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delis-thumbs-7e 6 minutes ago [-]
I have no idea, but with ADHD and all, I have taken recently the habit of reading aloud, especially course texts, doc’s and other boring stuff I easily get distracted with. I pretend to be a BBC 4 broadcaster. It seems to work. After awhile you can stop and just read silently.
itchingsphynx 1 hours ago [-]
It’s worth recalling that mass literacy is only about 300 years old, so the modern culture of reading is about as recent as the United States, which is probably itself a consequence of mass literacy. Ironically, today it’s also probably leading the decline in mass literacy. Maybe book-reading will eventually become an anachronistic hobby, although even Thomas Jefferson made this prophecy too [1].
“Acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.” [2]
Not sure. Since LLM's have their spot, I, personally, have been reading much more. And I was no slouch when it came to consuming written materials.
Sure, some of it is slop, some of it is pretty good. But I did read more.
2 hours ago [-]
xhevahir 2 hours ago [-]
There's been a lot of debate over the years about what exactly it was that Ambrose was doing differently, and whether silent reading was really so uncommon in antiquity.
monideas 38 minutes ago [-]
“Now Hannah was praying in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard.”
Samuel 1:13
The Hebrew says literally “speaking on her heart”
hizlikovboy27 1 hours ago [-]
the Augustine passage is a fascinating piece of evidence, but i wonder how much we can infer from it about the wider reading habits of the ancient world.
rob74 42 minutes ago [-]
To get to that, we have to first think about the literacy rate in antiquity, which is estimated at 5 to 10%. And of those, most could probably read well enough to get by, but didn't routinely read longer texts. So someone who was well-enough versed in reading to not have to read the text out loud in order to understand it was probably a rare and noteworthy creature indeed...
BariumBlue 8 minutes ago [-]
I would imagine most reading would be "let me read that sign" and not much else. To most folks, writing was probably logographs - "Ah, I've seen that collection of letters before, that meant 'pub' "
js8 36 minutes ago [-]
And you can't read long texts if there aren't that many to begin with. But it raises a question - why didn't China, which invented printing press earlier, didn't fare better?
“Acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.” [2]
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...
2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03205520
Sure, some of it is slop, some of it is pretty good. But I did read more.
Samuel 1:13
The Hebrew says literally “speaking on her heart”