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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1191 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 26, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm trying to finish Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. This time around it is resonating, perhaps because the abstract desire for freedom is on my mind.

I’m curious to know if I’m truly the only person on TM who finds reading fiction to be extremely difficult…

I was always a "smart kid" growing up but I hated reading. Of course I discovered blogs 10 years ago and I enjoy reading Discourse about news and current events (and i don't do it to learn about the issues or the events).

I realized a couple years ago that I just don't like fiction and narratives that much. There are dozens of us maybe!

Very interesting. Good to know I’m not alone.

I was always very much an autodidact. I never really “took off” in terms of any burning desire to read until I was maybe 16 and when it happened I raided my father’s library and tried reading everything I got my hands on. Don’t know what it was but one day something just clicked and I dove right into it.

Maybe I am “smart,” but I’m not as smart as people think I am. I feel like I’m deceiving people at times when they say that. Yes, I’ve read a lot of books. Maybe 2,000 or so under my belt of various topics. But genius is unmistakable when you see it. When you see what the kids at MIT can you, you’ll quickly understand why these people are in a different universe.

I used to solve the problems my friends and peers had all the time growing up. I re-wired my best friends mother’s stove when it quit working one day and fixed it, I’d write the homework essays for some of my friends in exchange for favors, tell them how to do the things they were trying to do and they’d always ask me how I know this and that.

One thing I always do when I read non-fiction is pay very close attention to the book’s bibliography. These are a gold mine that often go completely ignored by the reader. It often links directly to other books, articles and other authors. I’d always go and look up those books and the background of these authors to see what their expertise is in.

What that meant was I always kept my ear close to the ground such that even if I didn’t know the answer to a question (usually because I was more interested in reading something else), I knew ‘exactly’ where to look and who to ask and could “point” people directly to the answer and give it to them that way.

I think I’m maybe more rational or educated than I am “intelligent” in the sense of just raw mental horsepower. I have a very good memory and rarely forget things (although it’s a problem because usually when I don’t want to engage a point with someone I just tell them I forgot the details related to the point, and they never believe it), but very few of the ideas I’ve come up with were invented by me. A lot of the time I’m quoting or paraphrasing or extending the logical arguments of others I’m persuaded by it really feels like plagiarism when others attribute it to me.

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