Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to be a lost activity:

Most of the text out there is just not good quality that deserves or rewards deep reading.

My pet theory is that the rampant skimming or "shallow reading" is basically the brain performing a hidden Bayesian probability that any random text put in front of us isn't worth the effort of deep reading.[2] This is why many of us go to HN comments first instead of reading the actual article. The Bayesian priors told us that the "tldr" in the comments got to the point where the article all-too-often had a self-indulgent author that meandered all over the place and wasted our time. Therefore, "shallow reading" isn't bad for us... it's our way of optimizing against "information overload".

Even college professors who are used to heavy reading workloads skim new work. I'd argue this is another manifestation of Bayesian priors.

To back to my C Language example. I didn't really learn C by reading those binders cover to cover. (Deep reading.) I really learned it when I did shallow reading across fragmented sources like USENET comp.lang.c forum and playing around with toy programs. So maybe deep reading isn't the answer but the attention restriction from not being distracted with Twitter and Instagram notifications. In other words, maybe we're conflating benefits "uninterrupted study" with "deep reading".

[1] https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33794

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

This is why many of us go to HN comments first instead of reading the actual article.

Now I'm a bit ashamed haha.

Anyway, I've read her book, and have to admit that I skim quite a bit. Her writing style is deep and informative, but with a lot of literary allusions. I found my knowledge and life experience is still inadequate to understand everything she wrote. Overall an interesting read though!

I was going to highlight the same exact sentence, and then realized you did it too. Funny, no?

You mean half of HN reader? :p

For anyone who found the above too long, basically she means that deep reading often wastes too much time and you don’t know ahead of time what to read. She didn’t mention that you can check other shorter sources before you commit to reading, like reading this comment before hers.

>, basically she means that deep reading often wastes too much time

I apologize that you found my text length was too long but I thought the extra background was necessary to state why deep reading is often a waste of time.

If I only state a 1 sentence punchline in my original post, it can seem like a cheap hit-and-run comment and therefore not really engaging with the article's arguments. (Or the extreme brevity would just invite snark such as "you probably don't have deep reading skill". Therefore, a writer's reflex is to defensively preempt that with extra words that try to establish street cred.)

I thought it would be interesting to share that many of us can do "deep reading" and yet we don't bother with the effort -- and that behavior is not a contradiction. Instead, it's an optimization of limited reading time. This tradeoff doesn't seem to be reflected in Maryanne Wolf's research.

>She didn’t mention that you can check other shorter sources before you commit to reading,

I actually did and I specifically used "HN comments" as an example of readers trying to find a tldr summary and why it's a rational strategy.

> I apologize that you found my text length was too long but I thought the extra background was necessary to get state why deep reading is often a waste of time.

I read @EGreg as poking a bit of fun, rather than raising a legitimate complaint: simultaneously supporting your point, but also gently pushing at the limits of shallow reading.

<sarcasm> We need a digest of HN comments for people don't have time to read the comments about an article regarding people not having time to read everything that they come across </sarcasm>

I was just making a joke, with a few layers :)

Part of that joke was that I probably got your gender wrong while summarizing, and I made it like I missed what you said about the “HN contents” because I skimmed too fast before I summarized in my own comment.

Kind of meta that the comments which we may look to, before reading the article, may themselves have skimmed it and missed the point!

To make the joke more obvious I also replied to my own comment!

TLDR: Read short HN comments before articles / parents.

That was a long paragraph, but I agree with the general premise that a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games, so we shouldn't put them on a pedestal.

> a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games

I've never been a fan of this line of thinking. There are plenty of people who use critical thinking skills and participate in mentally stimulating activities throughout the day. When it's over, they just want to relax. So they watch shows like Family Guy, read basic action novels, or play Grand Theft Auto for an hour or two.

Why does everything have to be in pursuit of knowledge or something that contributes to a community?

I don't think anyone would disagree that the vast majority of content in any medium is tripe. And that doesn't assert that it fails to make "a positive contribution to knowledge". IMO "tripe" implies only: 1) it fails to achieve its intended end, usually through incompetence, or 2) it achieves its intended end, but it's aesthetically or ethically vile (like hate speech or child porn), or 3) it's a time filler, a mindless distraction, usually a palatable cliché.

I think it's fair to say the vast majority of popular media belongs in classes 1 or 3. To deride such fare as "tripe" isn't unfair. Tripe has utility too. It's just bowel meat.

I am not a fan of "basic action novels", because at that point you can go play GTA or play paintball, and you would get way more entertainment out of it. I guess I am arrogant in the sense that I like reading books that at least have a competent human being as the author, i.e. not Sanderson or whoever wrote that supernatural detective series that a certain demographic used to read.

But I see what you mean - there is a time and a place for anything.

> I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research

I thought I'd call out that the author is not a scientist and that her "neuroscience" is a soft science like political science or social science. The author has a degree in Literature and not in Psychology or any biological sciences.

fwiw, one thing I've learned is to just ditch books early if they aren't rewarding. Someone's rule of thumb is to give a book 50 pages to engage you. Yeah, you may miss out on some good stuff, but every minute you spend reading something is a minute you spend not reading something else that may be better. We'll never, ever, ever run out of good things to read.

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