5 ms·
I think his offhand implication that reading books is superior to TV is wrong. Most fiction has exactly the same purpose and function on TV, which is to entert
by araneae 17y ago
I think his offhand implication that reading books is superior to TV is wrong.
Most fiction has exactly the same purpose and function on TV, which is to entertain. Yes, reading some books makes you "cultured" but so does TV; just to a different culture. I consider watching all the latest sci fi to be just as "culturing" as reading all the latest sci fi.
- BoppreH 17y agoReading makes you better at reading (duh) and writing. Two essential skills that are used daily. What skills does your TV gives to you?
- zackattack 17y agoAbility to connect with strangers through mutual ties to 'pop culture'
- BoppreH 17y agoAlthough it answers my question, you could say that any practice (maybe with the exception of breathing) gives you "mutual ties".
- nostrademons 17y agoPassively sitting down with the latest Dan Brown novel won't make you any better at reading or writing. Sitting down with a novel that's just beyond your comfort zone (say, Dostoevsky if you're used to Dan Brown) will make you better at reading, and sitting down with any novel and actively paying attention to how the writer shapes the story with words will make you better at writing. But that's an apples-to-sushi comparison: it takes a lot more mental effort to actively engage with a book than it does to passively sit in front of a TV. A more appropriate comparison would be actively reading vs. playing Starcraft, which gives you a bunch of essential skills, eg. multitasking, resource management, positioning & prioritization, etc. Basically, you get out of any activity what you put into it. If you put zero effort into reading, you're going to get zero skill out of it.
- araneae 17y agoThe reading I did as a child was well beyond what other children my age were reading, but it never required "effort," because it was pleasurable. It's a mistake to think that activities which require no effort are useless.
- cynicalkane 17y agoThe most pleasurable things, in my experience, require great effort. You just don't notice because they're pleasurable.
- zackattack 17y agoWe can thank Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for this idea. Flow is what you get when you intersect a properly challenging task with a properly adept skill-set, and it is immensely pleasurable.
- Tycho 17y agoEven if a novel is not very literary, I think it still stretches the readers mind because rarely do you engage with such a complex structure/abstraction.
- BoppreH 17y ago> Passively sitting down with the latest Dan Brown novel won't make you any better at reading or writing. Well, I disagree. I think that any practice improves you, even if by a marginal amount. But I could be wrong, so let me rephrase that sentence as "reading serves as a practice for your reading and writing skills". I think it does not affect my point in the "reading is inherently better than TV" discussion. > Basically, you get out of any activity what you put into it. I'm going to write this one down. Thanks.
- araneae 17y agoThat would be a good point if I were 8 years old. However, my vocabulary is unlikely to increase anymore.
- BoppreH 17y agoThe brain gets lazy if you don't exercise it. Sure, you might be getting it from somewhere else, but reading is still a good source to as least practice your vocabulary.
- dgabriel 17y agoI'm sure there are many words you have yet to discover, and they are still worth learning and using.
- sliverstorm 17y agoI find reading a book engages and involves my mind much more. I'm not going to argue superiority, but there's a reason watching TV is known in slang as 'vegging out'.
- natrius 17y agoReading is entertainment that requires thought and imagination. While you're reading, it's easy and common to stop and reflect over what has just been said. Not so with video. When you watch a sci fi movie, you see the world the filmmaker has built. When you read a sci fi book, you build the world the author describes in your head. Value judgments aside, they're very different experiences.
- argv_empty 17y agoAnd if the sci-fi is good, then regardless of medium, I stop and reflect on the world or situation being described and the questions it raises.
- detcader 17y agoTheodore Roosevelt read two books a day and could recite quotations from them years later. The average TV in the US is on 6 hours per day. Would you rather be the average American or Theodore Roosevelt?
- j_baker 17y agoThe average American. Theodore Roosevelt is dead after all. :-)
- Qz 17y agoExcept that we remember his name, whereas the average American remains nameless.
- ajscherer 17y agoLets ask him how much better that makes him feel.
- Qz 17y agoYou don't think you would be a little happier knowing that when you die your name will still be written in history books for decades or centuries to come?
- ajscherer 17y agoNo, I don't think so. That doesn't seem to fall into any of the categories of things that have made me happy. I've accomplished a few things that I think "should" make me happy, but for whatever reason I don't feel any lasting difference as a result. Most things that have made me happier either gave me pleasure directly, or were the negation of something that was causing me stress.
- tomjen3 17y agoHe was also one of the original war mongers. Considering that, I would prefer the average American.
- olliesaunders 17y agoMaking TV costs lots of money so they only make shows to attract large audiences. Because writing books is relatively cheap you get books for all kinds of audiences, importantly you get books aimed at smart people. My comments siblings provide examples of this.