Joel Miller:
If there is an instrumental case for reading that does pass the substitution test, it rests upon the one thing books can do better than any other medium or activity. Books represent the only technology our species has devised for spending immersive, extended time inside another mind. AI, movies, music, social media, games, and sports are great. I enjoy them all. But none serve as “a technology for perspective-taking” in Steven Pinker’s phrase, certainly not to the same extent; they lack the immersive, expressive, time-qualities required.
SBF was not wrong about the cost-benefit; books are stairs, not an elevator. Rather, he was wrong about what books are for. Lewis said a primary feature of unliterary reading was reading for the use of the book. If you reduce reading to the utility it provides, you will eventually find other things to do. If you read because you love the adventure of taking up temporary residence in the mind and heart of another human being, you’ll never stop.
Beyond that, there are cultural and psychological dynamics at play. “All serious intellectual work happens on the page,” says Mastroianni. Despite the forces arrayed against it, reading wins because nothing else can do what text can do. “Videos can titillate, podcasts can inform, but there’s only one way to get that feeling of your brain folds stretching and your soul expanding, and it is to drag your eyes across text.”
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