The habit of reading

I remember before Youtube, substack, Economist had a terrific website or blogs such as Daring Fireball, it would be the simplest thing to sit and read in the VIT library or just quietly sit in my hostel room and read.

There would be folks playing cricket in the corridor, badminton in the ground floor or walking to the dhaba to grab a meal. And in ACJ, there’d be a computer lab filled with computers and a terrace with conversations. And a library. Not as large as the one in VIT. But more than enough to sit and read. Same during my drop year between 2007 and 2008. I’d read. I’d painstakingly google stuff. But it wasn’t easy to read online. And there was nothing to watch and learn or reflect on. There were distractions. But no competition to how the painstaking process of learning something actually happened. It was me and a book. Trying to understand a concept or a problem. No Youtube video waiting to simplify it for me. No Sam Webster to walk me through the anatomy of the ankle. I remember reading the mRNA chapter in Molecular Biology of the Gene at least twenty times. It’s seared into my brain. And I wasn’t an exceptional student. Nor could I apply the knowledge I acquired in college in a lab as more resilient and gifted students do. But what I learned left an imprint. A body of truth or knowledge that left me with enough wisdom to be able to discern bullshit from something that resembles truth.

This isn’t a nostalgia post. It’s really me reflecting on my struggles to read the books I used to read. The frictions and competition that exist. And how much of what we consume is passive nodding along. The illusion that I have understood something when I have no clue how to use it. Versus a robust understanding of a topic that allows me to use the knowledge I have acquired with clients or to solve a problem in the real world.

I watched a video essay on the South Korean demographic crisis. A YouTuber spoke to young Koreans about why they don’t want kids. And then I hopped over to a video about how the South African power grid collapsed. And citizens stepped up to the plate with solar panels to plug the gap. And they do the same with private security.

And I asked myself would I be richer if I spent those 35 minutes on reading instead. I have a Vaclav Smil book titled Speed right in front of me. Those videos taught me something about the world. Something that is really happening. The kind of insight that would not be available on a 2 minute report about how the Gupta brothers swindled South Africa. But if you asked me what is total power output of South Africa is. Or what the solar output is as a percentage of total production? Those are numbers and details I just couldn’t recollect or discern from a video. I had to go to this study https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2753-3751/adcb4a to learn about the nuances of South Africa’s solar output. This report about the Gupta brothers https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/how-the-guptas-milked-south-africa-for-diamonds and https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10623476/ for actual statistics. And to understand all this I had to have read someone like Vaclav Smil for broader context of energy use.

But the less I read guys like Smil, the less I understand the big picture. It’s just impossible to understand the extent and context of South Africa’s or South Korea’s challenges without reading how their economies grew or operate.

Same goes for anatomy. Sam Webster might have the most beautiful piece about the muscles that attach to the ankle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2RSMcT5y5c . Coincidentally released when I tore my calcaneal tendon. But to know about how tendons are built, heal or remodel, took a good biophysics book and this book https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B01DM25I9K/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

So as I age and content gets even more interactive, narrow and focussed, I just have to fight stupidly hard to ensure the skill to read and dive into detail is never lost.