Giving a certain number of hours dedicated to passive entertainment, many more people prefer to watch a terrible tv show on Netflix than to read a masterpiece of literature.
It could be because the tv show is more "entertaining" (which is tautological), a desire for social conformity (people can discuss more easily with others the latest tv show than Anna Karenina), or escaping the cognitive effort required when reading literature, which is almost always greater than the one asked for when watching a movie or tv show, or a tiktok.
It's not even about quality. I consider films like There Will Be Blood or TV shows like Deadwood to be comparable in quality to the greatest works of world literature. I've also gotten a lot of joy and entertainment out of reading crappy books.
My problem is with statements like "paper is an inferior entertainment platform". To me, this is assuming that these different media are fundamentally providing the same kind of experience, which I disagree with.
I see your point about the cognitive effort of reading, though. I guess it depends on how fluently one can read, which depends on how much exposure to books one got as a kid.
The problem is that you are talking about your experience, and not about the distribution of experience of people, which is why I wrote "at the population level".
For the more intellectually sophisticated person (does not mean "better" person, to be clear), "entertainment type" is not fungible (movies as art, advertisement as investigation into the psychology of the masses, etc.) but for the vast majority of people, it is just a way to spend time.
You are referring to critically acclaimed movies and tv shows, but for the majority of people, leisure time in front of the tv is not spent bouncing between Fellini, Von Trier, PTA, Kubrick, et similia, but binge-watching the latest terrible Netflix tv show.
It is the same with food: we like to think that what prevents the masses from enjoying fine dining is the cost of the experience, but in reality, to many (myself included, most of the time), French fries with mayonnaise, a burger, and some ice cream is just a better proposition.
I disagree myself wiht the statement that paper is inferior, entertainment-wise, to tv, games, and tiktok--they all overstimulate me, I feel dirty after being on tiktok for 20 minutes and I feel as clean as a whistle after reading for 3 hours, in addition to the subtle intellectual stimulation I get from reading-- but in terms of choices made by people, books are certainly the losing party.
The comment I am responding to is referring to their own experience, which, at the population level, does not appear to be largely shared, as, at the population level (i.e., people in general, not intellectuls, not academics, all of them), it is evident that people consider tv shows, games, and tiktok superior (i.e. revealed preference) forms of entertainment with respect to books.
How was it not clear? I would prefer to engage with more substantive comments.
What's not clear to me is how aggregate preferences about entertainment media should affect my choice of entertainment media. TFA is worded to suggest that because "nobody" reads fiction, it should be dismissed when considering what to read.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that most people prefer Netflix to Umberto Eco. However, I don't. And that is one reason I reject the analysis in the article.
I am developing a web application for a dictionary that translates words from the national language into the local dialect.
Vibe coding and other tools, such as Google Vision, helped me download images published online, compile a PDF, perform OCR (Tesseract and Google Vision), and save everything in text format.
The OCR process was satisfactory for a first draft, but the text file has a lot of errors, as you'd expect when the dictionary has about 30,000 entries: Diacritical marks disappear, along with typographical marks and dashes, lines are moved up and down, and parts of speech (POS) are written in so many different ways due to errors that it is necessary to identify the wrong POS's one by one.
If the reasoning abilities of LLM-derived coding agents were as advanced as some claim, it would be possible for the LLM to derive the rules that must be applied to the entire dictionary from a sufficiently large set of “gold standard” examples.
If only that were the case. Every general rule applied creates other errors that propagate throughout the text, so that for every problem partially solved, two more emerge. What is evident to me is not clear to the LLM, in the sense that it is simple for me, albeit long and tedious, to do the editing work manually.
To give an example, if trans.v. (for example) indicates a transitive verb, it is clear to me that .trans.v. is a typographical error. I can tell the coding tool (I used Gemini, Claude, and Codex, with Codex being the best) that, given a standard POS, if there is a “.” before it, it must be deleted because it is a typo.
The generalization that comes easily to me but not to the coding agent is that if not one but two periods precede the POS, it means there are two typos, not to delete just one of the two dots.
