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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

I'm older than you and also have trouble reading but I figured out the problem. I've spent so many years skimming articles on the web that I'm having a hard time breaking the habit. I'm reading "Spare" today by Prince Harry and it's a struggle, but I'm managing to slow down and comprehend each sentence and each word if necessary before moving on. I'm doing this because I want to start reading books again in my retirement.

You case sounds different though, like it might be something organic. Are you taking a medication that makes you less sharp? Bipolar meds certainly do that. Do you have headaches that might indicate some problem? Have you had Covid so maybe have brain fog from long Covid? Are you depressed and anxious? Do you drink a lot? Etc... Good luck figuring it out.

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This x1,000. The only time I'm able to effortlessly get in a lot of long-form reading done is if I go on vacation somewhere with no goddamn Internet at all. It's wonderful.

I swear, if a genie gave me three wishes, concern about being able to properly craft the wish would be the only thing that'd keep me from burning one of them to permanently eliminate the Internet.

[EDIT] That is, in addition to weakening my reading ability through use of it, the presence of the Internet is so damn distracting that it's hard to read more than a few pages at a time. Consider how, say, pop-culture trivia questions used to come and go from one's mind with hardly any conscious notice taken—no relevant book on hand, no friend or family member present who might know, well, even calling someone's too much effort for something so unimportant, and off goes that idle thought, probably never to come up again—now, though, those sorts of questions reach one's conscious mind all the time, and they itch until you take the 5-second break to answer them; repeat for everything else, like how's so-and-so doing, wonder if anyone's posted anything interesting, et c.

They said, on the internet, using a device likely paid for by a job that depends on the internet, likely alive due to medical knowledge that could only exist through the internet, ... and so on....

> They said, on the internet, using a device likely paid for by a job that depends on the internet

Yet you participate in society. Curious!

> likely alive due to medical knowledge that could only exist through the internet

Definitely not true yet. Maybe some day. Maybe never.

> Yet you participate in society. Curious!

You didn't say "the internet sucks", you said "I'd get rid of it if I could".

> Definitely not true yet. Maybe some day. Maybe never

Medicine has come further since the internet than it did in 50 years prior, imagine the hit COVID would have had if nobody fucking knew about it until someone they knew got it.

So many things depend on global information sharing, saying "blow it all up" because you don't like TikTok or Instagram is so ignorant it's unreal. The internet isn't just cat videos and short form content, it's the backbone of the last 50 years of innovation.

Yep. What can I say, the years have turned me from a "plug me in ASAP!" future-loving optimist to a bit of a luddite. I truly think I'd be happier in a world without the 'net.

I want to say I completely agree with this. I think, even more, we've lost sight of what is real. People think that the internet is real, and we're losing sight that life is something in the physical world. Heads are being stuck more and more into phones, and nobody is just out there talking and interacting in the physical world. It's a huge problem, not to mention the screen addiction I saw among teens when I was teaching.

I'd be much happier if I could have an internet free room or two near my family. In fact, if I ever move back, I might seriously work on that. Bedroom and a study/library if I can afford the place, no internet.

I much preferred the Internet when it was a place you had to go. A room with a computer. And maybe you had to wait for the dial-up connection, and you couldn't use the phone while it was on. And then it was slow.

I think it was actually better with a fair bit more friction. Most of the good stuff was still possible. It couldn't be as big a distraction as it is now. You had to decide to use it, then go to the place where you can use it, then wait a bit.

[EDIT] "So why don't you just live like that?" unfortunately, the entire world now assumes you have fast Internet available everywhere, at all times. Schools, employers, banks, everyone. Living like that today would be far more inconvenient and come at a higher cost than living like that back when it was the norm (or, before it was the norm, even—most households in the US weren't "online" at all until 2000 or so) due to changing expectations.

> Medicine has come further since the internet than it did in 50 years prior, imagine the hit COVID would have had if nobody fucking knew about it until someone they knew got it.

PCR goes back to the mid-80s before the internet became common at all. The news of a novel virus in China was all over the mainstream media outlets back in Jan 2020. Publication of the identification of the viral sequence happened in Nature, that could have still all happened over phone calls and fax machines.

The internet makes that all decentralized and faster, and now anyone can look up that information without going down to the medical library, and there's videos on youtube about virology where the average person can find good information (although you have to run the gauntlet of a plague of bad information without any training as well, so its kind of 50/50).

We still would have responded to the virus and developed the vaccines, and people still would have been able to be informed by the media. The ability of the average person to find out better information is also somewhat balanced by the ability of the average person to find out worse information.

It wasn't entirely the dark ages back in the 80s though and medical science still progressed.

> I swear, if a genie gave me three wishes, concern about being able to properly craft the wish would be the only thing that'd keep me from burning one of them to permanently eliminate the Internet.

In a "3 wishes" scenario, use the first wish to wish for additional wishes, then for each concrete wish in a 2 part process wish for a written quote that includes a no-harm rollback clause and a penalty clause granting more wishes describing how the genie will execute the wish, then wish for the genie to execute the steps described in the quote.

Any genie must be treated as a hostile counter-party.

Oh, I wouldn't even try a single wish with a genie I wasn't very, very sure wasn't hostile. It's hopeless.

That's a good observation. It's not just the neurological changes as a result of frequent exposure to clip-style internet content, but also simply adjacency to these things, as a consequence of their simply existing in ones environment.

In order to read like I read as a teenager, I now need to be on a beach and have detoxed from work/responsibility for a day or so.

I suspect the two are strongly linked. I.e. my subconscious at most times is actually continually running "normal adult life/parent shit" in the background, versus teenager-me had those cycles free.

I wonder how much strain on our ability to read long form is also caused by constantly reading badly proofread comments on the Internet, particularly ones involving autocorrect typos producing sentences that read almost-but-not-entirely correctly.

This really resonates with me. Thank you for sharing. I never really considered the fact that skimming articles on the web can have such an impact on me as well, especially when I don’t read long form content or books as often as I did in college.

I didn't even finish reading your comment, so touché.

(That's not sarcasm. I'm genuinely agreeing with you and mocking my short attention span.)

Just another one vote for this. In my case, I find myself reading extremely fast online, but when I read a book (fiction or textbook) I'm really slow, have to go back lots of times, sometimes I have to read a sentence 5 times.

My suggestion is to try to relax. I find it gets worst when I'm stressed because "I have to finish this chapter today". Pressure is my worst enemy. Also what helps me, is going to a park, or a place where I feel very good, that stimulates my good mood to read.

Agree with this. Seems like there could be many confounding factors in this case. Others: How much do you sleep? How active are you? What is your diet like?

Taking no meds for the last 9 months, never had Covid, my PCP referred me to the development/behavioral ophthalmologist.

updated the main post as well to reflect this..

But do you have a reading habit? That is, outside of reading the non-fiction texts you now need, do you read fiction for leisure?

Yes, I read a lot for enjoyment. This has also gone down hill.

Ever try using a sheet of paper to force yourself to slow down while reading a book? You use the sheet of paper to cover the unread portion of the page (aside from the current line, obviously) to prevent your eyes from skimming ahead.

I remember seeing kids with reading problems doing this in grade school.

Much to my chagrin (and amusement!) I now find it very useful for myself. Prevents me from reading so quickly that I absorb nothing.

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