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Comment by xerox13ster | Hacker News Reader

Legitimately and I say this was absolutely no shade intended. This is a reading comprehension problem, nothing to do with aphantasia.

He clearly states that he was reading an article, he uses past tense verbs when referring to Ross, and to the events spelled out in the article. If you somehow thought that he could be reading an article that ostensibly has to be describing a past event as he was seeing it in real time that is a logic flaw on you.

It has nothing to do with what you can or cannot visualize. All you have to do is ask yourself could he have been reading an article about Ross’s arrest while watching it? Since nobody can violate the causality of space time the answer is no.

This isn’t just you this is everybody in this thread who is reading this and going this is a little confusing. No it’s very clearly him speaking about a past experience reading an article about a past event.

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I realised what was going on, but I did a double-take at:

> Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me

The problem is that two past events are being described, so tense alone cannot distinguish them. Cut the readers some slack; the writing could have been better.

Done for effect: it felt to the OP as if it was the present so the writing conveys that, while elsewhere making it clear the arrest was not the present.

To follow the tense and delivery of the previous sentence, it would have been clearest to say

"Then when Ulbricht..."

That "then" always does a lot of heavy lifting in English prose.

Yes, same here.

I am as baffled at the responses and appreciated this explanation as it was helpful to me to work on my communication style and expresses a lot of similar frustrations I have. Like what is actually going on here? this isn’t shade at anyone, I just feel like people are losing some fundamental ability to deduce from context what they are reading. it’s doubly concerning because people immediately reach to an AI/LLM to explain it for them, which cannot possibly be helping the first problem.

Agree. This entire thread is weird. How do so many people in this thread have such obvious reading comprehension issues?

On a similar note--I've noticed that HN comments are often overwrought, like the commenter is trying to sound smarter than they actually are but just end up muddling what they're trying to say.

Perhaps these things are connected.

If an LLM clears up a misunderstanding, I am having trouble seeing that as a bad thing.

Maybe in 10 years we can blame poor reading comprehension on having a decade of computers reading for us. But it’s a bit early for that.

Who will think if LLM is doing all the thinking?

The problem is that people already have piss-poor reading comprehension. Relying LLMs to help them is going to make it worse than it already is.

I wonder what is going on? I’ve noticed this getting worse for a long time to the point I’m not sure it’s my imagination anymore. I usually like to lambast whole word reading as a complete failure in the american school system that contributes to this, but I think it’s likely something else. Shorter attention spans?

Long form reading is dying.

We have a multitude of immediate distractions now.

Books build richer worlds & ideas. But without learning to love books very early in life, which takes a lot of uninterrupted time, they don’t come naturally to most.

I used to read a few books a week, virtually every week. Sometimes two or three in a long day and some night. I still read a lot daily, interesting and useful things in short form. But finding time to read books seems to have become more difficult.

I do think the comment had something about how it was written that made it hard to follow. I understood the first sentence. But then I got to

> Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes

And the metaphor / tense shift caught me by surprise and made my eyes retrace to the beginning. I still got it, but there was a little bit of comprehension whiplash as I hit that bump in the road.

In some ways, we're treated to an experience like the author's as we hit that sentence, so in that sense it's clever writing. On the other hand, maybe too clever for a casual web forum instead of, say, a letter.

Agree this is a consequence of people reading too fast and reacting.

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