Reading Is Magic

4/12/2026 at 5:51:02 PM

> 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!

by aidenn0

4/12/2026 at 6:17:35 PM

> The correct thing to do if someone asks you a question with obviously false premises is to push back!

More generally, Luria completely ignores a key psychological dynamic that's in play as he tries to quiz these villagers: they're going to be suspicious of why he's even doing all this in the first place. What is he up to? And of course he was up to something: he was a agent of a horribly oppressive government that was trying to totally change the villagers' lives.

That kind of intellectually dominated "democracy" killed well over a hundred million people in the 20th century. And the people who promoted the horribly oppressive governments that did it--the Soviet Union, Mao's People's Republic of China, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, etc.--were among the most intellectually sophisticated and literate people on the planet.

None of this is to say that illiteracy and ignorance are good things. They're not. I'm much better off in my personal life being literate and knowledgeable. But literacy and knowledge have limits, and the people who want to dictate how entire societies should be organized and run based on their literacy and knowledge are in over their heads. Basic human instincts and intuitions, like the ones those villagers had that Luria completely missed, contain valuable information too.

by pdonis

4/12/2026 at 6:56:10 PM

> More generally, Luria completely ignores a key psychological dynamic that's in play as he tries to quiz these villagers: they're going to be suspicious of why he's even doing all this in the first place. What is he up to? And of course he was up to something: he was a agent of a horribly oppressive government that was trying to totally change the villagers' lives.

This doesn't explain the difference between the collective farm workers, who were actually forced by the government to change their lives, and the villagers who were not forced to change their lives. Why wouldn't the farm workers be even more suspicious, having already been victimized?

by lapcat

4/12/2026 at 7:09:49 PM

> the villagers who were not forced to change their lives

They were--they just hadn't been yet when Luria ran his experiments.

> Why wouldn't the farm workers be even more suspicious, having already been victimized?

They might have been, but they also knew from experience that "do whatever this party apparatchik asks you to do, no matter how pointless it seems" was a better strategy for staying alive.

Note that I am not arguing that the cognitive differences Luria observed were not real.

by pdonis

4/12/2026 at 7:24:43 PM

> They might have been, but they also knew from experience that "do whatever this party apparatchik asks you to do, no matter how pointless it seems" was a better strategy for staying alive.

Why didn't the villagers come to the same conclusion, especially since you're suggesting that the villagers were fearful of this person?

> Note that I am not arguing that the cognitive differences Luria observed were not real.

But that's the crucial question!

by lapcat

4/12/2026 at 8:25:19 PM

There's a difference between "I think this person might be up to something, but I don't know what" and " I know exactly what they're up to and it's in my best interest to avoid becoming an obstacle". Not all fear is the same.

by saghm

4/12/2026 at 7:48:54 PM

> Why didn't the villagers come to the same conclusion

Because they hadn't had the same experience--yet.

> you're suggesting that the villagers were fearful of this person

Not fearful, suspicious.

> that's the crucial question!

You don't think it's possible for both things to be true? That literacy caused significant cognitive changes, and that the psychological dynamic I described was in play? I don't see how those two things are mutually exclusive.

by pdonis

4/12/2026 at 8:14:36 PM

It's possible that the villagers were suspicious of Luria. It's also possible that the collective farm workers were suspicious of Luria. Don't you think it's possible for both of those to be true?

The question is, what explained the difference in behavior of the two groups with regard to Luria's questions? I don't see how suspicion is a plausible explanation for the difference. The villagers were clearly bold enough to talk to Luria, instead of avoiding him completely. They were also bold enough to refuse to entertain Luria's scenario. That could be considered a form of resistance to the Soviets, no? Given that the villagers were so bold, why would they even be afraid of entertaining the scenario in the first place? Are you claiming that they knew the answer to the question yet refused to say it? If so, why? If not, then the issue seems to be a failure of imagination rather than a matter of suspicion.

by lapcat

4/12/2026 at 9:12:51 PM

> It's possible that the villagers were suspicious of Luria. It's also possible that the collective farm workers were suspicious of Luria. Don't you think it's possible for both of those to be true?

Sure. But that doesn't mean that "suspicion" always has to lead to the same behavior. "Suspicion" doesn't exist in a vacuum. You have to look at all the factors involved.

> The question is, what explained the difference in behavior of the two groups with regard to Luria's questions?

And the answer is, there were multiple factors involved, and trying to pin it down to just one is a fool's errand.

> Are you claiming that they knew the answer to the question yet refused to say it?

No, I'm saying that Luria's claim that the only reason they gave the response to the question was a cognitive difference between them and the collective farm workers who had been taught to read, is way too simplistic. And more generally, that Luria only looking at that one aspect of the situation--the possible cognitive effects of illiterate vs. literate--and ignoring all other salient differences between the two groups--like the fact that the villagers hadn't yet been forced into collective farm work by the Soviet government, while the farm workers had--is way too simplistic.

by pdonis

4/12/2026 at 7:52:27 PM

> he was a agent of a horribly oppressive government that was trying to totally change the villagers' lives.

These were previously peasants still under feudal lords. Before somebody came to teach them under the communists, nobody cared if they were educated, or whether they lived or died.

This neo-John Bircherism masquerading as argument will always ignore the millions victims of tyrannical royals, or capitalist oligarchs in order to assign every death under communism as a death caused by communism. It's not even intellectually dishonest, it's not intellectual at all.

If Stalin didn't kill enough people for you that you still feel the need to inflate the numbers, it's an indication of how many murders you're willing to excuse for your preferred system: "We only killed 50 million!"

For a salient example, see the "60,000" protestors killed in Iran. What's a few exploded schoolgirls in comparison to that?

by pessimizer

4/12/2026 at 8:03:04 PM

> These were previously peasants still under feudal lords.

