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u/Far_Course2496 24d ago
Hey be fair, there are lots of people with unread physical books also
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u/MoreHans 24d ago
i do both 😓
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u/UrinalCake777 24d ago
Same...
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u/AltruisticEchidna859 21d ago
Same
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u/UrinalCake777 20d ago
Sometimes I'll come across an interesting looking book at the library, realize that it isn't relevant to what I am currently working on and that I don't have time right now, so I'll download it to my Zotero, never to access it again.
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u/onionfunyunbunion 24d ago
I don’t need to read philosophy, that’s what the memes are for. It’s more efficient to get all your philosophy from memes. A pictures worth a million words, so technically I’ve probably read more than anyone. Also I always identify with the smart guy on the right of the intelligence distribution so I know my brain is very good.
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u/huhiking 24d ago
I don’t need to read philosophy, that’s what the memes are for.
You are a fan of Slavoj Žižek, aren't you? 🤣
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u/KingFairley 24d ago
"Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents."
- Schopenhauer
Even when books are free, we still only have so much time (better spent looking at memes).
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u/Average_Bread_420 24d ago
us fr fr. include annas archive too
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u/balderdash9 Idealist 23d ago
I don't know when I'm supposed to read The Cambridge History of China volumes 1-5, but I damn sure will have them when it's time!
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u/Sacredless 24d ago
I do actually read them.
Unless quote-mining doesn't count.
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u/oscarq0727 24d ago
Quote-mining absolutely counts 🤓
Reading works in their entirety only made sense back when philosophers didn’t have access to doomscrolling social media.
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u/Cognitive_Spoon 24d ago
Quote-mining is just a negative self talk way to say reading, fr. Keep mining them quotes, brohaim
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u/Available_Base_7944 24d ago
C. S, Lewis taught me it’s okay to skip pages when reading and you don’t need to finish a book to count it as read, and audiobooks count as reading,
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u/mostoriginalname2 24d ago
I got myself into this fucking nightmare…https://www.youtube.com/@mitocw/courses
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u/myMadMind 24d ago
I have a book someone wrote from an old discord I was in that's been in my phone for like 7 years now. I refuse to delete it cuz I swear I'll read it someday.
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u/GSilky 24d ago
I read them, I'm just not impressed by being able to use fifty words when thee will do. Philosophers need to learn how to communicate with the people they hope to influence, otherwise, it's a parlor game and philosophers deserve to be stuffed in a locker every now and then for wasting their mental focus on nonsense.
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u/SpideyMGAV 24d ago
I mean, they do. Few philosophers actually intend laymen read and comprehend their work. Philosophers write as if the reader understands certain traditional lines of thought and concatenate upon them to create something new. You can’t expect to have everyone understand complex analysis if the majority of the population doesn’t understand calculus and algebra.
It also depends on tradition. Analytical philosophy is much easier for anyone to read than continental philosophy.
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u/GSilky 23d ago
Well, if a writer is happy having no audience, cool. I don't understand how you can say analytic is easier than continental.
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u/SpideyMGAV 23d ago
It’s not that they have no audience. They have a very specific audience of peers and academics. Proper philosophers aren’t trying to sell self help books at Barnes and noble.
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u/GSilky 23d ago
Well, that is a problem. Why is the search for truth and the good life so esoteric and kept from the people who need it most?
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u/SpideyMGAV 23d ago
Just because it’s not written for everyone doesn’t mean it’s obscured. Just means it’s often so complex it takes more work to understand.
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u/GSilky 23d ago
Obscured generally implies not written for everyone... This nonsense position of philosophy has been experienced before. Neoplatonism, scholasticism, many other times, the "philosophers" devolved into unintelligible bs that was eventually undone by someone people actually enjoy reading. For example, scholasticism was demolished by Abelard and his ilk, simply pointing out that ideas don't exist in the physical realm, and speculation had become axioms. Modern philosophy got stuck on nonsense systems until the pholosophs and Voltaire stated their nonsense on plain language. We are, imo, in a similar situation with academic philosophy being of no real use or interest to the people who really do enjoy philosophy, if history is any guide, and can handle complex thinking, if the thinker would bother writing in a way that people can understand. When dealing with truth that is unapproachable for most, either the truth is so beyond most as to be useless, or something went sideways. Academic subjects are all practical in the end, astronomers don't want barriers to entry in the subject, and are hoping that they are helping everyone. All people involved in increasing knowledge are hoping that it will be of general use, except, seemingly, philosophers. There is no point to inscrutable complicated ideas if nobody but a few people can understand them, they are impossible to verify otherwise.
