I have friends that like the book _Atomic Habits_ by James Clear. I thought the book was cool when I read it but I don't have good habits now. Tesler's Law: _This law states that there is a certain amount of complexity in a system which cannot be reduced._ _Some complexity in a system is 'inadvertent'. It is a consequence of poor structure, mistakes, or just bad modeling of a problem to solve. Inadvertent complexity can be reduced (or eliminated). However, some complexity is 'intrinsic' as a consequence of the complexity inherent in the problem being solved. This complexity can be moved, but not eliminated._ _One interesting element to this law is the suggestion that even by simplifying the entire system, the intrinsic complexity is not reduced, it is moved to the user, who must behave in a more complex way._ ### https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws#the-law-of-conservation-of-complexity-teslers-law Books don't do a great job of taking complexity off the reader; this leads to most books not being useful for readers below some threshold of conscientousness. It would be interesting to see what percentage of readers actually achieve goal writer has for a book after reading it. _related to 1 hose/2 hose post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MMAK6eeMCH3JGuqeZ/everything-i-need-to-know-about-takeoff-speeds-i-learned_ usually people use reviews as a proxy for goodness; atomic habits is 4.4/5 on goodreads. I don't think it's impacted my life at a 4.4 level. I wish there were a way to see ratings of how effective people found books. ideas: have people preregister what they hope for from books before using make site like spaced repetititon testing site Tags: [books](https://incrium.com/tags/books), [reading](https://incrium.com/tags/reading), [empiricism](https://incrium.com/tags/empiricism)