Why is it important

to read books?

So, let's look at some quotes from this

article. There's a lot of different

things going on here. And I've pulled

some quotes out of here, not in their

order that they appeared, but in the

order that I think they're important to

our discussion. So, let me grab the

first quote I want to start with here.

All right. Here is Maryanne. And again,

I have this on the screen. If you're at

youtube.com/calport media, this is

episode 238. All right. So let's start

with this quote. No human was born to

read.

Literacy requires a new plastic brain

circuit. Plasticity allows the circuit

to adapt to any writing system and any

medium. The catch is that circuits

reflect a medium's charact

characteristics whatever they are. So

we'll start with this point. It's a big

point that was made in P and the squid.

Humans aren't meant to read. It's a

highly unnatural activity. We hijack

significant portions of our brain that

were originally evolved to do other

things and we retrain them to do this

reading this reading activity that

humans invented. It's a cultural

innovation that's relatively recent in

the history of our species. But what

Maryanne is saying here is we're

reshaping our brain to this new

activity. So specific the specifics of

this activity matter. So what we're

reading, how we're reading it, what

format we're reading in actually can

have an impact on how the brain is

shaped. All right. Second quote I want

to read here. This is now about let's

dive into how different mediums can

affect how our brain is shaped around

reading. The medium of print advantages

slower, more attention and time

requiring processes.

The digital medium, by contrast,

advantages fast processes and

multitasking. Uh, both well suited for

skimming information's daily

bombardments.

Marian has a little interesting piece

here where she says, "Stop for a moment

and think about that sentence you just

read. Did you really read the whole

sentence or did you skim and bounce

around some words?" Because as she goes

on to clarify, that's really how we

engage with words on screens and web

browsers, on social media, etc. We skim,

we jump around. There's things called Z

patterns and F patterns. We'll read the

first line to middle section. We our

eyes jump around. We feel like we're

going fast, but we're missing a lot of

information. So, different types of

reading, digital verse physical,

requires different types of processes.

Um, so does this matter? Well, let's

see. Here's what Maryannne says. To skim

to inform, as we do when we read on

digital,

is the new norm for reading. What goes

missing, however, are deep reading

processes, which require a quality of

attention increasingly at risk in a

culture and on a medium in which

constant distraction bifurcates our

attention. These processes include

connecting background knowledge to new

information, making analogies, drawing

inferences, examining truth value,

passing over into the perspectives of

other, expanding our empathy and

knowledge and integration and critical

analysis. Here is the the key quote

about summarizing all these things we

get from reading a physical book. Deep

reading is our species bridge to insight

and novel thought.

All right. So, let's think about what

they're saying. What what Maryannne is

saying here. We have to reshape our

brain to read.

If we're reading on a screen, we tend to

do what she calls skim to inform. We

jump around and uh see ideas, try to get

the gist of what's going on. When we

instead read on a physical page, we

instead are prioritizing processes that

give us all of these all of these

advanced human cognition behaviors.

Here's where we get the analogies,

inferences, truth, value, passing over

perspective, empathetic, putting

ourselves into the shoes of others,

integration, critical analysis, the

things that she describes as our bridge

to insight and novel thought.

As Maryanne Wolf goes on to summarize

those traits we get from physical books

but not digital. To deploy these

interactive processes

requires nearly automatic decoding

skills and purposeful attention that

moves as William James once put it from

flight to purchase for thought.

Imperceptible pauses and reading can

lead to lightning speed leaps in our

thoughts furthest reaches. By contrast,

when we skim, we literally

physiologically don't have time to think

or feel.

So, this is a a big a big idea that's

being made here. Slowly reading full

sentences one after a time as we do when

we look at a physical page is supporting

and kicking off all of these incredibly

advanced deep thinking processes that

are at the key of what makes humans

human. And it's not just being able to

think clear. It's also being able to be

more empathetic. It's being able to

integrate the ideas you're seeing into

other ideas. What she's emphasizing here

is just the ability to pause and just

think for a moment about that sentence

before you move on to the next allows

you to integrate it successfully into

existing structures of thought.

