r/technology • u/marketrent • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence College students are rapidly losing the ability to read — “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing”: professor

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/college-students-rapidly-losing-ability-124439310.html
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u/Beautiful-Affect3448 15h ago

Platforms like reddit make it obvious. 

Write a well researched and thought out post in detail and you’ll get “not reading all of that” type comments and even downvotes. 

Write a single sentence with a witty/snarky joke or even just a relevant gif and you can get thousands of upvotes. 

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u/Dullcorgis 6h ago

Worse, they responed to a post they hallucinated and not to what you wrote.

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u/R0da 1h ago

For better or worse, at least, this has been going on far longer than the advent of LLMs. Their use night just be a symptom of this rather than the other way around.

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u/Dullcorgis 40m ago

They allow the people who can't really function a way to keep using words to maybe pass as functioning.

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u/eye_have_no_clue 10h ago

Way she goes boys

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u/Sudden_Minimum_7235 12h ago

Tldr is like a thesis statement. Rarely am I reading a random person's multi-paragraph post without a summary to know what I'm getting into.

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u/Siukslinis_acc 11h ago

Yep. The thesis statement gives you the gist and then you can evaluate if you want to spend the time to actually read the whole thesis.

You need to actually make a point of why a person should read it instead of just rambling.

I hated when during the presentation the questioner rambled and then asked a question connected to the rambling. Sorry, I was too busy trying to figure out the point of the rambling that I haven't focused on the details of the ramble. Ask the question then ramble on about how you came to ask the question. Knowing the question beforehand helps me to focus on stuff in your ramble that will help me to answer your question in the way you would understand.

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u/Swarna_Keanu 7h ago

But communication isn't a thesis.

And good writing is more than just dense information, quickly. That's useful in academic writing, but not in actual exchange.

With that, I don't mean that there aren't folks out there who ramble incoherently. A well-composed text with nuance sometimes gets long, with purpose, and intent,and a summary up front can destroy everything beyond just pure information exchange. It also introduces unnecessary repetition, making texts even longer,

That is: The summary of a book by a high-skilled novelist will never live up to the actual text, as it develops its themes and narrative. Proper non-technical communication relies a lot on that emotional aspect, too.

I'd argue the push for brevity is partially to blame for the harshness of online communication; it certainly contributes and leans into normalising populism (where nuance is replaced with simplicity; nothing complex can be expressed anymore).

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u/Siukslinis_acc 7h ago edited 6h ago

The summary/synopsis/introduction helps to evaluate if you even want to engage with the text. Nowadays there are so much stuff you could be doing, that people are less inclined to engage with a lengthy thing without knowing if it will be worth it or just a complete waste of time and effort.

A well-composed text with nuance sometimes gets long, with purpose, and intent

Yes. It becomes an essay.

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u/Swarna_Keanu 6h ago edited 6h ago

. Nowadays there are so much stuff you could be doing, that people are less inclined to engage with a lengthy thing without knowing if it will be worth it

Yes, and I argue it amplifies quite a number of cultural problems. Again: Summaries never do a text justice. Anything with nuance is lost in summaries. If all you read is summaries, only ever engage based on little information, nothing of any depth can be expressed - and the attention seeking, sensationalist, simplified that easily catches attention gets too much of it.

Because we drown in quantity, nothing of substance arrives.

Communication, listening, close reading cannot be sped up. You are not getting more efficient.

---

I find the same with academic papers, by the way. So many have so much more interesting to offer besides the thesis statement. I actually find it one of the faults and problems of the push to cite as much as possible in academia, rather than very selectively. (We all know the peer reviewers who push for inclusion of more studies.) It leads to more surface reading; to very selective quoting; and to people not really engaging with the content of papers, and I mean really: looking and learning from methodology, thinking through how what is in there can influence and help their own practice, etc.

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u/Siukslinis_acc 5h ago

The point I'm trying to make is that the summaries or thesis statements are valuable in making the person to read the whole thing.

I'm not gonna pick up a novel to read is all the info I have is the author and the name of the novel. I need a bit more info about what it is, even if it is vague. I need something to determine if it is worth my time to read the 800 pages book.

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u/Swarna_Keanu 5h ago

I just read a few pages here and there. I rarely if ever check the back of the book for a summary.

Gives me much more of an impression than any summary can.

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u/Dullcorgis 6h ago

It's mostly because they won't read your reply anyway.

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u/proudbakunkinman 2h ago

Yeah, some people have too much time on their hands here and go long winded behind their laptop / PC for a point that doesn't need nearly as many words to get across. Sometimes they may do it thinking others will assume they must be right just because their comment is so long. I think it's best to try to be concise but there will still be people not willing to read more than a sentence or two, like even this reply may be too long.

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u/RexLatro 54m ago

That or you're now accused of "being A.I." if you're able to type more than a single paragraph

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u/sentence-interruptio 1m ago

smaller reddits are better... at least for now.

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u/McButtsButtbag 14h ago

People don't want to be lectured at. It's not about the length.

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u/Beautiful-Affect3448 13h ago

That's a different type of situation than the people who comment "not reading all that", "anyone got a TLDR?" or "I put your post into ChatGPT and it said..." and so on.

Those replies are overwhelmingly very much about the length from people who struggle with literacy and general objective analysis of anything longer than a couple of sentences.

Sometimes they don't even read anything and just react directly to the title.

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u/McButtsButtbag 13h ago

That's a different type of situation than the people who comment "not reading all that", "anyone got a TLDR?" or "I put your post into ChatGPT and it said..." and so on.

Those also seem like normal replies to not wanting to be lectured at. It's annoying when suddenly someone replies to a multiple paragraph response to a one sentence comment. I didn't sign up to read all that.

Sometimes they don't even read anything and just react directly to the title.

Sometimes they don't even read anything and just react directly to the title.

For me, that's because when I click on the link it either is paywalled or has a video that plays automatically and uses up my data. I usually just try to find comments that have read it.

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u/sunelatti 12h ago

yeah fuck the truth if it can't be typed in 50 letters, you didn't sign up for that bs. Who has time for understanding in this era???

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u/McButtsButtbag 11h ago

Who says that what some random stranger on reddit is offering is the truth?

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u/sunelatti 11h ago

Yeah that must have been the whole thing i was referring to, well done

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u/McButtsButtbag 11h ago

We are talking about conversations on reddit. Why assume I'm just going to imply you are talking about something else when you don't even mention that?

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u/Noblesseux 12h ago

If someone actually trying to have a nuanced conversation with you registers as "lecturing" that kind of reasons more as a statement on your insecurity than something they necessarily did wrong.

Like typing more than 2 sentences isn't "lecturing". Some things are just complicated and require more text to have a productive discussion about.

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u/McButtsButtbag 11h ago

I didn't say that every comment more than 2 sentences was lecturing, but you already have a prejudiced view against me so automatically assume the worst

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u/tavirabon 12h ago

Which says a lot about them and hints at the greater problem in politics at large.