46% of Americans didn't read a book in 2023

Re:46% of Americans didn't read a book in 2023 by FredPret on Saturday February 10, 2024 @11:46AM (#39327688)

As you know games can be incredibly informative even though they usually aren't.

I learned history in a way that sticks much better from Europa Universalis and Total War than from books, even though those games aren't even real in the sense that you're making up a new timeline. Orbital mechanics only clicked for me when trying to land a rover on the Mun in KSP.

Maybe entertaining simulations are the second-best way to learn besides actually doing something, with books somewhere further down the line.

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Re:46% of Americans didn't read a book in 2023 by AlotOfReading on Saturday February 10, 2024 @12:17PM (#39328061)

I've met a lot more people who were profoundly misled about history by paradox/4x games than those who were meaningfully educated by them. acoup actually has a good series of blogs about how they serve as a form of historical education, which is worth reading through:

https://acoup.blog/2021/04/30/collections-teaching-paradox-e...

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Re:46% of Americans didn't read a book in 2023 by FredPret on Saturday February 10, 2024 @12:21PM (#39328098)

You don't learn the actual facts of what happened of course.

But you do learn about the situation in which different countries and historical figures found themselves and the options they had.

This is much more valuable because this type of learning has lessons for today; versus merely memorizing that king such-and-such did this-and-that in 1523, which doesn't.

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