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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I find books incredibly more immersive than, say, a film, probably because books are so full of perspective.

This story about the actor is wonderful

You’re also reading a book, which is far more active than just passively watching stuff on a screen. A typical two year old has no trouble watching tv, but can’t read a book. Reading is a more cognitively taxing and attention-demanding activity, even when you’ve mastered it. Then beyond the raw reading, you have the activity of your imagination working to conjure images of what you’re reading, which is yet another layer of attention.

Reading is the best.

Why would “cognitively taxing” and “attention demanding” be criteria for an intellectually superior experience?

Many concepts are simply better described by a visual demonstration. There’s less communicative barriers that way. Just observe the cause and effect. You could be illiterate and still understand a visual demonstration.

My three year understands engineering concepts from goofy YouTube videos. He doesn’t read.

Is all of this proclamation about books being the superior format just akin to old-timers screaming “back in my day we listened to great music, not like this crap nowadays!”?

Because one gains more from any experience wherein something in the way of effort is demanded. A beautiful vista is more sweet when it takes effort to get to it. A relationship with a person is more fulfilling when trials and tribulations are overcome together. Hard won knowledge imparts a deeper wisdom when it is obtained in spite of difficulties. You would like to believe your child understands concepts from videos because it makes you feel good, but I doubt you are going to have him build your deck. Intentional effort is a prerequisite for deeper fulfilment. While there are things that are better demonstrated via flashing images, there is no substitute for the cognitive effort required to read deeply on a subject, or follow a rich and complex narrative.

>Because one gains more from any experience wherein something in the way of effort is demanded.

This is true, however it's an argument for choosing hard goals (because they are hard, e.g. 'we choose to go to the moon...'); it's not an argument for doing things the hard way. For example, given a choice for learning how to build a deck I think I'd pick YouTube over a DIY manual.

> Why would “cognitively taxing” and “attention demanding” be criteria for an intellectually superior experience?

Because, just like exercise strengthens your muscles, reading strengthens portions of your brain. TV, on the other hand, literally rots your brain.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/12/02/heads-up-...

Reading Gödel, Escher, Bach? Intellectually positive. Reading a Harlequin novel? Intellectually neutral or negative (opportunity costs). The point is, as for intellectual advancement, choice of content is actually what matters, not the medium.

Regarding books vs video : If a book mentions a Wankel engine, I have to look up that definition or gloss over it, hoping it's concept is revealed later.

If I watch a video and it mentions a "Wankel engine" and I see an engine rotating around and immediately get the gist of how it works. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=josJhz8VS8A

> Reading Gödel, Escher, Bach? Intellectually positive. Reading a Harlequin novel? Intellectually neutral or negative (opportunity costs).

Not according to the brain scans. The content doesn't matter. It's the act of reading that strengthens the brain. If you manage to get more out of it than that, well that's gravy.

> Regarding books vs video

Maybe this was intended for another comment? I haven't said anything about video. TV is not youtube. The consumption patterns are different.

> Not according to the brain scans.

Which brain scans? Isn't it common knowledge now that most of those stories of "we put someone in fMRI and had them do X" are nonsense? Also, fMRI is hard and until recently, 25-40% of studies got it wrong. See [0].

> It's the act of reading that strengthens the brain.

Good to know I'm strengthening my brain every day, spending 10 hours reading code and/or HN comments. :).

[0] - https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobe...

> Reading a Harlequin novel?

In general, a work in a visual medium - a painting, a comic book or a film - supplies ALL or most of the inputs. A book supplies only some of the inputs and we, the readers, supply the rest.

Here's the thing: a good reader supplies good inputs and an average reader supplies average inputs. This is why children are described as "imaginative readers". They "live" in the story-world whereas we adults skim through it.

So even if it's a Harlequin novel, you can make it as vivid as you'd like. But that effort will be substantially more than watching even a good film adaptation of a Harlequin novel.

Active learning is more effective than passive learning, but requires more effort.

Active learning can occur with both mediums.

Many concepts cannot be described visually. You can't visualize how freshly cut grass smells, so there isn't much of a way to utilize that mental process as a manner of connecting you to something in your past to base a feeling off of. And you can't twist and break those feelings either - where you can easily, in words, take something like fresh cut grass and make it a painful experience by associating it with something like past trauma. Say, a description where an accident with a lawnmower led to a character losing an arm. Now that character is traumatized by the smell and in some manner so are you. There is less depth to the internalization a visual presentation of those events creates, as the book is more likely to force you into imagining those events and empathizing with the character. You may even end up traumatized yourself as the reader of such a powerfully connected piece.

>You can't visualize how freshly cut grass smells

Why can't I? Even to someone illiterate, this is an experience we've all had? And visually, seeing the blades of up close on a freshly cut lawn, with dew dripping down, might conjure up memories of summers past and the associated smells.

You're taking for granted that words are abstractions and aren't learned for most until they're 5 or 6. Meanwhile, visual recognition is something more innate and starts to appear in babies in as little as 2 or 3 months (smiling, recognizing parents, etc).

25% of the world's population is illiterate. By accessibility alone, video wins.

> 25% of the world's population is illiterate. By accessibility alone, video wins.

I don't think it's as clear cut as that. Literature doesn't have to be written; oral literature exists, and has been around for centuries, and was still fairly common even in living memory of people in the West. You can have literature without writing, basically... and that's always preceded video, and, I'd say, is probably the first form that humans encountered literature (and likely occurred when we first learned to speak, before Homo Sapiens Sapiens was even a thing)

But popular music these days IS mostly crap.

Said every generation ever.

You're absolutely right. Read a book 5 times and your imaginative representation will differ. Read it after years and "get" other aspects that you were not wise or mature enough to understand at a previous reading. Films have their own qualities but they are pretty much what you see. I'd be honest, I watched films I didnt get when I became more mature and they were somewhat different too.

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