Asmongold TV - American Literacy Crisis is real.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

American Literacy Crisis is real.. Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. -------- Keywords: game reviews, mmo gaming, gaming news, gaming hot takes, gaming commentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

40% of Americans can't read? What? Everywhere you look, you will see the headlines. Kids these days don't know how to read. Literacy is on the decline. Kids don't read for pleasure anymore. What? Some want to say that we are living through a literacy crisis. You'll even see some claim that 40% of American kids can't read. That's not true, by the way, and we're going to talk about that later in this video. Are we living through a literacy crisis? Or is this just a long-standing failure dressed up as something new? Okay.

understand the American literacy crisis, you need to know three numbers. First up, 40%. That's the percentage of American fourth graders who cannot read at what's called a basic level. Every few years. Nine years old? Here, students around the country take a test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the N-A-E-P. This is also sometimes called the Nations Report Card. Yeah. And it allows us to track educational progress throughout the country. It's nice. Reading scores have remained relatively stable since 1992 until 2019 when they started to decline. Sometimes that's reported as saying that 40% of students can't read, but that's not what those statistics mean.

So now 40% of fourth graders can't read at what's considered a basic level, and only 31% can read at what's considered a proficient level. The NAEP also defines those terms, and just because a kid can't read at a basic level doesn't mean that they can't read. But the literacy crisis... That sounds like they can't read, bro. Man, that's making me think that they can't read. read. Yeah, I'm getting worried about this. Like, we used to have a kid, uh, he like 10 or 11,

he couldn't read. And we'd be driving around. Then he'd be asking his little sister to read the signs for him. And we called this kid retarded so much that he learned how to read. Doesn't stop at elementary schools. And that brings us to our second number, 28%. Are we bullied them in the reading? That's the share of U.S. adults that are at the lowest level of literacy. Wait, wait, hold on. Hold on. Let me listen. Number 28%. That's the share of U.S. adults that are at the lowest level of literacy.

28% of adults. So the top performers are going down and the bottom performers are going up. That sounds pretty bad. In the last decade, that number has increased by nine points. It doesn't mean that those adults... Well, wait a minute. Nine points. That's 50 points.

percent almost. Because the scale was at 20 to begin with. So nine points sounds like it's not a lot. But when you start at 20 and you go up by nine, that is insane. It's can't read, but it does mean that they are what's called functionally illiterate. This means that they lack literacy skills, which would allow them to navigate the world and go about their day-to-day tasks. Oh my God. And our final number is 21.

That's Mississippi's ranking in fourth grade literacy. as of 2022. In 2013, Mississippi was ranked 49th. They were basically at the bottom of the country's rankings, and now they are well above the middle. And that's because they solved the problem, and they actually tried to solve it. So they taught the kids had to read? So at the end of this video, we're going to talk about what Mississippi has done right. But first, we're going to take a slightly closer look at that NAEP data. Literacy scores have been declining since 2019. This might not that surprising because something everybody knows this happened in 2020 which caused a lot of school closures and we've generally seen learning loss across the board absenteeism is learning loss is not

have you guys ever seen like you ever been to a local restaurant or something like that and you had the restaurant had to write a write something out like with like handwriting and like all the words are spelled wrong also up post-covid which does complicate actually teaching kids out our One group of students hasn't seen a decline in their test scores though. These are students who are already in the 90th percentile. So what we're seeing is a widening gap between those students who are reading quite well and those students who are struggling to read at a basic level. This tells us something important.

So they're dumb and they're getting dumber. To improve American literacy, the biggest impact we can have is by focusing on those students who are struggling to read the most. And that's going to be important when we talk about Mississippi in a few minutes. But even those top performing students, like the students who would go on to study, at really great colleges and universities are also struggling. At the University of Texas here in Austin, some professors told their school newspaper

that they would be shortening reading assignments and transitioning to assigning things like YouTube videos and audiobooks instead of physical. This is UT. I have friends that graduate from UT. Fuck. Does this mean that I have a degree from University of Texas because I'm a React streamer?

Like, do I get course credit at UT right now? I should, right? Physical books because students simply didn't have the patience for the reading assignments anymore. One professor was told by his students that Shakespeare's Hamlet was too long to read. Now, Hamlet is the long... DLDR. DLDR for Hamlet? I love this.

