[HN Gopher] Reading Is Magic
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Reading Is Magic
Author : gHeadphone
Score : 44 points
Date : 2026-04-12 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (samkriss.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (samkriss.substack.com)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > The most upsetting of Luria's puzzles was a mathematical
| problem. He told his subjects that it took three hours to walk
| from their village to Vuadil, and six along the same road to
| Fergana: how long would it take to walk to Fergana from Vuadil?
| Again, every single one of the collective farm workers solved the
| problem, but the illiterate villagers knew very well that Fergana
| was actually closer than Vuadil, and refused to answer. Luria
| kept saying that it was just a scenario, but the villagers kept
| insisting that they couldn't entertain a scenario that
| contradicted actual reality. 'No!' one exploded. 'How can I solve
| a problem if it isn't so?'
|
| Is anyone besides me with the villagers on this one? The correct
| thing to do if someone asks you a question with obviously false
| premises is to push back!
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The correct thing to do if someone asks you a question with
| obviously false premises is to push back!_
|
| More generally, Luria completely ignores a key psychological
| dynamic that's in play as he tries to quiz these villagers:
| they're going to be suspicious of why he's even doing all this
| in the first place. What is he up to? And of course he _was_ up
| to something: he was a agent of a horribly oppressive
| government that was trying to totally change the villagers '
| lives.
|
| That kind of intellectually dominated "democracy" _killed well
| over a hundred million people in the 20th century_. And the
| people who promoted the horribly oppressive governments that
| did it--the Soviet Union, Mao 's People's Republic of China,
| the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, etc.--were among the most
| intellectually sophisticated and literate people on the planet.
|
| None of this is to say that illiteracy and ignorance are good
| things. They're not. I'm much better off in my personal life
| being literate and knowledgeable. But literacy and knowledge
| have limits, and the people who want to dictate how entire
| societies should be organized and run based on their literacy
| and knowledge are in over their heads. Basic human instincts
| and intuitions, like the ones those villagers had that Luria
| completely missed, contain valuable information too.
| lapcat wrote:
| > More generally, Luria completely ignores a key
| psychological dynamic that's in play as he tries to quiz
| these villagers: they're going to be suspicious of why he's
| even doing all this in the first place. What is he up to? And
| of course he was up to something: he was a agent of a
| horribly oppressive government that was trying to totally
| change the villagers' lives.
|
| This doesn't explain the difference between the collective
| farm workers, who were actually forced by the government to
| change their lives, and the villagers who were not forced to
| change their lives. Why wouldn't the farm workers be even
| _more_ suspicious, having already been victimized?
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the villagers who were not forced to change their lives_
|
| They were--they just hadn't been _yet_ when Luria ran his
| experiments.
|
| _> Why wouldn 't the farm workers be even more suspicious,
| having already been victimized?_
|
| They might have been, but they also knew from experience
| that "do whatever this party apparatchik asks you to do, no
| matter how pointless it seems" was a better strategy for
| staying alive.
|
| Note that I am not arguing that the cognitive differences
| Luria observed were not real.
| lapcat wrote:
| > They might have been, but they also knew from
| experience that "do whatever this party apparatchik asks
| you to do, no matter how pointless it seems" was a better
| strategy for staying alive.
|
| Why didn't the villagers come to the same conclusion,
| especially since you're suggesting that the villagers
| were fearful of this person?
|
| > Note that I am not arguing that the cognitive
| differences Luria observed were not real.
|
| But that's the crucial question!
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Why didn 't the villagers come to the same conclusion_
|
| Because they hadn't had the same experience--yet.
|
| _> you 're suggesting that the villagers were fearful of
| this person_
|
| Not fearful, suspicious.
|
| _> that 's the crucial question!_
|
| You don't think it's possible for _both_ things to be
| true? That literacy caused significant cognitive changes,
| _and_ that the psychological dynamic I described was in
| play? I don 't see how those two things are mutually
| exclusive.
| lapcat wrote:
| It's possible that the villagers were suspicious of
| Luria. It's also possible that the collective farm
| workers were suspicious of Luria. Don't you think it's
| possible for both of those to be true?
