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Comment by phoe-krk | Hacker News Reader

Let's play devil's advocate for a moment.

Reading used to be necessary, since most of media was produced in written form, therefore consuming any sort of media mandated the ability to read it.

In the video-centric world of 21st century, where most media is produced and consumed on television and Internet via visuals and spoken language, why do you even need to be able to read? What's the need that the ability to read would resolve that cannot be resolved in other, simpler and/or more rewarding ways?

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The information density and the ability to drive deep into a subject is far superior in written form than a video.

I can think of a few reasons to support my assertion. First is simply the fact that you must dedicate much more time to read a book than a short form video. I just read Giles Whittell’s book Bridge of Spies, and it easily took me over 15 hours to read from cover to cover.

The next reason is the depth of understanding that you can gain from the act of reading. The author in that book wove in quotes from primary sources, details and nuance from the private lives to develop a nuanced view of the characters, all of which provides the deep understanding required to fully grasp the events that led up to the 1962 spy swap between two superpowers.

Finally, the fact that it took me 15 hours to read that book over the course of a few weeks meant that I had the ability to start synthesizing higher level understanding of the book rather than just recognizing a few facts. Sleep is important for the brain to organize thoughts during the day, and the fact that I had at least 10 sleep cycles to process the information I had learned in that “chunk” helps me truly remember concepts in the book in a way an hour long video cannot.

I find my ability to make rational arguments is greatly improved after I have the chance to dedicate time reading good books. I find my own kids ability to research subjects have been compromised- I can hardly convince them to do more than pump a literal question into Google and … maybe click on the first link? It’s terrifying.

>why do you even need to be able to read?

Worker drones indeed don't need to be able to read beyond a level needed to follow instructions and consume the products needed to be consumed to keep the money flowing.

If you want to advance the state of your civilization and society you need a large pool of people who are able to read and understand long complex passages.

One cannot learn what needs to be learned in order to cure a disease or build a rocket through the consumption of memes, videos, and simplified ad copy.

The deeper the pool is the better.

If I understand your logic correctly, then impairing the ability to read would be a force against advancing the state of a given civilization and society. The article mentions book bans as a conscious political effort and the prevalence of modern mobile media as a side effect of technology evolution; if I understand correctly, then both contribute towards a grim outlook that is mentioned in the comments to my post.

> In the video-centric world of 21st century, where most media is produced and consumed on television and Internet via visuals and spoken language, why do you even need to be able to read?

AV presentation is much better at evoking emotion chosen by the presenter and worse at conveying factual information that is retained accurately (visual presentation is obviously useful for conveying spatial relationships relevant for physical/mechanical tasks and skills, though, so AV isn’t uniformly inferior for things other than emotional manipulation.)

Is AV presentation worse at presenting facts? I've learned a lot through watching videos on science and history on Youtube. Probably some of it is incorrect, but that's also true of written media.

And is AV presentation better at emotional manipulation than writing? Lots of emotionally charged ideas spread through writing.

Unless those videos have no music at all (doubtful) the mere presence of music influences you emotionally. Present somber, depressing facts with cheery music and you’re intentionally steering the viewer’s feelings in the opposite direction.

I doubt the same time devoted to studying written word would leave you worse off.

You introduce a need to convey factual information. Why is such factual information required for living in the contemporary world?

At some point there should stop being turtles (questions and justifications) all the way down, and we should agree on some basic shared assumptions/wisdom/reality.

If we have to ask "why is factual information required for living in the contemporary world" something is very wrong with us or with this "contemporary world".

Might as well ask "Why do people need to survive, period? Why not just have them all go and off themselves?".

Taking off my devil's advocate hat for a moment - I disagree here. Many places in the world already redefine "factual information" with their own definitions that are based on e.g. their political or cultural views. Pretending it doesn't happen is not a satisfactory choice for me.

My play on being a devil's advocate is exactly going along this line - if we lose a part of the ability to convey facts because we lose an ability to read, then where exactly does this lead us to?

