What do i have to read to get smarter?

The redpill causes an awful degenerative brain condition.

get two anthologies of philosophy, one general one and one political one. Read at least three essays for every primary source you read. Although the more important the work, the more attention you should pay to the secondary literature. Read the SEP article before you read the primary source and watch as many youtube videos as you need. Watch at least one lecture a day about philosophy, even if it doesn't pertain to whatever your currently reading. Read very slowly, if it takes you a whole day to read two pages so be it, you're learning how to read, some may say that is a useful skill. Define every word you don't know and try as hard as you can to define ten words every day. Take it slow, don't be surprised if one year from now you're just starting to realize how deep the philosophical hole goes

reading is for smelly gay nerd losers
today's intellectual class subsists entirely on youtube videos and the occasional twitter feed

and don't take notes for a first read through as you'll just get too bogged down with your wrong thoughts on what you're reading (unless the reading involves clear definitions which are important (like in Kant))

best answer: start with the greeks

or you could go for rand and objectivism instead

she loves neophytes, and you'll feel wickedly smart

until you realize later that you could have started with the greeks

whatever tho, you'll learn something

>form my own thoughts... reading books...
Almost all books are a single persons opinions. Reading 100 books will have you listened to a 100 people.

Sure, some may draw upon a variety of sources, but in the end there is always a narrative.

Don't read books to get smarter - read books to get fascinated, intrigued, humored, thrilled and enjoy life. Let other people worry about being smart or rich.

like i said i tried starting with the greeks and even that couldnt help me, im so used to plain english writing that i could not understand any of their mumbo jumbo and just got 40 pages in and said, "WTF did i just read?"

thank you friend i will try doing this right away

just saying: the greeks are by far the easiest philosophers to read, so you unironically might not be cut out for this. may learn an instrument and stick to literature instead or something

To BTFO annoying Veeky Forumsrasado elitists

Daydreaming around the house being enlightened by your own intelligence is not the solution to your problems.

Read basic literature and write down your thoughts and ideas on each chapter. Then, compare with sparknotes or cliff notes and find out what you missed or didn't understand.
The goal here is to find your weaknesses in understanding and getting info from a text. Once you find out what you're bad at, you can try to improve it.

This isn't true. Reading the Greeks is like starting math with set theory. Their way of looking at the world is so different than today that it makes reading the Greeks very difficult

Im this guy here are some things I found:
Looks like a great intro to philosophy anthology, every important topic and historical era is covered in it books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4294986056

Here's contemporary political philosophy, may have to get this myself desu: wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405130644.html

This looks like an extremely good anthology as well, includes classical political texts as well as contemporary issues in the philosophy of economics, freedom, and politics

amazon.com/Philosophy-Politics-Economics-Jonathan-Anomaly/dp/0190207310/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1496535744&sr=8-14&keywords=anthology political philosophy

Western Philosophy: An Anthology by John Cottingham is a fantastic introductory anthology IMO.

>Rand
Pfffffft hahahahahahahahahahahahahaa

The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell is another good introduction to philosophy

but to just generally get smarter
you might want to take a course on logic (there's a couple good ones on coursera)

Good post, user.

Try this instead. Start with Stoic texts, and embrace the ideology. (If you agree with it.) This will help develop your philosophical mindset. Stoic texts are east and straight forward to read. However, that doesn't take away from the potency of the content.

>Their way of looking at things is so different from today

I dunno about all that. Seems like Plato is more relevant and digestible than 99.7% of modern thinkers/theorists/scientists.

this