4 ms·

'There's this strange idea that books are good for you and television is garbage. Nothing is further from the truth.' This seems very hyperbolic. I might agree

by mym1990 3y ago

'There's this strange idea that books are good for you and television is garbage. Nothing is further from the truth.' This seems very hyperbolic. I might agree with you if we are talking about short form content...a magazine column vs something similar in video format. And of course, selection matters as well...watching one hour of a well vetted documentary vs watching an hour of Love Island are going to engage the brain differently. Consuming books is a very active way of thinking, and consuming video media is generally very passive. The research that needs to go into getting a whole book across the finish line is pretty staggering(again, if you're not choose complete trash). Even when I read fiction, my brain has to create the imagery from the text, in rough form...and that is kind of beautiful. Watching an epic like Lord of the Rings...the scene is already there...there is little room for your brain to interpret it any other way. Your comment about becoming more biased as one engages in one direction of thinking definitely holds true...each "fact" reinforces the held world view. Which is why it is great to try to read things across a spectrum on one topic...its difficult, but it gives way more perspective on the issues.

makeitdouble 3y ago
> (again, if you're not choose complete trash). So you're not really dismissing parent's point that books aren't inherently good, and many will be half mass produced trash. I think people tend to forget that for many centuries book were the only game in town, and you'd have to write a play, a movie or a radio show if you wanted your content to reach an audience. That means what we currently see as blogspam, trash documentaries, stuff like Joe Rogan's podcasts whatever you categorize them were produced in news, magazines and book form. You could look around for the industry of speed ghost writing memoires when big events happen: you get famous for being involved in news cycle for a few months ? a publisher will approach you to get a book out with your name on it and it will be out in the world pretty quick. There is a misconception that "money spend on something" = "higher quality". A book needing an editor, a printer and money to distribute doesn't mean it's intrinsically better than something that costs less. It just mean it has reasonable prospects to sell, whatever the reason is. Sure we can only focus on the top of the pyramid of books written as an art, but then we should do the same for all the other media (think about people starting a youtube channel after retiring from decades of work in a field. Would these channels be worse that a book meddled by an editor/publisher ? probably not) > Consuming books is a very active way of thinking, and consuming video media is generally very passive That's the argument based on the brain needing to read and parse the sentences. Sure it takes more effort that parsing audio. But that says nothing about the quality of the experience. You're more "engaged", the same way you'd be engage in a TV show if you had to crank a lever to run it frame by frame. But I think in this social media area we already understand that engagement is far from the best metric to evaluate if a content is good for your or not. [edited]
- corethree 3y ago
  Yeah you got my point entirely. We are in total agreement. I'm not attacking books. Books aren't bad. They are the same thing as any other piece of content. They can be good or bad. I disagree with the premise of the article that all books are good you just need to reframe context.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mym1990 3y ago
  Your brain is doing so much more than just “parsing” sentences when reading, the creative process in how you form thoughts and ideas from text is incredibly complex. Books also have residual value, where the brain synthesizes ideas over time, across sleep cycles. I’m sure some of this happens with TV and social media, but I highly doubt it is anywhere close.
  - corethree 3y ago
    [flagged]
meristohm 3y ago
After Peter Jackson's interpretations I only remember what it felt like to have imagined the scenery, characters, and action in The Lord of the Rings. Even the cover art of Legolas and Gimli on The Two Towers paperback circa late 80s early 90s wormed its way into my imagination. Some cover art is great, really awesome art, and sometimes I'd rather not have seen it.
corethree 3y ago
I'm not the one that is biased here. Think about it. Both video content and text content are still content. The writer or creator has the ability to lie and deceive and produce bad things regardless of the format of the content. The bias is in people thinking books are better for no logical reason. As for the research and effort required to read a book. I agree. Watching videos is passive and less effort. I mentioned this in my original comment. But I stated that this extra "effort" leads to bias. It leads you to perceive what you read as "good" simply because you spent more effort on it. When you spend more effort on something.your bias towards it increases by a huge amount. Right and you caught on to this fact. You stated your disagreement and I respect that. Overall you're saying books are better because they force your mind to be more active? But I countered this with saying that the extra activity leads to bias. You countered that with just reading a large spectrum of books. Which further entrenched my point. Books lead to bias which has the weakness of forcing the reader to consume a spectrum of topics to avoid bias.
- mym1990 3y ago
  No, people are biased because they are more likely to seek out content that reinforces their view point…not because something is long or short or takes effort. Given by how reading books is actually a declining activity, I would not say most people see it as a “better” thing than video content. When you read a book, it is up to you to weigh the words, intake the research, vet the author, and then see if you can find some counter points from other sources. If your excuse for being fooled by false content is “well they lied”…you should get some accountability.
  - corethree 3y ago
    >No, people are biased because they are more likely to seek out content that reinforces their view point…not because something is long or short or takes effort. The actual act of seeking is involved with bias. You don't understand people. When someone puts an extraordinary amount of effort into something they become biased for a positive result. Extremely biased. If you don't understand this, you don't understand people, I'm sorry. Books involve much more effort then movies and as a result people are more biased towards books overall. >When you read a book, it is up to you to weigh the words, intake the research, vet the author, and then see if you can find some counter points from other sources. If your excuse for being fooled by false content is “well they lied”…you should get some accountability. What does this have to do with anything? You have to do the same thing when you watch video media. It's the same issue. Of course most people aren't going to spend that much time Vetting every point the author of either the video media or the book. It just doesn't happen that often. However, The book by virtue of requiring effort to decode lends itself to being more believable due to the natural human bias towards things they put effort in. No one is going to spend years of their lives reading every inch of the bible and then come out at the end of that ordeal saying they don't believe. They will.

