Comment by allanbreyes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allanbreyes | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I hope you publish, and I hope you tell that story. And I hope people read it.

There's a sobering article recently published in The Atlantic[1][2] about the end of reading and how we're in a postliterate age. We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus that the original author talks about being so critical for writing. I think it's the same muscle that lets us think. Quoting from The Atlantic:

> What’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If people become overreliant on AI to write for them, they could lose the capacity to interrogate or even develop their own views. These are quintessentially human capacities.

Accelerated now by generative AI, I fear that the end of reading goes hand-in-hand with the end of writing. I've totally sworn of AI for reading and writing. Maybe that makes me a Luddite, but I don't want to lose those muscles and I don't want the world to become a place where humans no longer read or write or think.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...

[2]: https://archive.ph/Rpquh

As someone who also dabbles in writing fiction (unpublished) I'm less pessimistic. I keep hearing less people read and the end of long form writing is near. To me this signals a great time to write and publish because the smaller the niche, the happier the people who get quality stuff in it.

The "book bubble" of avid readers is the most anti-AI community I am a member of which is a very interesting perspective (I do research in AI as my main job). I don't touch AI for writing/editing etc. because I see it as a creative endeavor and enjoy spending time with a blank piece of paper or an empty latex file :D

> We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus (...)

Yes, true, but that's also very much a thing you can do something about by, well: reading books.

It's a technique we must preserve for the good of our culture, but, also, in a society full of people who have forgotten how to, an individual superpower.

That offers no solution to the masses, only the individual. The former its a much more difficult and demanding discussion.

How so? The masses are composed of individuals... who can commit to continuing to read.

Are you talking about incentives?

The mass is more than the sum of its parts, and if only a small minority exercise critical thinking they will be overwhelmed by the whole. As the great comic wrote - those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but those who learn from history are doomed to stand by helplessly as everyone else repeats it.

And furthermore, a democracy can not survive if the majority of the voter base is incapable of critical thinking. It needs to be better than even a simple majority. It worked in the Colonies because the citizens were mostly middle class independent farmers, for whom critical thinking was essential. And even after the second industrial revolution, small business continued to be the cornerstone of the economy. The political landscape will mirror the economic one, and our economy is now ruled by petty tyrants.

For someone literate you should probably know better.

First of all the Patriots were not even a simple majority. Turns out you don't need a majority to win what is basically a war of insurgency. There are several modern analogs that reflect this reality.

Second of all the country was founded by elites. It wasn't that farmers could do critical thinking (whatever that really means) it was that the punitive British response aligned economic incentives across class, and across North and South. So a large enough slice of the populace was ready to be sufficiently bought in on the propaganda of a few outstanding men.

Thirdly, your conception of history is wrong. Small elites always rule societies. America was not a democracy at its founding, that is if you take democracy to be the 21st century standard of universal suffrage. Societies are less about some arbitrary standard of critical thinking and more a contingent set of circumstances and incentives.

It's a bit ironic in your rather tired critique of modern culture you reveal another truth - those who complain about the contemporary intelligence of the masses often leave much to be desired in their own supposed superiority.

You should read more.

Technology like digital media and AI certainly have an impact, which will only increase - but things are not that black and white. All we need is to look at the history of similar technological advances we have seen in the past.

We have cars; but people still walk, ride bicycles and even horses. We have rhythm machines and synthesisers, and people still play drums and other instruments.

So we will keep writing and reading. A lot of specific details about how we are doing either will change, but the activities will still be there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com