This is amazing. Oh my God. Shakespeare play, but it is about 30,000 words. It's much shorter than the vast majority of... That's nothing. I've read Twitlongers that are longer than that. These professors cited things like the rise of video content, but also phone usage, as leading to a decline in their student's reading abilities. But they've decided that they have to give in and change with the times so that they can meet their students where they are.

That same professor who was told that Hamlet was too long, he used to teach... They don't need to meet the students where they are. The students need to meet the school where it is. This is embarrassing. Because this school is going to be churning out retards. Like whenever you are working at like an engineering factory or an engineering plant, you're going to get a sheet of paper and it's going to have instructions. And there isn't going to be a TikTok video that's going to explain it to you. If the Bible has 700K words, yeah, I know.

Like there's plenty of books that have way more. Like my dad has like a copy of the Brothers Karamats off just randomly on the floor. The things like this fucking thick. So, no, this is, it's out, this is outrageous. And I'm not a reader. I'm not, I don't like reading. But even I know this is ridiculous. 10 plays per semester, he's now teaching six in his classes.

So even college students at good schools are struggling to read. And many of them are going to become adults who hardly read at all. That's right. Many Americans simply don't read books. And I think about 10% of college graduate. It's haven't read a book in the last year. They don't know how to read. I don't read books.

I don't. There are a waste of time. Like I just, I don't read for pleasure. The only thing that I read for is information. I spend hours everyday reading, but I don't read books. Maybe that's because they haven't been taught how to be a good reader. All right, let's pause for a second and ask ourselves what it means to be a good reader. The psychologist Daniel Willing,

Cam has this book called The Reading Mind. And in this book, he points out that reading is actually a fairly demanding task. First, you have to be able to understand the words on the page. And that's usually what we mean when we say that we're teaching kids to read. But actually reading involves three additional levels of representation. You need to be able to extract ideas from sentences. You need to be able to then connect the idea across those sentences. You're out. That's it.

No, I can see why we're having problems. Yep, I get it. Immediately. Yep, this totally makes sense. And then you integrate this within a model in my mind. Okay. Settle down. All right, all right.

This is, I'm out, bro. Like, people misunderstand tweets. You think they're going to be all to read a book? No. that answers the question of what the text is about. And Willingham notes that many readers fail at the second level. They're not able to point out obvious contradictions in a paragraph that they read. If you're not reading at a level where you could even catch obvious contradictions,

then you're going to struggle when you're reading sets of instructions or complicated forms. And really that contributes to what we called functional illiteracy before. That's that illiteracy that... It's like you can read, but you can't ever read when it matters. You can only read when it doesn't matter. You can read the sports stats. You can read a romance novel about how a woman falls in love with a lizard. And the lizard's also a billionaire, by the way.

But you can't read instructions on how to put together a vacuum cleaner. You can't figure that out. It makes it difficult for you to navigate your day-to-day life. Being able to connect ideas is actually a skill that you have to develop. And I found that when I was teaching philosophy at some universities, that skill was something that my college students still needed to develop. I found that the worst question I could possibly ask when I started a discussion of some text in the classroom was, what is this text about? Because most students could tell you what some of the sentences said, but they weren't able to form a picture of the cohesive whole. That meant that I...

You know what? I don't know if he's going to put this together. think about how many people on Twitter say Grock summarize this for me uh oh that's a lot isn't it

wow yep good example that's right there in front of you I had to guide them through interpreting a text I would have to ask them questions like what is the thesis of this article or this book or whatever it was that we were reading where are the arguments and the evidence for that thesis

And then is there any irrelevant or unnecessary information? You're getting increasingly depressed. You don't have to be depressed. In the future, these people will be turned into human batteries and some of them will be turned into food. And this problem will work itself out. You don't have to worry about this. Everything's going to be okay.

This was a process that I would guide my students through so that they could learn how to read better. But there was another barrier that my students faced, which is that they lacked a lot of background knowledge which help them make sense of a text. Let's see you want to read a really big book like War and Peace. Well, War and Peace is a historical moment. It is set in a particular time and place.

You don't need to know all of the historical details in order to make sense of war and peace, but having some idea of European history and maybe France's connection to Russia, knowing who people like Napoleon or Louis XVIth are. Napoleon, remember he was from that movie with the Lama? Remember him? That was a good movie.

