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Comment by torginus | Hacker News Reader

I never got the books argument. Is reading YA novels like the Hunger Games a more highbrow activity than watching movies or playing games like Civilization?

It's not immediately obvious to me.

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Rapid reading and comprehension¹ and exposure to a breadth of vocabulary and ideas is the professional equivalent of having superpowers. So many developers have crappy writing skills and weak reading comprehension and have to struggle harder to develop their careers because of it.

¹ The barren wasteland that is online discourse doesn't count for obvious reasons.

I'm not so negative about online discourse. Participating in online arguments, and writing tons of comments has immensely improved my writing skills and my ability to translate my ideas into text in a clear and concise manner.

Sure, it's not the peak of literary achievement, but hey, you gotta walk before you can run.

I also like to say that years of rules lawyering in D&D and MTG have given me a leg up in contractual language debates. Its kind of fun, even.

Am a biased person who also feels like the "common-sense" knee-jerk thinking books > games may not make much sense. But reading demands more imagination and patience. And literal reading skills. And it expects the reader to engage at its own pace in his/her own way instead of the more guided experience of most games. And I feel more books, even the average YA novel is going to engage in deeper and more relevant themes than the average game. Sure Civilization may teach a bit of history and lead to an interest in the topic, or an RPG may let you put yourself in another's shoes like a novel, but what does say, Fortnite teach?

And sure you could pick the most lowbrow possible book and compare it to an educational game, but you can also pick a highbrow book and compare it to the worst "designed to addict you" pay-to-win overwhelmed with random buttons and popups braindead mobile game.

Highbrow isn't the way to look at it. I think what books do, primarily, is make the brain work in a different way, because you're constructing a visual and perhaps audio interpretation of text. Which causes you to do a lot of world building yourself, whereas in Civilization it's the opposite.

Neither is better or worse but they're different forms of mental exercise.

Its a bit of a fence sitter response, yet the activities support each other, and are not necessarily 1/0 better/worse.

If I read historical novels (or nearly similar like medieval fantasy) then my experience of playing Civilization is enhanced, because I can consider all the little stories that might be going on in Civ. Founding a city by the sea vs founding a city by a great chain of mountains is a very different consideration (beyond just "numbers").

If I play Civ, then my novel reading experience is enhanced. I might read something like a Bourne novel, yet never ask questions like "what is the world beyond the immediate story locality?" "What are the politics, or continents, or logistics, or military situation like?" Its just popcorn action plus names.

If I read something like the Hunger Games, I might ask "what Civ result would have caused such destitution that everyone is playing PUBG for food?"

At least for me, reading requires significantly more concentration, comprehension and imagination than watching a movie, which is completely passive. Especially when reading/watching in English which is my second language.

Games are harder to compare as they're pretty active, it probably depends on the game.

Because reading is boring-- or at least boring relative to playing StarCraft while watching TV and chatting on Ventrilo (or whatever it is the youths do these days, WhatsApp and TikTok videos of Family Guy + marble game or somesuch.). Reading is a less dopamine-rich activity, and is therefore adjacent to work, and well-aligned with Protestant ideals of seriousness, diligence, temperance, and discipline. Because it's boring, it may also help train the mind to persist in other difficult, dopamine-scant activities, thereby allowing those sufferers to accomplish things that they might otherwise have given up on while jonesing for the next stab of reward chemicals.

It practices your reading skill which is applicable in many other domains.

It's a hard question when you mix the content as well, but yeah, reading a YAF-y book is way more actively engaging than watching the TV version of it. There's also an extra effect of the effort needed to get to the end, possibly over a number of days that will make you think of that content again. The movie will end in a couple of hours whether you care about it or not. The details of the world building are also going to be much better in the book version where the author has more space for it.

It's more about the mode of consumption than the content itself. The same way one might argue reading a book is better than listening to the audio book because it requires marginally more focus since it's an active vs passive activity. Now add screen time into the mix.

Doing several orthogonal things is typically better than doing just a single thing.

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