How I read - by Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland

Sometimes, I read for the pleasure of entering a mental world I hadn’t anticipated; sometimes, I read to be transformed. This essay is about the latter kind of reading. When I want to be transformed, I chase my reading, to use Robin Hanson’s phrase. “Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing,” Hanson writes. “With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions.” Searching is when I’m reading without a clear aim and continue to read even if I’m unsure about what the author is trying to achieve. Chasing is when I have a question I’m pursuing. Chasing makes you more active and critical of what you read. This helps you learn more. As Hanson writes, “search-readers often don’t have a good mental place to put each thing they learn. [...] Chasers, in contrast, always have specific mental places they are trying to fill with what they read, so they better integrate new things they learn with old things they kn

Sometimes, I read for the pleasure of entering a mental world I hadn’t anticipated; sometimes, I read to be transformed. This essay is about the latter kind of reading. When I want to be transformed, I chase my reading, to use Robin Hanson’s phrase. “Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing,” Hanson writes. “With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions.” Searching is when I’m reading without a clear aim and continue to read even if I’m unsure about what the author is trying to achieve. Chasing is when