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What's happening to reading?

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Re: What's happening to reading?

#281

Post by AceyMan »

Izkata wrote: post #155
bregma wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel? Gustav Eiffel? Robert Stephenson? Nikola Tesla? Alexander Graham Bell? Orville and Wilbur Wright? Thomas Edison? I guess it depends on how much you honour those who lit the way before you.

Ignoring the first three, the rest I've mentally bucketed into "inventor" and not "engineer". And that's assuming I have them associated with the right century - definitely would have excluded the Wright brothers anyway because of that.

> The aircraft we fly today is the same design as the Wright Brothers. They solved the control problem. They did wind tunnel studies. And yet you claim they're "not engineers."

As the joke goes, 'I want some of what he's smoking.' Just. Wow.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#282

Post by 8note »

asimpletune wrote: post #95

Summarizers start with the default assumption that reading is an obstacle standing between the reader and some kind of reward. Even the idea that knowledge is something that is capable of being transferred is something that has to be assumed at one’s peril. On the other it's those of us who’ve read in the old school style, for fun, in private that are more convinced of the opposite than anyone. If anything getting su…

i for one always enjoyed reader's digest even though i knew it was heavily critiqued by all the fancy people.

i still like reading the adapted books into chapters from the walrus too. i havent been a subscriber in a while, but they tend to be nice reads that dont require me to commit to reading the same thing for the next couple weeks on the toilet

Re: What's happening to reading?

#283

Post by vivzkestrel »

Too many people writing is a problem they have not discussed in this article. Information is too diluted. I dont have the time to read 5000 books on forex trading. What I want is an LLM crunching all 5000 forex trading books into one book with very concise information. I could apply this idea to "Value investing", "Cookbooks", "Startups", "Business", "Finance" and so on. Does anyone here on HN have an LLM capable of doing this or working on something along these lines?

Re: What's happening to reading?

#284

Post by Izkata »

AceyMan wrote: post #281
Izkata wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the first three, the rest I've mentally bucketed into "inventor" and not "engineer". And that's assuming I have them associated with the right century - definitely would have excluded the Wright brothers anyway because of that.

> The aircraft we fly today is the same design as the Wright Brothers. They solved the control problem. They did wind tunnel studies. And yet you claim they're "not engineers." As the joke goes, 'I want some of what he's smoking.' Just. Wow.

When did I ever claim they're not engineers? I said I mentally bucketed them into "inventor" instead of "engineer". People can be more than one thing at once, it's just not the association I have in my mind, so they don't come to mind when I try to think of engineers.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#285

Post by [deleted] »

andoando wrote: post #127
0xffff2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count me among those who have no idea when Michaelmas is, but does it really matter? The next sentence tells you it is sometime around November. The whole passage is laden with overlapping context clues.

How does November help? I don't even remember the academic terms from my college 10 years ago, how am I supposed to accurately know how academic terms worked a century ago in England?

[deleted]

Re: What's happening to reading?

#286

Post by HellDunkel »

chickensong wrote: post #208
HellDunkel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great perspective but one problem remains: AI will radically change the book market. Great new books will be even harder to find as we are drowning in a sea of words. How do we stay afloat?

Seek out book enthusiasts, which in some ways (tools, internet), is easier than ever, and find your tribe(s) that align with your taste. AI or not, the volume of books is ever increasing. Word of mouth, personal recommendations, curated lists, all are only increasing in value.

I don’t know if i would want such thing as a tribe. Reviews are great though unless ai generated. IMHO the internet as a source of valueable information is at risk.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#287

Post by jraph »

sneak wrote: post #240
jraph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful…

You have spent a lot of time and effort to explain precisely how and why you failed to get GP’s point, which is completely true and valid despite whatever unintentional misdirection you have posted in response.

Enlighten me.

To me, GP's point is that people aren't capable of reading. They illustrate this point with an experiment. I'm convinced the experiment doesn't prove their point and that's what I have spent time on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549089#44586441 makes a good point, although I'm not convinced that was the intent of GP.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#288

Post by jraph »

DrammBA wrote: post #253
jraph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful…

Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore? Any one of my classmates could read a page out loud fluently even if you stopped them randomly at the grocery store, and most of us are not even 30 yet.

> Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore?

They did when I was at school. But it was not so often, not often enough to get good at it if you weren't already.

And I don't think I'm good at it. Every so often, I find myself reading Wikipedia excerpts out loud for people around when some question comes up and we want an answer. When I do this, suddenly it feels like time slows down, I feel like I sound dull, and everything. I guess I could improve if I were to do it more frequently.

I think I do read relatively slowly, but doing it out loud doesn't help, and that also doesn't prevent me from reading a page of text for myself if it's worth it. I would not engage in unbounded out loud reading.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#289

Post by watwut »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #250
xandrius wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roses are coloured. Rhyming ending.

Alternative summary of Roses Are Red: Love, simplicity, beauty, ambiguity, tradition. There are different ways of summarizing a text. Odyssey (another poem) could be summarized bluntly: Homer's The Odyssey follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his perilous journey home after the Trojan War. For ten years, he faces trials, including the Cyclops Polyphemus, the witch Circe, and the deadly Sirens, while angering the sea…

If I read the latter description, I would be deeply disappointed. You really need to stretch it to make these "being explored by the poem". It omis more that you can detect these topics if you want to, but they are more of "present a little".

While the former one is quick plot review.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#290

Post by keiferski »

karaterobot wrote: post #272

> In our current reading regime, summarized or altered texts are the exception, not the rule. But over the next decade or so, that polarity may well reverse Most people don't read many books as it is. That's sad, but it's true for a couple decades. Those people will continue not reading. Of the remainder, some people will continue to read books because reading books is enjoyable. It's not a chore, it's fun, so there…

I don’t really buy this narrative anymore, and I think it’s more a reflection of individualist technologists than how regular people interact with culture. A big percentage of what’s read or watched is driven by what other people are reading or watching and has nothing to do with personal preferences. Just look at the Netflix shows that become extremely popular and watched by huge amounts of people, mostly to be discussed online or with friends. That behavior isn’t going away just because an AI can make a book or show tailored to my consumer preferences.
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