"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and
politics he appeared to know next to nothing.
Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired
in the naivest way who he might be and what he
had done. My surprise reached a climax, however,
when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of
the Copernican Theory and of the composition of
the Solar System. That any civilized human being
in this nineteenth century should not be aware that
the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to
me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly
realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do
know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a
man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic,
and you have to stock it with such furniture as
you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every
sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or
at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so
that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as
to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have
nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment,
and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to
think that that little room has elastic walls and can
distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes
a time when for every addition of knowledge you
forget something that you knew before. It is of the
highest importance, therefore, not to have useless
facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted
impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun.
If we went round the moon it would not make a
pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
I love that excerpt. The Holmes books were among my favorites growing up, read all of them several times, and that was one of the most memorable exchanges.
I'm a big believer that what is easy to produce (blog posts, daily news articles) is generally less valuable than what is hard to produce (books, journal articles, working code). If you want to fill your 'empty attic' with high-value information, focus on the latter as much as possible.
> I'm a big believer that what is easy to produce (blog posts, daily news articles) is generally less valuable than what is hard to produce (books, journal articles, working code).
I agree with you, especially in light of your "generally" caveat, but taking the lesson from the Holmes quote above... there are contexts in which the easily accessible approach of a blog post is far more valuable than a journal article on the same topic, along with the ability to provide prompt updates when the situation changes.
I agree in principle. The link between the "hard-to-produce factor" and the medium (blog vs. paper) is not in my eyes so strong. There's a lot of overlap and I don't think the generalization is that valuable.
It sounds pretty, but I'm not convinced this is a sound analogy. I think the walls are elastic to some extent. The real limitation on how much you can learn is not storage space, but time spent "moving furniture". You only have so much time to spend learning things, and you have to choose where to allocate it.
I don't really think his qualifications have much of a bearing on that - you could easily think of knowledge as a function of time and effort, which are certainly limited and finite resources for everyone, so the analogy still holds.
I subscribe to this as well, but I still think Doyle has a point. Sherlock wasn't talking about neural biology, but about the structure of the conscious mind. In practice, the advantage of an "efficient brain" might not be very important compared to having focus in one' thinking.
In other words, the problem is not that we have too many pathways in the brain, rather that we spend too many cycles traveling down redundant ones. Let this allegory warn us to accept the scarcity of attention.
The more efficient it is, but as an economist, I'd say those are two different things.
Your efficiency per unit resource may increase, but your total resources are still finite. Therefore, unless your efficiency increases asymptotically fast enough that the integral diverges (ie, infinite area), your total end product will still be finite. And I have a hard time believing that efficiency would increase that quickly.
One should not take this quote seriously. Doyle was not hoping his Holmes should be a model for anyone to follow. He is some kind of anti-humanist. I see Holmes stories as some kind of exercice de style, and in real life the reasoning part of a detective work is anecdotal, I believe the real good detective is the one who can put himself in the brain of his prey, see Maigret for example.
TLDR: BS! Reading good books unrelated to your main work is more necessary than ever. And that'a why closing the pipes of the noise is a good idea.
"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”