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This makes sense for some things, but the examples the author uses don't make sense to me. Take the Moby Dick example... the author says you don't get the retu
by cortesoft 5y ago
This makes sense for some things, but the examples the author uses don't make sense to me.
Take the Moby Dick example... the author says you don't get the return on it until you have paid the 16 hour price of reading it... but isn't those sixteen hours the actual reward? You don't read a book to be finished with it, you read it because you like the reading process. The reward starts the first minute you start reading the book.
Not only that, but you don't have to finish the book to get something out of reading it. If you enjoyed the time you spent reading, that is enough.
This attitude seems very "completionist", where you only get value after you finish something. That isn't how I view things.
Also, why does he think mindless apps and games are the same as doing nothing? The idea is you enjoy the time spent playing the game. Sure, you don't end up with anything after, but you enjoyed the time.
- cafard 5y agoSixteen hours to read Moby Dick? That recalls the old Woody Allen joke about speed-reading: "I read War and Peace in two hours. It's about Russia."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yepthatsreality 5y agoThis quote lead me down this rabbit hole: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/08/speed-reading/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/08/speed-reading/
- popcube 5y agothis is how nomal people read book, maybe it is not best, but still most common way to contact literature
- barbazoo 5y agoWhat are "normal people"?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- smnrchrds 5y agoThe unabridged audiobook is just under 24 hours. 16 hours seems short, but not terribly so. https://www.audible.ca/pd/Moby-Dick-Audiobook/B071NYW4Q1 https://www.audible.ca/pd/Moby-Dick-Audiobook/B071NYW4Q1
- diego 5y agoI generally read audiobooks at 1.5x because 1.0 seems terribly slow to me. This more or less matches my reading pace for printed books, so 16 hours seems right.
- stavros 5y ago1.0 is so slow that I wonder if they record the narrator, then slow them down by a third. It's much slower than people talk.
- perryizgr8 5y agoIf I am doing something else while listening, it helps to have it slow down a bit. Maybe that's why audiobooks slow it down from the get go.
- Fnoord 5y agoNot everyone is native English speaker, and slow pace allows you to get immersed. That people want 1,5 speed or do two things at same time is a sign of our time (appropriate content is cheap snd widely available but we don't have more available leisure time). Society doesn't want people have abundant leisure time, hence 'Bullshit Jobs'.
- strken 5y agoI slow down some narrators and speed up others because I like content delivered at a specific speed. Leisure time is a reason, but not the only reason.
- stavros 5y agoI'm not a native English speaker either. The thing here is that audiobooks are quite a bit slower than normal speech, which is what we've been trained on all our lives. People want 1.5 speed because that's what gets the narrator back to a normal speaking speed.
- danielodievich 5y agoSpeaking of War and Peace. I speed read War and Peace for the first time in ~4 hours for the school test (I refused to read assigned literature). It went into one ear and into another. I then re-read it while recovering from the surgery over a leisurely week and enjoyed it tremendously as I think would anyone who gives it time. My mother told me she read just the Peace parts, while my father admitted to reading only the War parts (they are pretty much alternate chapters).
- stephen_g 5y agoI’ve heard people say they’d done similar things (about skipping the battle scenes) and I don’t get it. Some really important things happen to some of the characters in those bits! Surely it’d be super confusing…
- BossingAround 5y agoTo be honest, the whole book is confusing even if you read it as written. It's probably me reading it over months, but forgetting names and relations does not help. So, probably skipping some chapters wouldn't matter to me that much. In general, I love the book. I definitely need to finish it! There was a time I wanted to learn Russian to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
- lumost 5y agoAssigned reading has a bad habit of pushing us into such patterns. Human's seem to treat anything they are asked to do as a cost to be minimized in favor of the things they choose to do. Given options, they will do the things least similar to those that they are asked to do. It's too bad we can't structure assigned reading and coursework in terms of choice, I distinctly remember choosing to work on harder assignments when given choices back in the grade school era.
