Being Well-Read Doesn’t Mean Reading More

In September 2022, Spotify acquired the leading audiobook distributor Findaway Voices and added more than 150,000 audiobooks to their premium library.

This change was unthinkable, especially for someone like me who grew up using iTunes credits (usually from Christmas) to buy Audiobooks at a premium. Even with a subscription service like Audible, downloading a new audiobook still felt like an expensive treat.

So, with this instantons access to hundreds of thousands of titles, I went on a rampage and downloaded every possible title I’ve ever wanted from Spotify.  

I started listening to books everywhere—at the gym, during the commute to campus, and even when I was lounging around the house scrolling on my phone.

It was heaven on earth for a few weeks… then came a big problem:

When audiobooks were scarce, I listened and relistened to my favourite chapters and paid total attention.

But since most are free nowadays, I can’t remember half of the stuff I’ve listened to, though I’ve marked more than a dozen audiobooks as “read.”

As the volume of available audiobooks increased, listening to books gradually turned from education to consumption.

And this consumption has the same shitty metric as the rest of the market: more = better. The naïve view is that the more information we consume, the more educated and wiser we will become.

However, this view follows the fallacious Counterspeech Doctrine. This view believes that wrong ideas can always be corrected by more information & discourse, hence the importance of always looking out for new sources and stories to show us accurate ideas.

But as Yuval Noah Harari argued in his new book Nexus, this naïve view is based on a misunderstanding of what information is. For him, information doesn’t magically lead to better ideas, it merely puts things in formation.  

Each book we read is essentially a microcosm weaved together by the author. Facts and opinions are blended into a unique formation we can understand as readers. But as great as books are, exposing yourself to more of these formations won’t automatically lead to wisdom.

I’ve met many intelligent people who still hold laughable ideas. They can explain Kant to me and give me a complete history of The Canterbury Tales yet still struggle to integrate noble insights into their life.  

Why? Because education does not and cannot ever bend down to the simplistic market metrics. Understanding and wisdom are inherently non-linear, and most of the work of wisdom happens when we are not consuming information.

It happens when we resolve an interpersonal conflict with an idea from Ben Franklin’s Biography. It happens when we finally start a meditation routine after reading about it for months. It happens when we step back and compare conflicting views between two opposing schools of philosophy. The real work happens when we develop the skills to evaluate and apply information.

This is why I took some deliberate steps to curb my information addiction this week. Instead of listening to another podcast or audiobook, I bought a journal and forced myself to think more than I read. Instead of collecting abstract ideas, I’m trying to anchor them into daily routines.

Let me end this week’s reflections with one of my favourite quotes from B.F. Skinner:

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten" 

Until Next Week

Robin