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/lit/ - Literature

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13912747 No.13912747 [Reply] [Original]

I literally just go on wikiquote, read the author's best shit, and talk about them as if I've read them. I have had hundreds of productive discussions on this board doing this. I haven't read a book in years and no one can tell.

>> No.13912762

>>13912747
I did this once, but on a joke post about Jordan B Peterson before he became a right wing icon. One of his followers genuinely engaged me thinking I knew what I was talking about and then told me off once it became abundantly clear I knew nothing :(

>> No.13912767

>>13912747
>I haven't read a book in years and no one can tell.
Kek. Keep telling yourself that, retard. The reason is either that you are talking to people who also don't read, or the intelligent people can tell you don't read and ignore you, knowing that debating you is a waste of time. Sage.

>> No.13912770

>>13912747

I used to call quotes fast food philosophy

>> No.13912774

>>13912747
Oh trust me, we can tell.

>> No.13912784

>>13912762
The point is to not do it as a joke. Nearly every man's core ideas can be summed up pretty quickly - I might go deeper if they're interesting, but I want to see the crux of it first, so I go to the popcorn version of it. There's too many great writers to read in-depth. If there isn't/"can't be" a popcorn version, I don't trust them - this is why I don't bother with Hegel.

>> No.13912806

>>13912767
This is unironically a cope. You can't tell - I've talked for hours with academic eggheads about things they study for a living, and they ask ME questions. The core ideas are all you need to get your own mind chewing on it (if you're smart enough) - the nuance is often beautiful and often worth reading, and I wouldn't say for a second that it's BETTER to not read, but there's too much to read all of it. You are always in a battle between breadth and depth.

>> No.13912815

>>13912784
Spoken like a true pseud.

>> No.13912834
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13912834

>>13912806
>I've talked for hours with academic eggheads about things they study for a living, and they ask ME questions.

>> No.13912837

>>13912770
I'm not talking about the author's best-known one liners or aphorisms, more like 20-30 of their best paragraphs. You can get a handle on anyone pretty quickly with just that. Elitists will never want to believe this but it's true. You will of course lose nuance and the possible beauty of their prose, but if you just want the IDEAS, you can eat them like popcorn.

>> No.13912845

>>13912774
No you can't.

>> No.13912855

>>13912806
>implying Academic eggheads inherently have good reading comprehension
You are simply fooling other fools.

I hope the other people in this thread are using sage.

>> No.13912871

>>13912837
>more like 20-30 of their best paragraphs
So you read summaries and abstracts? Nor sure how single quotes would help to understand Schopenhauer or Nietzsche.

>> No.13912874

>>13912834
If you told me what you "got out of" your favorite author, the one you have read the most of, thought the most on, and has had the most impact on you, the honest result would be a few pages at best. Even reading something in-depth you are not retaining half of it and are boiling it down to its core ideas automatically. The bulk of what you got out of the unnecessary parts was primarily entertainment, maybe picked up a little style, a little vocabulary, a little syntax - but even in your own mind, the core of it is automatically summarized. This is all anyone does on this board - the posts are necessarily short, so you can't get into real depth. The funny thing is you don't actually need to.

>> No.13912884

>>13912747
>no one can tell
Yes no shit, this is an anonymous image board. Whenever you would have to justify and embarrass yourself you can just not respond.

>> No.13912889

>>13912871
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil was one of the last I actually read because each stanza is a standalone, distilled summary with very little fluff attached. Now I simply try to get that same experience out of everyone else.

>> No.13912898

>>13912884
The point is I am never even CALLED to justify myself, because no one suspects anything.

>> No.13912917
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13912917

>mfw nobody on /lit/ uses sage anymore
You guys wonder why this board has so many low quality posts.

>> No.13912928

>>13912815
What is a pseud, in your mind? I am not defrauding anyone or speaking outside my knowledge, or pretending to know things that I do not. I am simply being efficient.