- int_19h 5y agoTo be fair, with "War and Peace", this is quite possibly the only way to read it and enjoy the process. ~
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- foxfluff 5y agoThe submission isn't loading for me right now but based on your comment, I imagine I share some views with the author. I have this problem with games; there are lots of games. I can only find out if I enjoy one by spending time on it (and unfortunately the industry seems to like drawing things out such that the first hour or three aren't necessarily representative). Unfortunately, very often it is the case I go in hoping I would enjoy it, but after a while have to cut it short because it's not enjoyable. Not only have I not gotten much out of it, I've lost all the time I could have spent on something more enjoyable (or productive). And it's still true that I've lost the time, even if I enjoyed the activity. One tricky part with games that start out as fun (and addictive) is that it can take a while to realize it's not fun anymore and hasn't been for a while. And I've definitely had regrets with games that don't feel fun but after consulting opinions, "trust me it gets better." Ugh. That sort of plays in to the value calculus on games.. a common mindset I see in reviews is that if a game offers hundreds of hours of gameplay, it is a high value game. For me, it rarely works out that way; I'm not a bored teenager desperate for entertainment, and in practice long games rarely seem to respect my time. They're long because they drag on and push you into running around, dull repetitive grind and fighting, mass produced shallow quests, boring errands, copypaste scenery spread over a large map... Quantity over quality. From my perspective, a game can definitely have negative value. What I'm looking for in games today is definitely the opposite. Maximum quality that lasts a weekend at most and then I can move on in life. And I still don't want to waste most of my weekends playing games, even if I could find good ones.. Similarly, I have a bunch of books about which I've been wondering whether it's really worth my time reading them. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I could somehow make more time available to me (e.g. work only three days a week oslt).
- selfhifive 5y agoIn general open world games are ones to avoid. They contain the most bloat. My Friend Pedro, Ori, and other 2D games are actually more fun than 3D games.
- jtbayly 5y ago> What I'm looking for in games today is definitely the opposite. Maximum quality that lasts a weekend at most and then I can move on in life. Try a board game! Seems like a great fit for what you want.
- Zababa 5y agoI'd go even further: I get a lot more enjoyment in going deep in things. Reading a book or watching a movie multiple times, discussing it with friends, family, people online, showing it/gifting it to people, learning about how it was made, who made it, in what context. I can't do this with everything, but I'd rather go deep on a few things than shallow on lots.
- xhevahir 5y agoMark Twain: 'A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.'
- phamilton 5y agoA friend once recommended a video game and when I asked if it was worth the price he said it was "a solid 100 hours of gameplay". There's definitely an alternative framing for entertainment. My friend gladly traded $60 for something that promised to take 100 hours. If it only took 50 hours, he would have found it less valuable.
- gjm11 5y agoThe author doesn't say that you don't get the return on reading Moby Dick until you have paid the 16-hour price of reading it. What he actually says is subtly but importantly different: "Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one." So he agrees with you: you start getting the benefits as soon as the "second price" is being paid. And I don't think it's quite right to say that the sixteen hours are the actual reward. They're the space in which some of the actual reward occurs, so to speak. You pay the price of using 16 hours of your time to read Moby-Dick. You get the reward of 16 enjoyably-spent hours, and also the reward of having your brain reshaped in whatever way reading Moby-Dick does for you -- deepening your ideas about friendship or obsession or sailing or whales, etc. The 16 hours you have to spend are still a price, even though you enjoy spending those hours. (Some people enjoy spending money. They're still paying when they do.) The 16 hours you spend reading Moby-Dick are 16 hours you aren't spending reading The Brothers Karamazov or sleeping or doing lucrative consultancy or talking with your friends.
- cortesoft 5y agoThis makes sense to me, and I think you explain it better than the author. However, this is basically just the idea of opportunity costs, and pointing out that they apply to more than just the money spent, but also the time.
- infogulch 5y agoThere are 2 costs: 1. Cost in money to purchase, 2. Cost in time to use and manage. By paying these costs you gain a benefit (of any kind, monetary, pure enjoyment, etc). These are given. So far this is pretty easy to agree on, and could be stated in several ways including probably in terms of opportunity costs. The article's point is that there's a particular relationship between these costs and benefits. Namely, that the first cost only enables you to gain the benefit, but that you can't actually receive the benefit until you pay into the second, time cost. This is interesting because it's easy to forget or miscalculate that second cost, and because the second cost gates the benefit that means you may not be getting the full benefit from paying the first cost.
- 5y ago
- AussieWog93 5y ago>Take the Moby Dick example... the author says you don't get the return on it until you have paid the 16 hour price of reading it... but isn't those sixteen hours the actual reward? You don't read a book to be finished with it, you read it because you like the reading process. The reward starts the first minute you start reading the book. Honestly, I'm not sure if you can say that the money spent is truly a "cost" either. Consumers love buying books (spending money) as much as they love reading books (spending time). There is definitely a sense of reward in simply buying a book - even one you never read - just as there is for buying clothes you'll never wear or gadgets you'll never use.
- chmod775 5y ago> There is definitely a sense of reward in simply buying a book - even one you never read Is there? Doesn't that just make you feel like an idiot for wasting your money? The only feeling I ever get after spending money is "this better not suck". Feeling a sense of reward simply for spending money sounds unhealthy.
