It was a meta point. Sorry if I gave you the impression that I was weighing in on the particulars of jmyeet's essay. Rather, it was a high-level point that if you know a ton of little facts but you're only seeing half of the story, then you need to improve and broaden out your intake.
I would have the same opinion of a poster who was so one-sidedly pro-America and anti-China.
And maybe you can read a book about adding to the conversation instead of navel gazing oh superior intelligent one who has read so many books but can't add a comment or reference a book to point to a concept that could help add to the shared pool meaning.
The good books, unlike the good podcasts, can rarely be reduced to a single forum comment. You don't read them to cite them as a zinger in an online back-and-forth. You read lots of them, and you cross-reference them with the world around you, to slowly build up a view of the world that's irreducibly complex. You read them to escape yourself and your times -- the exact opposite of "navel gazing", in a sense.
Most books add to "the shared pool [of] meaning", as you say. Pick any one; I didn't have a specific one in mind. The commenter to whom I was responding is in a state where pretty much any well-written book about history would help them out a lot. Something written before 1980 might be especially illuminating.
It might take many books, if they want their comprehension of history to actually be "hardcore".
What primary sources are you referring to? Come with receipts next time instead of just vitriol.
None in particular. I was talking about "primary sources" as a category. See also what I wrote here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178573
It was a meta point. Sorry if I gave you the impression that I was weighing in on the particulars of jmyeet's essay. Rather, it was a high-level point that if you know a ton of little facts but you're only seeing half of the story, then you need to improve and broaden out your intake.
I would have the same opinion of a poster who was so one-sidedly pro-America and anti-China.
And maybe you can read a book about adding to the conversation instead of navel gazing oh superior intelligent one who has read so many books but can't add a comment or reference a book to point to a concept that could help add to the shared pool meaning.
The good books, unlike the good podcasts, can rarely be reduced to a single forum comment. You don't read them to cite them as a zinger in an online back-and-forth. You read lots of them, and you cross-reference them with the world around you, to slowly build up a view of the world that's irreducibly complex. You read them to escape yourself and your times -- the exact opposite of "navel gazing", in a sense.
Most books add to "the shared pool [of] meaning", as you say. Pick any one; I didn't have a specific one in mind. The commenter to whom I was responding is in a state where pretty much any well-written book about history would help them out a lot. Something written before 1980 might be especially illuminating.
It might take many books, if they want their comprehension of history to actually be "hardcore".