>> No.13912944

>>13912917
Why do you think this thread deserves to be saged? Does it make you uncomfortable that I am claiming it is possible to reduce an author or a thinker to their core ideas and suffer none the less for it? You seem to disagree, so make your case.

>> No.13912964

>>13912944
I already did and you ignored me. Your post is low-effort and posted with the intention of getting (you)s. You are only fooling other fools and you cannot prove otherwise.
This >>13912855 is the post of mine that you ignored.

>> No.13912998

>>13912964
Your point about academics not having reading comprehension is probably true - but not relevant to whether reading summaries of an author's work is drastically less beneficial than reading them in-depth, which is what I've been getting at.
>You are simply fooling other fools
I am aware this is your opinion, but you didn't make a case for it. You can't prove that I am "simply fooling other fools" because you don't have access to the discussions - you are ASSUMING that they can't POSSIBLY be worthwhile because I didn't read the authors in-depth. How do you support this assumption?

>> No.13913016

>>13912855
pretty much this

>> No.13913047

>>13912998
YOU have yet to prove YOUR own claim, yet you want ME to disprove it?

>> No.13913073

Based OP. This is the future of intellectual discussion and its a good thing. The Internet allows zoomers to get to the essence of hundreds of author's ideas in the space of a few hours by scrolling Wikipedia, saving time and allowing them to grapple with the important stuff and synthesize new ideas rapidly to meet ever changing demands of the 21st Century. Anyone who says otherwise is a coping LARPing "intellectual" who thinks reading lots of books is a substitute for a personality, and thus a vested interest in defending an obsolete media form.

>> No.13913097

>>13913073
Might as well not discuss anything. You're literally worse than Tai Lopez and that's saying something https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24KnwTepKdU

>> No.13913102

>>13912747
I did the same thing and earned a degree.

>> No.13913114

>>13913073
People who think scrolling Wikiquote (not even Wikipedia!) is a substitute for true knowledge are delusional retards that belong in front of a firing squad.

>> No.13913116

>>13913047
I've laid out my argument in many other replies in this thread - and you complain about ignoring posts. Obviously I cannot "prove" anything, but I am stating that in my experience, understanding and validly discussing an author's core ideas does not require in-depth reading of their work. Your claim, simply put, is merely that I am mistaken. You have an opportunity to expand on this, which I am trying to get out of you, but you are refusing.

>YOU have yet to prove YOUR own claim, yet you want ME to disprove it?
That's not how this works - this is not a scientific discussion. I have made a claim about my experience - you can say "that's wrong, here's why," but have instead left it at "that's wrong, and you're a fool." Fine for 4chan, but if you're claiming this thread is bait, sage-worthy, or whatever, and the OP is trying to get in an actual discussion with you, and you are refusing, the one ensuring that the thread is low-quality is you, not me.

>> No.13913122

>>13913102
Okay, this is epic.
>>13912747
>>13912806
Cringe.

>> No.13913130

>>13913097
Explain to me right now why I would need to read someone's entire book when I can get the core of their ideas distilled down to me in a few paragraphs?

>> No.13913135

>>13913130
this.

>> No.13913169

>>13913130
Because you'd be discussing "bullet points" and you won't have a full understanding of the work. Hell, sometimes even people who read the entire book have problems understanding it... You're merely a LARPer touching the surface but somehow you've deluded yourself into thinking you understand this. Spoiler alert: You don't. You're no better than parrot at kindergarten repeating the alphabe. Anyone can do this. You're fooling fools, so enjoy it I guess.

>> No.13913199

>>13913169
You won't have a full understanding of the work even if you read it - you distill it down to bullet points yourself as you're reading. If you succinctly wrote down everything you got out of the book you've spent the most time with, thought about the most, and was the most rewarding, it'd be a few pages at best. We are skipping a step, saving ourselves a lot of time, and getting the same result.

