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Comment by sosuke | Hacker News Reader

I think that if there were a clear outline at the beginning of articles, essays or blog posts like this I might waste less time trying to skim them for the point. I didn't read nearly enough of it to find the author's point but personally I've started skipping over content that doesn't present clear goals up front. If I want suspense, mystery and surprise endings I read fiction.

I would think that "Deep Reading" isn't something you can't do today that you could do yesterday but something that has to be prioritized. I never could find time for fiction in my life today like I could chew through books as a kid. I have to divide my attention now because I have taken on responsibilities outside myself. I simply cannot get lost in a book unless I've planned to get lost in a book that day.

I'm writing awfully different than usual today. Oh look my phone is blinking.

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Tl;dr: infinite information and social streams satisfy our needs, TODOs carry a mental tax, http://project.wnyc.org/infomagical/ worked for the author.

I really wish this was framed differently, so I'd know there was an answer buried in there. I read this as an informational article, and didn't realize there was a "solution" until paragraph 33 out of 35.

Question, did you count the paragraphs or do you have some extension that does it for you? That sounds helpful..

I would love to see a writing format with something like the following structure: 1) A TLDR of Twitter length 2) A paraphrase of the key concepts and point argued in the article 3) The actual full-length article

This way you could ramp up at each stage and decide if it's valuable to keep reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

I actually agree with your list; I think the inverted pyramid is really about prose construction in an age where print space was at a premium. We can be a lot more free with formatting or redundant information (if it is clearly marked as such) on the web.

I mostly wanted to point out that the concept is not new, but as far as I can tell, it has been pretty much forgotten in most modern web journalism.

I've been reading some academic papers recently and taking notes in org-mode.

What I find is that a lot of information expressed in solid paragraphs becomes a lot easier to parse once you convert them into an appropriate list, tree or graph structure. A surprising amount of the text I've been reading is lists that have some relation ("x is used in x_1,...","x consists of x_1,..."). This ties in to authors deciding to shake things up by adding unnecessary complexity to these simple lists. This kills the reading comprehension.

For example

    K. Merton developed in the 1940s his nor-
    mative framework for the conduct of sci-
    ence based on universalism, communalism,
    disinterestedness, and organized skepticism

becomes

     K. Merton developed in 1940s a formative framework of scientific conduct based on:  
     - universalism : <definition of universalism> 
     - communalism 
     - disinterest : <note on disinterest> 
     - organized skepticism : <example of organized skepticism>

A nice bonus is that that allows me to annotate specific items in these lists very easily, and visually match up items to notes quickly. (Note how that statement itself is a list due to being joined by an "and").

I've been thinking similar things. Also, diagrams are underrated.

Maybe "reading" is a low tech invention that we just don't have the patience for anymore. Instead we want to "explore" a theory or network of statements or social graph.

It's pleasant to click around in Wikipedia and get a sense for how different topics relate, but reading the (often turgid and boring) prose seems like work.

I have to admit, diagrams are a bit harder to do in text, especially interconnected graphs. That said, I could imagine something that uses triples to define a rendered graph, similar to how RDF for the semantic web works. Say

     #BEGIN_GRAPH
     'Paul Graham' founded YC 
     'Sam Altman' leads YC 
     YC funded AirBnB
     YC funded Reddit
     AirBnB <> Accommodation
     #END_GRAPH

Leads to a graph like

      [Paul Graham]----founded----->[YC]------funded----->[AirBnB]<------>[Accommodation]
      [Sam Altman]-----leads------->[  ]            `---->[Reddit]

Now that could be prettier, but I am too lazy to copy and paste box drawing characters. With a simplified form like that, all the data is in the form of subject predicate object sentences, which makes for easy parsing. The data could also be fed into a diagram making application like yED for pretty graphical output.

Great idea. With the flexibility of org-mode, you could even turn those notes in spaced repetition flashcards using org-drill.

HN itself could really do with a description of 200 char to go under the link title, serving as a summary and contextualizing the title if it's inadequately informative. Timothy Gowers' Brexit blog post is an example of a non-clickbait title that just was not informative.

Agreed. I often find myself clicking directly through to comments to gauge whether it is worth my time to read the article. An (optional) 200 char. summary would likely increase my willingness to actually take a look at the source article.

> 1) A TLDR of Twitter length 2) A paraphrase of the key concepts and point argued in the article 3) The actual full-length article

Otherwise known as "real journalism". You know, that thing we collectively decided we don't want to pay for.

You just described the "lead, intro graf, story" structure that newspapers have been using for decades if not centuries.

Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals. Most magazine articles don't start with a concise thesis statement, instead they try to hook the reader with something like "As I made my way up the stairs in the convention center, a stocky man with pale blonde hair stopped to ask me for directions to the men's room." and keeps going with this kind of enticing pseudo-fictional storytelling.

> Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals.

The answer is exactly that "or" of yours. Informing the reader in an efficient and useful way is a very distant, low-priority goal, and we're all aware of that and yet still somehow pretend journalism is about informing people. It's not anymore.

Otherwise known as the specific inverted pyramid style historically used by newspapers specifically for technology reasons--so the story could be more or less cut at any point. Many magazines don't follow this format.

That said, as I've written before, a lot of longer pieces ramble around and take way too long to get to the heart of the matter. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a short paraphrase whether it's literally an abstract or a bit more of a teaser (especially if the main point really does need some build-up).

I think I got the point pretty quickly: there is too much useless information out there that we swallow up regardless of value. So I stopped reading after a paragraph or two.

I have a very similar problem of 'get to the main point' in videos. That is why I've built BriefTube (brieftube.net). It gives you instant automatic summarisation of lengthy youtube videos (with more platforms on the way).

I'm torn about this. On the one hand, people are very bad at editing in general and editing video in particular. They post 4 minute videos of something cool or funny, where it realistically could have been trimmed down to 10-20 seconds.

On the other hand, this constant need to condense everything, including complex topics, into 10 second sound-bites is problematic, in my opinion. Some topics can't be properly understood without more background or explanation of a position.

I'll have to check out your site. Looks like a cool idea. I just hope it doesn't go too far!

Good point. My app doesn't replace the video as the source, but rather creates a smart way to navigate it. Give it a try. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

Dude you misspelled extension on your site. Ctrl + F for "exstension" to fix.

Thanks! also, thanks for actually reading my explanations :)

I'm with you! I complain about this a lot. You go to an article looking for say "A recipe for Kombucha" and, instead of a recipe for Kombucha, you find 6 paragraphs about how great Kombucha is and how the writer's kids love helping them make it and how easy and fun it can be and why it's good for you and stuff.

NO. I came here for a Kombucha recipe not to read this fluff crap.

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