Comment by whiddershins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whiddershins | Hacker News Reader

It took me a long time to recognize and be able to articulate the seriously detrimental effect of reading pop sci on my thinking.

“Knowing” incomplete, false, distorted, or misleading facts is often much worse than having no information, or having never even considered a topic.

If I read fiction, it may imply some fundamental lens on the world, but I think my brain is better able to recognize it as an opinion, or subjective.

But if I internalize the “truth” of dietary principles or basic psychology, I will make real choices and have my perceptions shaped to believe I am seeing the results of these choices ... and it is often completely wrong.

This can be subtly or devastatingly negative for my success and quality of life.

I think this problem is under considered. In recent years I have started realizing that most of what I read literally makes me dumber.

It’s a thought that has more implications than I think most people want to consider. Especially people whose identity is connected to being someone who “knows” things.

I disagree. What's the alternative?

I prefer having a few wrong concepts in my toolbox than none at all. As the Gates quotes in the article suggests, it's good practice to be vigilant and run a basic reality check before absorbing an idea as part of your worldview, but that you might encounter wrong ideas is not a reason to stop reading accessible science books. I don't need to read papers on economic theory if I can pick up a basic book by a respected author and at least end up with some additional concepts, ideas and a good understanding what at least some experts believe is the truth. That doesn't mean I need to believe everything they say and if it matters you should neither rely on one journal's output nor on one author's book as the ultimate truth.

I can read a book about dieting or psychology or evolutionary theory and I should be aware that I won't end up as an expert, but at least I'll very likely be better informed.

"Why we sleep" has lots of good content, generally coherent information, etc. As the article here shows you shouldn't believe everything at face value but you will learn something. I'd love a reaction by the author to the claims here, but even if he says "I was wrong to do this" it doesn't invalidate his whole book or all his knowledge on the topic. He might have taken it out to avoid confusing laymen that all like to imagine themselves in the "under 5 hours" category. That doesn't make it sound in a scientific way but it does if his main aim is to get a message across that sleep is grossly undervalued.

There's lots of science on the need for sleep and what the article here says that there's no proof that sleep under 5 hours is harmful is simply not true.

Anyone else tired of learning and internalizing cool new concepts and then those ideas you had come to adopt and believe in gets debunked/disproven soon after? Might be better just to not believe anything so you don’t get betrayed anymore lol

I often think about that. It is why I wrote many thoughts about "Maturity Models": the best ideas for any subject (the system being far from ... uh, mature, at this point). But the idea is to take best practices and collate and order them with dependencies, instead of reading thousands of books to know what is "next" for one's own growth in an given subject. The idea is that multiple optionally-integrated-if-and-when-they-want communities of practice could develop. More info buried at at http://lukecall.net under Lessons Learned etc etc.

Edit: url & minor fixes. Also I hope to eventually progress with this, using my http://onemodel.org project.

Edit: ideally anything (or any source of info) could be assigned transitive trust levels. Dietary science would get a low one in my system at this time. ;) Physics, math, and epidemiology would probably get much higher ones.

Thesis - antithesis - synthesis.

Question would be whether you are better off at the end. Did your journey through these concepts help you improve your own understanding and action?

For me, it feels like I've fallen face flat into a puddle of doubt. Yes, believing in some particular idea and putting it to practice felt great at the time, but now the science has said it's bullshit and I'm wrong for believing in it. If I choose to keep believing in it because it makes me feel good, they're going to call me stupid and a science denier!

Half joking. I'd rather be stupid, get my sleep, and feel great. ;)

The book full of excellent, albeit commonsense advice and probably mostly claims made from studies which would hardly even need to verified by science because it’s pretty obvious from anecdotal experience. Your brain works better after you’ve had a good nights sleep. You’re body can repair while resting.

I think readers mostly enjoy the book because it’s a reminder of sleeps importance in a world where spending time on the internet and working long hours can seem even more important.

It’s good you decided to write off a whole genre, I’ll enjoy taking a light hearted approach an a open mind to reading similar publications in the future.

I once wrote a paper related to genetics. It's known that cells contain various parts (organelles), some of which used to be independent cells. Those are rather well researched but finding scientific references for some points were surprisingly difficult and I had to quote some 1940s papers to actually have a solid citation for a well-known but not trivially verifiable fact.

I can imagine much common knowledge is difficult to proof and the various alternate Nobel prizes are great at rewarding some of this important but hardly recognised work of "proving the obvious".

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