It came out when I was in high school. things that would be useful for you as you're reading. It would make reading war and peace a less demanding and I found that a lot of my students lacked historical knowledge or just general world knowledge, which would make reading books easier. I think part of the test. I think that's actually a really good point that he's bringing up is that like people process information inside of an apparatus of other information. So like when you read something and you think like, okay, the year is 1943. Okay, well, what happened in 1943? Well, there was like, I think there was like some kind of like big fucking war or some shit, right?

And so, but if you don't know that, that's going to really, that's going to harm your ability to process this in a contextualized way. Don't s-tectone? Well, that was in 1800. To do with the fact that at some point, we started to emphasize critical thinking over memorization of facts. You can find this a lot in popular discussions of pedagogy. The idea is that you should teach students how.

how to think rather than what to think. And there's some truth to that. But I think that we're at a position now where we're at neither. I think that the increasingly more important need to fit in with the group think and the amount of people who get ostracized for not fitting in with group think, think about what happened to people with COVID, think about people who have different views on trans ideology, think about people who are pro or against Donald Trump. Think about people like with the Epstein files and how, you know, polarizing that was, the H-1B visa thing. And so the ice stuff, yeah,

I think about, yeah, ice stuff, think about climate change, et cetera. And so all of these types of thinking, I think that critical thinking has been systematically removed from our society and it's by design. And the reason why I think so, and even if it's not by design, it is a natural entropy of human thought and collective thinking. Because what's happened now is that you have so many people that constantly think about the same stuff. And if anybody has like, how many of you guys have seen somebody on Twitter, for example? How many times does somebody get called a racist without also being called sexist,

homophobic, transphobic, and like, I don't know, what's the ablest, right? Usually this is like an array of insults that are just thrown out at somebody, right? Like, yeah, you never pull one card, you always get the full exodia. And so what happens is that people are taught not to critically think because critical thinking will lead them to conclusions that bring them against the established dogma of their worldview. So I think that really believing science and believing the outcomes of science is a great example of this. If you believe science, you would think that there are two sexes and that you can't change your sex. But if you believe science, then you could also believe that certain types of man-made climate change would be a negative impact on the world. Both of these opinions will get you ostracized from each of their respective political parties.

This is the way that people have been taught systematically not to critically think because they're afraid to. Because when you critically think and you go against the grain and he knows this, I'm sure, there are studies with this where, like for, example, it's like measuring a line and a guy goes into a, he goes into an experiment area and he thinks that he's doing the experiment, but he's actually the only one being experimented on. And the guy's like, okay, which line is the longest? And he keeps picking the longest one, but everybody else in the room picks the second or the third longest one. He eventually starts waiting for the group before he gives his answer. And the study was done in order to basically explain how strong the human, desire is to fit into group think. This is very well established and conformity. Yes, exactly. This is very well established. It's defined. It's documented and it's been repeated multiple times. So I think that critical thinking is like it's not that kids are learning critical thinking and not

facts nowadays. It's that kids are aware. Kids aren't learning critical thinking. And now they don't even have the facts to, they don't have anything. Yeah, they don't have fucking anything. There's a crucial error that's being made there, which is that actually... Yeah, when you critically think you can go against yourself. I think that, and this is a big... I'm going to have a big Reddit moment here. But I think that religion and a lot of people's adherence to religion and extreme political dogma

is because they're afraid of the conclusions of their own critical thinking. I think human beings in general, our cognition has evolved. faster than our ability to cope with our cognition. That's what I think. About the world and learning facts about the world goes hand in hand with learning how to think critically. Because it allows you to build a mental model of the world and you can see where new facts might fit in or where they actually contradict things that you should already know.

Critical thinking and memorization might actually go hand in hand. Yes. And they help us to produce... Critical thinking provides a frame of reference... Sorry, memorization provides a frame of reference for critical thinking. Because critical thinking is informed by what you know. Better readers. Now, some experts do not want to call this a crisis.

One researcher from Harvard University described American reading education as a very stable level of media. Oh, thank God. I was worried for a minute there. Gritty. We've never done a great job, and things have been getting a little bit worse. But this isn't new, and it's certainly not unprecedented. And there is a lot of fearmongering. about this. Let me tell you about the National Literacy Institute. If you've seen those headlines

I mentioned about American literacy, there's a chance that you've seen statistics from this website. For instance, you might have heard that 21% of American adults are illiterate. It's more than that. Anybody who's, again, anybody who has seen people read knows it's way more than that. Actually look at the website, and I'll put a link down below as well. There's no explanation for that number about 21% of American adults being illiterate. No definition is also given of what they mean by illiterate. And the numbers you find on this website are painting a much worse picture the numbers that you find elsewhere. I actually emailed the National Literacy Institute to ask them where they got these numbers and if they could explain some of them to me.

