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a 1700 word article isn't too long to read. But there are dozens of 1700 word articles (and longer) that make the HN frontpage every day, and most of us want t

a 1700 word article isn't too long to read. But there are dozens of 1700 word articles (and longer) that make the HN frontpage every day, and most of us want to know which of those are worth reading for us -- whether the article has the kind of "meat" we're going for, whether it's mostly fluff, whether the technical details are relevant to our particular interests, etc. One reason we see so many tl;dr comments even on a very technically inclined place like HN is that articles very often bury their content. We want a thesis out front; we don't want to be strung along for 1600 words and then find the interesting bit between 1601 and 1700.

kragen 12y ago
So, I agree that summarization is very useful, precisely because it allows you to focus your attention on interesting things. However, I also think that the phrase “too long; didn’t read” represents a dysfunctional attitude that turns this blessing that is the abundance of information into a curse: if you spend three hours reading 100-word abstracts (let’s say, 300 of them), at the end you will probably have learned almost nothing. If you instead spend three hours reading 1000-word articles (let’s say, 40 of them), you will probably have learned a small amount, which is an improvement. If, by contrast, you spend three hours reading 50 000 words (say, a few chapters of a Murakami book), or a quarter of Olin Shivers’s dissertation, you will probably acquire some new ideas that will stay with you for the rest of your life. There’s a point at which this becomes counterproductive; if you read a book in a day, it won’t stay with you as well as if you read it over the course of a week, and the week also gives you time to reflect on other connections. My thesis: being able to focus your attention on interesting things is only valuable if you then do actually focus your attention on them. The attitude expressed in “tl;dr” is that focusing your attention is itself undesirable.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  There are places where tl;dr implies a lack of focused attention. On HN, it often implies "I couldn't get the basic idea quickly enough to be sure this is worth focusing my attention on; can someone summarize for me so I can make a better-informed decision?"

kragen 12y ago

So, I agree that summarization is very useful, precisely because it allows you to focus your attention on interesting things. However, I also think that the phrase “too long; didn’t read” represents a dysfunctional attitude that turns this blessing that is the abundance of information into a curse: if you spend three hours reading 100-word abstracts (let’s say, 300 of them), at the end you will probably have learned almost nothing. If you instead spend three hours reading 1000-word articles (let’s say, 40 of them), you will probably have learned a small amount, which is an improvement. If, by contrast, you spend three hours reading 50 000 words (say, a few chapters of a Murakami book), or a quarter of Olin Shivers’s dissertation, you will probably acquire some new ideas that will stay with you for the rest of your life. There’s a point at which this becomes counterproductive; if you read a book in a day, it won’t stay with you as well as if you read it over the course of a week, and the week also gives you time to reflect on other connections. My thesis: being able to focus your attention on interesting things is only valuable if you then do actually focus your attention on them. The attitude expressed in “tl;dr” is that focusing your attention is itself undesirable.

lotharbot 12y ago
There are places where tl;dr implies a lack of focused attention. On HN, it often implies "I couldn't get the basic idea quickly enough to be sure this is worth focusing my attention on; can someone summarize for me so I can make a better-informed decision?"