I started off thinking he had a good point, but when he came to textbooks, I realized that it doesn't match reality. If what he claims were true, then books like Selfish Gene; Guns, Germs, and Steel, etc. should leave me with LESS knowledge than a typical textbook, which at least has questions, tests, etc. associated with it. But, in fact, I'm pretty sure that most textbooks have taught me precisely nothing, or at least nothing that I retained a year later, whereas Pinker, Taleb, Dawkins, Diamond, and other such authors have absolutely taught me things that stayed with me. So, there must be something missing, and I think it's this: good books stay with you a while. I think about them a lot, for some time after reading them I keep revisiting the ideas.
If I never did that, perhaps I would learn as little from them as the author of this post. But, for textbooks, this almost never happens, and that is probably why textbooks do worse than other non-fiction, even though by his analysis here the reverse should be the case.
If I never did that, perhaps I would learn as little from them as the author of this post. But, for textbooks, this almost never happens, and that is probably why textbooks do worse than other non-fiction, even though by his analysis here the reverse should be the case.