In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by pests » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

swatcoder wrote: post #212

mlsu wrote: post #195

The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiologi…

> When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. I think many can personally attest that either your use of "you" is waaaaay too presumptive or that your use of sucked into represents a mode of engagement that only certain people experience at certain times. Your rhetorical flourish of making it all sound universal and dam…

But then you have people like my one friend, who is scrolling non-stop literally from waking to sleep. It's hard to even have a 3 sentence conversation as he's constantly elsewhere.

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

#222

Post by selimthegrim » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

nataliste wrote: post #95

Cronus eats his children. In 1494, Johannes Trithemius printed De laude scriptorum , "In Praise of Scribes" assailing the development of the printing press. The same argument was made, but from the perspective of the manual scribe, that a printer doesn't understand a work as well as a scribe does, as the speed of reproduction doesn't have the same intent that a person lovingly copying by hand does. Similarly, Plato m…

No post body was provided.

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

#223

Post by southernplaces7 » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC

The title and apparent argument of this confound me somewhat. For those of us who read many, many books very frequently, but stick mostly to digital versions simply out of space and access convenience, it's not hard to feel as if we're somehow being looked down upon because we're not hauling around a bundle of weighty tomes..

Why should print be so specifically necessary if a book's content is what defines it? That I might read, say, Umberto Eco, in digital makes it no less intellectually valuable than if I bought a paperback version, or if you want to get really fancy about things, a hard cover, if those are still even released...

If anything, being able to carry hundreds of books of all kinds around with me nearly anywhere on my Kindle, or even on my cell phone, makes it all the easier to read more voraciously. With this it requires no extra effort beyond that of having with you a device that you'd in any case carry, and thus taking advantage of many more spare moments between daily activities..

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

#224

Post by diob » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:05 PM UTC

kleinsch wrote: post #219

mlsu wrote: post #195

The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiologi…

You’re commenting on an article about reading, which is also a solitary passive consumption activity. I suspect you’re not trying to make the point that reading books destroys relationships and self construction, so this seems like a roundabout way of saying that your favored passive consumption activity is better than what other people choose.

I will say that it is different to me, but perhaps others consume things like tiktok or instagram like I do books.

To me, I do not reminisce or think about tiktoks / instagram posts having an impact on my life or how I think or how I interact with others. Five years from now I do not think I will fondly remember a post, but probably I'll think about the books I read. I kind of know this, as I'm thinking about books I read in highschool over 20 years ago at the moment.

I suppose they give me things to think about beyond the moment I'm reading them, they make me feel things I otherwise wouldn't etc. It's possible for these things in media like movies, and even tiktok too I would imagine.

The reverse is also possible for books to be junk that you read and enjoy in the moment but soon forget.

But I also think the algorithm / profit motive behind tiktok and social media in general tends to mean that it's more likely to be junk, and it's not the person's fault who gets pulled into that. They're brutally effective skinner boxes, imo. Just like some games (mmos and now live service for even shooters).

There's something missing in the current media landscape that the old one did have, which was finality. You read a book, it's over. Similar with older movies, but now we have a bit of the "keep up with the starwars or marvel" thingy which is a bit live service like if you think about it. A constant desire to make folks feel like they have to keep up. Yeah things had sequels before, so I'm probably just waxing nostalgic here.

I'm rambling, sorry, just wanted to share some of my current thoughts.

I'm sure if tiktok didn't exist, these folks would be putting on 24/7 soap operas instead. The desire for a background thing to passively consume has likely always existed. Be it radio, whatever.

The algorithm does seem to be ruthless these days though, god if I know what I mean by that.

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

#225

Post by exceptione » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

RiverCrochet wrote: post #193

exceptione wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only question is: are we able to withstand the firehose of highly available, highly irrelevant short-form dopamine hit entertainment in order to find it? Simple but effective solution: 1. You bring news or debate? You will have to comply with a journalistic code. 2. You want to optimize revenue? You think about infotainment, click bait etc? You better not, because you will have to comply with the journalistic cod…

The following item counters and possibly invalidates the above assertion "simple": - News reporting is straightforward insofar as requiring a code. Opinion about news is where it gets messy - if someone has a TV or radio show where they render their opinions or thoughts about news events, that's first amendment territory. The following item counters and possibly invalidates the above assertion "effective": - Journali…

(Although the response is not gibberish, I can´t feel certain that I reply to a chatgpt response (?))

You take it too static. If you are waiting for the type-safe, leak free hammered approach, you will achieve nothing.

I want you to take this approach to get you going in the right direction.

