iraq War Correspondent from 2003-2006) called "The Forever War." This guy is talented and really knows how to bring the details to the page; you can smell Iraq in his descriptions. He's also a keen observer of the contradictions of the whole mess over there. He went everywhere, including into Fallujah with the Marines in 2004. Right in the thick of things. Amazing book.

Andrew

I have been recently reading up on one of the more enigmatic Founding Fathers, Aaron Burr. I know famous (or infamous) for shooting Alexander Hamilton. But his life was a really interesting one and it's quite mysterious because half of his personal paper were lost at sea (along with his only child, Theodosia.) One of the biographies I have read recently was Revisionist crap. The other one was written in the late 1970's. It was more balanced and not so revisionist. Some interesting facts: Burr was one of the only Founding Fathers who believed in equality between men and women. He was tried for treason (and acquitted) by the second Jefferson administration. He was one of the longest lived Founding Fathers mostly due to him being 20 years old in 1776. He politically influenced Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and many other "Jacksonian Democrats."

Anyway, aside from the historical books, I have recently picked up Michael Moorcock's Elric series and the latest Discworld book, Making Money.

I like how books, at least the ones that I have enjoyed reading, are able to articulate thoughts and ideas that I understand, but with an entirely new set of words to describe them. There is GREAT satisfaction is having someone else confirm your beliefs or even present new ones using a new vocabulary.

Malcolm Gladwell has done this to a degree that blows me away. I have downloaded his new book " Outliers " and am looking forward to talking funny for a while after I listen to it.

Word.

And it's kinda cool to recognize the dynamic that takes place within audiobooks. The narrator is crucial. For example, I listened to Jeffrey Toobin's, The Nine - about The Supreme Court. While I get that the content was close to the author's heart, I don't like listening to him read his own work in that case.

That's an interesting take. Normally, I have a problem with audio books. The readings just seem goofy. I'm gonna try this one.

Absolutely agreed on Gladwell. Potent and thought provoking stuff. Love it, and I do feel somewhat smarter after reading books like that.

Chickenjuggler, I just picked up "Outliers" (the paper version) at Costco yesterday. I look forward to reading it.

Andrew

Missing it's interesting that books have been on your mind. I'm nearing the end of one of those 1000 plus pages kind.

I'm a fairly slow reader but this mother of all books I'm attempting to read in 90 days along with a bunch of other people too. Yep-The Bible (NIV version)

Pew research found out that 72 percent of people who attend church have never read the bible cover to cover. And as much as I hate to admit it, I am one of those people. Although I have studied this book for many years, never have I gone cover to cover. Thankfully there is a wonderful program set up for small groups to talk about the reading, along with a DVD of Old and New Testament scholars to give historical and contextual continuity to what we're reading.

Should have it done in about 2 weeks. We're talking 12 pages per day.

Vitalogy I'm looking forward to reading Obama's books after I get done with the one I'm currently reading.

I just recieved a book from a Genealogy collaborator in Oklahoma. She and I have known each other for about 6 years now. My Gr. Gr. grandfather who was a great grandfather to her ( she is 80 years old). Of course we never knew the guy, he died in 1889, Captain in an Iowa regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War.

She gave me a book that she has had in her garage , stored for the last 45 years handed down to her at that time. It was his book, titled " Manual of the Constitution" 3 rd revision published in 1888. Inside cover signed by my gr gr grandfather and a drawing of a bird by his youngest son, the last of 13 children , age 15, signed by him as well. Harry, who died in Los Angeles in 1952 at age 78, while still working for the Los Angeles county auditor's office as an associate auditor, retirement?? what is that huh?

The last postition the old guy held was as a Justice of the Peace, so I suspect this is why he had the manual in the first place. It even has compressed flower petals in chapter 13.

I read a chapter in this book, Chapter 1, " Civil Government". Its been awhile since I have read the prose and syntax of the 19th century ! I have read short articles over the years but the last time I read such full chapters in books were ones that my grandfather had in our home, as he lived with us during his last 7 years on the planet. He had early late 19th century editions of Twain, A. Conan Doyle and the like. These I happily struggled through in Jr. High and High School. I read the current works a few days ago and found that I am a bit better and faster at the readings now as a seasoned reader in my late 50s, but still, reading the involved and wordy prose would challenge even Evelyn Woods herself to any meaningful speed reading accomplishment.

KSKD, you got me started about books, so this is what has been on my mind relative to the subject. And then relative to the subject of communications in general.

Speaking of reading, and communication (as we members are all prone to do because of our history in that medium ) and relative to the way people got their news in the 19th century, relates again to my gr gr grandfather, who's name was Norman. Norman and one of his sons, my gr grandfather, Edwin, owned a small newspaper in Red Oak , Iowa in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

This newspaper 1 of 3 in Montgomery co Iowa, was known as " The Public Telephone " . A snazzy new name contrived by ( I presume ) by one or both of these two characters , depicting a modern age of communications characterized by the recent invention by Alex G. Bell esquire. Anyhow , in those days newspapers gladly and openly represented specific political points of view. Well, the other two papers in the county represented Democrat, Republican, and my forefather's newspaper represented the Greenback Party point of view. You can google Greenback party and read all about it, but it was a party that we would call reasonable by today's standards. They supported Women's sufferage, a progressive Federal income tax, farm subsidies, and many other " outlandish " ideas for that day and time. A political party that was at least 45 years ahead of its time.

Norman , the old man, was the editor in chief, Edwin was the operations guy, type setter ( compositor as they were called then, later linotype operators when the technology changed ). Edwin was also a lawyer in Iowa. In Iowa at that time, to be a lawyer all you needed was a high school education ( academy they called it then )and 18 months in law school. So his law offices were 2 doors down the street from the Newspaper. They went to press, in the beginning once per week, then twice a week after a year in operations. I have a few copies of selected pages , an editorial or two. It was a real find for me. And this has taken 7 years to find and assimilate. And such a newspaper was a little like a local radio station, selling ads, printing the gossip and composing the weekly OP ED piece.

Norman and Edwin had some kind of falling out, we dont know what it was about, I think my Grandad knew, but he never talked about it and no one else knows...Norman moved away in his old age ( 54) with his wife and two youngest children, still at home and in school to Rich Hill ,Missouri, with his war injuries, an open abdominal hernia that according to a copy of a physical examination I have, was large enough to stick 4 fingers of the doctor's hand in to. This thing Norman aquired in the civil war after falling off a horse. It could not be surgically repaired in those days, only thing you did was put a truss on it and suffer, so being a local magistrate and sitting in a courtroom probably looked like the only way to make a living for him by age 55 to 61 !

Life was a bitch and then you died huh? All I have to do is re read this story, think about it somewhat and then decide, hey ! So what if you have to work till you drop, life now is still alot easier than my for-fathers had it !