{"id":14785,"date":"2022-12-13T03:55:34","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T11:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=14785"},"modified":"2023-02-03T04:00:04","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T12:00:04","slug":"the-ten-book-rule-for-smarter-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/13\/the-ten-book-rule-for-smarter-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ten-Book Rule for Smarter Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ten well-chosen books are usually enough to understand the expert consensus on any reasonable question you might have.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, I can imagine the doctors, lawyers and anyone with a PhD cringing at my exceedingly low bar for expertise. But let me unpack that above rule:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>The books have to be well-chosen<\/strong>. Any ten random books on a subject won\u2019t converge to the expert wisdom. Even a hundred books won\u2019t if they\u2019re low-quality. I\u2019ll define high-quality books below, but this is an important caveat to remember.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Understanding an expert consensus doesn\u2019t make you an expert<\/strong>. Understanding knowledge is a much lower bar than creating knowledge. It\u2019s also a lower bar than successfully applying knowledge to diverse domains. My argument isn\u2019t that ten books would be enough to make you a cardiac surgeon, but they would be enough to understand what most experts think is the right way to do a coronary bypass.<\/li>\n<li><strong>There must actually be an expert consensus on the question (or at least, a few dominant viewpoints)<\/strong>. You can\u2019t get an expert consensus if experts don\u2019t actually agree on the answer. Similarly, if the question hasn&#8217;t been addressed because the fields choose not to represent questions that way, you might be out of luck.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A reasonable question is down-to-earth<\/strong>. The highest levels of a field can often formulate questions a novice wouldn\u2019t even think to ask. Understanding string theory or Continental philosophy often requires a much more extensive background of knowledge to even ask reasonable questions. But \u201cwhy is the sky blue?\u201d or \u201cwhat is existentialism?\u201d are definitely answerable within ten books. A question is reasonable when it is both something a layperson could readily formulate AND a good answer already exists.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ten books is a substantial threshold in terms of casual interest. It\u2019s much more than perusing a Wikipedia article or an essay. The books in question are not fun, easy-to-digest pop-science. Even at the reasonable pace of a book-per-week, this is about three months of work.<\/p>\n<p>Ten books are considerably less than what it takes to become an expert in anything. But if you want to answer a reasonable question (that meets the criteria above), you can probably get a satisfactory answer just by doing the work.<\/p>\n<p>Given the relatively low bar I claim is needed to understand an expert consensus, why don\u2019t more people do this?<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to Pick the Right Books<\/h2>\n<div class=\"inline-podcast\">\n<small>Listen to this article<\/small><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"20\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1436514604%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xUUvq1E76LA&#038;color=%23219895&#038;inverse=false&#038;auto_play=false&#038;show_user=true\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tenbooks1-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14794\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tenbooks1-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tenbooks1-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tenbooks1-768x384.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tenbooks1-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tenbooks1.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>The first difficulty people have with this approach to research is that they pick the wrong books.<\/p>\n<p>There are three kinds of books that tend to slow the path to understanding expert consensus, and unfortunately, they\u2019re also the kind that tends to line bookstores and best-seller lists:<\/p>\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Books with \u201cnew\u201d ideas<\/strong>. Most ideas are old, even in supposedly cutting-edge fields. If a book is full of novelties, that\u2019s another way of saying it is full of things yet to be widely proven.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Books with \u201cuseful\u201d ideas<\/strong>. Pragmatism is a virtue, but it often distorts research results. Don\u2019t confuse \u201cwhat\u2019s the right way to think about this issue?\u201d with \u201cwhat are practical things I can do about it?\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Books with \u201crevolutionary\u201d ideas<\/strong>. Heterodox books that explicitly frame themselves as a paradigm change will make it harder to understand the orthodox perspective.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This doesn\u2019t mean the above books aren\u2019t worth reading, just that they don\u2019t count for the \u201cten\u201d you need to understand an expert consensus. Reading ten self-help books, or ten books about the \u201cnew science of X,\u201d or even a controversial best-seller that shows why all the experts are wrong may be fun and interesting, but it will only slowly get you to the general picture experts have about a topic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What books should you read instead?