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Reading Ourselves to Death
51–60 of 80 posts
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#52I've regretted hours spent watching TV, playing computer games, trying to figure out how to complete a task with no information available, being stuck waiting somewhere with nothing to do, but I can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading. There may be people in the world whose lives would be improved by reading less, but I'm guessing a vanishingly small number.
I've regretted reading many times in the past. Case in point - this site wasting hours of my time, as well as plenty of stories that I just couldn't tear myself away from even though it was hours past bed o'clock causing exhaustion.
(Tongue in cheek, but not really)
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#53> Every minute, humans send 220 million emails, 70 million WhatsApp and Facebook messages, 16 million texts, 530,000 tweets, and make 6 million Google searches.
And the google says: "The average size of an email file is about 75 KB"
That's about 15TB of data every minute, about 21,6 PB every day. Only emails. This number is so abstract i dont believe it's real. I would also say that it's not only humans that sends so much messages...
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#54[deleted]
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#55Reminds me of this article: https://bluelabyrinths.com/2021/06/06/an-abstract-oasis-in-t...
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#56I think what you read is the key here. Mindless reading of text messages, news headlines and social media posts is very different cognitively than reading actual literature, something like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
I smiled at the idea that Gravity's Rainbow is where you might start with 'actual literature'. A book so notoriously difficult to read that it has many guides on doing so and people have described to me how books such as Infinite Jest were light reading in comparison. I don't think you need to go quite as far as Pynchon ;-)
Start with The Crying of Lot 49, which is dense-ish but short, then Bleeding Edge, which is longer but closer to the storyline of a traditional novelist, and is semi-sci-fi.
I then proceeded to Inherent Vice (because of the movie) and then Vineland. Vineland was difficult and heavy in parts, but I enjoyed it overall (the whole chapter on how the protagonist describes the receiving of a business card feels like some kind of fever dream). I own Gravity's Rainbow, but haven't yet had the courage to open to page 1.
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#57I've regretted hours spent watching TV, playing computer games, trying to figure out how to complete a task with no information available, being stuck waiting somewhere with nothing to do, but I can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading. There may be people in the world whose lives would be improved by reading less, but I'm guessing a vanishingly small number.
> can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading Hmm, as an inexperienced youth I read - and believed - stuff that I now recognize as totally poisonous crap. Putting someone else's thoughts in your brain should be better regulated. There used to be censorship, abolishing it was probably a bad idea. Yes, I know how we've been conditioned about that. Sort of proves my point.
> Hmm, as an inexperienced youth I read - and believed - stuff that I now recognize as totally poisonous crap.
Sometimes you have to read crap in order to realize it's crap.
Fortunately, over time, it seems that we develop a certain "smell" for books. I am very picky about what I read nowdays, and my "hunch" for good books seem to be mostly accurate.
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#58I've regretted hours spent watching TV, playing computer games, trying to figure out how to complete a task with no information available, being stuck waiting somewhere with nothing to do, but I can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading. There may be people in the world whose lives would be improved by reading less, but I'm guessing a vanishingly small number.
95% of books are a waste of time to read.
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way but I don't know why. Even when I spend time reading average fiction, it still feels better than watching youtube.
Here’s my hot take: because of the deeply held cultural belief that screen time is bad and books are good. Certainly there are truths behind that, but I think we need to realize that videos and even video games can be informative, uplifting, moving, etc, just like books. And conversely books can be a huge waste of time.
I disagree. I actually read about 50 books a year on my phone so it’s still screen time, but I feel the same way as OP.
I think it’s that reading uses your imagination much more. It creates a whole world.
YouTube just feels frustratingly slow and boxed in to me relative to reading.
Re: Reading Ourselves to Death
#60An unmentioned problem with reading too much is that one becomes reactive to text in their thinking and eventually struggles to create new thought. One can become over-reliant on an unending stream of words to push forward the internal train of thought.