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> prissy I don't think you know what that word means. But that aside, everybody is making a lot of assumptions about what books are being destroyed. Excess cop

by EA0707 2mo ago

> prissy I don't think you know what that word means. But that aside, everybody is making a lot of assumptions about what books are being destroyed. Excess copies, outdated user manuals, etc etc. I'm sure there's some of that, but there's also probably lots of other books that are most certainly not that. Anyone who isn't even a little concerned that millions of books are being blanket destroyed without any hint of concern about what those books are - they are just being blindly scanned and pulped by the truckload - is revealing themselves to be a bit soulless imo. There's really no other way to put it. Things have meaning outside the material. And I certainly don't trust these AI companies to have the best interests of humanity in mind when it comes to any of this. The fact that some or maybe even most of these books may be unworthy of preservation isn't the point. We don't know what's being blindly pulped. And neither do they. And neither do they care. There's just something gross about the whole thing.

tiahura 2mo ago
Do you mind linking to some of your previous thoughts about the trillions of old books that get thrown in the trash without scanning every day?
- EA0707 2mo ago
  >trillions No need for hyperbole. The point you are missing is that those books get consciously thrown in the trash. Somebody evaluated them and decided they weren't worth saving. Will some fraction of these be the result of poor taste and those books were indeed worth saving? Sure. But most it's reasonable to assume won't be. In any case, they will still have been deliberated on by an actual human being. By contrast, these AI companies are doing none of that. They are blanket buying books, scanning them and then pulping them. No human evaluation happens at any point.
  - pfdietz 2mo ago
    So, if Google consciously throws books in the trash, that's ok, but if they scan them first, that's not ok? Or maybe this is just a thin veneer over anti-techbro antipathy. If destroying a book is such an evil, then isn't not printing a book also a huge net negative? Are you going to call on publishers to make endless print runs to churn out books that then get warehoused? I mean, if these lumps of cellulose are such inherently valuable objects, wouldn't we create endless value by piling up the unread copies?

by EA0707 2mo ago

tiahura 2mo ago

Do you mind linking to some of your previous thoughts about the trillions of old books that get thrown in the trash without scanning every day?

EA0707 2mo ago
>trillions No need for hyperbole. The point you are missing is that those books get consciously thrown in the trash. Somebody evaluated them and decided they weren't worth saving. Will some fraction of these be the result of poor taste and those books were indeed worth saving? Sure. But most it's reasonable to assume won't be. In any case, they will still have been deliberated on by an actual human being. By contrast, these AI companies are doing none of that. They are blanket buying books, scanning them and then pulping them. No human evaluation happens at any point.
- pfdietz 2mo ago
  So, if Google consciously throws books in the trash, that's ok, but if they scan them first, that's not ok? Or maybe this is just a thin veneer over anti-techbro antipathy. If destroying a book is such an evil, then isn't not printing a book also a huge net negative? Are you going to call on publishers to make endless print runs to churn out books that then get warehoused? I mean, if these lumps of cellulose are such inherently valuable objects, wouldn't we create endless value by piling up the unread copies?