Is there an advantage to being well-read?

It's what you read, not how much - you need to back up your reading with pretty sharp critical thinking skills, or you risk mistaking information which is propaganda/nonsense, for that which is truthful/credible.

If you don't have good critical thinking abilities, then all it takes is one pernicious (or naively nonsensical) book, read uncritically and accepted fully, to poison your thinking and deceive you about a subject (even get you defending truly reprehensible actions/policies, thinking they are justified).

You have to ruthlessly scrutinize the credibility of all your sources (and develop an allergic reaction to all forms of bullshít), and apply good critical thinking abilities to spot faulty logic and outright deceit, in order to determine what you should and shouldn't expose your mind to; you'd be surprised at how incredibly easy it is for perfectly intelligent people, to pick up 'knowledge' and beliefs (even those they once knew were false - through repetition), which are complete nonsense and often outright lies.


So, if you want to read more, good place to start is a decent book on critical thinking - that will teach you how to become smart (accurate knowledge plus persistence), and how to spot and avoid information that would make you stupid

The problem there, is facts aren't subjective, and all knowledge has to respect facts, where they're applicable. People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

When you pick two biased authors, and meet in the middle, you don't get any closer to 'truth' (you just get a viewpoint, skewed in favour of the author that takes more extreme views) - you have to give what they say/claim a solid grounding, with facts, and you have to discard everything they say, that does not pass critical/logical analysis.

I believe that there are three advantages to being well read:

Firstly is that in being well read, you can draw from the knowledge and perspective of others, many of whom are a lot more clever than yourself. This leads to being able to see an issue from a different angle, that would not have occurred to you previously, or being in possession of facts that would change your own perception, once you are aware of them. This benefit is of course limited to yourself.

A good example of this would be the property bubble. Anyone who had read on economic history would have had a very different attitude twoards purchasing property than someone without.

Secondly, it facilitates communication between well-read peers. If two (or more) individuals of simelar educational background converse, they can speed through complex discussion by referencing shared knowledge.

For example, if one were to be asked whether they believe in God and they answered that they did in so far as they adhered to Pascal's Wager (where both are familiar with this), then the question would be quickly answered. Even if the questioner was not familiar with Pascal's Wager, and this needed to be explained, they would grasp quickly it if they understood at least the basics of logic in philosophy. Someone without any knowledge would need both explained, leading to a much longer, drawn out discussion.

Finally, and rather cynically, there is the principle of quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur ('anything said in Latin sounds profound'). This means that the person who is able to quote the knowledge of others will typically sound more authoritative on whatever is being discussed, leading to those listening (not necessarily their counterpoint) being more likely to respect their viewpoint, as opposed someone else who clearly lacks such breath of knowledge.

Naturally, this does not mean that the well-read person's viewpoint is more valid, only that others will instinctively tend to trust the opinion of someone who's well-read over someone who is not.

Manach wrote: »

My view is that humans are not that rational when it comes to making decisions and evaluating judgements (interesting book on the subject, 'Righteous Mind'). Outside the scientific realm where objectivity is possible and prized, there are facts which are layered by contextual content that would take a lifetime to un-ravel. By taking two opposing view-points, then at least one can examine the issue from a bi-directional view and gain some measure of perspective.
For instance, say interested in the fate of Constantinople - which fell in 1453. That would be a standard world view of a European historian say from the 19th Century. However, taking that as valid view point and then reading the history of Istanbul from a pro-Turkish historian of the current era, a differing interpretation comes into play. The importance of the fact of 1453 remains unchanged, but the interpretation of it can be examined in differing ways.

The vast majority of knowledge is subject to scientific facts though - there is rarely a discussion that can be had, that does not have to respect facts, and when you take two opposing viewpoints and 'meet in the middle', you don't gain any useful perspective when either viewpoints are contrary to facts (with two completely diverging viewpoints, often it's the case that at least one of them is wrong, and thus you are automatically polluting your views with false knowledge by trying to find a middle ground).

One of the most damaging and dangerous ideas, often used as the foundation of most propagandized ideologies, is that facts can be subjective, or facts can be safely denied, or that in some area facts "don't apply" (this one is used to a silly degree in many of the social sciences - but just because something isn't a hard science, doesn't mean it can ignore facts).