But I did not hear back. Oh, what a surprise. Like the reason, by the way, my source is that I made it the fuck up. that's where I'm coming from. I just made it the fuck up. I think it's like 40%. I think 40% of people are fucking retarded and they can't read. I think it could be 50.

And if that changes between the time of recording and the time of posting, I will issue a correction. I'd be happy to do it. But some fact checkers reached out to the NLI in 2024 and they also never heard back. Those fact checkers concluded that the NLI was using an overly expansive definition of illiterate. They were also misdescribing the data that they were citing, and they were misleadingly describing their data as new, when in fact, this data does not come out on an annual basis. National Literacy Institute is just another name for the National Literacy Professional. Oh. Well, here we go.

Of course they're, no, they're creating a problem and then selling the solution. Of course, right? And so I think they're probably bad actors. they're identifying, they're saying, oh, wow, there's this huge problem. Here's four links that you can give us money or somehow interact with us in a way that's financially beneficial for us that you can solve that problem. Wow. Yeah, okay, okay, he's right about this, but again, I think it's higher than 21%.

And I'm not even selling a course. That's a private company that sells professional development courses for teachers. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, teachers often need more professional development as they further their careers. But the fact that they call themselves the National Literacy Institute sometimes... He's right. He's right that they're full of shit. I think this is beside the point of like the real issue here. But him looking at this, at this organization, like, this is one way that I always look at things.

If somebody benefits from a certain narrative, I take their pushing of that narrative with more grains of salt. Makes it seem to their research center and it gives a lot of authority to the things that they put on their website. And I've noticed that people will cite this website uncritically. I've even seen other YouTubers cite this when they talk about American literacy. I would never cite it. I would never.

Because it's way higher. They're wrong. I don't think those YouTubers were trying to mislead you. I think that they had the best intentions. Yeah. But I think they got fooled. But seriously, look at the website again. There's no sources.

There's no research methods. There's nothing like that. It's just bullet points and numbers. Yeah. Where did the numbers come from? Well, the website doesn't tell you. I think anyone honestly looking at this data would say that there is a real problem with literacy in America. Absolutely.

But we have to be able to say that there's a problem without engaging in fearmongering or simply lying about it. Fear mongering might even give you the impression that this is a problem that can't be solved. And that's not true. Like I mentioned before, some states have started to find... I think you can teach a lot of kids how to read. I don't think you can teach everybody how to read. I think you can get to about 90, 95%, though. 90, 95%, somewhere around there.

Like, I think you can teach them how to use their reading. Solutions, like Mississippi. Between 2013 and 2022, Mississippi students dramatically improve their reading scores. This was a period where most states saw a decline. This was such a dramatic improvement that some commentator started calling this the Mississippi miracle. But it's not a miracle.

It's just good policy. Because one researcher from the University of Toronto found that this improvement was linked to the literacy-based Promotion Act, or the LBPA. The Mississippi legislator passed the LBPA in 2013, and that bill did a couple of things. It expanded access to full-day pre-K programs. It focused education on phonics and the science of reading, so it actually changed how we were teaching students how to read. It invested in professional development for teachers because... This is what I said before. See, I was talking about how teachers are stupid.

This is exactly what I was saying. You get what you pay for. You pay teachers $40,000 a year. That's what you get. They would need more training. It identified struggling readers and then targeted them for specific interventions. So if a student was falling behind, they got additional help when it came to reading. And finally, some struggling third graders were held back for a year so that they would have more time to build.