You can only begin to understand the complexity and nuance of a subject if you are exposed to information in long written form. Tbh I see this with my own kids who don’t even know what questions to ask because they haven’t seen the possibility that there is more depth than what’s available with one click on Google.

Imo it leads to a propaganda driven and conspiracy mindset- if your understanding of the world is limited to a shallow “us vs them” viewpoint, and don’t know how to truly dive deeper into a subject (not just politically charged subjects, just any subject) - then you are imo more willing to accept a “magical” view of the world since you can’t understand what’s going on and you are at the mercy of whomever is more charming at the moment.

>Taking off my devil's advocate hat for a moment - I disagree here. Many places in the world already redefine "factual information" with their own definitions that are based on e.g. their political or cultural views. Pretending it doesn't happen is not a satisfactory choice for me.

Which is neither here, nor there.

First, they don't redefine all or even most factual information, just politics/monetary/national/etc-interest charged facts. They still agree that a table is a table and that the Earth is flat, and billions of other things.

Second, even when they refefine some fact, they still present the new information as fact. Because they still understand that facts are important.

Third, whatever this or that party, or ideology, or politician, or corporation, or media outlet, does to distort facts, it is still accepted that facts are good, and facts corresponding to reality is what we should be aiming for.

Fourth, no working scientist, engineer, and so on, can function well without facts or when provided with false facts pertaining to their field. They will still work with imperfect facts or with some wrong facts, but their output is improved the closest to accurate (and real) facts they get.

In any case, usually it's not the bare facts that re contested, but their interpretation/evaluation (ethical, as regards to motive, or as regards to utility, etc). It's expected (and OK) to have different evaluations of a fact, based on your political or cultural views (that's the very definition of a different political and cultural views in the first place), as long as you agree with the objective parts of the fact (the underlying hard reality).

You can say X war was good or bad, but not that it didn't happen when it did, for example.

>My play on being a devil's advocate is exactly going along this line - if we lose a part of the ability to convey facts because we lose an ability to read, then where exactly does this lead us to?

Who is "we"? Is the question is some person who doesn't care about facts, or is fed with bullshit facts they believe, can still be consumer, vote, make a living, be entertained, marry, and generally live their life?

Is the question whether a country and a citizenry can live that way, and maintain their agency, dignity, effectiveness, and so on, the answer is no.

Perhaps a better framing is "What is the relative importance of being able to read and write for transmitting/receiving factual information vs emotional persuasion, these days?" and "What is the relative importance of being able to use those methods to transmit a message, vs media literacy on the receiving side, in understanding how and when something is trying to persuade us, and what tactics are being used?" (and ultimately if you keep digging into that, you ask "What is the ultimate purpose of an education, what specific skills will be needed in the daily life of the recipient?" which is a better to way to ask about how people survive. I don't see that the assumptions or reality are necessarily shared or basic.)

One example is consumption of US Presidential debates of the radio era (1948-1960) vs TV vs social-media (2000s-) (when most people don't watch the full thing, they consume it via clips or soundbites, often distilled or reduxed by third-parties like media outlets, bloggers, highlights reels etc., which is handing over the power of framing and narrative to outlets who mightn't be either neutral or trustworthy). Like how the 2004 Democratic campaign of Howard Dean [0] was reduced (by many media outlets) to a soundbite which had zero to do with healthcare or fiscal policy. (Ok separately, shelve the a wider George-Carlin-type debate about whether political discourse is being dumbed down, by whom and to what ends).

Or a non-political example: if you want to figure out what's a good new-release movie/show to watch, do you read(/watch) individual critic reviews? professional vs amateur critics? or in the old days, just rely on Ebert/Roeper/Siskel? imdb? RottenTomatoes (pre-2016 Comcast-Fandango takeover? or post-2016?) Twitter? or poll five of your friends?

