The particular friend I refer to is unusually good at distilling things in ways that I find actionable/motivating, which might bias me a bit.
But of course it depends on the book and the topic and the person, and it would be unwise to think that most books could be easily summarized like this.
Notably, I think that many of the things that people commonly worry about RE status are easier to summarize than books. Examples:
Takeaways from a conference
Takeaways from a meeting with High-Status Person TM
Takeaways from a Google Doc written by High-Status Person TM
The main exception is when information is explicitly flagged as private. Even in these cases, I think people are often still able to reveal things like “the updates they made” without actually sharing the sensitive information. Or people are allowed the ideas but not their sources (e.g., Chatham House rules).
I think this is a reasonable critique.
The particular friend I refer to is unusually good at distilling things in ways that I find actionable/motivating, which might bias me a bit.
But of course it depends on the book and the topic and the person, and it would be unwise to think that most books could be easily summarized like this.
Notably, I think that many of the things that people commonly worry about RE status are easier to summarize than books. Examples:
Takeaways from a conference
Takeaways from a meeting with High-Status Person TM
Takeaways from a Google Doc written by High-Status Person TM
The main exception is when information is explicitly flagged as private. Even in these cases, I think people are often still able to reveal things like “the updates they made” without actually sharing the sensitive information. Or people are allowed the ideas but not their sources (e.g., Chatham House rules).