  Opinion pieces

- Opinion pieces are indeed a way where editorial boards go cheap, outsourcing meta thinking to external entities/influence. Those editorial boards going of the rails there is not an act of nature, but like in the case of the NYT a consequence of commercial ownership. As part of the code any opinion piece should be clearly marked as such, as well as the interests of the author.

  Journalism probably must be scalabe

There is no need for scalable mega media corporations. In countries with 1) public news organizations[*] and 2) required independent editorial boards, commercial titles are not as going overboard as in the US.

  You cannot separate any board of X from political interests

You can, but you can never be absolute 100% perfect.

A peculiar, mindset has been programmed that ethics in society is defined in what what terms the lawyer wrote. A good society is all about what you collectively allow or disallow, no scheme, no law can perfectly defeat all bad actors all the time.

The social part of "society" is an activity. If you as normal people don't show up, then it will be a Murdoch party.

___

* independent from but financed by the state

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

#226

Post by aziaziazi » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:11 PM UTC

kleinsch wrote: post #219

mlsu wrote: post #195

The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiologi…

You’re commenting on an article about reading, which is also a solitary passive consumption activity. I suspect you’re not trying to make the point that reading books destroys relationships and self construction, so this seems like a roundabout way of saying that your favored passive consumption activity is better than what other people choose.

I wouldn’t consider reading as a passive consumption. You have to 1. Lead and follow a tempo, essentially moving your eyes at the speed of you thought 2. Using imagination to associate what you read with other knowledges.

TV and ticktock don’t need 1. You can interact with a remote or you scrolling-thumb but interaction is not required to consume.

2. Isn’t a necessity neither but people do use TV, ticktock or music to "empty their mind" by thinking to nothing else but the consumption flow. You can do that with reading, but that’s not an experience people usually like and they come back to the place their mind left.

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

#227

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:15 PM UTC

The reason for epistemological collapse is that people peeked behind the curtain and found that the experts were just normal people endowed not with some magical knowledge but just making things up as they go.

I can do that, too, and sometimes I am better at it. Given that, I prefer reader-side filtering over writer-side filtering.

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

#228

Post by yawboakye » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:18 PM UTC

swatcoder wrote: post #212

mlsu wrote: post #195

The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiologi…

> When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. I think many can personally attest that either your use of "you" is waaaaay too presumptive or that your use of sucked into represents a mode of engagement that only certain people experience at certain times. Your rhetorical flourish of making it all sound universal and dam…

pretty optimistic review of the power of the individual/mind contra the really fine-tuned algorithms of engagement. the hook is the “filling bits of (idle) time.” the accounting when all the filling of bits of time is done seems to add up to a huge sum. the extra time definitely would have been borrowed (read: stolen) from somewhere.

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

#229

Post by IncreasePosts » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:22 PM UTC

southernplaces7 wrote: post #223

The title and apparent argument of this confound me somewhat. For those of us who read many, many books very frequently, but stick mostly to digital versions simply out of space and access convenience, it's not hard to feel as if we're somehow being looked down upon because we're not hauling around a bundle of weighty tomes.. Why should print be so specifically necessary if a book's content is what defines it? That I…

I read digital and dead tree, but there is a spatial understanding I gain from books that I don't get with ebooks. Like, if I want to re find a passage, I usually have a physical sense of where in the book it is, and can flip to it within 10 or 20 pages. That's the major difference for me at least between the two.

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

#230

Post by swatcoder » Thu, Nov 28, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

yawboakye wrote: post #228

swatcoder wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. I think many can personally attest that either your use of "you" is waaaaay too presumptive or that your use of sucked into represents a mode of engagement that only certain people experience at certain times. Your rhetorical flourish of making it all sound universal and dam…

pretty optimistic review of the power of the individual/mind contra the really fine-tuned algorithms of engagement. the hook is the “filling bits of (idle) time.” the accounting when all the filling of bits of time is done seems to add up to a huge sum. the extra time definitely would have been borrowed (read: stolen) from somewhere.

I agree that algorithmic feeds and even just having endless distractions in a hip pocket are terribly unhealthy. I thinks its wise to be very mindful with both and that they can quietly steal from other experiences that one might prefer in hindsight.

But I don't have a way to square that perspective with what the original commenter suggested about "psychological obliteration" and "addiction akin to gambling or heroin"

People won't even pay for most of these pocket distractions. They're clearly not consuming or addictive in the same way as those others things, where people often make explicit wantonly destructive choices in service to their addiction.

And realistically, that they're a different kind of risk with a different kind of impact may make them even more dangerous from a health-of-society perspective, because we don't have great cultural insight or hygeine practices to deal with them. If we want to change that, we need to recognize that they don't represent the same danger we're used to.

So I'm not dismissing that they're bad. I'm just dismissing the original commenters' deeply strained and distracting characterization.