Reading Is Magic

> 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!

Starting with a pitch for Jacobin is a pretty bad sign.

> 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...

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.

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.