Here's the problem. You are considered ignorant if you don't know anything about Pushkin. But it's perfectly normal or accepted to ignore who Enrico Fermi, Alan Turing or Paul Erdős were. We're all ignorant about something but, in society, literary ignorance is frowned upon much more than scientific ignorance.
You are considered ignorant if you don't know anything about Pushkin.
In Russia, sure. But the Pushkin example is completely atypical of our society. When was the last time you heard Pushkin mentioned among non-Russian non-specialists?
The obscurity of Pushkin is actually the point in this case. If she had said "He hadn't even heard of Shakespeare!" the implication would have been "He's a lout", which is quite different. "He hadn't even heard of Pushkin" is more along the lines of, "He doesn't pass the minimum test for my exacting, boutique tastes".
I noticed that too - I had absolutely no idea who pushkin was until I asked wikipedia. I do, however, know all the people you mention, and why they are known.
People are just different, and so is their taste in books. The idea of finding partners based on book preferences is interesting though. I would love a dating site where I could search for women based on their reading habits. I mean if I could search for women that liked Neal Stephenson or Bob Woodward I would be thrilled.
A friend and I were talking about such an idea right around the time Friendster was making rounds... and after running through lots of issues and the one sticking point was honesty - perusing friends of friends on frienster, I ran into people I barely knew - but I was pretty certain that they hadn't read "Foucault's Pendulum" or "Infinite Jest", etc - they were listing books that were "hip" (within certain circles).
My conclusion was that Amazon needed to do this, they have a pretty full catalog of personality reflecting items for sale - and the key (in my mind) was that a purchase record was at least as important as a rating/review.
In my dating experience, having interests that matched on paper never correlated with a successful relationship. Often it's a red herring that leads you to try and make something out of nothing. The girl you fall for despite having nothing in common is often the keeper, because the only reason you would fall for her is that there is great chemistry.
If you're talking about books my experience is the opposite, for me there is definitely a correlation between reading habits and girlfriend potential. It has however changed with the years, when I was 17 the first thing I would look at was a girls boobs, now it's more what books she's reading. So it might be related to age.
"... I would love a dating site where I could search for women based on their reading habits. ..."
Heard of this exact idea on popular media this week. Can't find the site though. So the idea while not original, is worth trying. How do you really know if a person is really reading the books they claim online though?
You could do it with music as well - make a small app that scans through your music library and uploads it. Then match with people that have the same taste in music. Would probably have broader appeal, since more people listen to music than read books.
"... I would love a dating site where I could search for women based on their reading habits ... Heard of this exact idea on popular media this week ..."
That's not a good reason to not try something - because there is already a service. In fact I'd be surprised if there was not more competition. Music is a good one. I'll see if I can find the service ...
Delicious Library already does that on the Mac. Put your book/cd in front of the mac's built in webcam (or at least the barcode of the book/cd) and the item is added instantly to your library, with coverart and everything Very cool.
So if you're going to build this type of web-app, you might need to talk to Will Shipley :-)
Lastfm's user profiles are public and show what they have listened to in the recent past - so maybe you could make a site where you add your lastfm username, and scrape the info from lastfm and use that.
There might be legal issues with this approach though.
I disagree. If you use name recognition as a proxy for knowledge (which is probably a poor metric), than you're probably as likely to have heard of Turing as your are Pushkin. The set of people who have heard both is likely to be much smaller, and by inference, more knowledgeable.
On the other side of the argument, you could argue its easier to understand the contributions of someone like Pushkin than someone like Fermi. But this too is probably true only on a superficial of level.
That's not really what this is about, however. Knowing who Enrico Fermi, Alan Turing or Paul Erdős is, indicates you know your math. Knowing who Pushkin is, on the other hand, serves as a tribal marking that signals that you're one of a group of people that have a certain outlook on life, namely one in which literature is important.
If you're hiring someone for your startup, that's probably not important to know, but if you're looking for someone to have a relatioship with it can be helpful.
I feel vaguely guilty when I read fiction, as if I'm wasting my time playing videogames or watching TV. It's gotten to the point where I can't really enjoy novels anymore. I still occasionally read trashy non-fiction though; today I've been reading To Cork Or Not To Cork by George Taber. I wonder what this says about my future relationship prospects.
I used to feel that way, but not so much anymore. The difference for me is that I think reading good literature or maybe even watching a good film can help make you a better person, depending on how you define "better". Sometimes literature can bring up ethical or philosophical issues: consider how "Antigone" makes you think about the relationship between citizen and state, "Cat's Cradle" discusses the dangers of technology, or "Less Than Zero" sheds light on the alienation and social dysfunction of the wealthy suburban middle class. It's easy to think about the tragedy of child soldiers in Africa, but it wasn't until I read "Beasts Of No Nation" by Uzodinma Iweala that I realized just how horrific things really are. Reading classics like "The Odyssey" or Dante's "Inferno" will help you understand Western culture in general. Certain novels are important from a historical point of view, e.g. "The Jungle" or "Uncle Tom's Cabin." This is one of the reasons I prefer reading to most other forms of entertainment: a movie or a video game can be fun to watch or play, but beyond that, there's usually not much else there.
