Where is the US pirate party when we need them! 🏴‍☠️

The increased availablity of information only really reinforces the status quo.

[removed]

It's overwhelming.

If you liked The Alchemist try Gravity's Rainbow? Surely you're joking?!

I understand that and I'll pay the retail cost if I have too. But the cheapest one on eBay pre-owned is $1,500. Which would kill my pockets if I got forced to pay that amount or close to it.

My family thoroughly enjoys the plethora of knowledge available at their fingertips.

I'm a scientist and my wife is a public elementary reading teacher.

My wife and I value curiosity above most traits. We have read thousands and thousands of books to our kids already. Both of our children are remarkable. I'm not even doing the normal parental exaggerations but they are both likely geniuses.

When I was a kid I couldn't even read. I was much more concerned with things like food and not getting arrest for being poor. It is remarkable the difference some resources can be. It is even more sad when most the kids don't even utilize those resources.

I thought Go Set A Watchman was an earlier draft of To Kill A Mockingbird, published by her because her publishers pressured her into it? She died after Watchman came out, by the way.

Same. Though reading OP's description I feel like I should have. My connections to nature are where I am most grounded in my spirituality.

In most libraries I know, you pay a fine, I don't know how big.

I say fade/fad I long ago stopped reading his books became cookie cutter 👎🏽

No that is right of first sale. If you have a physical object it is yours to with as you please. You have the explicit right to resale it.

The issue is that that right goes away as soon as things go digital as you can’t prove who has the one true paid for copy.

Unfortunately I don’t think popularity is a very good metric in this case, there are a lot of wildly popular books that are full of bullshit. Because there is just so much research out there in the world, you can find studies that support pretty much anything you want to promote. That doesn’t mean they’re good studies: A book can just say ‘Studies have found that X is good for you’, and it’s only when you actually look into the studies they cite do you see that it’s just one study with a tiny sample size or no control group etc.

For diet, good studies are generally long term cohort studies - that means they’re tracking the eating habits and health of a very large group of people over a very long period of time, because only then can you really say anything meaningful about long term health effects. Examples are the EPIC Oxford study, Nurse’s health study, and Adventist health study. You can look those up and see what some of their main findings are.

In terms of diet and nutrition, most countries also have a national dietetic association - an association of professionals in the field - and also a government agency that provides nutrition guidelines. While in some countries certain industries have a little too much influence, the guidelines produced by these national associations and government agencies are still mostly pretty good and based on the scientific consensus.

There are several annual rankings of diets by health and sustainability (as in, it’s not hard to keep up long term), and the Mediterranean diet consistently comes out on top.

I don’t know much about where to look for good advice on fitness and psychology I’m afraid.

[removed]

I also really loved it and found it really almost life changing (I was 24 when I read it). Came on this sub and it made me feel like I was a moron for even liking it.

Yes, the limiting factor is not availability of information but time, effort and willpower.

Nothing wrong with watching a bit of Netflix to unwind though

[removed]

Hah, yeah, I think I've heard of him. One of those Terrain Model folk. It's a mad, mad world.

I don't mean to dissuade you from thinking there isn't a consensus on many things. Like the mood stabilizers and antipsychotics, there are things that are prevalent in many disciplines.

The books these are in may not be as glamorous as the shiny, edgy books with bold claims. One way is to find out what they're talking about: how does a psychotherapist help a patient? What's the day in the life of a nutritionist? When doctors do talk about vaccines, what do they say? How do Olympic athletes train?

Getting a sense of something may be just as, if not more, important than factual knowledge.

Like I said, think of it as exploring, not fact-checking.

[deleted]

I loved it too, and I am ok if most people didn't like it, we have different perspectives and have read different stuff in our life and that can change the way we think about a story. The Alchemist was one the first books I read and maybe I liked it more because I wasn't exposed to many books yet. But even after reading many books (although not much tbh) I still like it. I still go back to the parts I had highlighted and still draw inspiration from those lines. I recommend it to all beginner readers since it's short and is written in very simple english.

[deleted]

This always seems to be the gateway book to those who don’t read or don’t read much, especially since high school or college. If it gets you back into reading great! But there are so much better and more wonderful books out there that will really blow your mind so keep reading widely and deeply.

Yeah being dumb sadly is nothing that a PhD makes disappear there are some really delusional people in academia as well I remember a story about a guy (PhD in biology) that claimed viruses don’t exist. Basically he said that he‘ll give anyone that can prove the existence of viruses to him $1,000 someone then linked him 6 peer-reviewed articles that do just that and after he (suprise!!) refused to give out the money the other guy took it to court and the dr. was forced to give out the reward. Lol Anyway such stories are funny but I don’t think I‘m at serious risk of falling prey to some strange people suggesting delusional conspiracies antivaxx or whatever else.. I trust myself to be able to see through that

It's a hornets nest in there. Vaccines specifically, you could get trapped in an endless web of definitive sounding self-proclaimed gurus, all privy to some deep, dark secret that no one else knows about. Some of them even have "MD" attached to their name, making it all the more confusing.

I came to the conclusion that vaccines are safe, not by a book or article, but by witnessing the silence of the medical community. If adverse reactions were happening at the rate antivaxxers were saying, the entire medical establishment would be clamoring about it from the roof tops. Instead, nothing, and that nothing speakers louder than any reactionary website or YouTube video or book.

Moreover, I know the medical community is very aware of and responsive to any anomalies in vaccine programs. That none of those alarms sounded was very telling.

> because the medical community has come to the resounding consensus that vaccines are safe. If that doesn't tell you the state of medical science, I don't know what does.

That’s exactly the kind of knowledge that I‘m looking for. Things that are agreed upon by a majority of experts in the field. I think for most topics the majority of experts have already come to agree on lots of viable knowledge. So I just have to find someone reliable who tells me what those things are that are widely agreed upon. But I reckon there’s no easy way to find a book that credibly does so I‘ll have to use my critical thinking skills.