>> No.13913239

>>13913199
Sure, it can help you have superficial conversations with normies like with sports or movies, but you're essentially just reading and memorizing index cards. It can't truly help you understand an author in the long run. Also you'd be trusting Wikiquote's retarded users' editorialization, which is icky at best. Might as well read a summary or an abstract from somewhere else like someone mentioned.

>> No.13913250

>>13912889
They're all highly contextual though and you lose a lot of his meaning if you read them out of their context. Nietzche constantly uses contradiction and tongue in cheek writing as a rhetorical device.

>> No.13913289

>>13912747
its not even available in french, disgusting savages reee

>> No.13913302

>>13912747
You might be right that no one can tell OP, but if you do this you're cheating yourself of the true value of literature. What value is there in training yourself to give the appearance of being well read if you're bypassing the substance? The value of literature and philosophy isn't in training yourself how best to spout out quotes and present yourself as an intelligent person, it's that reading literature can give you a better understanding of yourself, other people and the world around you.

You obviously don't care for literature itself, you care for the social prestige that appearing to be well read gives you.

>> No.13913305

>>13912747
imagine being this arrogantly idiotic...

>> No.13913323

>>13912874
you're not wrong

>> No.13913339
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13913339

>>13912806
>they ask ME questions
What middle English questions do they ask you about?

>> No.13913346

i like the idea but not the deception, deceiving oneself or others. it's true even if you "specialize" yourself there is so much to read it can be a good thing to go through a few of em real quick and then go back to those you find might be worth more of your time, it's a form of speed reading in a way, a tool that is used for a long ass time.

>> No.13913364

>>13912747
I have the feeling this happened in a Seinfeld episode Sounds like seinfeldian scenario,

>> No.13913416

>>13912747
so you're saying it's more important for you that others merely think you're well read than actually being well read

>> No.13913448

>>13913416
>so you're saying
no. I'm saying that since a summary is all a book is going to turn into in your head, you can skip the book and go for the summary, and build from there if you want. This is only concerned with the IDEAS contained within it, not the entertainment/beauty of it. It is an efficient, hacksaw way to take in more ideas more quickly without losing as much as you'd think.

>> No.13913463

>>13913346
There is no real deception - I do not claim to have read the books, I just let people assume that I have, if they happen to.

>> No.13913475

>>13912747
This is not always a bad strategy. It's called satisficing in operations research. You don't always have time to dig deep into every author. You sometimes prefer to skim in search for some choice bits. You can't always make the optimal decision but you choose the best compromise.

The flaw in this approach is that you trust the crowd. You place faith in the assumption that someone else knows better and can feed you the good stuff. If we all based our decisions on what the crowd supports, we would end up only supporting things the crowd supports, without any justifying reason. The flaw is essentially democratic.

>> No.13913484

>>13913302
I am not spouting quotes, I am discussing the simple, core, pragmatic ideas. The basic explanation of the idea is all you need to start applying it in sincere, valid ways.

>You obviously don't care for literature itself,
In a way.
>you care for the social prestige that appearing to be well read gives you.
No. I care for the IDEAS contained within the literature. That is why I seek them out specifically, and that is what I discuss. There is too much to read - I only have so much time for prose.

>> No.13913488

>>13913475
>someone else
And that someone else isn't a credentialed authority, like a doctor, it is the ambiguous General Will that asserts itself with impulsion and directness, with justification coming a distant second.

>> No.13913534

>>13913475
>You place faith in the assumption that someone else knows better and can feed you the good stuff.
Yes, but this is not as blunt as it sounds when you are reading a specific author's direct quotes about a specific idea of theirs. It is true that someone (not a crowd) selected the quotes for you, but it's unlikely that something extremely profound is going to be missed by them. To apply this absurdly, you're also trusting the author to have come up with something worth reading. You're not "basing your decisions" on blind faith in the quote selector or the author. You're reading what they wrote and deciding what to make of it yourself.

>> No.13914481

>>13912806
we all believe you and are impressed

>> No.13914486

>>13912917
sage is invisible now retard