This means that almost all rules have to be specified, whereas I expected the coding agent to generalize from the gigantic corpus on which it was trained (it should “understand” what the POS are, typical typos, the language in which the dictionary is written, etc.).
The transition from text to json to webapp is almost miraculous, but what is still missing from the mix is human-level reasoning and common sense (in part, I still believe that coding agents are fantastic, to be clear).
I have a Subaru with driver's assistance. Basically you input speed and distance from the vehicle ahead, and the car turns, accelerates, and brakes. It disengages quite often, in particular when the lanes are not clearly marked.
I used it a couple of times, but then I stopped; for me, as a driver/passenger, it has very little value. Yes, maybe I can lower my attention from 100% to 95%, but it does not make much difference: I need to keep my hands on the wheel, it disengages at random (for me) times.
Think about having to assemble a car (you can find specs and tutorials online, say) and then drive it, or asking engineers and mechanics to assemble it, and then using the car assembled by others to go for a drive.
Couldn't the same be said of all professions in which some people earn a lot, such as acting, sports, singing, entertainment in general, and which are considered less “serious” than the professions of medical doctor and engineer?
One might say that, in theory, the well-earning actor or actress has to show some craft at least, but there are plenty of actors whose popularity comes only from their looks--my dog would act better than them.
A lot of the youngsters who'd decide to make money undressing themselves on OF will soon realize they might have the will, but they lack the market power.
There is a mix of culture and food at play here. Most people, left to their own devices, without cultural pressure, are lazy, unproductive, and slovenly.
We can see that with food: as soon as the shaming of people for being fat weakened, as it happened primarily in the US and then in the Western world at large, people started to indulge without guardrails.
We can see that with clothing and appearance: people started to dress slovenly, preferring comfort to being presentable and well-put together.
We can see that with "productivity": people started doomscrolling for hours or watching hours upon hours of life lived by other people, instead of living their lives.
> We can see that with clothing and appearance: people started to dress slovenly, preferring comfort to being presentable and well-put together.
I know a 21 year old dude who dresses like he's from the 50s, suit, hat and all. He looks extremely presentable and is the biggest compliment machine that I know!
I live in a beach town and dress almost always in trousers and sports coat, occasionally in a suit, sometimes casually in jeans and shirts and desert boots, but always with intention.
Well, what can I do? I am terribly vain and don't see myself going out in flip-flops when not at the beach.
> Most people, left to their own devices, without cultural pressure, are lazy, unproductive, and slovenly.
I disagree strongly. I think most people do the best they can. When they are emotionally overwhelmed, they withdraw.
Doing things you dislike, such as dressing certain ways, is not slovenliness. Your opinion is meaningful only to you (and those who choose to share it), it's not a standard. Also, what data is there of a problem? When people started dressing more casually (which I guess is your objection), the economy boomed, freedom boomed, Silicon Valley - famously casual - boomed, etc.
We could say that your thinking is slovenly, too lazy to try to understand that others have very different thoughts, perspectives, and priorities which are just as valid as yours. Too lazy to try to look at evidence. Much easier to take the egocentric path and judge everyone else, and repeat misinformation that's appealing - and all especially easier when it's culturally enabled.
Of course I judge, and I expect other people to judge me. It is what we do every day: we assess, evaluate, and draw conclusions. What people have problems with is not to be judged per se, but judged negatively: "oh, please stop judging me as a brilliant, awesome, good-looking person!" is something that, in fact, nobody never said.
The way that the comment I am answering comes across is quite reactive in nature and too forceful in tone.
Nowhere I said that people should dress in a suit or sundress or that they should have visible abs. I do, but that is just my preference.
I just expressed my opinion that, when left to their own devices, people are often apathetic. Or maybe, as the writer of the comment suggested, they (some, to be clear, but in my opinion, too many) choose to be 400 pounds, not showering, dressing in PJs, or doomscroll, because that's the way they are happy.
Good for them, they surely live a life of fewer preoccupations.
> Of course I judge, and I expect other people to judge me. It is what we do every day: we assess, evaluate, and draw conclusions.
