Thank you for posting these; I appreciate that people (the quoters) generate such thoughts and questions and discussions, and that other people excellently accumulate these things and spread them (this substack).
Thank you for posting these; I appreciate that people (the quoters) generate such thoughts and questions and discussions, and that other people excellently accumulate these things and spread them (this substack).
Your welcome! I strive to do original work here (more coming soon!) but these questions are a great thought-provoking resource that should be more widely known, glad you appreciated it.
Also, another thought: where did you come across all of these? (generally speaking, e.g. "mostly books", "mixture of articles + podcasts" etc...). These questions are provocative, and I will likely be contented by trying to parse them out further in my journal, maybe through answering them directly, trying to find what emotion or assumption or social context they are embedded in, etc... I often fail at recording interesting passages from what I read, but would like to fail less in this regard. Off the top of your head, do you have any recommended readings, from the subset of what you've read, that contain these questions or remarks?
Hey sorry for the delayed response - this is a good question and I'm not sure I have a great response. I'm not sure how I found about Edge.org but it is a great resource and it is definitely worth looking at the other annual questions series (see the part 1 post), full of interesting ideas and speculations. As for your more general question, I can only say what has worked for me. When I was younger I read a lot of books on science and philosophy. As I've gotten older, I've probably shifted towards reading more articles about science/philosophy (huge Scott Alexander fan) and more fiction books. I've been an avid listener of podcasts for the last 12ish years of my life (I'm 31) and have learned a lot from various people. Two favorites are Sam Harris and Very Bad Wizards, I've learned a huge amount about psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and meditation from these two. The podcast Weird Studies is another recent favorite, eclectic discussion of art, philosophy, and the occult. As for favorite books, I'm a huge Daniel Dennett fan (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, from Bach to Bacteria and Back), I love everything by Noah Yuval Harari, and for fiction I love Ted Chiang and Jose Luis Borges and can't recommend them highly enough - full of fascinating ideas and questions that you might like. I also like the work of Thomas Metzinger, his book the Ego Tunnel is very interesting and he has some good essays (check out my post "The Blind Spot of Existence" for recommendations).
I don't have any special system for remembering things or recording passages. Sometimes I'll take a picture if I see a quote in a book that I like or I will copy interesting passages from articles into a word document. I really don't worry about it too much, if it was really that interesting then I usually remember it, and if not so be it. I'm guessing you are fairly young, the one thing I'll say is that you tend to get more efficient in you reading as you get older, it's like you have a bigger database built up so it is easier to make connections and therefore remember things, or at least that's my experience. Hope this helps!
Thank you for posting these; I appreciate that people (the quoters) generate such thoughts and questions and discussions, and that other people excellently accumulate these things and spread them (this substack).
Your welcome! I strive to do original work here (more coming soon!) but these questions are a great thought-provoking resource that should be more widely known, glad you appreciated it.
Also, another thought: where did you come across all of these? (generally speaking, e.g. "mostly books", "mixture of articles + podcasts" etc...). These questions are provocative, and I will likely be contented by trying to parse them out further in my journal, maybe through answering them directly, trying to find what emotion or assumption or social context they are embedded in, etc... I often fail at recording interesting passages from what I read, but would like to fail less in this regard. Off the top of your head, do you have any recommended readings, from the subset of what you've read, that contain these questions or remarks?
Hey sorry for the delayed response - this is a good question and I'm not sure I have a great response. I'm not sure how I found about Edge.org but it is a great resource and it is definitely worth looking at the other annual questions series (see the part 1 post), full of interesting ideas and speculations. As for your more general question, I can only say what has worked for me. When I was younger I read a lot of books on science and philosophy. As I've gotten older, I've probably shifted towards reading more articles about science/philosophy (huge Scott Alexander fan) and more fiction books. I've been an avid listener of podcasts for the last 12ish years of my life (I'm 31) and have learned a lot from various people. Two favorites are Sam Harris and Very Bad Wizards, I've learned a huge amount about psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and meditation from these two. The podcast Weird Studies is another recent favorite, eclectic discussion of art, philosophy, and the occult. As for favorite books, I'm a huge Daniel Dennett fan (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, from Bach to Bacteria and Back), I love everything by Noah Yuval Harari, and for fiction I love Ted Chiang and Jose Luis Borges and can't recommend them highly enough - full of fascinating ideas and questions that you might like. I also like the work of Thomas Metzinger, his book the Ego Tunnel is very interesting and he has some good essays (check out my post "The Blind Spot of Existence" for recommendations).
I don't have any special system for remembering things or recording passages. Sometimes I'll take a picture if I see a quote in a book that I like or I will copy interesting passages from articles into a word document. I really don't worry about it too much, if it was really that interesting then I usually remember it, and if not so be it. I'm guessing you are fairly young, the one thing I'll say is that you tend to get more efficient in you reading as you get older, it's like you have a bigger database built up so it is easier to make connections and therefore remember things, or at least that's my experience. Hope this helps!
Oh and I love "The Beginning of Infinity" By David Deutsch and would highly recommend checking it out.