Signal Sources
A few people become the source and inspiration for others' ideas. Scientists publish a study and others summarize that information. Downstream people read those summaries (more than who read the actual papers). Most of the information you consume comes from signal repeaters. These people are important to grow the scope of information you're aware of. Signal repeaters are top the Knowledge Funnel.
To get truth and the core of an idea, you want to go directly to the source. A signal source is something that provides useful, High Signal information.
What acted as inspiration in the signal repeaters? Who are your role models' role models? These are the people you want to go to as the source of truth.
Philosophy students read Plato directly. Physics students, curiously, almost never read Albert Einstein's original papers—they learn relativity from textbooks written by people who may have never read Einstein either. Why? Because in science, subsequent expositions improve on the originals. The originators shared many misconceptions of previous theories. But when you're learning philosophy, history, or wisdom about how to live, the opposite is true. The source material—those five books you reread over and over—contains something that gets diluted with each retelling. These are materials that create the feeling you've leveled up just from knowing they exist.
The most idea dense information is usually:
- Old or little-known books – I have 5 books that I reread over and over again because the ideas are so good. It's likely these are a part of a Lindy Library
- Curated blogs, accounts, or books – Blogs like littlealmanack.com curate the best ideas from modern intellectuals, accounts like Navalism curate Naval's best ideas, and books like The Maxwell Daily Reader have one of John C. Maxwell's best ideas one day at a time for a year.
- Heavy-hitting social accounts – I have a list of maybe 5 social accounts that always post great ideas. If I don't have something to write about, I'll scroll through their page and find something that I have an opinion on and write about that.
- The newest technical papers