Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

lithub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 351 posts

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#51

Post by switch007 »

nkrisc wrote: post #35
retskrad wrote: post #22

Times have changed. Students who use podcasts, YouTube, and ChatGPT to complete their academic tasks aren't shallower or less educated than those who have spent years mastering the skill of extracting information from dense books.I have younger relatives who can't sustain their attention to read a book to save their life but still earn excellent grades because they were born into a world of technology. Their way of f…

> I have younger relatives who can't sustain their attention to read a book to save their life That’s sad. There are many times in life one will need to do what is essentially the equivalent of reading a boring book and these kids are being set up for failure.

It's sad on the human level too. A family member or friend may have a difficult issue that takes more than 2 minutes to discuss, but a person won't have the attention span to listen.

No wonder therapists are raking it in and short supply.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#52

Post by nileshtrivedi »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #39

What's special about the book? It's the cost, proof of work if you will. If costs nothing to write or read an internet post, so bots, cheap workforce and gullible people can be employed. Only selected few buy books, because it costs money, so it's their vote that counts for the author, the publishers and for fellow readers.

Writing digitally is cheaper but that's exactly why distributing or getting reach is not cheap at all. You still need cost and proof of work in getting noticed by algorithms, as well as people who usually set trends. In fact, the lower cost of production means that more niche things get written than there would have been a market for.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#53

Post by 1aqp »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #48
n4r9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I struggle to understand how podcasts and youtube are an efficient learning resource. They are slow, unstructured, and unsearchable. Whilst some software can ameliorate some of these (e.g. playback speed control), there's no analogue to the process of "can skip this paragraph, can skip this paragraph, let's search back for the definition of this term, let's cross-reference this term with this other text, let's…

Perhaps I'm old fashioned but I despise this new fad of everything having to be a video. I can read much-much faster than the goober on youtube can talk, and I can easily skip sections which are uninteresting because I can see at a glance what the paragraph is about. But these days everyone has to be a Content Creator and a Personality and there's just no money or celebrity in written text, even though it is a vastly…

Hear! hear!

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#54

Post by cglace »

retskrad wrote: post #22

Times have changed. Students who use podcasts, YouTube, and ChatGPT to complete their academic tasks aren't shallower or less educated than those who have spent years mastering the skill of extracting information from dense books.I have younger relatives who can't sustain their attention to read a book to save their life but still earn excellent grades because they were born into a world of technology. Their way of f…

What will they do when there isn't a podcast or video to teach them a concept?

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#55

Post by usrbinbash »

The issue isn't about "screen vs. print", the issue is about "critical, discerning, questioning mind" vs. "mindless consumerism".

The epistemological collapse we are experiencing wasn't caused by information being online and disseminated via browsers.

It was, and is, caused by a mass of uninformed people, with strong tribal behavior, shutting out any information that doesn't fit their preconceived world views, and industries and politics designed to benefit from that behavior.

And btw. misinformation can be, and has been, spread via print [even today][1].

[1]: https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-delivers-nine-tons-of-pr...

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#56

Post by dyauspitr »

retskrad wrote: post #22

Times have changed. Students who use podcasts, YouTube, and ChatGPT to complete their academic tasks aren't shallower or less educated than those who have spent years mastering the skill of extracting information from dense books.I have younger relatives who can't sustain their attention to read a book to save their life but still earn excellent grades because they were born into a world of technology. Their way of f…

I don’t think ChatGPT belongs with the other two. It essentially counts as reading.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#57

Post by torlok »

retskrad wrote: post #22

Times have changed. Students who use podcasts, YouTube, and ChatGPT to complete their academic tasks aren't shallower or less educated than those who have spent years mastering the skill of extracting information from dense books.I have younger relatives who can't sustain their attention to read a book to save their life but still earn excellent grades because they were born into a world of technology. Their way of f…

YouTube and podcasts are fine as an introduction to a topic, but they are and do encourage passive consumption. It's fine for reciting shallow factoids in class and getting grades, but won't make you an expert in a field. If you can't maintain enough attention to read, you'll always have to rely on processed, second hand information. That's why reading needs to be taught as a skill, and heavily encouraged.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#58

Post by ndjdjddjsjj »

mihaic wrote: post #18
ndjdjddjsjj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well just change your URL to something better, right. The curse is not the lack of information but the lack of will to change the channel from whatever feeds their (our!) biases.

If drugs flood my community, you can't say the solution is simply "just don't do drugs, duh". If you put the burden on the population when everything in society works against them, it's not productive in any way.

My main point is there isn't some Illuminati with access to good info you can't get for free.

In the drug analogy I am saying most addicts know about rehab. The conspiricy isn't hiding all the NA groups.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#59

Post by sudahtigabulan »

ethernot wrote: post #41
retskrad wrote: post #22

Times have changed. Students who use podcasts, YouTube, and ChatGPT to complete their academic tasks aren't shallower or less educated than those who have spent years mastering the skill of extracting information from dense books.I have younger relatives who can't sustain their attention to read a book to save their life but still earn excellent grades because they were born into a world of technology. Their way of f…

I am not sure this is the case. I work with a mix of younger and mature students and there is a distinct inability for the younger students to compose complex abstract processes. When people do well as a cohort they are usually normalised against their peers. It requires a little more academic comparison across age groups.

Isn't it also because of a change in testing methods? It seems to me that multiple choice tests are more and more widespread. These can be gamed more easily, since you can often eliminate some of the choices based on knowledge unrelated to the correct answer.

For comparison, during my own education, a couple decades ago, I don't recall having a multiple choice test ever. Maybe 1 to 4 grade in primary school. Maybe. Everything was problems, proofs, or essays.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#60

Post by nonrandomstring »

pjc50 wrote: post #37
hunglee2 wrote: post #10

That we are entering a crisis of epistemology is a positive sign that we are recognising all produced information is unavoidably narrativization. We can't - and shouldn't want to be - certain of anything. Buyer beware and we'll be ok

The problem is, you can't live like that. Not in an advanced society. There simply is not time and effort enough available for everyone to check everything. You can't do your own medical trials and your own long-term toxicity studies.

> you can't live like that

Indeed its psychological torture but it doesn't just tear up the individual, it undermines all social institutions.

A minor nitpick, TFA author uses the term "Epistemological Collapse". That's the "science/philosophy and study of knowledge and meaning" and for that to collapse would be different from what people talk about more widely which is "epistemic crisis"... a deterioration in common knowledge and disappearance of meaning, trust, truth, veracity.

Historians call it an 'interregnum'. We're very definitely in one. With another author I co-wrote about it here [0]. You can see it everywhere. But I argue that no single technology is the cause of it - rather what people do and how tech alters their behaviour. Look at this adjacent thread on whether "Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video". This rather simple debate raises a more or less "unfalsifiable question", even if you have sophisticated electronic test equipment and nation-state level of dedicated expertise,, what do you really know about the relation between an LED and covert surveillance.

In an epistemic crisis we are forced to confront how we use knowledge and maybe to use it in a different way.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/radical-disbelief-and-its-ca...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259278

Post reply on HN