4 ms·

I saw things the same way as you. There are millions of books out there, most of them are pretty worthless. Not much point in drawing attention to one book not

I saw things the same way as you. There are millions of books out there, most of them are pretty worthless. Not much point in drawing attention to one book not worth reading. I was hoping for something more along the lines of 'this book looks at things from a unique viewpoint but it actually makes sense'.

dan-robertson 8y ago
I think books on academic topics like this are typically not that numerous (eg about a dozen on this sort of introductory formal languages and automata), and as they don’t really make money for the author they are typically written by academics who either want there to be course material for some undergraduate course they are teaching or by academics who want to teach other academics/grad students about their field. I would also argue with your point about most books being worthless. All books from an actual publisher will have been read by someone who has decided that the book will likely make money (and so should be printed), and that it will make money because it is worth money to the people who buy it. Eg I think the author of the article would probably consider any of the other books on the subject to not be worthless. All fiction books can basically be considered to have entertainment value, in the same way that a movie has value even if you won’t make money from seeing it. There are books that many would consider worthless to themselves (eg books about advanced mathematics or some particular small region in history and space), and there are also books that many would consider worthless to any person (I suppose this is what you are referring to as worthless? Things that are more like terrible self-published fiction or conspiracy theory treatises). I think this is interesting because it is unusual to see the second category disguised as the first for mathematics textbooks. I think it is also interesting to wonder why the author wrote such a book and why they made the strange choices in it. I would certainly guess that the author is some kind of not-very-formal linguist rather than a mathematician. I suppose it is more common to see the second class of “worthless book” trying to look like history books than mathematics books.

dan-robertson 8y ago

I think books on academic topics like this are typically not that numerous (eg about a dozen on this sort of introductory formal languages and automata), and as they don’t really make money for the author they are typically written by academics who either want there to be course material for some undergraduate course they are teaching or by academics who want to teach other academics/grad students about their field. I would also argue with your point about most books being worthless. All books from an actual publisher will have been read by someone who has decided that the book will likely make money (and so should be printed), and that it will make money because it is worth money to the people who buy it. Eg I think the author of the article would probably consider any of the other books on the subject to not be worthless. All fiction books can basically be considered to have entertainment value, in the same way that a movie has value even if you won’t make money from seeing it. There are books that many would consider worthless to themselves (eg books about advanced mathematics or some particular small region in history and space), and there are also books that many would consider worthless to any person (I suppose this is what you are referring to as worthless? Things that are more like terrible self-published fiction or conspiracy theory treatises). I think this is interesting because it is unusual to see the second category disguised as the first for mathematics textbooks. I think it is also interesting to wonder why the author wrote such a book and why they made the strange choices in it. I would certainly guess that the author is some kind of not-very-formal linguist rather than a mathematician. I suppose it is more common to see the second class of “worthless book” trying to look like history books than mathematics books.