Sometimes you got to do it. I mean, like, I understand that it's really embanking. really embarrassing to be held back because you can't pass third grade, but I can guarantee you that it's even more embarrassing to not be able to read the instructions for your Roomba. I could promise you that. The simple description, though, is that the LBPA took literacy seriously. It gave teachers the training they needed. It focused on struggling readers, and it gave kids time to learn how to read properly. So the LBPA had an... And also, like another,

thing that like this is like a subtext of this is that it is it underpends the one thing that I always talk about which is direct personal immediate accountability the teachers individually are accountable for this the students that are having problems with reading are individually accountable for having those problems teachers are individually accountable for making those students do a better job and students are individually accountable for doing a better job or they get held back. The moment that you apply individual accountability, the results of anything that you're doing will dramatically increase. Very strong impact on those students at the bottom. It helped bring a lot of students from that below basic category to basic and also students from

basic to proficient. There it is. It had almost no impact on students who were already proficient, maybe moving them to the advanced category. But that's to be expected given the kind of interventions that were in the bill. What Mississippi demonstrated is that the decline in America, and literacy isn't inevitable. We can solve this problem, and it actually only cost Mississippi $15 million. That sounds like a really... That's nothing. So you're telling me it would only cost maybe like a billion dollars across the whole country

to just have kids understand graphs? I mean, that's it? A.S. They don't want that? Yeah, I don't think they want that. Big number. Yeah, it's got to be a reason for that, huh? So we are talking about fractions here.

This doesn't solve ever. every problem. There are still adults in the United States who are functionally illiterate. There are plenty of adults who can read but simply choose not to. And we still need to figure out what to do about college students who can't keep up with assigned reneek anymore. But kick them out of college. Kick them out. If you're not good enough, you get kicked out. The fact is that we do not need that many people with these degrees. There are certain in demand degrees that yeah maybe you have to you have to maybe make up a little bit for it but there's a lot of people that go to college to get a bullshit degree so they can go to a job that's a bullshit job

at a bullshit company that makes a bullshit product that doesn't do anything they would be better off if they were an electrician or they were doing something else that had a tangible beneficial effect on the world we don't need more gender studies uh majors we don't need we don't need more fucking, I don't, we don't need more business majors. I used to be in business school. You know what business school is? A waste of time. A colossal fucking waste of time. I, let me tell you, in, in marketing, no, no, no, no, no, any of you guys that went to business school, they made all of that shit up. They, they created vocabulary. They, they, they, they invented all these terms. So wrong, bro. No, no, I'm not talking about finance. I'm not talking about

accounting. I'm not talking about anything else. I'm talking about management. This is, bro, we could have had a fucking class in astrology. And I think it would have given people better insight on how to advertise a product than marketing. It's a joke on management. Get the fuck out of here. It was such a waste of fucking time. Business management was bullshit. Complete bullshit. Mississippi's success shows that the literacy crisis can be mitigated. We can help more people learn to read if we're smart about it.

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It's just him talking. It's just a guy talking. That's it. I like that. Yeah, I'll link you guys the video. I'll give it a like. Yeah, that was really, really good. That's a great video. Yeah, I like that a lot.

And teachers don't fail students anymore because the teachers are afraid of the parents. No, I don't think that's the reason. I think that it's more systematic. Schools don't fail students because schools are afraid of being defunded. And if enough students fail, the school will get evaluated. The leadership might get changed and they might get defunded. So it's actually a systematic problem that is passed down to the teachers. But I think if the teachers had the final and only say, you would have a different thing going on.

That's my understanding of it. I'm sure that there are instances of what you're talking about too, also being the case. It's a terrible system. It is. It's a terrible system. Give the video a like, yeah, that was a really, really, really great video. I like that a lot. That's somewhat partially true. Some teachers are scared, but admins also change grades. It happened at my school and an admin got caught and fired. Yeah, well, it happened at my school and the admin probably became the fucking principal. And so that's it. I'm working at school. Teachers have the no child left behind policy. And that's why they don't fail kids. And we're regardless. just move them on. Yeah, you know, it's systematic because in college teachers can fail students, and that's the end of the story. Yeah, no, I think so. You're right about that. And it's a huge problem. I mean, I do think that, like, his, the criticism that he has for, like, this agency or, like,

this institute is just full of, yeah, the institute is full of shit. They are. And again, why, why are they saying this? The National Literacy Institute that just coincidentally has a bunch of different programs and initiatives that you can pay them for to increase literacy. Wow. How fucking convenient for them. So yeah, obviously you shouldn't listen to them. They're in on it. They're making money off of it.

Fucking duh. So yeah, trade work should be an option in high school. Bro, in Texas, now it is. Like in my old high school, they've got like computer repair. They've got welding. They've got auto repair now. Like, they've got a lot of that stuff. And like at least in my school, that's happening.

