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

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

#231

Post by nataliste »

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…

>But far more remarkable than that it's simply a waste of time, and rarely articulated, is this psychological loss. The destruction of the self. That echoes through a person's life, to their relationships, their self-construction, etc. It is those echoes that we are now dealing with on a mass sociological scale.

Cervantes, 1605:

>In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it...

Now we're all Men of La Mancha.

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

#232

Post by mlsu »

perihelions wrote: post #204
paulyy_y wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's (quite ironically!) an artifact of the social media culture itself: the shift towards increasingly unmoored, extreme language, disproportionate to whatever thing it's in response to. The effect of echo chambers both winding people up in agitation spirals, while tuning out influences that'd tend to tamp down the intensity . "I wasted a few hours watching stupid videos and feel regretful about that" != "YouTube ob…

Eh, sorry if this wasn't clear, but obliteration is intended to have a specific meaning in my post. I'll clarify here.

Obliteration is like when "you," your conception of "your self" as an entity in the world ceases to exist. Like your internal thoughts turning off, minutes turning into hours, lack of awareness of your surroundings. If you've ever been to a casino or seen someone with a bad drinking problem, that's kind of what I'm talking about. Alternately (!), if you've ever seen someone in a pro tennis match, grandmaster chess tournament, (or as other commenters are rightly pointing out -- reading a really good book!) it's kinda like that too.

However, those productive activities are different for the soul in a way that I have trouble articulating.

I emphatically am not intending it as just like "thing that's really really bad."

I don't think it's unmoored or disproportionate at all, actually. Look at someone who is really locked in on one of these apps. Or do a search for social media addiction, that stuff really does wreck people's lives and is bad for the soul. A wide body of psychological research supports this. I am sharing what I have noticed and trying to understand what the causal mechanism is.

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

#233

Post by archagon »

analog31 wrote: post #207
SoftTalker wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The COVID school closures and remote learning years will prove to be the biggest negative educational/developmental impact on a generation that we've seen in a long time.

At least it will lay to bed the sentiment that nothing is learned at school, and that we all could have just stayed home and taught ourselves to code. It also challenges the belief that what education needs right now is disruption.

I don’t think it will. See: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/27/republican-b...

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

#234

Post by wayoverthecloud »

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.

Reading a book is not really passive. Especially if it's a good book. You have to constantly imagine the layouts and the connections the book is trying to draw. For me, after years of Internet, getting back to books made me appreciate my younger self because books need active imagination and follow-through in the brain. I was able to do that effortlessly when I was a child. In fact, if you read all the HN comments the way you read books, it will be challenging(if you have no book reading habits).

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

#235

Post by southernplaces7 »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #229
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.

I understand what you mean about spatial understanding, and personally do love the the comforting reference value of having actual books on your shelves and being able to go back to specific parts of them no matter what.

However, it's not hard to compensate for this with digital books, through bookmarking options, copy-pasting specific parts and storing them elsewhere (with tiny notes on page number and book title) and other options.

I keep all of my own digital books DRM-stripped in my own device folders and back those up too. This to at least partly replicate the possession security that physical books give. I also absolutely never trust storing large collections of them on something as absurdly untrustworthy as, for example, "Kindle on Demand", which is on-demand right until your access demand arbitrarily gets ignored no matter how much money you spent on what were supposedly owned purchases.

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

#236

Post by hydrolox »

I think the main issue with this line of reasoning is that before all of these internet based forms of content, did many people actually read literature, like is mentioned in the article? I am not sure, but I would expect that the books that were read were probably not some high form of art but entertainment - which is fine of course, and it is different to a large extent from scrolling tiktok, but does it like up with the authors thesis about reading providing some deeper form of enlightenment? Maybe it still does, since it's still the same act of reading, but maybe not as much, since it's not normal "intellectual content"

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

#237

Post by Spivak »

wayoverthecloud wrote: post #234
kleinsch wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reading a book is not really passive. Especially if it's a good book. You have to constantly imagine the layouts and the connections the book is trying to draw. For me, after years of Internet, getting back to books made me appreciate my younger self because books need active imagination and follow-through in the brain. I was able to do that effortlessly when I was a child. In fact, if you read all the HN comments th…

This happens with all forms of art, it's not unique to the written word. With movies and TV you're imagining the world outside the frame borders. With paintings you're imagining the whole scene or story depending on the piece.

So there's a point here that TikTok is competing for leisure time that in its absence has a better chance of being imaginative but I think that undersells the creativity of social media to a degree.

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

#238

Post by rinoybehAvior »

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…

[dead]

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

#239

Post by marmaduke »

swatcoder wrote: post #230
yawboakye wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If someone is paying, the transaction, by construction reinforces the psychological boundaries that obliteration eliminates. So I think not paying is part of it, just like addicts ignore the (perhaps partially non monetary) price of their behavior.

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

#240

Post by Spivak »

aziaziazi wrote: post #226
kleinsch wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Number two but in book form is "beach reads" which can include your favorite trash romance or the latest "dad book" Vince Flynn / Clive Cussler / Tom Clancy thing. And given the huge popularity of the two genres folks are reaching for books to turn off plenty.
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