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JohnMakin | on: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
I am as baffled at the responses and appreciated this explanation as it was helpful to me to work on my communication style and expresses a lot of similar frustrations I have. Like what is actually going on here? this isn’t shade at anyone, I just feel like people are losing some fundamental ability to deduce from context what they are reading. it’s doubly concerning because people immediately reach to an AI/LLM to explain it for them, which cannot possibly be helping the first problem.
lee-rhapsody | parent | next
Agree. This entire thread is weird. How do so many people in this thread have such obvious reading comprehension issues?

On a similar note--I've noticed that HN comments are often overwrought, like the commenter is trying to sound smarter than they actually are but just end up muddling what they're trying to say.

Perhaps these things are connected.

Nevermark | parent
If an LLM clears up a misunderstanding, I am having trouble seeing that as a bad thing.

Maybe in 10 years we can blame poor reading comprehension on having a decade of computers reading for us. But it’s a bit early for that.

firesteelrain | root | parent | next
Who will think if LLM is doing all the thinking?
dontlikeyoueith | root | parent
The problem is that people already have piss-poor reading comprehension. Relying LLMs to help them is going to make it worse than it already is.
JohnMakin | root | parent
I wonder what is going on? I’ve noticed this getting worse for a long time to the point I’m not sure it’s my imagination anymore. I usually like to lambast whole word reading as a complete failure in the american school system that contributes to this, but I think it’s likely something else. Shorter attention spans?
Nevermark | root | parent
Long form reading is dying.

We have a multitude of immediate distractions now.

Books build richer worlds & ideas. But without learning to love books very early in life, which takes a lot of uninterrupted time, they don’t come naturally to most.

I used to read a few books a week, virtually every week. Sometimes two or three in a long day and some night. I still read a lot daily, interesting and useful things in short form. But finding time to read books seems to have become more difficult.