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> Not understanding English from the early 1800's ... I can sometimes more easily understand written Greek, Spanish or French (I don't speak any of those languages) than old English.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, written in the 1790s and published in 1813, is more difficult to read than 3 languages one doesn't speak?

Yes, a modern reader may not understand a word here and there. I myself did a double take when reading a Victorian mystery novel by T.W. Speight and the detective was discussing his cup of tea while discussing the case. I didn't throw up my hands and stop reading. I understood the general drift of the scene and continued on enjoying the rest of the novel. I later confirmed that "discuss" had an archaic meaning of consuming a food or beverage, but even if I hadn't, I still would have enjoyed the book. And "whiskers" in a Dickens' novel per the article is not exactly a show-stopper.

Padding is perhaps a problem in books (especially when it takes 100-200 pages to get into a novel!), but I see a worse problem online: everyone and their brother gaming the systems (LinkedIn, Substack, Medium, Quora, Reddit, etc.) by posting articles about technical topics about which they know very little and getting the content very, very wrong. Incorrect information which then gets disseminated to countless readers who accept it as the gospel truth and who, in turn, then disseminate it in one form or another to countless others.

The enormity of the flood of information on the internet also makes it difficult to distinguish multiple perspectives, let alone decide which perspectives are credible. The reader has to rely on -- just like with books -- experience and will eventually learn to reach out to respected sources and references.

> I recently went on an analogue book binge, and discovered something I'd not previously noticed. Possibly for commercial reasons, books tend to frequently be much longer than they need to be, (coincidentally) they're often a minimum of 200-250 pages. Books that could easily have their content conveyed in 25 or 50 pages will be padded to 200. And not just literary trash (of which there's a lot) but books that are highly recommended reading.

I might not be a huge fan of the verbosity of Ulysses or A Song of Ice and Fire for that matter, but I also don't believe that reading is or should be an exercise in data throughput optimization, whether in fiction or non-fiction.

In fiction you set a tone, paint a picture, fill out characters, motivations, parallell arcs, etc, not to mention just appreciating the flow of prose.

In non-fiction you can explain things from various perspectives, repeat things which is crucial to learning, as well as expand something beyond the topic itself, which can make it easier to retain it when you have something already familiar to anchor it to.

> Another big disadvantage of books is you receive exactly 1 perspective. Whereas if you actively research a domain with web access, you can cross reference and absorb a variety of contrasting (/conflicting) sources, and by smashing the ideas together enough, you can figure out which arguments are strongest.

It's okay to read multiple books.

> I'd also argue the study mentioned in the article is unfair. Not understanding English from the early 1800's doesn't make you an idiot... ...than old English.

Disagree. The subjects were "Students of literature at two American universities". They are supposed to be quite used to reading and explaining flowery, metaphorical, and older language. This is comparable to a supposed PHP programmer being flummoxed by a few hundred lines of messy PHP 5 code. Or an American History teacher who doesn't know Lee from Grant.

Pedantic Notes:

- For those unfamiliar, "Old English" is a specific thing. It fell out of use around 1150, and is seriously unreadable if you only know Modern English - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English#The_Lord's_Prayer Vs. "Modern English" was used from (roughly) 1650 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English Shakespeare wrote from 1585 to 1613, and is still quite understandable.

- "Bleak House" was written in the early 1850's.

EDIT: But I definitely agree with you about far too many books being stuffed with filler fluff. And that it's for commercial reasons - what market is there, these days, for 25 to 50 page works? Outside of recommendations for a very short list of people, I just don't buy books without spending a half hour skimming and reading them.

Yeah. Take this very article for example. The title:

> Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?

And the only parts where the author justified the title are:

> At its simplest, Athenians in the fifth century BC could begin to practise “ostracism”—voting to banish people by writing their name on ostraka, scraps of pots—because, as William Harris, an academic, points out, they had achieved “a certain amount of literacy”.

And:

> We also analysed almost 250 years of inaugural presidential addresses using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. George Washington’s scored 28.7, denoting postgraduate level, while Donald Trump’s came in at 9.4, the reading level of a high-schooler.

I don't know, man. I found this super unconvincing. Were Athenians reading more than modern citizens in developed countries? Is "ostracism" even a good way to run a country? Do we want presidential addresses to be harder to read? Especially when we're comparing to Washington, who came to power in an era when the general population didn't vote for president?

It's almost like the author is appealing to confirmation bias. Surely we intuitively think the decline of reading makes politics dumber. So the author doesn't even bother to support their claim. Just throw in some random examples off the top of their head and call it a day.

Our knee-jerk reaction is Tiktok = information junk food. But isn't this article, printed on The Economists, simply less-digestible junk food?

The results of the Flesch-Kincaid readability test seem like direct evidence that politics is getting dumber.

> Do we want presidential addresses to be harder to read?

This is a very reductive question.

How would you address the dumbing down of politics?

> Especially when we're comparing to Washington, who came to power in an era when the general population didn't vote for president?

Thanks for asking this as I was not aware of how low the national turnout was for early presidential elections.

That said, a comparison of the Flesh-Kincaid readability score over time[0] compared to a chart of national turnout over time[1] shows that the trend only gets more consistent once national turnout of eligible voters surpasses 50%.

0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/feb/12/st...

1: https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present

I do think politics is getting dumber. I was criticizing that the author didn't provide meaningful arguments, so I got very little from this article except confirming my own existing belief [0].

Clearly George Washinton had much lesser motivation to appeal to the general population than Trump does. If the comparison was made between, say, Trump and Reagan, it'd be slightly more convincing to me.

> How would you address the dumbing down of politics?

I don't know. Of course I don't know. Which was why I read this article: I expected it to answer this question for me. But I found it did a very poor job at this, as

1) Comparing to Washinton makes little sense.

2) I don't think "easier to understand" means "dumber." I expect if you asked Flesch and Kincaid themselves whether they think a text of lower Flesch–Kincaid readability score means it's "dumber" they would say no.

[0]: And except this article 'inspired' me to write the above comment and therefore made me use a bit of critical thinking, perhaps.

I believe that the article has meaningful arguments, such as:

* By contrast, decreasing literary sophistication may lead to decreasing political sophistication.

* Lose the ability to read complex prose and he fears you may also lose the ability to develop complex ideas that “allow you to see nuance and to hold two contradictory thoughts together”. The medium is the message, and the message is currently 280 characters long.

However, I also agree with you that the article does not present evidence that directly supports its arguments.

Studies linking reading comprehension & critical thinking (which I expect means the ability to navigate complex thought) certainly do exist & should have been mentioned.

> I expect if you asked Flesch and Kincaid themselves whether they think a text of lower Flesch–Kincaid readability score means it's "dumber" they would say no.

The "dumber" adjective isn't regarding the text, but the intended audience.

The lower Flesch–Kincaid readability score of inaugural presidential addresses is a lagging indicator of the dumbing down of politics, not a cause.

> Comparing to Washington makes little sense.

Democratization of American politics is a confounding factor, but also directly related. The elites would have higher reading comprehension, so increased democratization would require a dumbing down of politics.

Similarly, the decline in the lower Flesch–Kincaid readability score is noticeably stronger after inaugural presidential addresses stopped being delivered in written form.

So I think that using Washington for comparison is perfectly fine considering that the trend has continued incrementally throughout American history.