[fasteddie]

In recent years I've switched a lot to watching a non-fiction author's 30 minute talk on youtube about their book rather than reading the book entirely.

This is especially true for business/self-improvement type books, where I've found its almost never really time efficient when I'm really just looking for the list of 5 things I should be doing and skipping the extraneous pages of anecdotes.

[e1g]

For me it's the opposite: for example, I had watched countless videos on "disruption" but did not fully grasp it until I read The Innovator's Dilemma. The same holds true for theory of constraints vs reading The Goal, Robert Cialdini's works on influence, Richard Dawkin's views etc. In all cases, I thought I understood the material before reading the original source, and in every time the books blew me away.

Perhaps there is a dimension about how rigorous the thinking is behind the book. I struggle to imagine a YouTube video that could effectively and convincingly unpack ideas from The Intelligent Investor, The Sovereign Individual, Sapiens, etc. Other topics like "How to get rich with x" or pop-sci covered by the likes of Kurzgesagt are simplistic enough for a video essay, but those are seldom worth consuming regardless of medium.

[tynpeddler]

I think you're hitting at the dichotomy of knowing vs grokking. A lot of powerful concepts have high level summaries that can trick the audience into thinking that's all there is to it. Chris Voss's excellent "Never Split the Difference" comes to mind. A lot of his negotiating strategy can be boiled down to "develop a mutual and deep empathy with your negotiating partner". On some level this makes intuitive sense; people who empathize with you will help you solve your problems, and empathizing with other will help you tailor your solutions to their concerns. But when you sit down to pull this off, you run into two major problems. What is the strategy for doing this? Some phrases tend to antagonize people, while others help build rapport. There are often emotional stages that relationships have to go through, so you need to behave appropriately at each stage, but also you need to move the relationship to the point that is beneficial for you. The second major hurdle is actually implementing these strategies. Even with the head knowledge, when the pressure to perform is on, you may not behave appropriately.

[scott_s]

Put another way: it can be easy to gain an understanding of a particular goal, but very difficult to develop a deep understanding of the systems that allow you to achieve that goal.

[davidivadavid]

Yeah, I think in some ways I've also adopted a sort of bimodal approach:

* If it's a somewhat technical topic, go straight for the textbook/papers. If you don't understand them, you won't understand them any better from reading the "pop" material. If it's too complex (say, quantum physics), walk back and get acquainted with more basic material.

* If it's not technical, e.g. popular non-fiction books, listen to a (couple) podcasts. If it sounds like there's more to it than the 5 bullet points the author keeps repeating, get the book. That doesn't happen very often.

[msla]

> If it's a somewhat technical topic, go straight for the textbook/papers. If you don't understand them, you won't understand them any better from reading the "pop" material. If it's too complex (say, quantum physics), walk back and get acquainted with more basic material.

OK, I've been holding this in and now I finally have an excuse to put it out there:

Trying to talk about quantum physics without math makes it more confusing, not less. You inevitably end up making some weird analogies which aren't analogous, things which an expert might be able to reverse-engineer into the actual concepts but which put a non-expert in a Lewis Carroll Bullshitland, which is like Wonderland only not as amusing and definitely not worth putting in a book, let alone a "physics" book.

At worst, you end up with crap which is actively wrong, like everything Deepak Chopra has ever said in his entire existence.

Meanwhile, you can give people a real understanding of basic quantum mechanics with high-school algebra and a bit of simple logic.

The deep reason behind this is the same damned interpretation problem physicists have failed to solve for nigh-on a century now. We have the math, we know it works, and, miracle of miracles, we can do some real physics with fairly simple mathematical models, but we don't know exactly how the math hooks up with reality. If none of Dirac, Bohm, Feynman, and Pauling could definitively solve this problem, the odds of a pop science author doing so are not worth thinking about.

To drag this back to the topic: A book about quantum physics which includes no math isn't worth reading.

[mcguire]

Is there any specific recomendations for: "Meanwhile, you can give people a real understanding of basic quantum mechanics with high-school algebra and a bit of simple logic"?

[msla]

> Is there any specific recomendations for: "Meanwhile, you can give people a real understanding of basic quantum mechanics with high-school algebra and a bit of simple logic"?

I had "Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum" in mind, but I forgot it used some simple calculus, too. It's easy enough to bootstrap from high-school algebra to the kind of calculus it uses, but my statement wasn't correct for that book.

But I'm being unfair: The volume on quantum mechanics is the second volume, and both differentiation and integration are explicitly explained in the first, on classical mechanics.

And there's a difference between using an equation and deriving it. If you don't expect to derive equations, you can still understand quantum mechanics in terms of state vectors, matrix operators, and complex amplitudes turning into probabilities without explicitly using a Lagrangian, which does unavoidably require calculus.

(And, yes, I consider basic matrix algebra and complex numbers to be high school algebra.)

[EnFinlay]

Business/self-improvement books are the worst for having 3 pages of ideas and expanding it to the publishers 200 pages minimum.

[HNLurker2]

Blinkist is best app for this, google quickly the author to get a glimpse and at least you find some gold pots.

[cloudkj]

I think that defeats the purpose of learning from reading. I just finished the Learning How to Learn class on Coursera and it emphasizes the active learning by doing that needs to take place for one to internalize ideas. By watching summary videos to just get the gist of each book, I think you end up with a not so useful illusion of understanding.