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What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

washingtonpost.com

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Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#21

Post by TeMPOraL »

tw1010 wrote: post #7
hyko wrote: post #4

the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information - seems like an odd and misleading statistic.

The precise number doesn't really matter. The strongman interpretation is that we just read and skim too much each day.

That statement makes about as much sense as saying that on average, a human being consumes 4 million droplets of water a day. That is, it's off by 2+ orders of magnitude, and a stupid comparison in the first place. There's nothing to strongman here, IMO.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#22

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sbr464 wrote: post #20
neonate wrote: post #2

https://outline.com/HRfAnU

I was just thinking a service like this would be useful, and the large sum I would pay to not be inundated with animated ads when reading articles.

If it's just the articles, ad blockers work, as does reader mode(s). Even AMP would if they offer it, but AMP is an evil hostile takeover attempt from Google.

If it's the subscription paywall, just get the subscription. Else, don't read it on a site infringing on copyright - you're not entitled to the content.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#23

Post by jasode »

First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to be a lost activity:

Most of the text out there is just not good quality that deserves or rewards deep reading.

My pet theory is that the rampant skimming or "shallow reading" is basically the brain performing a hidden Bayesian probability that any random text put in front of us isn't worth the effort of deep reading.[2] This is why many of us go to HN comments first instead of reading the actual article. The Bayesian priors told us that the "tldr" in the comments got to the point where the article all-too-often had a self-indulgent author that meandered all over the place and wasted our time. Therefore, "shallow reading" isn't bad for us... it's our way of optimizing against "information overload".

Even college professors who are used to heavy reading workloads skim new work. I'd argue this is another manifestation of Bayesian priors.

To back to my C Language example. I didn't really learn C by reading those binders cover to cover. (Deep reading.) I really learned it when I did shallow reading across fragmented sources like USENET comp.lang.c forum and playing around with toy programs. So maybe deep reading isn't the answer but the attention restriction from not being distracted with Twitter and Instagram notifications. In other words, maybe we're conflating benefits "uninterrupted study" with "deep reading".

[1] https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33794

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#24

Post by PhasmaFelis »

tw1010 wrote: post #7
hyko wrote: post #4

the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information - seems like an odd and misleading statistic.

The precise number doesn't really matter. The strongman interpretation is that we just read and skim too much each day.

It's clear what the author meant, yeah, but the fact that they blithely throw around big numbers while clearly not understanding what they mean does affect their overall credibility.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#25

Post by derekp7 »

hyko wrote: post #4

the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information - seems like an odd and misleading statistic.

The only way I could think of to interpret this, is to take the content in 1 hour of video and figure out how many words it takes to give you that same knowledge. This will vary based on the type of contents (nature documentary, vs a thriller move, etc). But to start with, assuming watching a regular drama. An 80,000 word novel can turn into a 2 hour movie, so each our of video is worth 40,000 words. But a lot is left out when making a novel into a movie, so you may need to take the Reader's Digest version, which gives you 20,000 words per hour. That means that people take in about 5 hours worth of video content a day.

Note, these numbers are my best guess, would like to see better numbers filled in.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#26

Post by madeuptempacct »

jasode wrote: post #23

First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to b…

That was a long paragraph, but I agree with the general premise that a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games, so we shouldn't put them on a pedestal.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#27

Post by kd5bjo »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22
sbr464 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking a service like this would be useful, and the large sum I would pay to not be inundated with animated ads when reading articles.

If it's just the articles, ad blockers work, as does reader mode(s). Even AMP would if they offer it, but AMP is an evil hostile takeover attempt from Google. If it's the subscription paywall, just get the subscription. Else, don't read it on a site infringing on copyright - you're not entitled to the content.

How about illegally charging more if you don’t want to consent to their tracking regime?

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#28

Post by jgtrosh »

tw1010 wrote: post #7
hyko wrote: post #4

the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information - seems like an odd and misleading statistic.

The precise number doesn't really matter. The strongman interpretation is that we just read and skim too much each day.

If so, the title of the article is meaningless clickbait. From reading the article it seems to me the author takes the phrase at face value as they imagine skim reading a third of Middlemarch in a day. I'm surprised they describe different modes of reading as a skill future people will have, since afaik it's normal for most people to approach different types of texts at different speeds and paying attention in different ways. I can skim quickly over comments and articles just building an understanding of the context and basic information and conclusions people are using, while I will read a scientific article anywhere between ½ and 3 pages per hour if I'm actually trying to understand a difficult concept.
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