Therefore, growing a much more

sophisticated understanding of the

world. All of this comes from the pace

of reading. The style of reading that

happens on physical pages. On a screen,

on a phone, on an iPad, we don't get

that. We're skimming around and we

literally physiologically don't have

time to think or feel. So, we're not

able to integrate the thoughts we're

reading. We're not able to examine them

successfully for truth value or

understand how they fit in or challenge

existing schemas. We do not have the

physiological or psychological space for

empathy for the other people. So, what

we look for is uh arousal. Hey, this

makes me mad. This makes me laugh. This

makes me, you know, excited about

something. This makes me, you know,

scared. Emotional arousal kind of

captures our attention and we look for

key words about do I like this person or

not? Is this on my team? Do I agree with

this idea or not? It's a primitive

engagement with information.

Does this affect other types of

thinking? So if we spend most of our

time reading in a digital screen instead

of reading on a physical screen, will

that impact the way we think not just

when we're engaging with text, but when

we're trying to do other type of

thinking in other aspects of our life?

Here the article provides evidence that

yes, the answer there is yes. Maryanne

points towards a recent study that was

published in Jamba Pediatrics by a group

of researchers from Singapore, McGill

and Harvard. It looked at over 500 young

children. And what they found is

increased screen time at a young age was

associated with weaker development of

the brain regions responsible for the

executive function skills that govern

attention impulse inhibition and some

aspects of memory.

So they're not getting the cognitive

training that book reading in physical

books gives you. And without the

training you're not developing those

skills. So, it's not just the act of

reading itself while you're reading

allows you to do this deeper thinking.

It's cognitive strength training. It's

making those parts of your brains able

to do that type of thinking better in

the future when you're doing other

cognitive activities. Now, is this just

for young kids? Well, no. Maryanne goes

on to say, "This same sentence, she's

referencing a sentence that summarized

what I just said, could as easily

describe the experience of older

children and indeed adults."

So to me,

these are important points.

Reading a physical book in a slow,

deliberative, and careful manner

sharpens a type of innovative,

empathetic, creative, and critical

thinking that is otherwise hard for

humans to access. It requires us to

literally rewire our brain to do that

type of thinking. And without a

concerted effort, we will not develop

those skills.

If we avoid the slow and deliberate

reading of actual physical books, if we

mainly consume information on screens,

constantly keeping up

with the news, on Twitter, looking at

what's going on on Instagram, jumping

around highly engaging websites or

following links on social media. Even

very highly educated people will do this

and convince themselves, I'm really up

on things. I know what's going on. I'm

jumping back and forth between these

Substack quotes that I saw quoted on

other tweets. you feel like you're

really engaged, but you're not doing the

type of reading that supports

innovative, empathetic, creative, and

critical thinking. So, what happens is

the sophistication with which you

understand and later make sense of

information is decreased, and your

ability to apply sophisticated thinking

in other contexts is also atrophied.

Avoiding books is like being in ancient

Sparta and avoiding doing any physical

training. you're going to be bad at the

main activity that your civilization

prioritizes. For the Spartans, it was

physical war. For us, it's cognition.

You're making yourself much worse at

that if you avoid physical books. Now,

if we think about this

even more literally

and we we go with this idea that Wolf

pushes

that training our brain to do this type

of innovative and empathetic and

creative and critical thinking is

something that's unnatural. We have to

hijack huge portions of our brain and

doing this very difficult unnatural

activity that is sitting there and

holding a codeex and trying to decode

the sentences that we have to do

something incredibly unnatural again and

again to train our brains to be this

higher order of human. If we're not

doing that, if we're substituting that

time with screens, we are in a literal

sense evolving our brain backwards

towards our pre-iterate tribal selves.

We're going backwards to the type of

brains we had before the advent of

literacy

and the impact that had on the plastic

formation of how our brain actually

functions. I spent all day last

Wednesday sick on the internet and here

was my uh my conclusion. It's a terrible

place. Seriously, there's no empathy.

The thinking is simplistic. there is a

automatic knee-jerk meanness to any

perceived outsiders. In other words, if

you're bouncing around Twitter and

social media and substack fights going

back and forth, it's a digital

paleolithic tribe. And so, exactly what

Wolf would predict, if you don't do this

effort that makes us more than our what

we used to be, we're going to go right

back to what we used to be.

And when I see Twitter today or what 10

years ago would have been Tumblr

fighting with 4chan

uh and before that, you know, who knows?

Um what I see there is the human brain

going backwards.

It's going back to where it's

comfortable. Where's my tribe? How does

this make me feel? Who's the bad guy? I

want to feel something big right now.

And when we do that, we get away from

what characterizes and distinguishes

humans, the modern human from any other

any other animal or beast that's ever

come before.

