Summaries and extracts: useful resources or useless shortcuts to nowhere?

I was trying to help some of my friends in the search for references and notes for Master’s Degree thesis, as I tried to help others in “reading books for them” (non-fiction books that are, as words suggest, not novels but essays on the most disparate subjects), then producing summaries or concept maps, in order to save them time. As much as the intent and the result were appreciated on their part, I realized a problem in the “second degree propagation” of the message: acting as an intermediary between the author of the book and my friends, something was lost, adding a an extra degree to what is already lost in the transmission of information (think for example of the phenomenon known as “lost in translation“). By extension, the same concept applies not only to books, but to any type of publication and information disseminated in any way: blogs, podcasts, audio books, shorthand reports, documentaries, and so on.

What is lost along the way

To explain the phenomenon, I could make comparisons with physical systems (regarding errors and losses during for example propagation and signal processing); instead, as a simple person who lived a pre-facebook childhood, the simplest comparison is that of the “Chinese whispers/telephone” game: the longer the chain of intermediaries, the lower the probability that a long message will reach an entire fixed to the last player.
For simplicity, assuming that there is no distortion in the original message (which can be good or bad, as researchers studying DNA replication errors, but also anyone who has read Nassim Taleb’s “Antifragile” know) , there will at least be a loss of information: if the result were to be as long as the original, it would be an identical copy, no longer a summary. As a result, inevitably, we will lose something; after all, there is no escape: in a real physical system, the efficiency (measured for example as the ratio between the input and output power) is always less than 1. Or, if you prefer, compression leads to losses ( try to listen to the sound of a) In the following representation, I therefore outline the single passage of a single intermediary:

And if there are further links in the chain (so, “multiple” book summaries of summaries), the information losses increase (and we are always in the happy/lucky hypothesis of not adding distortion, an assumption that is not generally valid, given the number of people unable to understand what they read).

Yes, who would not like to have a plug inserted (like loading information into the Matrix) to incorporate all the details of any topic? Instead, as Farnam Street writes (I recommend devouring his books and his blog): “Our circle of competence can be widened, but only slowly and over time“. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts, the way is to patiently assimilate the concepts and then “Practices make perfect”. That’s all? You will say “what a great discovery you made…”. As often happens, the topic needed more study.

“Go(o)d is in the details“

(To understand the pun, read here). Reflecting more on the issue, I began to understand what reading an entire book provides compared to a well-done summary (and I’m not even making the comparison with those looking for an aphorism that “contains” the author’s bibliography). It’s not so much repeating the same concept several times (I don’t like the motivational style of some self-help books or personal finance bestsellers where the same concept is repeated ad nauseum, each time with words suitable for subhumans), but the fact that, very often, a footnote or an engraved sentence can strike more than the main theme or highlight nuances that certainly cannot be grasped by reading a summary. This obviously is all the more true when the book you are reading deals with already known themes: after reading 10 books on the same topic, it is very likely that the 11^th one includes many concepts already exposed by the previous ones (perhaps organizing them and connecting them in a different way, if we are lucky), so the advantage in reading it is in that infinitesimal quid, in that informative epsilon perhaps negligible for a neophyte, but which can turn out to be the door that opens a world to those who are in the sector and want to go down into the rabbit hole . Furthermore, a sentence written in a certain way can cause very different connections in the minds of different readers, based on previous knowledge and experience (again in physical jargon, we are “systems with memory”, the result of which also depends on previous stimuli) . It happens therefore to read a short caption or a parenthesis, thrown there en passant by the author and … you can suddenly find yourself in an “ah-ah!” Moment, in an epiphany, in that moment of clarity when the ophthalmologist it makes us try the right lens or in that feeling of completeness of the puzzle piece that ends a picture. And that precious little information could have been lost if we had only read a summary!
Which is also the reason why the same concept, learned from different people, fits in differently in everyone’s mind: conceptually, the concept (forgive me the pun intended) is linked to the notions of a higher and lower level. , but also to previous experiences and other mental resources within me, then providing in turn a “hook” node for subsequent concepts and experiences, which may happen intentionally or not.
I try to outline:

To give an example: I read how a rectifier (ReLU) works for a neural network and that concept is inserted, in my head, into the set of activation functions, connecting it at the top to the layers of a neural network, while, at the bottom , I think about the mathematical function that I could have studied many years before and in the meantime I try to recall a memory in which I have seen a system work like this. I try again with a more tangible example: watching a Scientific American video, I learn how the Maillard reaction works and I pigeonhole (“embed”) it in my brain, among other concepts (for example, memories of chemistry during high school) while images and flavors of succulent steaks eaten near large expanses resurface from my memories. from free-range farms in Canada or savory pretzels from a small-town bakery in Germany. And, to that new concept I have learned, others will probably be added, for example when I read something on Bliss Point or Umami or while looking for cooking recipes.
From a good book, usually, more than one concept is extracted, thus increasing the number of nodes and connections that are inserted into the network of one’s mind; which makes it highly unlikely that two people, even though they have attended the same course of study and shared different experiences, can obtain the same result by reading the same book: they will recall different concepts and lived episodes, as well as potentially generating new ideas.

Possible uses of summaries

Just to recap: reading a summary could give us the false impression of having understood a topic well without actually having actually observed the nuances proposed by the author; so: is it necessarily bad to use a summary? Not entirely: as with all instruments, from a sheet of paper to nuclear fission, it depends on the use. Over time, I’ve identified a couple of situations where having a summary can be helpful:

• Before reading a book: either as an “extended review” (which can complement/replace those available on a site such as Good Reads, on a specialist group/forum or on an e-commerce platform), or to scroll more the topics dealt with in the various chapters quickly, in order to understand if there is any chapter that can bring added value for us based on the time spent (unfortunately it is always a matter of cost/opportunity: we spend our most precious and limited resource, time, so it makes sense to spend a few minutes to understand if we can spend hours / days in a reading);
• After reading a book: after some time, if you have not produced any notes, schematized the main concepts or highlighted the most important points, it may make sense to re-look at (or re-listen to) that book summarized by someone else (and even if the summary will not quote the passage that struck us, it is likely that we will remember it by listening to another passage summarized by that same work).

Above all, the summary should not be used either to make yourself appear brilliant with friends while drinking a fashioned cocktail, speaking only to show off a pseudo-culture based on Oscar Wilde’s aphorisms, nor to be able to score points on a social media challenge comparing yourself with who read more books (by the way: those which I update in my list of read books are whole books, not summarized).
And if you are one of those who “but I don’t have time to read everything, I just need to understand the concept”, then I guess you just need to let a friend tell you what a certain place, a certain painting, a song, a film, you just need to go to the point and hear the main concept, right? I do not doubt that the executive summary of a report, as well as abstracts and conclusions of a paper, are useful to save time, but are you really willing to miss all the details?

At this point, I just have to wish you happy (full) reading! 🙂