/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10238040]

Does reading books make you more smarter or just an idiot +books?

[Anonymous No.10238067]

>>10238040
Depends on how you use the information you read. Though, in general it does make one more intelligent.

[Anonymous No.10238073]

It will increase the readers insight in the given subject, thus increasing their intelligence relative to that specific subject.

[Anonymous No.10238074]

>>10238067
Mhm. I feel like a small car on a shorter route is better than a small car taking a detour.

[Anonymous No.10238083]

>>10238040
>Does reading books make you more smarter

[Anonymous No.10238123]

>>10238073
Are you sure? I noticed how reading pop-science about quantum physics and whatnot, misinterpreting the double clit experiment for example, actually led new agers to feel validated in their theories. Same could be said about radical feminism, where more knowledge about the subject apparently leads to more confusion rather than intelligence.

Seems like reading not at all is better than reading the wrong stuff.

[Anonymous No.10238158]

>>10238123
Pretty good point. A bad, incorrect theory is caused by lack of insight due to bad understanding of the given material.

But that's not bad in itself. Bad theories pave the way for good ones. A person with more insight/intelligence can use the bad theories to bring fowards new, better ones. In that way, it's only positive for people to gain their insight, even if it's bad and faulty. These people should then be corrected and their insight will grow from that.
Of course some people just refuse to do that but they're the vocal minority in the examples you gave.

[Anonymous No.10238252]

>>10238158
I get that, I suppose, but on the other hand what do "lesser people" gain from consuming content they can't properly comprehend? Even if they could, they would need to be able to differentiate between good and bad information and consider the substance in context of other works. That said, I think reading secondary literature might hold it's own pitfalls, if it's used as substitute for the lack of the ability to think yourself. Like clinging to a false interpretation of some great book, that attributes some artificial meaning to the color of the curtains maybe, when it might have been just a somewhat random decision of the actual author.

Some of the avid readers have pretty great memory, but then they lack the intellectual brass to properly question whatever they had been fed, especially if said content is generally held in high regard by an authoritative figure.

If I had to come up with one book to highlight my point I would argue for one of the religious works like the bible. Yes, it did influence some people to come up with valuable insights, on the other hand average people generally don't seem to benefit intellectually from reading it. They don't attribute some jungian interpretation to the christian ethos, where religious ceremony is supposed to be a symbolic act in context of some allegory that deals with the human condition and wasn't meant literally. No, there's literally a man in sky watching them poop.

[Anonymous No.10238284]

>>10238252
I should add that maybe I read too much into christianity myself and really boils down to a guy in the sky watching you poop. Or rather the jungian perspective, or whoever else tried to justify christianity intellectually, is the same thing as overanalyzing the curtains in some novel. Where as some farmer who never heard of god and just tends to his work, is closer to the truth than some intellectual who read a 1000 books.

[Anonymous No.10238300]

That is one nasty ass cat

Like does he even lick himself ever? Fuckin sicko

[Anonymous No.10238306]

>>10238040
No, this is one of the biggest meme of our century. Maybe in the distant past books were more tied to intelligence, academia or knowledge in general, especially when not everybody could read or write. Nowadays, books are just another medium.

[Anonymous No.10238312]

>>10238067
also on the information per se