Books are too slow, according to this maverick of provocative takes. His brain, summarizes Joel Halldorf in this The Atlantic piece,
...is “far too advanced” to enjoy such a low-velocity medium: “I need action. I need constant chaos in my life to feel content.”
...
Hitting on Andrew Tate seems like waaaay too low a bar... but whatever your SEO guys think might work. Let's ignore the hook and get into the actual piece:
The history of reading is a story of technological disruption, in which revolutionary innovations in the design and availability of books have yielded sweeping changes to how they are read.
By 1597, the scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon advised readers to reserve deep reading for a few, select books: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau duly lamented in 1761 that “the Frenchman reads a lot, but only new books; or to be precise, he leafs through them, not in order to read them but to be able to say that he has read them.” The rise and spread of magazines, journals, and newspapers increased the need to read with speed.
"The erosion of deep reading weakens our capacity to grasp complex ideas. This shallowing effect reshapes the public square, allowing brief snippets of emotionally charged content to crowd out nuance, and algorithms to reinforce preferences and prejudices""The erosion of deep reading weakens our capacity to grasp complex ideas. This shallowing effect reshapes the public square, allowing brief snippets of emotionally charged content to crowd out nuance, and algorithms to reinforce preferences and prejudices"
I've considered these themes on SN before (#944961, #1025290) plus the (economic) value to things that are now infinitely replicable and abundantly available -- read, _zero_. #796401... Nice to have it _somewhat_ vindicated by Nobel Laureates... hashtag we like credentials
Halldorf obviously argues back and says there's virtue in deep reflection, deep reading and (physical) books are unrivaled in this respect. Perhaps, perhaps. I want him to be right, I sort of feel deeply that he is right.
...but I also can't shake the conviction that infinite supply (#1425743) and endless distractions scatter the available attention across thousands of worthy places, with the wholly predictable conclusion that nothing gets the reflection it "deserves." Everyone shouting endlessly into the void with nobody left to listen.
Have fun, staying mentally obese (#1383936)
I've been reading short articles thanks to newspapers and magazines for 50+ years, so I don't think it's about that. Reading articles is a separate skill (and scratches a separate itch) from deep reading.
I do think there's a good argument, especially in nonfiction, that many longer books could just be replaced by articles ("this is a book that could be an article" is like "this is a meeting that could have been an email"), and the online world makes this easier (as opposed to when the choices were short encyclopedia articles or full books, with not nearly as much in between).
But reading Gatsby or Master and Margarita is simply different from reading articles on any website.
yes. 100%.
Tho peeps get less cred for it. Under the model that books are expensive business cards (much like university degrees are signals for discipline and hard work), your story doesn't work anymore... articles don't get you that book-like kudos
archive link
Ah, I've been working on something the is tangential to this. I'm surprised that the author didn't bring up how people are using AI to do their reading for them.
here is an article about Andrew Tate not enjoying reading. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/slow-reading-books-benefits/686266/ give me a 300 word summary.I suspect many people are coming to rely on LLM generated summaries to facilitate their understanding of an article or a topic. You encounter an article that is too long or too complicated or too far afield from your areas of expertise and maybe you are in a rush, so instead of slogging through it you ask chat to give you a summary. Maybe you go back and forth with chat for a bit to really get it. And this is how you read the article.
The Herbert Simon quote you call out doesn't quite get to the real problem though. While lack of focus certainly is a real thing in the world, I think the trouble the author's really trying to get at is that people aren't being thoughtful, they aren't giving a good workout to their reasoning abilities.
In the same way that it is laughable to as an LLM to do your meditation hour for you, it is laughable to ask it to understand something for you -- yet it is so easy to feel like we approach understanding by querying chat.
It is often said that writing is thinking. And I believed this, only it's not the case with AI. People are forgetting that they can't outsource thinking, and this probably means that you can't outsource writing. Not that many people won't try...
Now I am become ChatGPT, destroyer of writing.
Illiterate 80iq diddler uninterested in books
more news at 11 🤣🤣
Why does/did anyone care what Andrew Tate thinks?
I know.
You could have written this article perfectly well without his involvement. Not sure why author/editors didn't
The Atlantic is globoslop first and foremost, so Tate makes for a convenient caricature to reinforce what they want you to take away... which is that their readers should feel virtuous for bearing through their bloviations instead of distilling from infinite sources of information