First, Warren Buffett’s famous claim that you should simply read a lot of relevant material because “knowledge builds up, like c

On actually reading the book – Nate Meyvis

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2024-04-25 15:00:08

First, Warren Buffett’s famous claim that you should simply read a lot of relevant material because “knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”

Apparently it’s frequently the most famous people who discover these gaps. Roommate said it was surprising the degree to which a lot of what famous people do is actually what everyone is “supposed to do,” e.g. deeply understanding techniques, checking things for yourself…

And third, Byrne Hobart noting that that claim “generalizes across other fields.” I can affirm it’s true in philosophy, poker, and software. People often ask what they can do to generate original contributions or comparative advantages. Usually they vastly overestimate how common it is to have gone through the basic intellectual background in a field. If you’ve actually read the book (actually checked the proof, actually implemented the algorithm), you’re probably way ahead of the field. Much expertise is simply doing this over and over.

Addendum 2022-10-05: This note from Donald Knuth suggests that he thinks that, for many problems in The Art of Computer Programming, “nobody has been sufficiently motivated to check the finer points out carefully as yet.” In context, “check out the finer points” seems clearly to mean something like “actually work through properly.”