In your example above, an archeologist could search for and dig up evidence of the fall of Constantinople, and carbon date the evidence - that would help give an objective grounding to any historical theorizing.


Sometimes, just saying "I don't know" is also the far more intelligent approach, rather than comparing the positions of two authors who could be making completely unfounded assumptions (particularly true where it comes to history, in cases where it is not grounded in something objective).

MaxWig wrote: »

So you don't up being a fcukin waffle-waitress

I suppose this is the elephant in the middle of the room. As much as we'd like to go on about education being something that allows one greater understanding of the World around us and improved capacity to communicate our ideas with others, the grubby little truth of the matter is that education has always been the key to greater prosperity - especially nowadays.

Lottery winners and entrepreneurs who drop out of school yet go on to become billionaires (the chances of either is pretty simelar), the reality for the other 99.9999% of us is that without an education we are more likely to end up in a low-skilled occupation on low-income.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Only if those people hold a simelar level of education whereby they can relate to you; otherwise you'll just sound like a pompous git.

As much as I can happily wax lyrical about the late Roman republic, and others can find it interesting too, it's not for everyone, especially if the closest to this they've ever gotten was watching Gladiator.

That's true but of the people you're likely to be able to engage more freely with there are going to be a greater amount of them that can have an impact on your life. I know its not true in every case but a lot of those who succeed in life are keen to understand and learn, which is what enabled them to progress in their chosen career.

A good understanding of a wide range of topics along with a good ability to communicate clearly and efficiently shows that you are a person eager to learn, understand and share. Those things are highly valued in every aspect of life and will endear you to people professionally and socially even if they dont have much interest in a specific topic themselves.

Candie wrote: »

Nobody finds a monomath that interesting, and it's not necessarily indicative of erudition.

Very true. I know lots of illiterate four year olds who can go on about dinosaurs with specific facts and classifications. But none of them could read a dick and Jane book or tell you much about the renaissance. They can drop in some Latin via the names of the dinosaurs though, and can even root out some etymology. Still can't read though.

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Candie wrote: »

And there lies a great modern tragedy.

Popular culture elevates mediocrity and promotes it to such an all saturating extent, that anything other is considered esoteric or obscure and pretentious, and role models or examples of people who are more are becoming fewer.

Mass media has a case to answer, and it's hard to see any prospect of it improving.

How then do you account for the enduring popularity of wilfully 'pretentious' mass media performers like Bob Dylan, Scott Walker, and David Bowie, who have laced their music with references to some quite obscure and esoteric inspirations? How many people have delved into Rimbaud after hearing Blood on the Tracks, or into Brecht on foot of Bowie's Baal EP?

And these are merely pop music examples - you could just as easily cite the acclaim garnered by serious tv dramas like The Wire.

Candie wrote: »

Popular they may be, but I doubt if they currently outsell Beyonce, or One Direction, or any number of artists currently in the charts. Whether or not they are 'wilfully pretentious' is a matter of opinion or taste, as is whether or not they fall into the same broad category as most popular music.



I suspect they don't outnumber the audience figures for Keeping Up With The Kardashians, or the X-Factor.



I've never seen The Wire so I can't comment on how deserving of acclaim it is, but if it is, it's the exception in terms of popular culture.

Quality does exist in popular culture, but mediocrity is infinitely more mainstream. Outliers exist as a very small proportion of the overall picture.

Modern popular culture does elevate mediocrity but I'm not so sure it is all saturating. Just as the pointless lives of the Kardashians are broadcast to millions of people so too are other things which are of more worth available to a much wider audience.

Also if you go back to the time a lot of the now classics were created and they were not all popular among the masses, in fact a lot of those outside elite society were most likely illiterate and poor anyway and these high quality works were unavailable to them. I'm sure there was a lot of small shows, hookers, pub bands, burlesque shows, comedians etc that entertained the unrefined on a regular basis too.

And as with everything it cant all be great, for something to be considered a great work there has to be a lot of other works considered inferior which is just as true now as it was then. So in terms of what the masses were into I'm not so sure the quality has lowered more so than broadened just as everything has with technology making it much more accessible.