In andymatuschak.org/books, I argued that non-fiction books are surprisingly ineffective for typical readers. One common (great!) criticism I heard was: Isn’t reader interest the biggest factor? So what if vaguely-interested people don’t absorb much from pop non-fiction? (Thread)
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I framed the piece in terms of mass-market books to give everyone a common basis, but I see this as a continuum. A quick blog post might demand little reader interest and offer little impact. Mass-market non-fiction might offer more impact for more reader investment.
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(“Impact” is deliberately vague. What’s important might not be detailed understanding; it might be a shift in the way you see the world, or a sense of possibility, or whatever. Just thinking intuitively: how much does it change what the reader thinks, does, can think, can do?)
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More academic texts might offer nothing below some level of reader investment yet handsomely reward a week of serious study. Accessibility stretches a text left; depth stretches a text right. More effective texts are shifted upwards, offering more impact at any level.
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If we overlay the best works in a medium, we’ll see them approximate an “efficient frontier” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient)—the limits of that medium's efficacy at a given level of investment. Good writing/editing is in part about trying to get closer to this frontier.
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Different mediums have different frontiers. Film makes that clear: at low levels of “reader” investment, that format can consistently deliver so much higher levels of impact than books! But since they’re necessarily shorter than books, perhaps they’re harder to study deeply.
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To some degree, these curves are all personal to each reader: if you learn great study skills and build great discipline, you may be able to bend the whole frontier of some medium upwards for yourself. So, yes, it’s great to teach people how to study, but:
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New cognitive media can bend these efficient frontiers up for _everyone_, establishing a new baseline. Helping a median reader access the impact curves of an 80th percentile reader. Helping a 99th percentile reader access new curves altogether.
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In this sense, there’s something for everyone. A fixed level of reader investment can yield a bigger impact. A fixed level of desired impact can be had with lower investment. The minimum-viable-investment shifts downwards; the maximum-accessible-impact shifts upwards.
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quantum.country focuses on higher levels of reader investment, but it’s not difficult to imagine adjusting those mechanisms to make e.g. blog posts more impactful for a fixed level of reader interest.
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That’s just one cognitive medium: there’s a whole zoo to be created! And of course we can decompose “impact” into “emotional resonance,” “detailed understanding,” “motivation,” etc, and examine the impact of novel media on those efficient frontiers. (Fin)
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