How to run a rigorous reading group

In the latest episode of Elucidations, Sam Enright (Progress Ireland, The Fitzwilliam) instructs us in the delicate art of learning forever. 

If you’re one of those people who responds well to formal education, chances are you’ve spent 10-20 years of your life as a student. When you finally graduate, it can feel jarring, like you’re kissing all this efficient infrastructure for mastering difficult skills goodbye. How are you going to keep learning, without a teacher you can pester with questions in the classroom, without regular feedback on homework assignments, and without exams? Sam Enright is here to tell you that just because you’re moving into the next phase of your life, that doesn’t mean you need to turn your back on the learning experience.

In this episode, he discusses his study regimen, which ranges over philosophy, history, economics, math, and computer science, via a couple different formats that are easier to integrate into your everyday life than full-time study in the classroom. The first is something called spaced repetition. This is a method that involves repeating your study practice less and less frequently over time, in order to maximize your direct recall ability. The version that our guest practices involves using software that leans into quizzing you more often on whatever you have the most trouble with, and less often on whatever you have the least trouble with. The quiz questions are of your design, and every time you answer one, you’re given the opportunity to revise it for the future. This allows you to update your study materials over time in light of the expertise you accrue.

Another method Sam Enright recommends is reading groups. Echoing similar recommendations from the Elucidations podcast in Episode 126, our guest tells us about a recurring reading group he runs in Ireland that spans a wide variety of disciplines. The key here is to select reading material that is too difficult for you to fully make sense of on your own, and to establish a culture of staying on topic. Sam Enright’s reading group has been in existence for years now and attracts researchers from all over.

Finally, our guest discusses how he is able to use AI chatbots to supplement the reading process and drill deeper. In addition to traditional techniques such as notetaking, being able to upload an entire text into a chatbot’s context window and then ask it questions about what you’re reading allows you to explore the terrain it opens up interactively. You can restate your understanding of what you just read, invite the chatbot to identify mistakes in your summary, revisit the parts of the original text that are relevant to those mistakes, and so forth. Interestingly, he even reports having success when the platform he is using hallucinates a little, because trying to sniff those hallucations out allows him to cultivate the kind of skeptical attitude that makes reading itself a bit more like the classroom experience.

It was a tremendously fun discussion for me to have, and I hope you enjoy it.

Matt Teichman

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