makeitdouble 3y ago

> (again, if you're not choose complete trash). So you're not really dismissing parent's point that books aren't inherently good, and many will be half mass produced trash. I think people tend to forget that for many centuries book were the only game in town, and you'd have to write a play, a movie or a radio show if you wanted your content to reach an audience. That means what we currently see as blogspam, trash documentaries, stuff like Joe Rogan's podcasts whatever you categorize them were produced in news, magazines and book form. You could look around for the industry of speed ghost writing memoires when big events happen: you get famous for being involved in news cycle for a few months ? a publisher will approach you to get a book out with your name on it and it will be out in the world pretty quick. There is a misconception that "money spend on something" = "higher quality". A book needing an editor, a printer and money to distribute doesn't mean it's intrinsically better than something that costs less. It just mean it has reasonable prospects to sell, whatever the reason is. Sure we can only focus on the top of the pyramid of books written as an art, but then we should do the same for all the other media (think about people starting a youtube channel after retiring from decades of work in a field. Would these channels be worse that a book meddled by an editor/publisher ? probably not) > Consuming books is a very active way of thinking, and consuming video media is generally very passive That's the argument based on the brain needing to read and parse the sentences. Sure it takes more effort that parsing audio. But that says nothing about the quality of the experience. You're more "engaged", the same way you'd be engage in a TV show if you had to crank a lever to run it frame by frame. But I think in this social media area we already understand that engagement is far from the best metric to evaluate if a content is good for your or not. [edited]

corethree 3y ago
Yeah you got my point entirely. We are in total agreement. I'm not attacking books. Books aren't bad. They are the same thing as any other piece of content. They can be good or bad. I disagree with the premise of the article that all books are good you just need to reframe context.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mym1990 3y ago
Your brain is doing so much more than just “parsing” sentences when reading, the creative process in how you form thoughts and ideas from text is incredibly complex. Books also have residual value, where the brain synthesizes ideas over time, across sleep cycles. I’m sure some of this happens with TV and social media, but I highly doubt it is anywhere close.
- corethree 3y ago
  [flagged]

meristohm 3y ago

After Peter Jackson's interpretations I only remember what it felt like to have imagined the scenery, characters, and action in The Lord of the Rings. Even the cover art of Legolas and Gimli on The Two Towers paperback circa late 80s early 90s wormed its way into my imagination. Some cover art is great, really awesome art, and sometimes I'd rather not have seen it.

corethree 3y ago

I'm not the one that is biased here. Think about it. Both video content and text content are still content. The writer or creator has the ability to lie and deceive and produce bad things regardless of the format of the content. The bias is in people thinking books are better for no logical reason. As for the research and effort required to read a book. I agree. Watching videos is passive and less effort. I mentioned this in my original comment. But I stated that this extra "effort" leads to bias. It leads you to perceive what you read as "good" simply because you spent more effort on it. When you spend more effort on something.your bias towards it increases by a huge amount. Right and you caught on to this fact. You stated your disagreement and I respect that. Overall you're saying books are better because they force your mind to be more active? But I countered this with saying that the extra activity leads to bias. You countered that with just reading a large spectrum of books. Which further entrenched my point. Books lead to bias which has the weakness of forcing the reader to consume a spectrum of topics to avoid bias.

mym1990 3y ago
No, people are biased because they are more likely to seek out content that reinforces their view point…not because something is long or short or takes effort. Given by how reading books is actually a declining activity, I would not say most people see it as a “better” thing than video content. When you read a book, it is up to you to weigh the words, intake the research, vet the author, and then see if you can find some counter points from other sources. If your excuse for being fooled by false content is “well they lied”…you should get some accountability.
- corethree 3y ago
  >No, people are biased because they are more likely to seek out content that reinforces their view point…not because something is long or short or takes effort. The actual act of seeking is involved with bias. You don't understand people. When someone puts an extraordinary amount of effort into something they become biased for a positive result. Extremely biased. If you don't understand this, you don't understand people, I'm sorry. Books involve much more effort then movies and as a result people are more biased towards books overall. >When you read a book, it is up to you to weigh the words, intake the research, vet the author, and then see if you can find some counter points from other sources. If your excuse for being fooled by false content is “well they lied”…you should get some accountability. What does this have to do with anything? You have to do the same thing when you watch video media. It's the same issue. Of course most people aren't going to spend that much time Vetting every point the author of either the video media or the book. It just doesn't happen that often. However, The book by virtue of requiring effort to decode lends itself to being more believable due to the natural human bias towards things they put effort in. No one is going to spend years of their lives reading every inch of the bible and then come out at the end of that ordeal saying they don't believe. They will.