But, media consumption habits to a certain degree, do dictate our thinking and how much and how long we can actually concentrate, no? I also agree that we need not do everything the same way we have done before and there are different ways to achieve the end.
>> I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone else.
We all have our bias. We settle with and swear by a way we end up finding to work for us for right reasons.
I notice this a lot while doing math. I would normally start with books because they already have predefined structure and have all the topics a person would normally need. I buy 3 or 4 books for which solutions are available. I start with book and then I would listen to lectures. If I do not understand, I would read some other book on same topic. I would have one book which I can understand better than other. Then try to solve many problems from all the books and look up solutions.
Though this is so time consuming and demanding with a full time job, when I engage with learning, I try to engage in this manner. If somebody asks me, I would recommend this because for fairly technical topics because other ways have left me with vague understanding but not good enough mental model to make me relate to problems in terms of the abstractions from those topics. That does not mean this is the only way and each might have to find thier own path.
LLM has been godsend for me too here, particularly when I am trying to fill my gaps in understanding while reading technical books. And it is much more easier to listen or see, than to read. So, given our current landscape and how much time is spent with work, it is true that it is getting harder and harder to read and almost not feasible for many of us.