# Why Books Don't Work **Covers**:: **Source**:: [Why Books Don't Work](https://andymatuschak.org/books/) **Creator**:: [[andymatuschak.org]] # Highlights ##### ^306125198 highlight_tags:: [[reading]], [[lecturing]] ###### ^306125198q Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false. ^306125198 ##### ^306125199 ###### ^306125199q good lecturers don’t usually believe that simply telling their audience about an idea causes them to understand it. It’s just that lectures, as a format, are shaped as if that were true, so lecturers mostly behave as if it were true. ^306125199 ##### ^306125200 https://hyp.is/XkmnWiQ7EeuI8nfONtkZMA/andymatuschak.org/books/ ###### ^306125200q The lectures-as-warmup model is a post-hoc rationalization, but it does gesture at a deep theory about cognition: to understand something, you must actively engage with it. ^306125200 ##### ^306125201 ###### ^306125201q some people do absorb knowledge from books. Indeed, those are the people who really do think about what they’re reading. The process is often invisible. These readers’ inner monologues have sounds like: “This idea reminds me of…,” “This point conflicts with…,” “I don’t really understand how…,” etc. If they take some notes, they’re not simply transcribing the author’s words: they’re summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing. ^306125201 ##### ^306125202 ###### ^306125202q Readers must learn specific reflective strategies. “What questions should I be asking? How should I summarize what I’m reading?” Readers must run their own feedback loops. “Did I understand that? Should I re-read it? Consult another text?” Readers must understand their own cognition. “What does it feel like to understand something? Where are my blind spots?” ^306125202 ##### ^306125203 ###### ^306125203q textbook exercises are often designed to yield both a solution to that specific problem and also broader insights about the subject. Will readers notice if they solved a problem but missed the insights it was supposed to reveal? ^306125203 ##### ^306125204 ###### ^306125204q Courses also offer emotional salience, which motivates and amplifies learning: live lectures might be inefficient, but an instructor’s palpable fascination can leave a lasting impression. ^306125204 ##### ^306125205 ###### ^306125205q mediums can be designed, not just inherited. What’s more: it is possible to design new mediums which embody specific ideas. ^306125205 ##### ^306125206 ##### ^citation ###### ^306125206q Andy Matuschak, “Why books don’t work”, https://andymatuschak.org/books, San Francisco (2019). ^306125206