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Letting go of the idea of keeping up

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Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#41

Post by cgriswald »

newzisforsukas wrote: post #29
geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

Not perfect, but helps to determine if something is worth the time: https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html

For kicks, I gave it the URL to these comments (shortly before this post, ~30 comments). Here are the results:

Summary:

geuis: I've noticed a trend of "recipe articles" that are overly wordy when they could be more concise. I've resorted to using ChatGPT to summarize key points of important blog posts, as the authors don't seem to value their audience's attention span.

meristohm: I've become more selective about what I read as I've realized I can't consume everything. I don't feel compelled to finish books that don't interest me anymore.

msy: The problem is that much of the content is generated by language models, creating "expensive noise" rather than meaningful signal.

Terr_: The degradation of communication for the sake of advertising revenue is a market failure, as individuals struggle to control how much of their attention is taken.

bicx: I often skip to the end of articles to see if there's a coherent conclusion, and if so, I'll go back and read the body. I agree that non-fiction books in particular tend to be overly padded.

HKH2: The worst fluff is when authors use excessive analogies or anecdotes without clearly explaining what the reader should take away.

throwaway2037: Why read the full novel when you can just read the back cover or watch a short summary? People seem to value efficiency over depth these days.

steviem: I read a lot of "shitlit" or inconsequential literature, but I don't see that as better or worse than anyone else. Reading should be for enjoyment, not a target to hit.

deebosong: I respect people who read a lot, but I worry that reading 100+ books per year could become more about appearances than true engagement.

theK: How does someone manage to read 150 books per year? What's their routine and how do they avoid distractions?

harrisi: When you get in the habit of reading regularly, you can read books surprisingly quickly.

spxneo: Reading 150 books per year is impressive, but it would be tough to apply all that content to real life.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#42

Post by esafak »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #34
geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

I need to troll a little bit here: Do you watch the whole 90 min film, or the YouTube summary in 10 mins? Or even shorter: Just the 2 mins trailer? Why do you read a whole novel instead just reading the back cover? Why read Der Speigel or The New Yorker long form journalism when you can get the summary in 90 seconds on the toilet with CNN?

It's not a difficult question: people will watch the trailer or read the summary to decide if they want to invest their time in the complete work. That's why trailers exist!

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#43

Post by karambir »

geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

I had same feeling. I have been using AI summarizers more and more for these type of articles/posts. Though I haven't checked the summary quality, here is what I got from Kagi Summarizer:

The passage discusses the author's experience with the growing sense of competition and obligation around reading and book consumption. It criticizes the way platforms like Goodreads have turned reading into a quantifiable task, with people feeling pressure to read a certain number of books per year. The author argues that reading should be about the experience and personal enjoyment, not about keeping up with others or hitting reading goals. The passage encourages readers to step away from the social media side of reading and not worry about the "right" way to read. It emphasizes that the value of reading is not quantifiable and that people should read at their own pace without external pressure.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#44

Post by switch007 »

msy wrote: post #18
geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

Ironically it’s because increasingly it’s 100 words generated by an LLM from a 10 word prompt. We’ve effectively found a way to keep entire datacenters humming to do nothing more than obfuscate signal in very expensive noise and the lossily try and extract it again.

My colleagues use chatgpt to generate very long and eloquent walls of text in slack, then I use slack's new AI summarisation feature to extract their actual point. Insanity

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#45

Post by riwsky »

geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

TL;DR: “TL;DR”

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#46

Post by caskstrength »

codetrotter wrote: post #27
geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

> Can anyone provide a summary of this article? Well that’s too much work. But here is an LLM produced summary of the text: Molly Templeton's article, "On Letting Go of the Idea of 'Keeping Up'," explores the pressures of contemporary reading culture, contrasting it with the joy of reading she experienced in childhood, symbolized by earning gold stars for each book read. She describes how, as an adult, reading has be…

> Templeton recalls a turning point when being asked about her recent reads felt more like a competition than a shared interest, prompting her to reevaluate her relationship with reading. She argues for a reading culture that values personal experience over productivity, emphasizing that the number of books one reads should not dictate one's worth as a reader.

