Schopenhauer on the danger of being seduced by a good writer.

Arthur Schopenhauer in On Reading and Books:

"The sophist coats the poison pill of error in the sweet honey of eloquence, so that the mind swallows its own destruction without realizing it."

Randomly saw this quoted, and it made me think of the writers whom I've learned to be suspicious of because they are just so good. First to mind are Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. I've read and reread all their books, enjoyed them immensely. But then time pases and I try reconciling their clearly presented persuasive ideas against the history unfolded, and they are too often revealed to be wrong, short sighted, and if not outright inveigling us into bad narratives or contrafactual ideas, at minimum were shown to have been fully seduced by the power of the narrative that they have woven.

It motivated me to look up the original essay and get some more context for the quote. And it just get's juicier:

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher... Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal... gradually loses the ability to think for himself.

And now I feel attacked.