That's a good thing. Now, obviously, that's not happening everywhere. However, in many places it is, which is a good, that's a very, very good thing. It's like a DEI apartment pushing racism. Yeah, definitely, right? They're trying to create a need to, sorry, they're trying to create a problem so they can sell themselves as the solution. So I think that's always very important to keep in mind. Do we make your situation come up?

We're opening a sanctuary county, do a Newsom's very important. refuse to cooperate. Our little local schools are losing a substantial amount of funding. Yeah, it's really awful. I mean, I don't know why there's so many classes and so many schools that just have basically no real reason or willingness to do that, you know, like, or follow along with like this stuff. I think it's very, very weird that's happening.

But unfortunately, that's just how things are right now. And you never learned how to put a car engine together in school. No, you didn't. But you could sign up for a class that's. going to teach you about what a four cycle engine is or it's going to teach you what the different parts of a car are like i mean they're not teaching you how to build an entire fucking engine they're teaching you basic things and basic understanding right it's the same as school like a computer class will right the shop class yeah some class you order can't yeah exactly and uh it's that

simple uh so proud found out problem reaction solution many times ago to hear it used so commonly matter of fact progress we made yeah definitely and uh i think we're going to see a lot more of this too. And I think the problem with literacy, here's another really big reason why literacy is falling off. Reading requires direct, immediate, uninterrupted conversation. So like, for example, if you're a teacher, right, or something like that, or sorry, not teacher, if you're like on your computer and you're reading something, that has to be on your main monitor. You can't listen to it while you're doing something else. Reading is something that you can't multitask in generally, right? You have to actually read the words on the

page and be thinking about what the words mean. Because if you don't do that, you're probably not going to listen to it. So the issue is that now people are so used to overstimulation with like two or three different input systems at all times. Like how many of you guys are playing video games on a Discord call listening to music? Well, you can't do that while you're reading. So because there's there's like a stimulation fucking like stimulation

inflation nobody's fucking reading because reading doesn't reading doesn't get the dopamine going in the same way that scrolling TikTok does super fast or anything like that

and so that's really what I think it is in a lot of cases yes people are pushing I think that there is a degree where people are looking for dopamine so much that they push themselves into sensory overload. And you can see this with little kids that do it all the time. They'll have like

a phone, a tablet, and they'll be looking at TV all at the same time. And you ask your kid, like, or not your kid, you ask the kid, what are you doing? And I don't know. Doesn't even know what he's doing. He's just doing it. That's it. Internet curfew,

unironically, I'm being serious. How would you add dopamine to reading? I don't know. I don't think that not everything has at a certain point, there are certain issues that you can't just, you can't gamify every issue, okay? There are people that play every game on second monitor while the first one is playing on a stream. Yeah, exactly. Like how many of you guys right now are listening to my stream on your second monitor while you're either probably working still, maybe still working, or you're doing something else?

A lot of you guys are doing that. And so you couldn't do that if I was writing. You would have to actually sit down and read it what I'm saying. And here's a very interesting question. When was the last time that a book was written or something was said that or something was written down that actually had a large cultural impact? When was the last like really big book that was written that had a large cultural impact that people cared about? Harry Potter. That's probably the best example.

That's a good one. And you think about like Harry Potter and that that's a book that's written for children. Right? It's written for kids. and the three body problem. Yeah, I guess that one's kind of, like I've seen some people discussing that, 50 Shades of Grey, that's not the same thing. But either way, maybe Defensi Code.

Yeah, but there are some minor examples. But if you think about like all the books that people read in school, none of them are very contemporary at all. Generally, it's all the same books from, you know, the old times. And I think that the reason why is because people just aren't communicating and written media like when was the last time an article was written or something was written

down on social media that everybody read and cared about besides like a twit longer about how some streamer is a fucking rapist or something like besides that when was the last time that happened? Yeah exactly basically never. Grog's crash out Mecca Hitler

that's another one, the painter's book yeah Luigi probably Luigi's manifesto ironic isn't it? But yeah I think think that probably more people read Luigi's manifesto than most of the books written in the last 10 years. Straight up. Do you think we'll hit diminishing returns with impactful literature? I think that the problem is that, so why is it that people aren't reading and don't care about literature in the same way? There's a number of reasons. Number one, people can't visualize ideas. Number two, people can't read.