It feels to me that Templeton needs to re-evaluate her relationships with friends asking this instead of with reading. Sometimes I read a lot, sometimes barely at all but I don't get questions from friends like "Only two books in half a year? Bro, do you even read?!".

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#47

Post by 2143 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #34
geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

I need to troll a little bit here: Do you watch the whole 90 min film, or the YouTube summary in 10 mins? Or even shorter: Just the 2 mins trailer? Why do you read a whole novel instead just reading the back cover? Why read Der Speigel or The New Yorker long form journalism when you can get the summary in 90 seconds on the toilet with CNN?

Not the same. The key is weather it captivates the reader/viewer/audience.

If the 90 min film gets hopelessly boring, I wouldn't hesitate to stop watching. Heck I've abandoned 10 minute YouTube videos because it got boring.

I have abandoned novels halfway because it was boring. Perhaps it may have been the greatest novel ever and I'm missing out by not completing it, but it's okay for me. Now I'm not saying it should be interesting right from page 1. But if it's not reached any major plot point by page 200, I'm skipping.

Relevant discussion about this from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35340083

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#48

Post by NalNezumi »

When I saw the title I thought the article would be about the dreadful stress of keeping up with new tech or research.. But it's about spare time reading?

Granted the problem seems similar, but only because the author is in the field of reading (working in books related profession).

I'm not sure how much it can be applied to just hobby reading. Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of professional obligations (you'll fall behind to your professional peers) but there's not much of stress if you're in it as a leisure /hobby; it's not inherently competitive activity.

So the conclusion is not that helpful. It's targeted to a very small audience (people that work in a field where reading books and keeping up with the latest books, are important) and is essentially "don't worry about it!"

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#49

Post by pas »

Animats wrote: post #22
pas wrote: post #5

It's so strange because my experience is the opposite. I see a lot of content about reading and books (how there are no great books anymore, what was the best book, etc), fun facts and other trivia about authors, a few books getting made into movies (hello Dune, but I was thinking of the Martian and Ready Player One) ... but I don't see any of this cultural expectation, this peer pressure. (One of my friends keep rec…

> Okay, I saw Pikkety's Capital on a different friend's bookshelf. He has some good things to say, but he wrote more than he had to to say them. That book is too big.

And likely it's simply wrong.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/th... ( https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/inequality-might-be-going-down... )

> That book is too big.

Most non-fiction books are best "consumed" by watching a few talks or podcast episodes by the author(s) and a few others by critics.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#50

Post by saurik »

geuis wrote: post #14

I'm in a weird position. Can anyone provide a summary of this article? I have all the time in the world to read things that are interesting (to me) and really absorb the content. But I've increasingly been noticing a "recipe article" trend with blog posts. People throw 100 words in when 10 will do. This article is an example. I've even gotten to the point with certain important blog posts where I copy paste the conte…

This is a magazine (note the "mag" in the hostname). The reason people read magazines is not to "get to the f'ing point": if you want that, find a newspaper or something. The intended audience of a magazine is people who actually want to have the leisurely fun of reading an article that isn't just long but might actively bury the lede or use rhetorical devices such as a false start... honestly, your comment -- which is itself three times longer than it "needs to be" to make your point, btw -- feels as insulting and asinine as someone complaining that Romeo and Juliet could have been summarized in five minutes or so, demonstrating that Shakespeare clearly didn't know how to write.

(And sure, maybe some articles are just bad, and don't have writing which captivates anyone, but an article is not a bad article just because it is long or just because can be summarized with fewer words by someone who merely wanted to "get to the f'ing point", and if you come into articles with that mindset you are also going to find slow movies extremely boring and whine about "nothing happened"; but... did you feel anything?)

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