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by eagsalazar
5128 days ago
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The attitude of the author is irritating and all too common in people in love with a self image of being an intellectual. "In the absence of rigorous experimental evidence, I’m quite skeptical." - This is not logic. This is an arrogant and out of hand rejection of a hypothesis that has not yet been proven or disproven. " “expert” who “totally believes” you’re a “different person” for having read books even if you don’t retain anything, with some flimsy feel-good reasoning such as the “extraordinary capacity for storage” that our brains have" This is better reasoning than that put forth by the author by far. I love the quotes around "expert". WTF? Does he mean the PhD in Neuroscience and Prof at Tufts? That "expert"? The one who actually has studied this subject in depth? As many other poster point out, we don't even remember most of our own lives but it is totally absurd to say our life experiences therefore don't influence us and that we shouldn't try to fill our lives with pleasurable moments. It is unfortunate he defends working to remember more of what he reads with such a flawed and irritating argument because trying to remember what you read is an awesome and worthwhile pursuit. There is no need however to bash all of literary fiction and the reading 99.9% of people on this earth enjoy. |
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Similarly, while he's trying to pose as an intellectual as you say, he misses the point that we learn things in multiple layers. Rememberance of the literal wording is only one layer. Witness Romeo and Juliet, a classic story which most people are familiar with, but extremely few would be able to quote a line from. Reading this guy's essay was like listening to those insufferable fresh graduates who claim 'but I never learned anything at university'.