As someone who also dabbles in writing fiction (unpublished) I'm less pessimistic. I keep hearing less people read and the end of long form writing is near. To me this signals a great time to write and publish because the smaller the niche, the happier the people who get quality stuff in it.

The "book bubble" of avid readers is the most anti-AI community I am a member of which is a very interesting perspective (I do research in AI as my main job). I don't touch AI for writing/editing etc. because I see it as a creative endeavor and enjoy spending time with a blank piece of paper or an empty latex file :D

> We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus (...)

Yes, true, but that's also very much a thing you can do something about by, well: reading books.

It's a technique we must preserve for the good of our culture, but, also, in a society full of people who have forgotten how to, an individual superpower.

That offers no solution to the masses, only the individual. The former its a much more difficult and demanding discussion.

How so? The masses are composed of individuals... who can commit to continuing to read.

Are you talking about incentives?

The mass is more than the sum of its parts, and if only a small minority exercise critical thinking they will be overwhelmed by the whole. As the great comic wrote - those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but those who learn from history are doomed to stand by helplessly as everyone else repeats it.

And furthermore, a democracy can not survive if the majority of the voter base is incapable of critical thinking. It needs to be better than even a simple majority. It worked in the Colonies because the citizens were mostly middle class independent farmers, for whom critical thinking was essential. And even after the second industrial revolution, small business continued to be the cornerstone of the economy. The political landscape will mirror the economic one, and our economy is now ruled by petty tyrants.

For someone literate you should probably know better.

First of all the Patriots were not even a simple majority. Turns out you don't need a majority to win what is basically a war of insurgency. There are several modern analogs that reflect this reality.

Second of all the country was founded by elites. It wasn't that farmers could do critical thinking (whatever that really means) it was that the punitive British response aligned economic incentives across class, and across North and South. So a large enough slice of the populace was ready to be sufficiently bought in on the propaganda of a few outstanding men.

Thirdly, your conception of history is wrong. Small elites always rule societies. America was not a democracy at its founding, that is if you take democracy to be the 21st century standard of universal suffrage. Societies are less about some arbitrary standard of critical thinking and more a contingent set of circumstances and incentives.

It's a bit ironic in your rather tired critique of modern culture you reveal another truth - those who complain about the contemporary intelligence of the masses often leave much to be desired in their own supposed superiority.

You should read more.

These remarks about how they'd agree with you if only they'd read more or how they aren't as superior to others as they think, these make your comment worse and emotional. Just make your case like you would in any other comment. If it's persuasive, then you look right and they look misinformed.

This kind of response is why we can't talk about all sorts of hot button topics on HN: people get personal. I'm sometimes guilty of it myself.

Who is being emotional? You must be projecting.

I elucidated three facts as to why they were mistaken. If they were more well read these facts would have been obvious to them. It's rather straightforward.

What are you offering? An off topic diagnosis of my mental state? I suggest you take your own advice, and offer a meaningful rejoinder to the facts in question if you have one. If not, I would remind you not commenting is always an option.

holy hell I enjoy an acerbic takedown as much as the next guy but this is beyond the pale.

given that we do now live in a society with a universal right to vote the need for an educated populace esp. regarding matters of civil society is more important than ever.

You've also misinterpreted the parent comment as they wrote nothing about contemporary intelligence. They're instead referring to structural forces that negatively impact critical thinking. See: the glut of commentary from otherwise highly intelligent and accomplished people reporting their own ability to focus being negatively impacted by social media and short-form content.

Furthermore, this is why the old school shared media outlets (the whole "back when everybody watched Walter Cronkite every night" thing) was so valuable. Few of us have the time to consider the issues with any degree of nuance or accuracy. So it's a real problem when the collective "source of truth" is poisoned by a horde of uncertified, often anonymous, charlatans spewing outright lies and incendiary half-truths, distributed at scale via algorithms designed to divide and inflame.

disclaimer: i'm fiercely anti-democracy, esp. with universal suffrage, for the exact reasons you cited.

> See: the glut of commentary from otherwise highly intelligent and accomplished people reporting their own ability to focus being negatively impacted by social media and short-form content.

Many people have long abandoned these platforms. No one is making you engage with them. These are not new problems. Famous example: Zuckerberg keeps his own family off his apps.

Your fourth paragraph is misinformed. Valorizing the Cronkite era is profoundly simplistic and boring. Humans always come up with alternative media. Conspiracies and half truths pervade every age. This entire internet ecosystem came up when the mainstream lied about the rationale for the Iraq War. Manufacturing Consent was written pre internet.

This paragraph also contains a contradiction with a statement you raise in your second paragraph as self-evident, given you offer no justification:

> given that we do now live in a society with a universal right to vote the need for an educated populace esp. regarding matters of civil society is more important than ever.

But in the fourth paragraph:

> Few of us have the time to consider the issues with any degree of nuance or accuracy.

So the populace must be educated but we need someone to tell us what to think because we have no time? Why is it so obvious that a society with universal suffrage requires an educated populace, vs say a populace simply capable of comprehending the instructions of an educated Cronkite?

Disclaimer: these are the contradictions raised by your own manner of framing the debate. The fact you missed this tension among neighboring paragraphs is something you have to account for. This is not the only such contradiction in your response fwiw, but hopefully you will grasp the nature of my point.

Do you not hear in your own arguments the same echoes of the uncritical pablum - the "glut" you also describe in contradictory terms - that passes for social commentary on "social media and short-form content" these days?

I merely suggest that you are just not thinking about these problems hard enough. Sorry, I'm not trying to cross some line, it just reads as obvious to me, on a critical evaluation of your statements. Why holding your statements to a high standard would be "beyond the pale" I'm not sure. You should spend less time online and reading more history. You would know better.

Here is something that may encourage you along these lines:

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus & Thucydides, for Newton & Euclid; & I find myself much the happier."

- Jefferson letter to John Adams, 1812.

Best of luck in your reading.

I was sure someone was going to say that.

Culture can change surprisingly quickly, but it certainly won't change in ways you like if you're not doing your part.

Already, young people and the ways they use online media are quite different from people my age, and I'm not that old.

I see a lot of young parents reading to their children, making sure they grow up with a love of books, very concerned about their consumption of social media.

Backlash against the shallowness and divisiveness of social media is not niche anymore.

It needs a little more pushing, a little more time, a little more being an example for yourself and others.

What's certainly not going to help is throwing your arms in the air and submitting to the all powerful social media overlords.

Technology like digital media and AI certainly have an impact, which will only increase - but things are not that black and white. All we need is to look at the history of similar technological advances we have seen in the past.

We have cars; but people still walk, ride bicycles and even horses. We have rhythm machines and synthesisers, and people still play drums and other instruments.

So we will keep writing and reading. A lot of specific details about how we are doing either will change, but the activities will still be there.