I'm not suggesting that people only read fiction for self-improvement or to make you better at conversation: there's nothing wrong with reading something for it's own sake. Is reading something for its own sake better than watching a movie or playing a video game for its own sake? Probably not.
I know the feeling - I get it sometimes as well. I don't think it's a "correct" feeling, though. Certainly fiction can be as intellectually stimulating as nonfiction, and the fiction/non-fiction line is an artificial construction anyway.
One way to get over this feeling may be to keep in mind that the raw accumulation of knowledge is not really that valuable anymore - certainly less valuable than mental "agility" (for lack of a better term). In other words, we can look up any facts we need to know pretty easily, but being able to put order to those facts and make correct predictions based on them is a skill that takes practice. I think that some fiction may be better at fostering that skill than most non fiction - especially labyrinthine stuff like Neal Stephenson, Tolstoy, or Thomas Pynchon.
Just because some TV, video games, novels, etc, are not worthwhile doesn't mean you should be averse to rich media in general. The format is good, and good things can be put in it.
I think he's not so much concerned about the medium (or even content) as he is the read-only-ness of it. We do hold authors in much higher regard.
But this brings up another question: why does there seem to be this general obsession with the consumption of this particular medium? I would say they're in love with the form, but they don't mention doing any writing. I would say they're in love with great art, but they don't mention any other forms. (Is it a NYC thing? Manhattan always seems downright foreign to me.)
Imagine asking the people quoted in this NYT article about the last manga they've read or the last modern symphony they heard or the last painting they made.
It's the same reason we aren't showing each other pictures or playing each other music right now. Written word is the best way to convey almost all kinds of complex information. If you have the time, that is.
It's the most direct way. A picture you love can be worth 1000 words you couldn't stand to hear, and as such could be "better" at communicating its message to you.
i think video and pictures are useful for a lot of information (less than writing, but a lot). but in general they are more expensive to do well. but examples include charts, maps, and graphs, and also pictures of scenes usually work better than describing what it looks like in English.
I said "complex information". This is vague, but you can see the truth of this in a following way: take any topic, such as maps, which you mentioned. What's more complex, a map, or knowing how to make a map? The former will be a picture, but the latter will be mostly text. As far as I can tell, this is the rule. As you go up in complexity, text becomes more and more suitable.
By the way, I mostly agree that books are overrated. The reason is that most books are not very complex. Text is the wrong medium for the ideas of their authors.
Heh, I actually an "Atlas Shrugged" experience - I knew a pretty girl and after adding her on facebook I noticed the book was at the top of her favourites. That really did change the way I thought of her.
But more generally, I can't make my mind up one way or another about this. I've seen the kind of relationship the last part of the article talks about - very long term, very stable with interests like books, movies, music etc being completely irrelevant - so that makes me think its quite right. At the same time, there's gotta be some baseline - how can a music lover go out with someone that thinks highly of (say) Paris Hilton's music? Or a normal person with a objectivist? ;)
Adults who list Harry Potter as their favorite book (which is not the same as admitting Harry Potter is a fun read) by doing so fairly explicitly state that the universe of a children's book, however well written it is, is pretty much all the intellectual stimulation they care for.
Nothing wrong with them, most likely, but certainly not people I'd want to invest emotionally in. YMMV, of course.
By that logic, listing any book as a favorite would mean that you have a limited intellectual horizon, after all, you only care for the intellectual stimulation provided by that book.
The brilliance of the Potter books is more in the way that they start off as being extremely accessible to children, but by the time the series finishes, they are truly adult-level books. It's a good way of getting children through that speed hump - most young children read, but many stop during adolescense. Harry and Co help with this problem.
I've read all of them. They're a lot of fun, but I think it's important to go beyond them and read the books that inspired J.K. Rowling. Joseph Campbell's works on legends and mythology are particularly instructive.
Reminds of me Joel Spolsky's quote, to which I agree with to some degree.
"You can learn a lot about somebody by the books they've read. And I've always thought that if you read all the same books I read, you'll come to think like me, too."
My girlfriend loved Harry Potter when we first met but I've since turned her on to much higher quality stuff (fantasy and otherwise) and she seems to be responding well. At least she doesn't have any literary pretensions like some girl who prides herself on having read pushkin probably does.
If you pride yourself on having rad certain authors you're reading them for the wrong reasons. You don't read great literature because it's "Great Literature". You read it because it is good.
I suppose it's to be expected. Even in the intellectual world Sturgeon's Law applies. 90% of everything is crap.
(Btw, if you havn't you should read Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human)
If he renamed it "Why Most Things Fail -- and 10 Easy Things You Can Do To Avoid It Happening to YOU," it would be on the front page of every social media site . . .
Music is considerably more important than books, since it's typically hard to avoid the other person's taste, good or bad. "Urban contemporary", "country" music, and anything involving death grunts can cause problems.
At least a reasonably interesting discussion ensued on HN. But other than that, I don't think those books are as big an issue in dating as the article tries to make them to be. Hm, except perhaps if you happen to be a "bookslut"? Impressive how they even manage to tailor the article towards the intended audience of their client (I presume).