Or: what proportion of people can figure out north/south/east/west or navigate without a smartphone, only a map, signs and recognition points? It could plausibly be argued that navigating in general isn't as important as it used to be (unless you're in remote, unknown or hostile territory or don't have reliable phone charge or radio/satellite reception). Which depends largely on where you live and your occupation.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean_2004_presidential_...

Even the devil wouldn’t advocate the direction you’re taking this.

That's why I'm doing it in their stead - see the sibling comment.

Reading was necessary because it's a highly evolved and compressed way to convey information, which refines, distills, and focuses thought, and gives access to millenia of civilizational expression, wisdom, and experience.

The video-centric world of 21st century is a Beavis and Butthead vision of culture, where we regress to stream-of-consciousness communication.

We don't gain oral communication (we always had that alongside texts). We lose reading.

> We don't gain oral communication (we always had that alongside texts). We lose reading.

The reason I've heard that we have public schooling in the first place is because the Prussian Army convinced the Prussian State (to the degree these were distinct organisations) that it needed literate soldiers as a prereq for Auftragstaktik; that having been successful, everyone else copied their system.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

Yes, but that concerns how schooling for the masses came about.

People that expected to be active citizens, participate in the state, drive society forward, etc., have been educated for millenia, in ancient Greece, Rome, China, Egypt, all the way to today.

So unless we strive to live like peasants and subjects to royalty of the old times, or like the dystopic living-in-a-drugs-and-entertenment-blur degraded population of "Brave New World", we should not lose education.

Text is much more information-dense, and much easier to search, skim, bookmark, summarize, quote, remix… Compare a movie to a novel, or a math video to a math textbook. One is not a substitute for the other.

Also, “most media” is video? Citation needed.

I was going to reply, but ipython wrote it already, better. However, understanding his reply requires the ability to read it correctly. Notice that we are not having the hackernews discussions as a long list of small video clips. People who have not learned to read on a professional level, have a hard time grasping the volume, depth and speed with which you can transfer knowledge through text, using that developed skill. It is trivially true that a person who has not learned to read well, learns faster by watching videos. But this is not an argument for videos being the most capable mechanism, only the more initially accessible. You may be able to start running before I can saddle my horse, but once it is saddled, my horse will outrun your running start.

There is obviously areas in which video, 3d and computer systems/models surpass what a book can present, but outside those areas, the information in the world belongs to books,or the computer equivalent thereof. It is not about old books. It is about that written text is our strongest tool yet to present and capture a large connected set of ideas into a consistent argument, and similarly to RECEIVE such an argument. If you think a youtube video will do 'just as well', you probably need to read some more books :-) At work, I dread whenever I have to develop software for which I cant find written documentation, but must rely on random youtube guides sketchily explaining bits of it like and subscribe.

Society is already structured to handle a population where approximately 50% of adults cannot read beyond the 6th grade level. For all the hemming and hawing and throwing money at education, it might be the best we ever get. I'd venture that our society would continue to operate just fine if that number went up to 75% of the population, considering the pareto rule about the percentage of workers who are actually productive and so on.

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Video and audio presentations are a much slower way to ingest information, even when played at 2x speed.

Text on a page allowed the reader to rapidly scan back to previous points to make connections between concepts. Similarly you can scan forwards quickly and then return and read more closely after identifying key words and topics.

Text gives additional structure to the information with clearly delineated paragraphs, sections, chapters and italicized or bolded words and phrases. Citations and footnotes, asides and figures can be referred to more easily than in a video or audio where they must occur linearly.

Text is also more easily modified and marked up by the reader making referring back to important parts simple, being able to do so at a glance of the page rather than scrobbling through the video or audio.

I’m sure others can think of many more but the point is that text is more information dense and less linear than video/audio.

Ironically, we are preaching to the choir :-) It all won't be read by the nonreaders we sought to persuade.

Continuity, truth, being able to learn and reason from published facts from verifiable sources.

