3 ms·

You don't know why it's worrying that people aren't reading? I don't know what to say about that. I think it's very worrying.

by mvdtnz 2y ago

epicureanideal 2y ago
It would be great if they also asked people why they did or didn’t read a book in the last year, so we could have more insight.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
  People make up excuses. Oh didn't have time etc.
phito 2y ago
There are other ways to learn besides reading books, and it's probably my least preferred method. They often contain a lot of redundant/useless information.
James_K 2y ago
I think you are fooled by the general societal perception that reading makes you smart. This originates from a time when books were expensive and most people couldn't read without paying for private school which made reading the exclusive pursuit of the rich and educated. This is no longer the case. The truth of the matter is that a book is simply one way among many of presenting information. If a person spends 9 hours reading a fiction book for entertainment, they are not substantially better off in life than someone who spent that same time playing video games.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  The book, even a crappy book by a weak author, will be more thought provoking than the video game.
  - SwiftyBug 2y ago
    What do you mean? What makes a book more thought provoking than video games? Disclaimer: I do not play videos games. I just don't enjoy them. I'm not in defence of them. I'm just thought-provoked about why you think video games are essentially less then books.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      Writing is literally the conveyance of thought itself, and nothing else. A picture of a rock might or might not provoke any particular thoughts about rocks in the viewer. But if I write anything more than the purely descriptive "there is a rock" then I have conveyed some sort of thought about the rock or rocks in general, and at the very least you have been introduced to my thought, and very likely you have also reacted with some thought of your own. And the mechanical process of reading gave you the time and venue for that to happen. Even if I do try to be purely descriptive, it's impossible to seperate my perception from the output. I can only describe what I noticed and considered noteworthy. I litetally cannot write the equivalent of a photograph of a rock, but can only write my thoughts about that rock. The photograph may contain more data, but no opinions and no understandings. The viewer can possibly have no thoughts at all about it, and not actively notice most of the data, or the significance of various bits of the data, but the reader must have at the very least the thoughts of the writer, and it will be almost impossible not to have some sort of thougts of their own in reaction to reading the writers. Other things also provoke thought, including video games. But I only asserted "more".
  - nickthegreek 2y ago
    I assure you that Baldur's Gate 3 is more thought provoking than Green Eggs & Ham.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      The existence of contrived exceptions does not disprove anything, and I would not agree this would be an exception anyway. An incurious person can fail to think about anything at any time.
- mariusor 2y ago
  > reading makes you smart The tone of your post suggests you're refuting this wholesale. I think you're wrong, reading books makes you smart(er) at least by expanding your vocabulary and widening your understanding of the world by putting in front of you experiences from people that are not exactly like you. You're offering video games as an alternative, but people that invest a lot of time in playing video games as opposed to reading, usually do it with terrible games, where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc. Games as art form rarely engage people in the same way as mass murder types of games. What are the sales numbers of Disco Elysium vs Call of Duty? And yes, pulp exists in writing too, probably to an even greater extent, but at the same time the peaks are higher and, in my opinion, the benefits, as subjective as they may be, greater.
  - James_K 2y ago
    > where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc You make an almost credible post but then totally undermine it with this statement. It's rather like saying Looney Tunes is bad because the intended lesson is that you should set your cat on fire.
    - mariusor 2y ago
      Maybe you're right, but if you see no connection between the trivialization of violence and murder (that most media, not just games is pushing) and the attitude society has to the same violence I feel like maybe we're living in different worlds. My problem is not that games make kids shoot schools, is with the fact that games in order to "be fun" and have people play them need to follow this recipe in the first place. The violence is probably intellectually understood as "wrong" by the large mass of players, but in my opinion it still desensitizes and erodes normal reactions against it to a level that should not be acceptable.

You don't know why it's worrying that people aren't reading? I don't know what to say about that. I think it's very worrying.

by mvdtnz 2y ago

You don't know why it's worrying that people aren't reading? I don't know what to say about that. I think it's very worrying.

epicureanideal 2y ago

It would be great if they also asked people why they did or didn’t read a book in the last year, so we could have more insight.

jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
People make up excuses. Oh didn't have time etc.

phito 2y ago

There are other ways to learn besides reading books, and it's probably my least preferred method. They often contain a lot of redundant/useless information.

James_K 2y ago

I think you are fooled by the general societal perception that reading makes you smart. This originates from a time when books were expensive and most people couldn't read without paying for private school which made reading the exclusive pursuit of the rich and educated. This is no longer the case. The truth of the matter is that a book is simply one way among many of presenting information. If a person spends 9 hours reading a fiction book for entertainment, they are not substantially better off in life than someone who spent that same time playing video games.

Brian_K_White 2y ago
The book, even a crappy book by a weak author, will be more thought provoking than the video game.
- SwiftyBug 2y ago
  What do you mean? What makes a book more thought provoking than video games? Disclaimer: I do not play videos games. I just don't enjoy them. I'm not in defence of them. I'm just thought-provoked about why you think video games are essentially less then books.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Writing is literally the conveyance of thought itself, and nothing else. A picture of a rock might or might not provoke any particular thoughts about rocks in the viewer. But if I write anything more than the purely descriptive "there is a rock" then I have conveyed some sort of thought about the rock or rocks in general, and at the very least you have been introduced to my thought, and very likely you have also reacted with some thought of your own. And the mechanical process of reading gave you the time and venue for that to happen. Even if I do try to be purely descriptive, it's impossible to seperate my perception from the output. I can only describe what I noticed and considered noteworthy. I litetally cannot write the equivalent of a photograph of a rock, but can only write my thoughts about that rock. The photograph may contain more data, but no opinions and no understandings. The viewer can possibly have no thoughts at all about it, and not actively notice most of the data, or the significance of various bits of the data, but the reader must have at the very least the thoughts of the writer, and it will be almost impossible not to have some sort of thougts of their own in reaction to reading the writers. Other things also provoke thought, including video games. But I only asserted "more".
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  I assure you that Baldur's Gate 3 is more thought provoking than Green Eggs & Ham.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    The existence of contrived exceptions does not disprove anything, and I would not agree this would be an exception anyway. An incurious person can fail to think about anything at any time.
mariusor 2y ago
> reading makes you smart The tone of your post suggests you're refuting this wholesale. I think you're wrong, reading books makes you smart(er) at least by expanding your vocabulary and widening your understanding of the world by putting in front of you experiences from people that are not exactly like you. You're offering video games as an alternative, but people that invest a lot of time in playing video games as opposed to reading, usually do it with terrible games, where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc. Games as art form rarely engage people in the same way as mass murder types of games. What are the sales numbers of Disco Elysium vs Call of Duty? And yes, pulp exists in writing too, probably to an even greater extent, but at the same time the peaks are higher and, in my opinion, the benefits, as subjective as they may be, greater.
- James_K 2y ago
  > where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc You make an almost credible post but then totally undermine it with this statement. It's rather like saying Looney Tunes is bad because the intended lesson is that you should set your cat on fire.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    Maybe you're right, but if you see no connection between the trivialization of violence and murder (that most media, not just games is pushing) and the attitude society has to the same violence I feel like maybe we're living in different worlds. My problem is not that games make kids shoot schools, is with the fact that games in order to "be fun" and have people play them need to follow this recipe in the first place. The violence is probably intellectually understood as "wrong" by the large mass of players, but in my opinion it still desensitizes and erodes normal reactions against it to a level that should not be acceptable.