Say a person was super introverted and basically just read a bunch of books and watched documentaries and lectures all the time for 5-10 years. What would happen? Would they become a super genius? Or would it matter? Would they become some sort of anti-social freak?
Throughout history, people have gone into isolation for years at a time for spiritual enlightenment. They come out perfectly capable of living socially.
Ideally, that person would try to give back to humanity by transmitting that knowledge, synthesizing it, into some useful form, like a compendium, book etc.
I read something that said Joseph Campbell (The hero with a thousand faces) read for 9 hours a day for five years. Obviously got him somewhere.
The stories you hear about people who vanish and do nothing but read or study for years are generally exceptionally smart BEFORE they start. If you were to randomly pick someone off the street and tell them to read, and watch documentariese and lectures for years, most of the information would be lost on them. Memory only can take you so far.
The more water you add to a container, the more that container will weigh
I can't say that documentaries are all that informative. I find that a good long-form article can pack as much information as a documentary. Every time I watch a documentary that somebody recommended, I come out thinking that I got as much information from a magazine article that I read the other day.
Also, simply reading and watching movies does not teach a man any skills. To get the full benefit from so much information consumption, I think one has to synthesize that information into some sort of product in order to fully churn and grasp whatever was consumed.
You'd have more than just streaks in your underwear.
It's like being a university student who doesn't take any exams. You'll end up stupid and lazy. And you want even get a job in the public sector.
I wish letsrun was on tv or video so I wouldn't have to read so much.
I've done this -- I'm a terrible procrastinator and work at the computer most of the day. The result is that I know an enormous number of facts about a really wide range of things, but not enough to be especially useful. I also pretend not to know things or allow people to be wrong a lot of the time to avoid coming off as a know it all.
For example, I can tell you all about hunger hormones. But I'm not a doctor or a researcher, so who cares?
I don't know.
I watched the Mark Twain documentary on PBS the other night and I learned a lot more about him than anything I learned in school. Also I would probably never read a book about him, but the documentary was presented in a way that drew me in.
I watched a show awhile back about water. Yes, water.. how it fluctuates and moves throughout the planet, how cold water currents affect typhoons in India etc.. it was great.
You turn into Docu-Man.
Your superpower: the ability to make a person's eyes glaze over in a matter of seconds.
Sounds like life in prison. Sitting around reading. How do they come out? Lol
That would depend on what they were reading or viewing and who(m) the author(s) was/were.
***Go Ed Whitlock***
Documentaries, TED Talks, and the like are best thought of as "Science Porn." They teach you some interesting factoids, but they don't go in depth or challenge your mind enough to really make you smarter. They don't take the place of actually studying, at best they may spark your interest but you'd still have to do the work yourself. It would be better if the person had a bunch of encyclopedias handy.
Just watching documentaries for 5-10 years wouldn't make you a genius any more than watching porn for 5-10 years makes you popular with women.
It would be so amazing if this thread were not entirely, or nearly entirely at least, composed by the same person...Am I wrong? AM I WRONG DONNY?!!
You would run the mile in 3:52.5.
DocNo wrote:
It would be so amazing if this thread were not entirely, or nearly entirely at least, composed by the same person...Am I wrong? AM I WRONG DONNY?!!
Usually the-same-person-post give away is that the time stamps are very close together. However i intentionally and cleverly spaced this one out to make it look like different people, but in fact, it's all the same lonely person, entering in comments during commercials between PBS Documentaries.