I read it in a book somewhere

I was settling down to read AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor and thought “should I be taking notes on this?”. It is a topic that is likely to be relevant to my career, and also something that I may want to bring up in conversation professionally. It would be helpful to be able to point to a chapter in the book and say “here, they are saying it, not me”. By “they”, I mean the experts… right? Can the author(s) of the books I read be considered experts? Sometimes — but there are certainly times when I want to reference someone’s opinion rather than some research that was performed. Something was said eloquently and I now want to parrot that beautiful phrasing onwards. To do so, I need the source, because while I remember the idea, I don’t remember the prose. The more I think about it, the more taking obsessive notes about articles and books seems paradoxically like a doomed egotistical mission to sound more intelligent, while also not trusting ourselves enough to be accurate conduits of information.

There is no better feeling than when someone asks a question aloud, and you have an article read to go, right in your back pocket. “Ah, I read about this just last week!” (this subtlety shows how much time you spend reading) “I have the article right here, let me pull up a quote” (this shows off that you have a perfect system for organizing quotes). “It’s hard to say exactly when the clock was invented, because of the long history of time…”. You look smart, everyone learns something new, and the effort you spent writing down that quote seems worthwhile. A triple win.

How often does that happen though?

Perhaps I am alone in this, but I find myself spending so much time reading something new, that my thinking is always changing and I don’t spend much time re-reading quotes from old books. Rahul Chowdhury talks about having principles to guide us, rather than metrics. Could this be a case of thinking that reading more books is better than reviewing those that I have already read, chasing a metric rather than a goal?

Having a North Star principle or purpose for every corner of your life helps here. For example, if you want to learn more things this year, reading five books well instead of fifty would be a better target. Your North Star principle is to gain knowledge, not read as many books as possible.

Baldur Bjarnason takes the opposite approach in The promise and distraction of productivity and note-taking systems, essentially arguing that our mind is being continuously transformed (hopefully, improving) through digesting and contemplating the thoughts we experience.

Good books, those that are worth reading, do not have big ideas. They have big arguments. The “big idea” is never on the page but in your head – the thoughts that engaging with the argument inspired.

I interpret this to mean that books or articles are constantly clashing against the priors we have in our head. So long as we are open to thinking about new ideas, the writing may change our thinking ever so slightly. We cannot possibly account for every moment our ideas about the world are shifting, because it is happening all the time. I may wait longer at a traffic light because I just saw a newscast about a car crash, without even recognizing why I am doing it. We are the summation of all the information and experiences we have ever taken in.

This disconnect, the unpredictability of the “aha” moments when we conceptualize something new for the first time, can be frustrating. If only we tried harder, perfected our note-taking process more, then we could have such moments every day. Casey Newton writes in Platformer:

In short: it is probably a mistake, in the end, to ask software to improve our thinking. Even if you can rescue your attention from the acid bath of the internet; even if you can gather the most interesting data and observations into the app of your choosing; even if you revisit that data from time to time — this will not be enough. It might not even be worth trying. The reason, sadly, is that thinking takes place in your brain. And thinking is an active pursuit — one that often happens when you are spending long stretches of time staring into space, then writing a bit, and then staring into space a bit more. It’s here here that the connections are made and the insights are formed. And it is a process that stubbornly resists automation.

So if not for new grand ideas, what should I look to remember from books? I have tried fun facts, but the next time I want to know something about that topic, I always consult the internet instead (it can be hard to track down the citations that authors used in their books). Perhaps a single sentence about how a book changed my prior belief about something, or solidified it, is best. For example, from Not the End of the World I could write “I knew solar had gotten cheaper, but I didn’t know it had gotten a lot cheaper”. This may change my belief into how many countries can adopt solar energy, or the profitability of companies that sell panels to homeowners at a particular price point.

Shifting away from references being the ultimate goal

This is a hard point for me accept coming from a scientific background where references are everything. However, this may be changing now that references are so easy to come by. Alex Edmans talks about this in May Contain Lies. The website paraphrases a quote in the book nicely and was the one sentence takeaway I had after reading it.

Stories, statistics, and studies are everywhere, allowing people to find evidence to support whatever position they want.

If I am arguing something outlandish, does it make you trust me more if I can point to a single book or article I read that agrees with me? Of course not. If I pointed to five? Also probably not. What matters most is the hundreds of things that you have read up until that point, and how closely what I am saying aligns with that. In communicating, we always have to be adaptable, no two situations are going to be the same or fit perfectly into something we have come across before.

Knowledge gardens can have a way of becoming walled-gardens. We build up an arsenal of books that support an existing idea, taking down quotes that further reinforce just how right we have always been. I am guilty of this. The amount of books I have read on the effects of social-media on society (3 books on Facebook alone) is borderline absurd. The message is all the same; Facebook is harmful to mental health, privacy, and discourse. Before I even pick up the next book, I’ve read the summary to make sure that it conforms to that general notion. Reading the books is comfortable, and comfortable can be tempting quicksand.

Instead, I’ve learned more about the perpetuation of Facebook through conversation. “Why do you keep using Facebook?” I ask, “well, all my friends are on it, and they won’t switch”. It’s as simple as that, network effects are incredibly powerful, taking precedence over privacy or mental health concerns for many. It isn’t even that hard of an idea to conceptualize — of course something as concrete as friendship will overtake a lawsuit over data handling that very few people have even paid attention to. A book about how bad Facebook is will probably miss that fact, and warp my worldview into thinking that I am seeing something nobody else is.

Knowing where to look is more important than capturing everything

When reading, it is impossible to know which part of the book is going to useful down the line. Instead I always find myself thinking “that book was about this topic and generally argued this, I bet this topic is covered” and then going back to glance at a chapter or two. Keeping track of books (even with no notes) can be a huge help with this. On android, OpenReads has been a huge help with this. Simply be scanning the barcode of a book I can load it into the collection. There is an option to attach a small note to books, which could be useful for a one sentence summary of the main argument of the book.

Trusting ourselves (and those around us) to voice opinions

I want to conclude with the idea that we may have strayed too far into looking for others to have opinions for us. In no way am I saying that we should replace expertise with any one individuals’ thinking on a topic, but there is something to be said for taking opinions, even if not supported by any best-selling book, seriously. Most people are not alone in their thinking. If I talk to three neighbours and they all think crime is up, it can be useful to pay attention to the idea “people think crime is up”, rather than “crime isn’t actually up, and people are wrong”. There is a lot of nuance in the translation of knowledge between people and within communities. Could it be that my understanding of the statistics is skewed? How broadly are the statistics disseminated? To what extent do people care about the statistics in the first place?

This can be especially important in areas where we have people around us that are not world-class experts, but know a lot more than us. If I am learning how to play volleyball (something I am terrible at), I will listen to a friend that is much better than me, even if they aren’t the very best coach in the world. I won’t ask them to support their instructions with articles or books about the best volleyball techniques. I will accept that their understanding of volleyball through years of learning and practice is sufficient and go with it.

Within reason, we should trust ourselves to do the same, and not feel overly reliant on pulling up quotes and books to support everything we are saying. We will have the context necessary to tailor a message to the audience we are talking to, understand the community where we live, and also be more receptive to the feedback we get from others. When we pull up a quote from a best-selling book and someone disagrees, it can be easy to say “you’re clearly wrong, this expert says so”, but if we state an opinion ourselves we can learn and be strengthened by pushback. Why do I think this? Are there any holes in my reasoning? What am I missing?