- AussieWog93 5y ago>Is there? Doesn't that just make you feel like an idiot for wasting your money? Of course there is. Most books people buy can be borrowed from a library for free, but people still do it.
- shwoopdiwoop 5y agoAfaik this is called Tsundoku in Japanese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku
- cortesoft 5y agoIf it makes you happy, is it really wasting money? Personally, I only think money is wasted when you don't get what you were trying to get when you spent the money. So if you decide to spend your money buying a delicious burrito, but it turns out to taste bad, then it was wasted money. If you are trying to buy a book to bring you the joy you feel when buying a book, and you get that joy, then it isn't money wasted. If you buy it and then regret it after and don't feel the joy, then it was wasted.
- Rd6n6 5y agoIn Ux, you often optimize systems to help make user error as close to impossible as you can, and to optimize to be able to complete tasks quickly. However, in many video games, user error is a core part of the experience and you often don’t want to shorten tasks because they are pleasant. Starcraft players fight on forums to defend the unnecessary tasks they have to do manually because they enjoy practicing their good mechanics, some even asking blizzard to worsen the games pathfinding (big, fascinating subject, won’t get into it here) That said, I own several books and games that I haven’t put the effort into reading/playing yet. Reading and gaming aren’t effortless
- JKCalhoun 5y agoYou might be splitting hairs. I think the broader point the author is making is that we are over-consuming — because we can. But without the fulfillment that comes from the time spent with the purchased thing we are finding our lives paradoxically empty. The problem the author elucidates really resonated with me, but perhaps it was framed a little awkwardly. We are living in an age when consuming is easy, while time has become so much more precious. Contrast that with days past when the opposite was true: purchases were precious while time was more plentiful.
- watwut 5y ago> Contrast that with days past when the opposite was true: purchases were precious while time was more plentiful. When exactly was supposed that be?
- appleiigs 5y agoWhen going out for dinner was only for special occasions.
- Fnoord 5y agoIts more of a spectrum but pre-internet, if you wanted to watch a movie you had to rent the VHS or order it somehow. You had to buy a book in a bookstore. Each limiting your range of exposure (you had magazines, papers, and peers which each were very important). On top of that, piracy took little amount of time and effort, and legal distribution eventually went to compete.
- inglor_cz 5y agoPre-modern society was precisely like that. Agriculture on the level of, say, the 17th century, demands a lot of time, but only in specific periods dictated by natural processes. In the meantime, as a male peasant you are "almost free", with scattered duties here and there. Also, no commute and very little artificial light. Most people's workplace was within walking distance from their bed, if not in the same house. And a majority of work was stopped after sunset, given that artificial light was scarce (perhaps just one lamp for the entire household). People like pastoralists who watch over grazing flocks are relatively free too, it is not a constant work comparable to a factory floor. Traditional female works were a bit different. A lot of spinning, for example, that was a major time eater, and independent of season.
- muzani 5y agoAn extreme example these days are the people who buy games for $5 on Steam sales and never even download them because they can't afford the 200 hours or so to enjoy the game. The 200 hours isn't quite the reward. A jog isn't rewarding. Reading a paragraph isn't rewarding. You need to read perhaps a chapter at least to get some reward. I bought Dune. I read until the legendary "fear is the mind killer" scene. And then I put it down and haven't picked it up yet. I got some reward from it, probably not the full amount, but I just couldn't afford the hours to finish the book.
- Fnoord 5y agoAre you otherwise familiar with the story? There's a good reason it is recommended to read the book before you watch the movie/series. A book allows you to completely apply your own imagination. My path was: Dune II (game), Dune (David Lynch movie), Dune (game, did not finish), Dune 2000 (game), Dune (remake from 2001), Children of Dune and in 2016 I finally finished reading the book (I started in ~2012). Obviously I knew the story quite well as I played Dune II and watched the movies a lot (though I did not like Children of Dune much). The book felt like a choir, but it was good. Really good. Its just that the movies were good enough. Its why I don't bother reading Fire and Ice, Lord of the Rings, or The Witcher. I've seen the series/movies. We also need to put a book in the age or context it was written. Or, well, 'need to'? It'd be fair. I do the same with older content of movies and series.
- muzani 5y agoI'm not. It does sound like the kind of thing I would like (I'm a fan of the Dark Sun setting). I normally prefer movies over books, again, because it's less time commitment. But Dune tops Amazon's list week after week, so there has to be a good reason for that.
- Fnoord 5y agoIt is a fantastic book, still reads well nowadays (I finished reading it in 2016). Just like a book like Snow Crash. However, the movies/series are great, too. The games are dated. Haven't seen the 2021 series as of yet.