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Comment by chmike | Hacker News Reader

> I don't get it

Is it hard to understand that for some people it may be difficult to read ? It might be due to motivation issues, thrust issues, or concentration issues. While at the same time they may have a rich inner imagination or thinking that they would like to share.

My impression is that humanity might miss valuable insight by rejecting whatever is not "well written" whatever the reason might be.

You may feel yourself very luck if you don't have any difficulties to read and write. Avoid to judge severely people who don't share the same facilities.

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I think there is lot of fair questions if such person is able to effectively write. And write in a way that enough people would be willing to spend time reading it.

Context is important. The blog discusses people taking training to be writers. Which I take means they aim to do it at least some way as career. And that puts lot higher bar for what they should be producing.

That is like someone aiming to be artist in visual arts never would even look at any other visual arts. Or understand the history and such. Probably not that useful education if you aim to be hireable or sell.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is missing anything from someone who doesn't know/like how to read, sorry.

There's other mediums to express ideas that isn't books if you are functionally illiterate.

I'll resist the temptation to dunk on that last line.

The case for reading (and why its demise may lead us to dark places) was laid out very recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...

Having "difficulty, lack of motivation and concentration" for reading, but not for writing, doesn't make sense to me. It's far more arduous, and in the first place you have to re-read what you wrote unless you're throwing a stream of consciousness straight into the void/dumpster.

Imagine instead the post was about people who want to make music but don't listen to it.

I literally cannot imagine being a musician who doesn't listen to music.

There are many game devs who don't play games. A lot of artists would rather be working on movies, and a lot of programmers who just love to program.

The best game devs all do though.

But are these game devs designing the gameplay loop? Or are they working on backend, like the engine?

I could imagine a (solo) game dev not self-describe as a gamer, but they must have some intuition about what makes (video/board) games fun and engaging.

I can't imagine you can obtain that without ever playing games yourself?

This isn't a real counterexample, but an interesting case is Bobby McFerrin, who wrote "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He avoided listening to singers for 1-2 years in order to develop his own voice/sound:

"First was the vision, then the technique of working it out. I wanted to find my own way of singing by knowing myself. I knew that if I started listening to other singers, it would take me years to develop. So I shut myself off from other singers for along time."

from page 25 of https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/R%26B-Re...

That makes sense to me. If I was about to write a doom metal record I'd probably avoid listening to doom metal for a while.

The difference here, as you point out, is that Bobby already had a lifetime of listening to music and appreciating other singers.

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