The Reverse Flynn Effect

calnewport.com

15 points·ingve··4 comments

> Print requires us to make a logical case for a subject. A really significant feature of books is that if you make a case in print, you have to make it logically add up.

An amazingly self refuting statement.

Could you elaborate on your comment here? My interpretation of this critic's point regarding the difference in "print" vs "digital" is that print has(d?) more friction to publish, thereby having a built-in filter or higher cost to weed out grifters or unsubstantiated claims that the digital path has not (blogs, social media, etc...).

Did you read the whole quote? You've added your own spin that I don't think is supportable.

I went and watched some of the source podcast before the lack of logic wore me down.

> You can’t just assert things in the way you can on TikTok or on YouTube.

This bit actually supports his argument as he originally said this on a YouTube podcast.

If you want to steel man his argument, he's worried about the loss of literacy i.e. the replacement of text by video. But all of his arguments are woolly BS and mix up print books and digital reading and reading for pleasure as if these were all the same thing in a really sloppy way.

He quotes people worried about TV in the 1960s, when we know the IQ was rising for decades afterwards.

The American guy supporting him goes on an extended tangent about how you can't pause video in the same way you can pause a book at which point I gave up.

An even better post here on how the Flynn Effect and Reverse Flynn Effect was never real in the first place: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-demise-of-the-flynn-effect

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