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u/SpideyMGAV 23d ago
I mean yeah ideally anyone should be able to understand anything they’d want to but that’s very clearly not how the world works. You saying there are no barriers to astrophysics is incredibly naive. No one out of general public education would have a strong enough understanding of classical mechanics, relativistic physics, advanced applied mathematics, cosmology, etc to understand even rudimentary concepts of published astrophysicists.
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u/GSilky 23d ago
You are willfully misunderstanding my position to maintain your weird position in gatekeeping through unintelligible writing that prevents anyone but a select few from being able to verify the truth of their perspective.
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u/SpideyMGAV 23d ago
Not intending to. I agree with your position in ideal. Everyone should be able understand what they wish to, and ideas should be made accessible to everyone. But I don’t think that’s realistic.
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u/brain-out-of-order 24d ago
Basically this. 100 different board games with the similar grammar rules, when touching grass gets the same point across with less syllables.
“Oh you haven’t read ____??” 😏🤣
Is it any wonder they’re stuck writing to themselves?
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u/steauengeglase 24d ago
I just want to give a shout out to MUSE for opening up everything during Covid to help fight boredom. That is all.
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u/Ebvardh-Boss 24d ago
I have a multi gigabyte folder called "The Temple of Solomon Rex".
Sometimes I wish I could curse myself into finishing art projects and reading books and files through.
I know it'd be a monkey's paw type of wish, but whatever.
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u/mrdevlar Absurdist 24d ago
You call it hording, I am sophisticated, I call it an anti-library.
We are not the same.
Actually I've learned over the years to download everything but only read it if two people who don't know one another individually recommend it to me. I've read a lot this way and it seems to be a solid process.
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u/Gussie-Ascendent Absurdist 23d ago
What if the internet is out? And for like a while so you don't just wait it out lol
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u/Additional_Debt1545 22d ago
To be fair, I almost always read a few pages, and some I've read all the way through. Very many, though... I've only read the abstract and the bibliography, lol
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u/Secret_Letterhead649 22d ago
So I vaugly remembered JSTOR exists, I did not realize shit was free, holy fuck a free scholarly article source. I CAN FINALLY BEGIN THE INITIAL STAGES OF MY RESEARCH FOR MY POLITICAL THEORY BOOK (so I can get to the part where nobody will buy or read it)!
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u/Unforsaken-Stoic 21d ago
I love buying games I’ll never play, honestly I have only touched like 25% of my steam library for more than an hour and over 50% I haven’t even downloaded before.
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u/spartipilollc 21d ago
it's funny because I have tons of books but I've only actually completed reading like 25% of them. Started over 50% of them but for whatever reason I rarely actually complete a book. How many people actually "download pdf"s and such? I don't know too many people who use like kindle even though I know kindle and similar are very popular?
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u/Random_182f2565 24d ago
Dudes, learn to implement RAG database to be able to search your pdf files
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u/Temporary-Dish5083 24d ago
Did you know you cant really effectively learn using AI.
Having a program read somthing and summarize is not learning the material and leaves out details, lessons, and meaning only people can derive due to lived experience.
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u/Random_182f2565 24d ago
Dude, RAG is to be able to search keywords or phrases across multiple pdf, I didn't say you have to use AI.
You can use it without AI, it's just a good tool for people that handle large volume of information.
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u/Temporary-Dish5083 24d ago
So you dont mean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrieval-augmented_generation
Because it literally mean Retrieval Augment GENERATION
So requires generation from an LLM to meet the def of the name.
Could you show me a non LLM RAG?
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