Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every medium has creation and consumption costs, and it affects their average quality. Books have a high creation cost: both in time and money, relative to electronic mediums. They also have a high consumption cost, as you cant read a book in a few seconds like you can watch shortform content. These factors select for quality.
You could say the same for TV or film and most of it is still garbage.
Ask HN: Are a lot of books just useless?
51–54 of 54 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are a lot of books just useless?
#52Pirate Bay is the best literary critic, quote Palahniuk: "Nobody steals a bad book". It has happened that I have paid for the stolen book and bought more books from the author because of free sample at Pirate Bay.
Re: Ask HN: Are a lot of books just useless?
#53I think you are focusing too much on the negative side of a book you find useless. There is another framing that is more useful and helps to suggest answers to your other questions. One way to think of it to kind of get an intuition for why things tend to be long is to imagine you are going to have someone be your personal trainer for a month. However, they must interview for the job. One interview question you could…
Re: Ask HN: Are a lot of books just useless?
#54Also, YMMV, but for me, repetition in books causes to remember much more, shape and use the knowledge. Unlike a random blog post from HN ;)