Having an idea about the birth of the universe, dinosaurs, etc is not bad to have and you certainly can spend your time in worse ways than reading pop science books. But most of the time you will take almost nothing from these books as the information does not come as an answer to a question that bugged you, so you value it close to worthless. Water tastes the sweetest when you are thirsty and so on.
* How do we know that fact / how was it measured or determined? How sure are we that the fact is true? How accurately / precisely do we know it?
* Who figured it out / generated / measured the fact? Why did they do that?
* What is the "distribution" the fact is drawn from? e.g. for "height of highest mountain", what are the next 3 tallest mountains, etc, what is deepest trench, how far to space? etc.
I'm with you on feeling jaded by pop science in general, but I'm struck by the lack of specific comments on this specific series in the HN reactions here.
My opinion from reading 10 of them in the last few years: 3 were worthwhile to me (The ice age, Stoicism, and planetary systems), and a couple more in the sort-of-OK range. An 11th I quickly gave up on (Anatomy: A VSI -- I'm still on the lookout for a book in that niche).
I'd really value a series like this which presumed a reader comfy with basic freshman math for a STEM major, or even high school math -- it's some kind of indictment of modern education that educated adults are taken by the whole industry to be repelled by even that much math in pop science.
Most of my time in the library was spent reading sci-fi and world history. Of the few encounter with these books, I've found them as a great initial boost. Apart from their own content, the references and further reading sections serve as a fantastic reading list. All _without_ the need of a knowledgeable expert by your side. As I'm applying to computer science, the introductions to classical philosophy and economics were really helpful as I did not take relevant courses.
I wouldn't bother reading a random one of them out of boredom though. Many of the topics may not be relevant to what you already know, and would be quickly flushed away and not survive a single week in your brain unless you do further reading.
p.s. as of this comment I have a cart full of newly arrived Short Introduction books behind me, about 130+ in count.
[0]: I am a long time volunteer at the school library, so statistics are available.
Beautiful.
Does anyone even want to be a know-it-all? While I'd like to be knowledgeable in more topics I know that if I read/study topics that I'm not thoroughly interested in I won't retain the information. So I'm content knowing what I know.
https://bigthink.com/high-culture/george-dantzig-real-will-h...
How to Be a Know-It-All - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15439701 - Oct 2017 (48 comments)
