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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

#281

Post by [deleted] »

mandmandam wrote: post #264
alexashka wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's astounding how people can have all the facts and teachers in the world, while dodging genuine understanding of everything most important. You said they are dodging 'genuine understanding'. I am saying you aren't the final word on what 'genuine understanding of everything most important' is. In other words - you are using lots of words to say 'I want others to do more of the stuff I want them to do and less of…

So anyone who uses the phrase "genuine understanding" is secretly a wannabe power-hungry authoritarian? Dunno about that one bud. And anyone who calls out vapid conspicuous consumption, or the greedy exploitation of the planet for personal gain, that's not obviously perverse to you; it's just one person's opinion and easily disregarded - because they're not the final word on genuine understanding? Well, pick your pro…

[deleted]

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

#282

Post by ndjdjddjsjj »

exceptione wrote: post #158
ndjdjddjsjj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You would have a better main point when you started to question how this accident could happen: Oh oopsie, I am the owner of highly popular media, that by accident does everything to not talk about subjects that are highly damaging for society, but that, if they would, would be highly detrimental to my and my business partners interests. Also, by accident, instead of bringing real investigative journalism looking at…

I can't engage with this unless I talk politics... and my views (based on calling spades spades) wont be popular with anyone on any side ;). So will leave it there and say yes it is unfortunate.

r/leopardsatemyface sums it up though (although I don't blindly agree with all that is posted there)

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

#283

Post by sourcepluck »

dlkf wrote: post #256
sourcepluck wrote: post #246

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 Desmurg…

I implore everyone reading this to google the Sokal hoax before decide whether these guys are worthwhile.

Michel Desmurget is a well-respected neuroscientist working in research in France, so the Sokal thing is totally irrelevant to him, presumably? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Desmurget

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair - for the curious.

The Sokal affair is a funny thing yes, which I'd seen before (and I presume many people here are familiar with). I don't see how it's relevant here?

I mean - it was one journal, in 1996, that had no peer review process, that published a fake article someone sent in to prove a point that the journal publishes at least some crap...

What should we reject based on that in your opinion - all cultural and media studies presumably, at the very least, you seem to be clearly suggesting. And every philosopher too? The logicians? The linguists? All of social science? Economics too? Is it just STEM-type stuff that's acceptable then?

Seems preposterous to me. The soft sciences are looser, and definitely have a higher proportion of hand-wavy nonsense, but rejecting it all to avoid stuff you don't like is just silly. Learning to avoid the crap and find the good stuff is pretty similar to other fields.

And often, anecdotally, it seems to me that the more interesting figures in the experimental sciences tend to be very intrigued by the softer, arguably sometimes "trickier" questions that the non-STEM sciences can explore.

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

#284

Post by xcrunner529 »

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…

Seeking out just other viewpoints that agree only with you and your initial beliefs, usually by people grifting and making money of of having said viewpoints is definitely much worse and not at all what “educated” means.

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

#285

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

sourcepluck wrote: post #246

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 Desmurg…

Wanted to add Marshal McLuhan impulsively upthreads, but restrained myself, and read everything else first. Have something to amend your list with, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann

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

#286

Post by jaybrendansmith »

Sam6late wrote: post #70

My 2 cents: 1- 'The Department of Education’s most recent survey, released in June, was sensational: it found that text comprehension skills of 13-year-olds had declined an average of four points since the Covid-affected school year of 2019-2020, and more alarmingly that the average drop was seven points compared with the 2012 figure. The results for the worst-performing students fell below the reading skill level re…

Don't worry. When the next administration gets rid of the Department of Education, we won't have any idea how bad things are.

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

#287

Post by magnio »

grayhatter wrote: post #245
wayoverthecloud wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

> “Bitch,” he repeated. The mallet came down. She shoved herself upward and it landed just below her kneecap. Her lower leg was suddenly on fire. Blood began to trickle down her calf. And then the mallet was coming down again. She jerked her head away from it and it smashed into the stair riser in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, scraping away the flesh from her ear.

Does your mind conjure no images while reading this?

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

#288

Post by llm_trw »

akkartik wrote: post #253
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…

Yeah, I had to look closely as well to figure out what this was saying. The core reasoning seems to be this one sentence: "Printed books are a zone of resistance against the neon god of the algorithm since tinkering with code can’t delete their contents, as hackers recently did with the Internet Archive." But you don't have to retreat from software entirely. You can read offline to keep someone over the network from…

If only there was a place starting with p and ending with "irate bay" where you could get forever copies of books.

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

#289

Post by llm_trw »

mandmandam wrote: post #172
seabass-labrax wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason why the FT, among others, don't spend much space on human rights issues is because they are inherently transactional publications in nature. You have to pay to subscribe, and those who do expect something in return - I suspect that this is usually a sense of being 'in the know' on business matters. Obviously knowledge of Jill Stein's manifesto is not going to make its readers any money in the fores…

> I suppose I'm defending the FT in the sense that there is no alterior motive, I believe No ulterior motive? I really don't know about that. They're better than most, because they generally tell the truth - a shockingly low bar - but it's a specific type of truth, as seen from a specific and very narrow window, from a deliberate vantage point. Always viewing the world from that specific window belies a motive, consc…

I'm having a hard time understanding what your complaint is.

That the worlds premier capitalist publication publishes facts capitalists find useful?

Yes.

Also bears shit in the woods.

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

#290

Post by sizzle »

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…

Thanks for articulating this phenomenon so well.
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