What feudal lords? From the article's description it seems like they were basically on their own before the Soviet Union came in.

> Before somebody came to teach them under the communists, nobody cared if they were educated, or whether they lived or died.

And you think the communists taught the peasants to read for the benefit of the peasants? It is to laugh.

> This neo-John Bircherism masquerading as argument will always ignore the millions victims of tyrannical royals, or capitalist oligarchs

I'm not ignoring them at all. Where did I say that it was perfectly okay for tyrannical royals or capitalist oligarchs to kill people?

Indeed, if you look at how societies under tyrannical royals or capitalist oligarchs are run, they basically have the same problem I described: one person, or a small elite, at the top thinks they know enough to run an entire society. But they don't. And their attempts to do it cause massive human suffering and death.

by pdonis

4/12/2026 at 10:42:12 PM

People who are illiterate and ignorant despite being intellectually capable were a burden to society and overal considered undesirable. The goal was to improve the quality of living for all people in society and educated workers, engineers and burocrats were needed

by mx7zysuj4xew

4/12/2026 at 11:06:00 PM

> The goal was to improve the quality of living for all people in society and educated workers, engineers and burocrats were needed

That was the claimed goal, yes. It didn't actually work out that way. Which is an example of the problem I described.

by pdonis

4/13/2026 at 1:37:45 AM

> What feudal lords? From the article's description it seems like they were basically on their own before the Soviet Union came in.

The Alai region was not "feudal" in the European sense but it was a tribal system where power was centralized in a layer of elite lords. While pastures were communal and not "owned" by individuals, livestock was private and literate, wealthy aristocratic elites owned massive herds using their prestige to command the loyalty of poorer tribal members

The Soviet government was actively working to replace the Arabic literacy of these elites with Latin and Cyrillic script to break the their influence

by CGMthrowaway

4/13/2026 at 5:22:40 AM

Yeah, I've a friend that'll react the same way. This reminds me of a question, why are a lot of early stories a fable? It's because it's the easiest way to discuss an abstract thing, to become something still concrete enough to imagine, but detached enough from reality to not create unnecessary problems.

by mcmoor

4/12/2026 at 8:16:17 PM

Yeah, I don't know why they couldn't just use made-up locations rather than ones that exist and didn't fit the intended question.

by saghm

4/12/2026 at 10:03:14 PM

>The correct thing to do if someone asks you a question with obviously false premises is to push back!

Being able to understand theoretical suppositions is a measure of intellectual maturity.

If I tell you "imagine I was made of iron, how much would I weight" as an exercise, an answer like "but you are not made of iron" shows inability for abstract thought.

Outside of scientific exercises: if I asked you what would you do if your significant other cheates on you, would you imagine yourself in the situation or would you answer that your partner is loyal/ that you're single?

by torben-friis

4/12/2026 at 7:33:10 PM

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.

by tripdout

4/12/2026 at 9:42:15 PM

>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.

"Imagine everything here was flooded and then the water leaves. The land would be left super muddy right? That's how much mud there is now".

I'm surprised it's a difficult phrase, I'm not even a native speaker.

The part with the stegosaurus is harder in that it relies on a biblical reference, but there is no way for it to be interpreted by a decent reader as a literal animal, it should at most make you wonder why he's suddenly bringing up that idea ("it would not be wonderful...).

by torben-friis

4/13/2026 at 1:18:39 AM

I guess I could see that, but if all the water left, it could be dry like a desert too.. (although even though that was my initial interpretation, I did understand that's not what he meant)

And yes even without the reference it's not that there's a literal animal there.

by tripdout

4/12/2026 at 8:31:00 PM

> Why does “as if the waters had but newly retired” mean there’s a lot of water (and thus mud)?

It doesn't. It means there's a lot of mud. It might help if you had the rest of the paragraph in front of you. It sets the scene for us with a bunch of sentence fragments -- bullet points, we would say. Here's the beginning of each of them:

    Michaelmas term lately over...
    Implacable November weather. 
    As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired... 
    Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle...
    Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. 
    Horses, scarcely better

... and so on.

And yes, modern audiences aren't attuned to biblical references.

by herdrick

4/13/2026 at 10:39:41 AM

So don't feel bad, is my point :)

by herdrick

4/12/2026 at 7:56:46 PM

> 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...

by vzaliva

4/13/2026 at 10:02:30 AM

There's a (very) big difference between reading weekly and reading a book in the past 12 months. I used to read a book or two in the past 12 months, back then it was on vacation to have something to do while lounging on the beach. Today I read a book every month and it's something I do instead of watching TV. I would not call my younger self a reader.

by worksonmine

4/12/2026 at 8:29:36 PM

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

by wilg

4/12/2026 at 6:32:35 PM

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.

by 65

4/12/2026 at 7:20:54 PM

There's a further argument being made here that being literate changes the way you'd interpret and understand a YouTube video as you absorbed that information.

by beej71

4/12/2026 at 7:55:37 PM

To be fair, author's point is more nuanced than "kids these days". He traces an evolution from: (i) an overly conservative but reality-based oral culture, to: (ii) a reality-detached and turbulent text-based culture, capable of envisioning our current technological era, back to (iii) another overly conservative oral culture. To me, the perceived threat seems to be how this second oral culture won't be based on direct experience of the real world, but on other people's (and AI's) interpretations of the former: taking the worst parts of both previous cultures (i.e. you can't think outside the box, and your box isn't even real).

by alrmrphc-atmtn

4/12/2026 at 10:10:53 PM

why are kids not reading? is this not very alarming? my oldest is 7 and reads every day, she has finished and re-read various 100-200ish page books, I remember being her age and getting lost in the pages of a good story, it’s def more than just sad to imagine a kid missing out on this

by luxuryballs