Number three, it's not stimulating enough. And number four, it's just not seen as something that's interesting to do anymore. So you put all of these things together and you don't have any of that happen. The stories suck. I don't think the stories, I don't think that, I don't know, fucking, I'm trying to think of like a book, what is a good example of this? I don't think Beowulf is any worse than the new Thor movie, okay? I feel like, yeah, treasure. Yeah, something like that. 1984 is not worse than, I don't know, the new Superman movie. It's better. Yeah. And so that's it. It's not good enough to just read if you can't comprehend what you're reading and many people can't comprehend anything they read or hear. Well, the reason why, though,

why are people not able to comprehend what they read or hear? I'll tell you why. It's because they have no frame of reference to process the information in. That's the reason why. And so they have no other way to do that or to talk about it or think about it because there's nothing that they can base it off of. That's the big issue. It's the book's fault. Yes, it's obviously the book's fault. And lack of imagination. Books are really regulated. Very well regulated. Yes. AI is already smarter than our children. It's smarter than adults, too, I would say. Guys read and master a margarita, a great book. People don't know when they talk about good books because they push only manifestos and boring political books. I think that most books that people discuss nowadays are political. Yeah, I do think that's a big factor.

Yeah, it's a lot of those things are very much big factors. Maybe we should just go Amish, like pre-internet and still have electricity. People over- idolize old things, which is why old books are read into and looked at better. In 100 years, some of the modern books will be read. I don't know. I don't think that's, I personally don't think that's true. Like, or at least not at the same ratio, but we'll see. what happens. Do you think that we're in this thing at the start of the end of our civilization? No,

I think it's just the beginning of a new type of civilization. I don't think there's anything that's like the end of civilization or anything like that. No, it's just very simply that I think a lot of people are, a lot of people are just kind of tired of dealing with just in general, the way that kind of stuff happens, right? Like reading or anything else like that, more so audiobooks are more consumed nowadays. Well, audiobooks. are a very different medium, aren't they? I think that they're a very, very different medium. Idiocracy era?

Well, I think that what's happening now is that also there's going to be a lot of people who don't really need to know how to read. That's another big factor. It's because, like, basically, machines and automation and technology are going to do so much of your thinking for you that you're not going to need to come to conclusions on your own and even apply any level of critical thinking at all on your own, because let's be honest,

the machine already does it for you. Grock, summarize this for me. Grock, what does this mean? Like, I don't know, guys. That's how I see it. How do illiterate people use a smartphone if they can't read? Because people are,

so this is like what I was saying before, is that they can read a tweet, they can read a meme, but they can't read the instructions of something. They can process information basically they can eat French fries, but they can't eat a hamburger. Does that make sense? Yeah, the world became faster.

Yeah, they can recognize patterns and stuff like that. And how many people make decisions based off of the headlines? Yeah, they're functional illiterates? Yeah, exactly. Kind of like cyberpunk implants will happen even a bit far. Yeah, I think that's actually a good insight. I like that. Differentiate illiterate versus reading comprehension.

Well, it's that. And also, I think reading comprehension, like if you can't comprehend what you're reading, you're basically fucking illiterate, right? Like, that's like me saying, oh, I can read Spanish, and I read a paragraph in Spanish, and somebody asked me, what did it say? I'm like, yeah, I don't know.

Like, that's... It means you can't fucking read Spanish, doesn't it? And so, yeah, I mean, if you might as well, fucking be. And so I actually read the most I'm commuting to work. So you're reading while driving? That's interesting. Very interesting.

Maybe you're on a bus. Maybe that's it. And instructions my Pokemon Red Hat reading optional but required to enjoy the story. Yeah, sure. My reading level is around grade 11 and I'm not strong at it. It takes me a while to read words and sometimes most people don't know how to understand words but pronouncing them. Well, that's fine. I mean, mistakes happen and not everybody's going to understand everything. But I do think that reading is a big issue.

I used to do, I used to write things on my Twitter a lot. I used to go and write out like twit longers about my opinion on things. and I guess I just stopped doing that because I thought videos were a better way to do it but I do think that writing things and also this is another big issue is that writers have writing is an art and a lot of writers are either

robots or theater kids and let me tell you something I don't know which one's worse I don't they're so annoying they're awful yeah it's a brain exercise Yes, sometimes both. Yes, sometimes both. Exactly. And I've seen this happen a lot and it's been insanely fucking annoying for me to look at. So yeah, I think it's just going to be more of the same stuff in general.