Ugh, I feel this myself. Not even just about learning. I love learning, but I also love gaming and writing and reading and a bunch of other stuff. And there’s just too much stuff for one lifetime. I first started to notice I guess around ten years back, when I realized there were so many great video games coming out that I there was no way I could play them all; that I was missing cool things. And that is not okay.
Same for books; and, as you point out, same for raw knowledge. I’ve tried to contain the flood by restricting myself to only reading (or playing) the best of the best material in whatever medium. Of course, that just replaces the problem of absorbing everything with identifying that which is worth absorbing! If you want to start using the programming language C, you read K&R2 and you’re pretty much ready. What’s the similarly-definitive reference for, say, a given subset of geology? Sculpture? Authorship? Are your only options to try and find that one specific bible for the field, or to read 100 books and find that 90 were mostly wasted time?
Somewhere around here is a thread trying to pick out excellent textbooks. I think it’s one of the most useful things on the site outside the Sequences.
Error, I agree with you (what a nickname you got by the way!)
For books, you are pretty much on your own, or under orders (advisor orders) so you’re fine once you have the method of finding stuff in an area (usually finding someone you trust in the area), that is how I got my education by the way. I found 4 really smart apes, and asked each to tell me a 1000 pages to read. I don’t regret it.
Now what is fuzzy and complicated is activities that can be social, in particular, I have a list with about 100 movies that one of 15 people I asked qualified as Life-changing, or majestic. I can nearly never get my friends or girlfriend to watch one of those. I frequently find myself either going to the cinema to watch something random (in comparison) or watching a movie that is clearly suboptimal for my criteria (personally I like movies that make me cry, which is easy, and make me rethink the whole of existence, which is hard).
34 years from now someone will quote me: “Error, I agree with you”—Diego Caleiro
and conclude I was a deconstructionist postmodern philosopher...
Ugh, I feel this myself. Not even just about learning. I love learning, but I also love gaming and writing and reading and a bunch of other stuff. And there’s just too much stuff for one lifetime. I first started to notice I guess around ten years back, when I realized there were so many great video games coming out that I there was no way I could play them all; that I was missing cool things. And that is not okay.
Same for books; and, as you point out, same for raw knowledge. I’ve tried to contain the flood by restricting myself to only reading (or playing) the best of the best material in whatever medium. Of course, that just replaces the problem of absorbing everything with identifying that which is worth absorbing! If you want to start using the programming language C, you read K&R2 and you’re pretty much ready. What’s the similarly-definitive reference for, say, a given subset of geology? Sculpture? Authorship? Are your only options to try and find that one specific bible for the field, or to read 100 books and find that 90 were mostly wasted time?
Somewhere around here is a thread trying to pick out excellent textbooks. I think it’s one of the most useful things on the site outside the Sequences.
Error, I agree with you (what a nickname you got by the way!)
For books, you are pretty much on your own, or under orders (advisor orders) so you’re fine once you have the method of finding stuff in an area (usually finding someone you trust in the area), that is how I got my education by the way. I found 4 really smart apes, and asked each to tell me a 1000 pages to read. I don’t regret it.
Now what is fuzzy and complicated is activities that can be social, in particular, I have a list with about 100 movies that one of 15 people I asked qualified as Life-changing, or majestic. I can nearly never get my friends or girlfriend to watch one of those. I frequently find myself either going to the cinema to watch something random (in comparison) or watching a movie that is clearly suboptimal for my criteria (personally I like movies that make me cry, which is easy, and make me rethink the whole of existence, which is hard).
34 years from now someone will quote me: “Error, I agree with you”—Diego Caleiro
and conclude I was a deconstructionist postmodern philosopher...