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I would suggest three types of books, in the following order:<\/p>\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Up-to-date textbooks.<\/strong> Textbooks are one of the most valuable books to read because they are written to represent expert consensus. Even authors with strong heterodox opinions usually present a balanced picture in their authored textbooks.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Academic monographs.<\/strong> Monographs tend to be more focused than textbooks, so while you may not get a general survey of the field, you\u2019ll often get closer to the answer you seek via a monograph. If good monographs don\u2019t exist for the question you have in mind, then review articles are often a good substitute.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Canonical texts that the field cites as authoritative.<\/strong> I don\u2019t usually start here because, as a novice, identifying these texts and understanding their significance is often tricky without greater context. However, when a particular work is oft-cited in textbooks or monographs, I try to fill in my understanding of it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>My claim with the above rule is that if you picked a well-posed question like, \u201chow should I invest in the stock market?\u201d, \u201cwhat\u2019s the best way to treat anxiety?\u201d or \u201chow do batteries work?\u201d you\u2019d get a good read on the expert consensus by reading those books.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Care About the Expert Consensus?<\/h2>\n<p>Why should we care about the consensus view anyway? Shouldn\u2019t we care about the truth, even if that means turning away from the opinions of a bunch of ivory-tower academics? I think there are good reasons why understanding the modal opinion of experts is still very useful, even if it falls short of knowing the \u201ctruth\u201d:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>In healthy intellectual fields, \u201cexpertise in X\u201d is pretty close to \u201cpeople who know a lot about X.\u201d<\/strong> Learning the expert consensus is, therefore, a reasonable estimate of the answer to: \u201cif I learned as much as an expert, what opinions would I likely form?\u201d The ten-book rule helps you get close to this estimate.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Discourse tends to be grounded in a consensus viewpoint.<\/strong> Therefore, it\u2019s impossible to properly understand a heterodox view without knowing what it seeks to reject. Thus even if you strongly suspect that experts of a particular stripe have the wrong mental model, you still need to learn the consensus ideas and language to understand the alternatives.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Knowing the \u201ctruth\u201d is problematic; knowing the expert consensus is achievable.<\/strong> Without wading too far into epistemology, there are well-known difficulties in acquiring reliable knowledge about the world. Practically speaking, every discipline has its own standard of evidence and methodological techniques. In contrast, figuring out what experts tend to think is eminently achievable and doesn\u2019t fall into the same quandaries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Engaging in More Research Projects<\/h2>\n<p>In keeping with my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/09\/study-for-job\/\">previous post<\/a>, I think there are two broad ways to learn more about the world: building up from the basics, or learning for specific ends. Both have merit, but after you have mastered the basics, the sheer volume of knowledge explodes, so it helps to ask more pointed questions.<\/p>\n<p>Self-conducted research isn\u2019t without pitfalls. As mentioned above, a major reason people don\u2019t reach the expert consensus after ten books isn\u2019t that their goal was impossible. It\u2019s because they picked the wrong books. Similarly, online sleuthing often leads one further away from reality as bogus sources and \u201calternative\u201d accounts drown out any reasonable interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>However, I tend to think that these problems have less to do with critical thinking and more to do with motivated reasoning. If you genuinely want to know what experts think about a topic and are willing to read at least ten serious books about it, I would wager you\u2019d be on-target more often than not. All that\u2019s required is to put in the effort and actually want to know the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The right ten books can let you understand the expert consensus for almost any question. Here&#8217;s how to pick them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal-development","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Ten-Book Rule for Smarter Thinking - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/13\/the-ten-book-rule-for-smarter-thinking\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Ten-Book Rule for Smarter Thinking - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The right ten books can let you understand the expert consensus for almost any question. 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