The ability to operate a machine without understanding its inner workings, and also the ability to crack open a book and repair said inner workings when necessary.

Convince a nation that they don’t need to teach their children to read and you’re on course to be able to undo the progress of centuries (if not millenia) in just a generation or two.

What exactly do you mean by "continuity"? The concept of "truth" has already been discussed widely, to the point of the term "post-truth world" being coined. Why learn, why reason from published facts, how are these necessary?

People can learn from one another without any written instructions, which is how tacit knowledge is often transferred; why would one need to read to learn how something works if they can just get trained by someone else?

Why do we need a global skill to read in order for the progress of centuries to be globally available? As long as some people, let's say a "caste" of those being able to read, retain the skill of doing so, why wouldn't we be fine with the rest of people consuming television and YouTube?

continuity means 'not walking blindly into a new world war 30 years later', this time with nuclear weapons too.

the idea of continuity is well understood, I suggest you go do your own research.

Got a concrete link? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity gives me a disambiguation page with most sublinks being math, science, entertainment; the "other links" section doesn't seem to have anything suitable here.

continuity implies continuous and uninterrupted.

But you know this, feigned ignorance implies you're a bad actor.

I know what "continuity" means in the dictionary, I don't know which aspects of the problem at hand should be continuous and why. Continuity of knowledge (and, if yes, theoretical knowledge, tacit knowledge)? Continuity of culture of reading and writing (in general, or when applied to learning and knowledge generally)? Continuity of history (as a specific branch of knowledge)? Continuity of culture? Continuity of whole nations (as carriers of culture and history)?

You’re giving humanity one last chance to talk you out of your plan for global domination, aren’t you?

C’mon, dude. Let us keep our books.

that line of thinking gives you WW1, WW2, and at the moment, whatever Putin is doing in Ukraine.

IIUC, they have no issues with reading, they have issues with understanding what they have read. Meaning they likely also have issues with understanding information presented to them in other formats. After all, understanding speech requires constant focus over an extended time.

Yup, it resonates with when you hear someone claim 'well I'm more of a visual thinker'.

I have a further, simpler argument. Movies. Ever notice that movie adaptations of books often suck? Well, there are some that don't. When shortstories are made into movies, it often works better. This is because the amount of content that fits in a shortstory, matches with what you can cover in a 90minute movie. If you try to communicate the contents of a book that takes 8 hours to read,to video, that video will be much longer than 8 hours. So, yes, possibly, you could turn your 8 hour reading assignment into a 40 hour video watching assignment. However, I don't know how you will manage your note-taking, now that you have given up on reading? Abandoning reading is abandoning our ability to organise and maintain knowledge, which we do with words and letters assembled and grasped with ability.

It took some effort, but I have finally evolved past boring and unrewarding ability to read…

Can anyone please share a hackernews-to-video converter? Tried finding it through TikTok, but without ability to read it is a pain to type something into their search bar.

This hits way too close to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295526. I am now waiting for someone to start turning HN discussions into videos in the style of "MongoDB is webscale", which is both amusing and terrifying.

On a serious note, I think people in tech underestimate just how much yellow and mass-market race-to-the-bottom content existed out there prior to the Internet.

What we see is just mass crowd getting into the tubes, with content producers and platforms adjusting accordingly.

reading is far faster than video, there's no way it goes away.

Instead I suspect the issue is more due to kids being taught not to think too deeply on things. I doubt the professor is saying many kids literally can't read, but that they can't comprehend any sort of nuance.

Of course they can't given the world today.

That’s an interesting point. Is long form reading the new cursive?

Is it joining the club of skills that we no longer need to master due to specialization and technological advances, like being able to sow your own wheat fields, field dressing a dear and building a log cabin?

It is, to the generation that 'read' that NFT's were a great idea.

As the author suggests, "The loss of things I took for granted"

Like the cognitive/emotional benefits of being able to read and write.

Never would have imagined anyone could question such things.

You don't miss your water. Till your well runs dry.

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