|
| The question is, what explained the difference in
| behavior of the two groups with regard to Luria's
| questions? I don't see how suspicion is a plausible
| explanation for the difference. The villagers were
| clearly bold enough to talk to Luria, instead of avoiding
| him completely. They were also bold enough to refuse to
| entertain Luria's scenario. That could be considered a
| form of resistance to the Soviets, no? Given that the
| villagers were so bold, why would they even be afraid of
| entertaining the scenario in the first place? Are you
| claiming that they knew the answer to the question yet
| refused to say it? If so, why? If not, then the issue
| seems to be a failure of imagination rather than a matter
| of suspicion.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> It 's possible that the villagers were suspicious of
| Luria. It's also possible that the collective farm
| workers were suspicious of Luria. Don't you think it's
| possible for both of those to be true?_
|
| Sure. But that doesn't mean that "suspicion" always has
| to lead to the same behavior. "Suspicion" doesn't exist
| in a vacuum. You have to look at all the factors
| involved.
|
| _> The question is, what explained the difference in
| behavior of the two groups with regard to Luria 's
| questions?_
|
| And the answer is, there were multiple factors involved,
| and trying to pin it down to just one is a fool's errand.
|
| _> Are you claiming that they knew the answer to the
| question yet refused to say it?_
|
| No, I'm saying that Luria's claim that the _only_ reason
| they gave the response to the question was a cognitive
| difference between them and the collective farm workers
| who had been taught to read, is way too simplistic. And
| more generally, that Luria _only_ looking at that one
| aspect of the situation--the possible cognitive effects
| of illiterate vs. literate--and ignoring all other
| salient differences between the two groups--like the fact
| that the villagers hadn 't yet been forced into
| collective farm work by the Soviet government, while the
| farm workers had--is way too simplistic.
| saghm wrote:
| There's a difference between "I think this person might
| be up to something, but I don't know what" and " I know
| exactly what they're up to and it's in my best interest
| to avoid becoming an obstacle". Not all fear is the same.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > he was a agent of a horribly oppressive government that was
| trying to totally change the villagers' lives.
|
| These were previously peasants still under feudal lords.
| Before somebody came to teach them under the communists,
| nobody cared if they were educated, or whether they lived or
| died.
|
| This neo-John Bircherism masquerading as argument will always
| ignore the millions victims of tyrannical royals, or
| capitalist oligarchs in order to assign every death _under_
| communism as a death caused by communism. It 's not even
| intellectually dishonest, it's not intellectual at all.
|
| If _Stalin_ didn 't kill enough people for you that you still
| feel the need to inflate the numbers, it's an indication of
| how many murders you're willing to excuse for your preferred
| system: "We only killed 50 million!"
|
| For a salient example, see the "60,000" protestors killed in
| Iran. What's a few exploded schoolgirls in comparison to
| that?
| pdonis wrote:
| _> These were previously peasants still under feudal
| lords._
|
| What feudal lords? From the article's description it seems
| like they were basically on their own before the Soviet
| Union came in.
|
| _> Before somebody came to teach them under the
| communists, nobody cared if they were educated, or whether
| they lived or died._
|
| And you think the communists taught the peasants to read
| for the benefit of the peasants? It is to laugh.
|
| _> This neo-John Bircherism masquerading as argument will
| always ignore the millions victims of tyrannical royals, or
| capitalist oligarchs_
|
| I'm not ignoring them at all. Where did I say that it was
| perfectly okay for tyrannical royals or capitalist
| oligarchs to kill people?
|
| Indeed, if you look at how societies under tyrannical
| royals or capitalist oligarchs are run, they basically have
| the same problem I described: one person, or a small elite,
| at the top thinks they know enough to run an entire
| society. But they don't. And their attempts to do it cause
| massive human suffering and death.
| mx7zysuj4xew wrote:
| People who are illiterate and ignorant despite being
| intellectually capable were a burden to society and
| overal considered undesirable. The goal was to improve
| the quality of living for all people in society and
| educated workers, engineers and burocrats were needed
| saghm wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know why they couldn't just use made-up locations
| rather than ones that exist and didn't fit the intended
| question.
| torben-friis wrote:
| >The correct thing to do if someone asks you a question with
| obviously false premises is to push back!
|
| Being able to understand theoretical suppositions is a measure
| of intellectual maturity.
|
| If I tell you "imagine I was made of iron, how much would I
| weight" as an exercise, an answer like "but you are not made of
| iron" shows inability for abstract thought.
