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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

#241

Post by mhh__ »

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…

Ask yourself: What were the last 5 reels you watched?

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

#242

Post by zuluonezero »

What I found particularly disturbing about this was that I had to swipe away two pop ups and a lower banner just to start reading. All the while my subconscious was asking if I would like to just pick up a book. Then I got distracted by an ad for another article on the right of the screen. .

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

#243

Post by crvst »

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…

Sorry, it just sounds like a seemingly reasonable and eloquent, yet highly emotional speculation.

“There,” “here,” psychological obliteration—what is this but sciency reasoning, on par with boomers claiming, “Games make kids violent”?

“Your entire whole self is destroyed.” Jeez.

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

#244

Post by zusammen »

Yeul wrote: post #97
zusammen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point these focus-deprived children could accurately make is that our adult world is also about reward hacking and bullshit metrics. I’m old but I will tell you that everything I dislike that I see in the young is society’s fault. We did a truly terrible job of giving them a world in which to become better, rather than worse, people. In 1400, actually reading books deeply was for autistic weirdos who were usually…

Kids see adults who don't read so why should they? It makes me kinda sad. Videogames need voice acting now to become successful because nobody has the reading or concentration skills. When I was a child I taught myself English by playing Planescape Torment.

My kids convinced me to try out a couple of those old final fantasy games from the 90s. As someone who studied Kabbalah I was intrigued by the fact that they named a character Sephiroth, although the character really had nothing to do with the name or concept. Anyway, I was already old so I didn’t have the same emotional connection (except when that girl was killed) because neither the writing nor the realism was at a level I hadn’t seen before. It definitely would have hit me hard at 13, though. Really hard.

Video games seem to be aiming to inspire strong emotion through realism, not writing. I won’t say the quality of the writing doesn’t matter but it’s not what makes a great game. Final fantasy games have really hackneyed plots and writing but do the game part extremely well. And video games are the best way to make a story accessible to a large number of people. I don’t think the written word puts a story into the center of a culture anymore.

The voice acting probably adds realism and accessibility but I agree that it also takes something away, just as no video game can do, intellectually and emotionally, what the written word can do. The fact that mere text had such an effect is part of the artifact. Sadly, I don’t how you tell teenagers, if you’re teaching language and literature, that people had the same strong emotional reactions to these texts we assign, that they have to video games.

Oddly enough I’m reading a fantasy novel right now by someone who used to be part of this community. It’s far better than I expected it to be, and it’s causing me to rethink a number of recent events I thought I understood.

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

#245

Post by grayhatter »

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…

I don't use imagination when I read. The connections are instinctual, and the layouts are often irrelevant (which I can say because I've never attempted to consider them and don't ever find myself missing out on the story).

I'd like to say I'm astounded when I hear other people visit other worlds when they read, but really that whole idea is so foreign to me, it might as well be a complete lie. I have no thread in which to pull on to begin to imagine it. I chalk it up to aphantasia, but my point is that not everyone processes and interacts with the world in the same way you might.

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

#246

Post by sourcepluck »

Someone mentions Postman below so I'm tempted to add: can the tech crowd try a bit of Neil Postman, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and the Situationists, Mark Fisher, Marhsall McLuhan, presumably loads of others I don't know about who have done work in these areas, and then maybe Michel Desmurget on the more science-based side of it if they want to avoid any airy-fairy theory.

It's arguably especially wild that Desmurget doesn't get a mention in these discussions. Or, I mean, it would be wild in a world where there was a smooth and effortless flow of good ideas and arguments between people, maybe over some sort of transcontinental network...

A lot of the topics that people have opinions about when it comes to screens and devices and health and etc have loads of studies on them. Which doesn't mean that everything is all solved, there are unexplored and uncertain areas, but reading these discussions you'd think there was no data out there whatsoever. There's tons!

It doesn't mean either that people can't enjoy sharing opinions, some of the anecdotes are interesting and insightful, but there seems to be a few obvious arguments which are basically non-arguments that get trotted out, and which seem to be hindering a more fruitful discussion.

How many times have we seen someone make a point about the bad type of screen-use for someone to say: "yeah, but I use ________ like _________." or "yeah, but when you read books you're being antisocial as well." and so on. The research on the topic distinguishes carefully between the different types of use! Etc etc, I could go on.

This comment is intended constructively

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

#247

Post by canadiantim »

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…

I think this is a very salient point, namely the danger of passive consumption is the losing the sense of oneself. We can be become so absorbed by the objects of our attention that we forget ourselves and this has very real consequences both on of physiology but also our psychology. So part of the solution is to "remember yourself" while you're consuming or directing your attention towards any object, so you are the subject and you are attending to an object. The last piece of the puzzle is that both you, the subject, and the object of your attention are located in space, so location/context is the third essential aspect of the experience to internalize for proper harmony, as far as I understand it.

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

#248

Post by mckn1ght »

diob wrote: post #224
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 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…

> perhaps others consume things like tiktok or instagram like I do books

> Five years from now I do not think I will fondly remember a post, but probably I'll think about the books I read

Exactly what I was thinking. I can still tell you about the first novel I read, first trilogy, favorite books, least favorite, and also each of those per genre. I can tell you what was going on in my life at the time.

The only thing I can say about social media posts are that I have a handful of vague memories of times when someone I knew or knew of would post something that made me realize they had a side I didn’t know of, and not in a good way.

I’m reminded of a quote I read recently, paraphrased: social media connects limbic systems, not prefrontal cortexes. I might take issue with the pure dichotomous nature of that statement, but I think it holds generally.

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

#249

Post by gopher_space »

crvst wrote: post #243
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…

Sorry, it just sounds like a seemingly reasonable and eloquent, yet highly emotional speculation. “There,” “here,” psychological obliteration—what is this but sciency reasoning, on par with boomers claiming, “Games make kids violent”? “Your entire whole self is destroyed.” Jeez.

Is the OP using terms of art?

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

#250

Post by non- »

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…

Depends on the book. Depends on the TikTok.

You can have passive experiences via either medium. TikTok is really optimized for that shallow level of engagement though and books trend in the opposite direction.

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