You know, Aristotle identified in the

Nikmachian ethics concentrated deep

thought, the ability to sit here and

manipulate ideas just within our head as

the essence of what it means to be

human, what separates humans, art, our

teological

end point.

So to voluntarily move backwards from

that is something that we should be

cautious of. All right. So I'm being

pretty philosophical here. Let's get

more concrete. What is my recommendation

for, you know, my listeners here to the

show? I think we need to think about a

serious reading habit as an exceptional

activity, one that you need to isolate

and support and really prioritize in

your life. No matter what else you think

is important in your personal definition

of a deep life. I'm increasingly

convinced, the serious reading of good

books needs to be in there. So, I have

seven suggestions I want to give. Seven

suggestions about integrating real

reading into your life. All right.

Number one, uh always be reading

something challenging. I don't care if

it's fiction or non-fiction, but

something that's challenging. uh ideas

you have to grapple with, characters

whose psychological reality is uh

difficult or pushes you into new

psychological or emotional places like

in fiction, but challenging. Number two,

read real books, not on a phone, not on

an iPad. Kindle, I think, is okay. We're

going to get into this later with a

question later in the the program. We

have a good collection of questions

coming up, but for now, I'll just say

Kindle's okay. Physical books are okay.

Don't read on your phone. Don't read on

your iPad. Wolf goes into this in this

article. It's where the other

distractions are, and you're going to

read in those old ways. If you're trying

to read on those same devices, you're

going to read in the skim style. Number

three, uh, read when possible in

awesome, awe inspiring locations. I

don't like this mindset that reading is

a take your cod liver oil type of grin

and barrett ice bath type self-

flagagillation behavior. Make it

awesome. It's sunny out. I'm going to go

to a park and sit on a bench or hike

into the woods for 20 minutes and bring

a book by, you know, thorough read at a

coffee shop in the morning or as I would

occasionally do when I lived in Beacon

Hill for a while when I was at MIT,

go to a pub. That's it. We we The

British are great at this. Americans are

terrible at this. The the art of being a

grad student that has a book that's a

little bit too hard, but you have a

hefty in a back corner of a pub. It's

great. It opens up. You're like, "Great.

I'm excited to read. This feels like the

right place to be doing it." Um, take

your time. This number four. Take your

time when you read. Go slow. Seek to

understand. If you're reading a

complicated book, use secondary sources

to push yourself. So, read books about

the book you're reading. It'll give you

things to look for. It'll push your

understanding. You'll come back to the

book and be able to come at it more

sophisticated. Again, I'm not a big

believer of just immerse yourself in a

complicated thing and and you will just

grow. No, don't just grab Ulyses.

Read a book about Ulyses so you have

some understanding of what was going on

with modernist English literature in

this point. Why is this so important?

What are you looking for?

Uh number five, the quantity of books

finished in the reading life is less

important than the time spent actually

reading.

So reading regularly, slowly and

deliberately is what matters. The

quantity of books that translates to

will depend on two things. One, happen

stance, the length of the books you

happen to be reading. And two, just as

your skill increases, as you get better

at reading, you might finish books

faster. Uh, six, keep notes.

Keep notes. When you are tackling an

idea that's important, maybe you've read

multiple books on it, start a document

somewhere, keep notes. This helps you

practice, puts you in the mindset of,

I'm not just reading the sentences. I

want to actually try to extract

information from these sentences. You're

going to slow down. You're going to

allow those purchase for thought that

William James talked about that pause in

between that allows you to say, "hm,

what was said here reminds me of what

was said there." and it changes the way

I think about what I wrote the other

day. That's where real interesting

synthesis happens. And finally,

to support all of this reading, when it

comes to your life with screens,

especially phones and iPads, try to

reduce

the use of screens as a default response

to boredom.

That should be a plan thing. It's okay

if you say tonight I'm going to watch a

show uh that I'm going to stream or

there was a baseball game today and at

breakfast I am going to check on this

site that site and this site to get the

analysis of what happened there. That's

perfectly fine. What you want to avoid

is when I'm bored, whip this out. Hey uh

Tik Tok algorithm or Twitter social

dynamic, show me some stuff that makes

me feel big. That you want to avoid. You

want your brain to not crave that so

much. You want your brain to be more

comfortable with not having the big

feelings at all moments so that when it

comes time to do deep reading, it

doesn't complain. All right, so that's

my advice. So here's my summary here.

The reading life is a deep life. The

screen life, the screen fil life can be

downright primitive.

Which one do you want? Hey, if you like

this video, I think you'll really like

this one as well. Check it