|
| Outside of scientific exercises: if I asked you what would you
| do if your significant other cheates on you, would you imagine
| yourself in the situation or would you answer that your partner
| is loyal/ that you're single?
| 65 wrote:
| What the author fails to understand is that merely consuming text
| is not the be-all-end-all of being an educated citizen. I am wary
| of trusting an author who is screaming from the rooftops about
| how the bad thing is coming, how the world sucks so much more
| now.
|
| It's my opinion that writing is by far a more effective way to
| understand the world and the nuance in it. You could,
| theoretically, watch a video on YouTube, understand it, think
| about it, and then write out your thoughts and ideas and would be
| far more educated than someone merely reading a novel.
|
| There is always a strange disconnect with egg head types where
| they fail to understand that information input is not the only
| way to become smart. And valuable information exists everywhere:
| a book, a blog entry, a podcast, a video, a movie, in the real
| world, etc. Thinking that text, which by the way is one of the
| most inefficient methods of information consumption, is the only
| way to be "smart" is incorrect. Critical thinking is what is
| desperately needed.
| beej71 wrote:
| There's a further argument being made here that being literate
| changes the way you'd interpret and understand a YouTube video
| as you absorbed that information.
| alrmrphc-atmtn wrote:
| To be fair, author's point is more nuanced than "kids these
| days". He traces an evolution from: (i) an overly conservative
| but reality-based oral culture, to: (ii) a reality-detached and
| turbulent text-based culture, capable of envisioning our
| current technological era, back to (iii) another overly
| conservative oral culture. To me, the perceived threat seems to
| be how this second oral culture won't be based on direct
| experience of the real world, but on other people's (and AI's)
| interpretations of the former: taking the worst parts of both
| previous cultures (i.e. you can't think outside the box, and
| your box isn't even real).
| tripdout wrote:
| I actually don't understand the meaning of that sentence in
| Dickens fully either.
|
| > As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly
| retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful
| to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an
| elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
|
| Why does "as if the waters had but newly retired" mean there's a
| lot of water (and thus mud)? "As much mud as" clued me in, but I
| don't get this part.
|
| And apparently it's also referencing not just some flood but the
| flood of Noah's Ark from the Bible, which is why you might happen
| to see a dinosaur because it was such a long time ago. I guess I
| don't come across many opportunities to think of / that remind me
| of Noah's Ark because I didn't think of that either.
| herdrick wrote:
| > Why does "as if the waters had but newly retired" mean
| there's a lot of water (and thus mud)?
|
| It doesn't. It means there's a lot of mud. It might help if you
| had the rest of the paragraph in front of you. It sets the
| scene for us with a bunch of sentence fragments -- bullet
| points, we would say. Here's the beginning of each of them:
| Michaelmas term lately over... Implacable November
| weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters
| had but newly retired... Smoke lowering down from
| chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle... Dogs,
| undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better
|
| ... and so on.
|
| And yes, modern audiences aren't attuned to biblical
| references.
| torben-friis wrote:
| >Why does "as if the waters had but newly retired" mean there's
| a lot of water (and thus mud)? "As much mud as" clued me in,
| but I don't get this part.
|
| "Imagine everything here was flooded and then the water leaves.
| The land would be left super muddy right? That's how much mud
| there is now".
|
| I'm surprised it's a difficult phrase, I'm not even a native
| speaker.
|
| The part with the stegosaurus is harder in that it relies on a
| biblical reference, but there is no way for it to be
| interpreted by a decent reader as a literal animal, it should
| at most make you wonder why he's suddenly bringing up that idea
| ("it would not be wonderful...).
| vzaliva wrote:
| > Russians are essentially the only truly literate people left.
| The vast majority of Russians read regularly, more than anywhere
| else in the world.
|
| Not really.
|
| According to Nielsen, 59% of Russians read at least weekly. High,
| but not the highest in the world, and behind China:
|
| https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/commentary/2017/maj...
|
| Several European countries have a very strong reading rates, some
| exceeding 70% of adults reading books annually:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
| wilg wrote:
| Starting with a pitch for Jacobin is a pretty bad sign.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| why are kids not reading? is this not very alarming? my oldest is
| 7 and reads every day, she has finished and re-read various
| 100-200ish page books, I remember being her age and getting lost
| in the pages of a good story, it's def more than just sad to
| imagine a kid missing out on this
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