Not 'of course' - it's a choice, like the other ones you talk about. This choice isn't a meaningless subjective preference like clothing, but one that results in errors and harm to other people. We are responsible for our errors and for preventing them - claiming the error is inevitable is to make yourself a victim.
I don't judge people unless I have to - it's not hard to learn, especially if you learn from and are responsible for your mistakes; I didn't have to make that mistake many times. And that has been the approach of most wise people I know. There is no other way to prevent those errors: Lacking godlike omniscience, we can't read minds or observe more than a very little; we are prone to serious errors. There's a reason courts and science require objective evidence and strict process; truth is very hard. 'Judge not' goes back a couple thousand years.
When I have to judge - for example, when evaluating job performance - I am very aware of my own limitations. Otherwise misplaced confidence causes even more mistakes.
Dressing with intention does not require any particular willpower, just some desire, intention, a bit of time, and a taste that may develop over time.
Avoiding doomscrolling is not that hard. The first few days are usually hard when we want to break a habit that's hanging around like a terrible smell, but after that, it is smooth sailing.
One can play victim not forever but for a long time: we have seen that in particular between 2010 and 2015, with people claiming to be abused by the most absurd things.
But those abusers remain absurd, and the alleged victims--of food, social media, celebrities stealing their attention like a bully steals candy from a nerd-- pathetic.
These are all empty claim, including a grand social theory. I'm not even sure what you're talking about for 2010-2015. You really need to be drowning in yourself to believe it all and then, on top of it, to judge other people.
People don't share your priorities or beliefs. Maybe that's why they act differently.
> Avoiding doomscrolling is not that hard.
If you mean addiction to social media, that's empirically not true. You can see how many people are addicted, and the research about it. Typing a few bytes into HN doesn't change or establish any facts.
It is simple logic that dressing with intention is not hard. But let's define 'hard' with an example: running a marathon under 3 hours is hard for the general population; that is, it is an activity that, despite desire, planning, and effort, is beyond reach for many.
Dressing appropriately, such as not going out in PJs or with a mangled, overused, stained T-shirt or in flip-flops (apart from the particular cases I need to include, otherwise I am marginalizing people who don't have the resources to buy a 3 dollar shirt or refuse to clean due to some disorders included in the DSM-5) is not hard.
Avoiding doomscrolling is certainly not hard; one, given sufficient desire and a recognition of their inability to stop looking at other people's lives, could just delete IG, snap, X, or whatever.
Finally, people can do what they want, like going out semi-naked and without showering for 3 weeks, farting in public, which has become an unfortunate common circumstance, doomscrolling until their eyes are a bright red, or eating until they explode because sugar is "addictive".
But I like encouraging people not to live their lives like defenseless victims of circumstances.
Almost all of them - you have no evidence, just your subjective beliefs stated as facts. There is a great, wide world outside your head.
> It is simple logic that dressing with intention is not hard.
I don't see logic in it. For many people, such as those on the spectrum and those emotionally exhausted by other demands, it is hard. We have emotional limits.
> appropriately
You are defining appropriately. You are free to follow your own ideas, and others are free to follow theirs. Many think your 'appropriate dress' is a waste of time and money, and an attempt distract from merit - putting lipstick on a pig. If someone does good or bad, works well or not, many think dress is irrelevant.
> Avoiding doomscrolling is certainly not hard
See my prior comment, which has an objective factual basis.
> farting in public, which has become an unfortunate common circumstance
huh? That's a pretty wild claim.
> I like encouraging people not to live their lives like defenseless victims of circumstances.
They are not doing that; they are living their own lives their own way, for the most part.
It is certainly fine where you are; the world is a big place and it is charming because it varies in people and experiences.
Some time ago, I wrote something about "mood", which can be adapted, or parallels can be found, with "personality", after all, who knows who we really are.
"Recognizing our moods and then changing them is not easy, but neither is it impossible. It requires considerable initial effort to get to know ourselves and constant practice to ensure that this knowledge does not disappear at the first sign of crisis. As always, when we try to change a behavior or habit that we don't like, the first step is to convince ourselves that it is possible, the second is to create the change, and the third is to maintain it.
