Of Reading and Hidden Gorillas

 I know I have mentioned this experiment before; I also know it is one of my favorite experiments.

Spoiler alert: if you have not checked out this experiment, go to this link before reading further: selective attention test (youtube.com).  Note; this video is from a research by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris.

Two teams, one in white and one in black and one in white are passing basketballs.  The viewer is instructed to count the number of times the team in white passes their basketball.  at the end of the segment the viewer is asked for the count and given the right answer: 15.  The viewer is then asked if he/she saw the gorilla that walked across the players.

I understand that about 50% of the watchers miss the gorilla: I was one of those 50% that failed to spot the gorilla.

Reading new books, especially non-fiction books, mimics that experience for me.  Books present condensed knowledge that authors worked on for years.  In his book The Art of the Impossible, Steven Kotler emphasizes this when he compares the Return on Investment (of Time) between blogs (about 800 words), full sized articles (about 5000 words), and books (about 60,000 words).

At an average reading speed of 250 words a minute, blogs take a little more than three minutes, full size articles about twenty minutes, and books about five hours.

How much of the author times do we get for each effort?

In case of blogs, it is about three days of the authors time for three minutes plus of ours.  For a long form articles, an author like Kotler can spend about four months (including researching, reporting, and crafting the article).  By quintupling his/her reading time, a reader has accessed a work that took an author thirty times as much to create.  This is a huge gain on return on investment.  Books, however, are on entirely different category.

For books, an author like Kotler may spend fifteen years' worth of his labor or brain power to create his work.  Five hours or three hundred minutes (almost a hundred-fold of time invested) earns the reader fifteen years of an author's time.  As he neatly summarizes it in his book:

• Blogs: three minutes for three days of an author's time
• Long form articles: twenty minutes for four months of an author's time
• Books: five hours for fifteen hours of an author's time

Books, according to Kotler, provide condensed knowledge.  When reading books in an unfamiliar domain of knowledge, however, there will be a number of gorillas that you will never see because of the cognitive load imposed on you as you grapple with new concepts.  As you read more in that domain, however, you will begin to spot those gorillas more easily.

I must admit that it takes me more than five hours to read a book in an unfamiliar domain of knowledge.  It takes reading, evaluating what I have read, and rereading the material to understand it better.  It is often a frustrating experience; but i take solace in the knowledge that I am grappling with condensed knowledge that yields a very high return on time invested in reading.  I also get the occasional burst of joy when I spot the gorillas that I missed prior to rereading and grappling with the challenging texts.