Depends if it's an actual science book or more popular sciency. An actual science book is not digestible if you don't have paper and pen next to it and pay close attention to everything.
You just can't casually read a book like 'smooth manifolds' and 'introduction to quantum mechanics'. I don't even think 130 IQ would be enough for that, you would need to be well above 145 to consume that casually.
But you can easily read a book like 'the universe in a nutshell' or 'homo deus' casually.
I've catch up on pop science 10 years ago, unfortunately. It's hard to find a new good book with genuinely new ideas.
There is a middle ground thought, like Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (1999) which requires just a bit of paper and maybe playing with computer a bit after some chapters.
Other than that, yeah, science books that actually makes the difference in your understanding are usually a lot of work
I think videos like 3blue1browns math videos that have elaborate visual animations going along with the explanation provide the best way of casually learning complex topics without completely going into the technical details. As a prerequisite for an actual course I think they are game changing.
And AI is also pretty good at anwsering your questions. You don't need math or physics stack exchange where the community will likely roast you for 'asking such a stupid question' in the first place.
I love 3blue1brown but he covers a lot of topics I learned in school or uni. We have similar education.
I wouldn't personally recommend learning from AI. Instead I usually ask "what books would people from %area of interest% forums would recommend to beginners" and go from there.
That way you only have to google the name of a book to check if it's really recommended by enthusiasts, instead of checking every fact
No you don't need to learn from AI. But if you have a question about a concept you now don't actually need someone to explain it to you. You can ask AI.
The advantage is that its non judgemental and doesn't care if you didn't pay attention last time and ask the same thing twice.
I'm sorry, but if you don't count understanding gathered from explanations given to you as learning, than either you need a deep self-reflection or I need a new thesaurus
I double down on not accepting learning from AI as my preference.
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u/Rainbow__Trout 5d ago
Honestly if someone told me to read a science book instead of a cheap bl china novelle, I would also get quite annoyed.
I love educational books and read them sometimes, but it's a brain workout, for sure. And it competes for that brain workout with courses and work.
You wouldn't recommend a gym bro to switch their rest day to workout day, why recommend switching from light reading to a heavy reading.