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Comment by apparent | Hacker News Reader

This is not a fair comparison:

> Only 38 percent read a novel or short story... The proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.... Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.

It takes much less time to place a bet than to read a novel/short story. Likewise, reading for pleasure "on any given day" is a totally different measure than "placed a bet last year".

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Your selective quote left off the part that made it a fairer comparison. "Only 38 read a novel or short story" was a follow-up to "fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022." That's a year-long stat.

Reading an entire book takes much more time than placing an online bet.

> Reading an entire book takes much more time than placing an online bet.

Yes, but do you only do things for pleasure if they're done quickly? Is your sex always over in a minute?

Also, I was responding to this:

> Likewise, reading for pleasure "on any given day" is a totally different measure than "placed a bet last year".

Yes, reading for pleasure "on any given day" is a different measure than "placed a bet last year", but "read a book of any kind in 2022" is the same length of time, though not the exact same year.

> Yes, but do you only do things for pleasure if they're done quickly? Is your sex always over in a minute?

This is a valid critique, but the motivations are not the same for reading books and gambling. Both are done partly for entertainment, but reading is partly for edification whereas gambling is partly for making money (in theory, at least). People want to make money almost universally, whereas ongoing edification is something that people do not enjoy intrinsically (meaning they would do it less if it takes more time).

> Yes, reading for pleasure "on any given day" is a different measure than "placed a bet last year", but "read a book of any kind in 2022" is the same length of time, though not the exact same year.

I critiqued the two comparisons separately for a reason. One conflated a time-consuming activity with a quick one, and the other conflated time periods of comparison. I do not claim that both critiques apply to both cases, just that each comparison is flawed.

> reading is partly for edification

Not necessarily. Is Harry Potter for edification? Trashy romance novels?

In any case, the article specifically notes that reading for pleasure, a subset of all reading, has declined.

> One conflated a time-consuming activity with a quick one, and the other conflated time periods of comparison.

There was no conflation by the article.

You presented a selective quotation that omitted the yearly book reading stats and attempted to argue misleadingly that the article was comparing a daily time scale to a yearly time scale.

I think you missed the point of the reading vs. gambling comparison. From the article: "Gambling has become [emphasis mine] a more common leisure activity than reading a book." In other words, the change is the point. Gambling was not always more popular than reading.

Nit picking around the edges doesn't undermine the general point. The comparisons were bad. You have succeeded in pointing out that they were not as bad as they possibly could have been, which I guess makes you feel good? Anyway, I'll leave it here since I don't enjoy engaging with people like you on HN.

> The comparisons were bad.

The comparisons were fine. I guess it makes you feel good to tell yourself that I was "nit picking around the edges", but I was actually disagreeing with you 100%.

> Yes, but do you only do things for pleasure if they're done quickly? Is your sex always over in a minute?

You do things for pleasure more often if they're done quickly. When was the last time you had a lovemaking session so long you could have read a book in the time?

I don't think I've read a book from cover to cover in one sitting since I was a kid. But I nonetheless read most days, sometimes just a chapter at a time. You don't need to read a book in one day, or even one week.

When was the last time you broke up a single instance of sex into a dozen or so blocks over the course of a week? It doesn't matter that they don't need to be consecutive hours, it still takes hours, which means it can't be done nearly as frequently as something that takes seconds.

I think you're missing the point here. By any measure, whether a year—"fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022"—or a day—"the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023"—there is time to read books.

The relative amount of time it takes to read a book compared to the time it takes to place a bet is largely irrelevant, because reading books is worth doing, and there is time for it. If you want, you can read and bet, on the same day!

It's not necessarily true, however, that gambling can be done more frequently than reading, because gambling requires money, and if you keep gambling a lot, you'll likely run out of money.

Yeah, at least it should be over the same time period!

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