Unfortunately, more often than we would like, our moods and actions are not aligned, they do not go in the same direction. As has happened to everyone with an Internet connection and a profile on social media, we can be in a bad mood after reading a post on social media written by someone we do not know about an issue that does not concern us.
Furthermore, and I have experienced this many times in my life, we can wake up annoyed, angry, unnecessarily combative for any reason or, often, for no particular reason, and carry on with this cloudy state of mind for hours. Sometimes for days.
We can, and often do, accept bad moods, irritation, and conflict as inevitable, part of our personality, a healthy reaction to an unfair world that does not reward us, does not gratify us, gives to others what it should give to us.
As I said years ago to a girlfriend of mine when she complained about some of my behavior that she considered wrong—-almost always unfairly, I would say, but I am not my own harshest critic—-we wake up in the morning in a bad mood, perhaps because of hormones that do as they please, the bedroom is too hot or too cold, the sugar in the blood goes up and wakes you up and then goes down and puts you back to sleep. But instead of accepting a bitter awakening as the result of chance or an overly heavy omelet, we often start looking, like a Lagotto Romagnolo would for truffles, for other causes and culprits, real or imagined, for our bad mood.
I suspect that we struggle to change our moods because we see them as part of ourselves or as defining who we are. But is a bad mood that goes away after half an hour of afternoon sleep or melts like snow in the sun when someone, after much intolerable and unfair waiting, finally recognizes how beautiful and charming we are with a smart compliment, really part of us?
My personality, which, like everyone else's, derives from a mixture of genes, experiences, chemical and hormonal reactions to food, words spoken and heard and, in my case in particular, humidity, is not what I would describe as tremendously jovial, either by nature or habit. But following these reflections on moods, I began to think that I should not accept this tendency toward ill will: as I read somewhere, pessimists give the impression of being intelligent, but it is optimists who are successful.
As I was saying, I used to wake up in the morning annoyed, wanting to argue with someone, or rather with everyone, wallowing in my tormented thoughts. But I decided, hesitantly at first and then with determination, to change. I began to recognize the movement of my mood toward irritation and distraction, and instead of letting it continue undisturbed, I began to remind myself of the opportunities of the new day, the life ahead, and the hopes and possibilities that come with it. And I realized that this brief act of persuasion was often enough to change my mood, to put me in a more positive frame of mind for the day ahead, whatever difficulties or pleasures it might present.
It's not that being irritated or in an aggressive mood should always be avoided, and even less so the sadness that follows an unfortunate event. It's just that irritation and aggression should be used sparingly: it must be the right mood for the occasion."
This comparison is hardly apt in the way it is formulated, but it is fitting when considering tailors and seamstresses. A few decades ago, numerous tailors made custom-made clothes and skilled seamstresses repaired them.
Today, since clothes are made by machines and the cost of production has fallen significantly, making bespoke clothes has become a niche job, almost extinct, and instead of repairing clothes, people prefer to buy new ones.
These jobs have not disappeared, but they have become much less common and attractive.
I read Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist a few years ago, and I was impressed by the breadth and depth of the great physicist. Later in life, he became a geologist, working with his son.
Those physicists worked hard: he writes in the book that 60 hours of work per week — and there were no phones back in the day to blur the lines between work and non-work — were routine in Berkeley. Those were dedicated people.
I feel a similar way when I read Lunch with the Financial Times, which I used to love and now find tedious, partly because of the interviewer's snarky attitude and partly because they rarely, if ever, get to the point.
The idea is/was excellent, but the recent execution lacks seriousness. Excessive sarcasm and snark, especially in print, often come across as bitterness to my eyes.
Giving a certain number of hours dedicated to passive entertainment, many more people prefer to watch a terrible tv show on Netflix than to read a masterpiece of literature.
It could be because the tv show is more "entertaining" (which is tautological), a desire for social conformity (people can discuss more easily with others the latest tv show than Anna Karenina), or escaping the cognitive effort required when reading literature, which is almost always greater than the one asked for when watching a movie or tv show, or a tiktok.
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