Paul Graham: How to Know (How You Know)
“Reading and personal experience form a worldview. And even if you do not remember the very moment of receiving the experience or content of the book, their influence on your understanding of the world will certainly remain in you. Your mind is like a compiled program without source code — it works, but it’s not clear how. ”
- Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, programmer, investor, essayist
"The capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders" (Eugene Delacroix, 1840)
Original - How You Know
December 2014
')
Thanks for the translation of lxsmkv , for valuable clarifications - knagaev , for the support of the publication - Edison
I re-read the Villaruenan Chronicles on the Fourth Crusade at least twice, or maybe even three. And if I had to write down on paper everything that I remembered from there, I doubt that I would have accumulated even one page. And now, if you multiply it by seven hundred, then the result will turn into an unpleasant, oppressive feeling that visits me every time I look at my bookshelves. What is the use of all these books for me if I don’t remember any of them?
A couple of months earlier, I had read Hilbert’s remarkable biography written by Constance Reed, and I found in it, if not the answer to my question, then at least something that would smooth this unpleasant sensation. In her book, she writes:
This thought always seemed to me to be extremely important, and the words of Hubert only strengthened my point of view.
However, how did I come to this conviction? It was born from my personal experience and read books. None of which I remember. And, perhaps, I would not even remember the words of Hubert. But the thoughts found in the books reinforced my thoughts and beliefs, despite the fact that I do not remember their content.
Reading and personal experience form a worldview. And even if you do not remember the very moment of receiving the experience or content of the book, their influence on your understanding of the world will certainly remain in you. Your mind is like a compiled program without source code — it works, but it’s not clear how.
And the fact that I learned for myself from the Viladruen Chronicles that I read was not what I read, but the mental images of the crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege battles and other things.
And looking back it seems obvious, even though it was once a discovery for me. As would be, perhaps, for anyone who has ever felt annoyed at not remembering what they read.
Having understood this, it may become easier to stop worrying because of the properties of the brain to forget. In view of the above, we can make further observations.
Book and personal experience are intertwined with the level of your consciousness in a certain time period. Thus, one and also a book can be put on consciousness differently depending on what period of life you read it. That is why it makes sense to re-read important books several times.
Before re-reading the book I was previously embraced by an anxious feeling. After all, I unconsciously treated reading as carpentry work, where redoing work means that the work was done poorly for the first time. Now, I rather think that in relation to the book, the verb “re-read” is not applicable at all.
It should be noted that these findings apply not only to books. Technology provides us with new opportunities to relive our experience. After all, once we strive for this, then we like it. How do you like to revise vacation photos or dig for yourself, trying to understand what made us the way we are (like Stephen Fry, for example, cleverly remembered that the reason for his inability to sing is the long-term mental trauma that occurred as a child). With the improvement of technology for recording and reproducing experienced experiences, it can become commonplace for people to experience past experience anew, even without any purpose, just to discover something new in it, just as it happens with books.
Maybe someday we will be able not only to reproduce the past experience, but to archive it, or even overwrite it. And let us think that this is a completely normal property of the human brain - not to think about the nature of our worldview, but who knows.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris for reading the drafts.
Previous translation - Paul Graham: How to make a Pittsburgh start-up hub
PS
Who is ready to help with the translation of The Refragmentation , write in a personal or e-mail (specified in the profile)
- Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, programmer, investor, essayist
"The capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders" (Eugene Delacroix, 1840)
Original - How You Know
December 2014
')
Thanks for the translation of lxsmkv , for valuable clarifications - knagaev , for the support of the publication - Edison
I re-read the Villaruenan Chronicles on the Fourth Crusade at least twice, or maybe even three. And if I had to write down on paper everything that I remembered from there, I doubt that I would have accumulated even one page. And now, if you multiply it by seven hundred, then the result will turn into an unpleasant, oppressive feeling that visits me every time I look at my bookshelves. What is the use of all these books for me if I don’t remember any of them?
A couple of months earlier, I had read Hilbert’s remarkable biography written by Constance Reed, and I found in it, if not the answer to my question, then at least something that would smooth this unpleasant sensation. In her book, she writes:
Hilbert did not tolerate lectures on mathematics, in which students were stuffed with facts, instead of teaching them to formulate and solve problems. He often repeated to them: “A good formulation of the problem is already half of its solution.”
This thought always seemed to me to be extremely important, and the words of Hubert only strengthened my point of view.
However, how did I come to this conviction? It was born from my personal experience and read books. None of which I remember. And, perhaps, I would not even remember the words of Hubert. But the thoughts found in the books reinforced my thoughts and beliefs, despite the fact that I do not remember their content.
Reading and personal experience form a worldview. And even if you do not remember the very moment of receiving the experience or content of the book, their influence on your understanding of the world will certainly remain in you. Your mind is like a compiled program without source code — it works, but it’s not clear how.
And the fact that I learned for myself from the Viladruen Chronicles that I read was not what I read, but the mental images of the crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege battles and other things.
And looking back it seems obvious, even though it was once a discovery for me. As would be, perhaps, for anyone who has ever felt annoyed at not remembering what they read.
Having understood this, it may become easier to stop worrying because of the properties of the brain to forget. In view of the above, we can make further observations.
Book and personal experience are intertwined with the level of your consciousness in a certain time period. Thus, one and also a book can be put on consciousness differently depending on what period of life you read it. That is why it makes sense to re-read important books several times.
Before re-reading the book I was previously embraced by an anxious feeling. After all, I unconsciously treated reading as carpentry work, where redoing work means that the work was done poorly for the first time. Now, I rather think that in relation to the book, the verb “re-read” is not applicable at all.
It should be noted that these findings apply not only to books. Technology provides us with new opportunities to relive our experience. After all, once we strive for this, then we like it. How do you like to revise vacation photos or dig for yourself, trying to understand what made us the way we are (like Stephen Fry, for example, cleverly remembered that the reason for his inability to sing is the long-term mental trauma that occurred as a child). With the improvement of technology for recording and reproducing experienced experiences, it can become commonplace for people to experience past experience anew, even without any purpose, just to discover something new in it, just as it happens with books.
Maybe someday we will be able not only to reproduce the past experience, but to archive it, or even overwrite it. And let us think that this is a completely normal property of the human brain - not to think about the nature of our worldview, but who knows.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris for reading the drafts.
Previous translation - Paul Graham: How to make a Pittsburgh start-up hub
PS
Who is ready to help with the translation of The Refragmentation , write in a personal or e-mail (specified in the profile)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/301666/
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