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As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

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Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#231

Post by dsr_ »

openfuture wrote: post #204
dsr_ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never run up against problems caused by people reading too widely. I have frequently seen problems caused by people who didn't read enough.

Errr.. reading too widely is a well known problem called "analysis paralysis" or "procrastination" and there are several other labels. (Curious!) people who "don't read enough" are great to have around the ones who read too much, from my pov problems stem from these groups being unwilling to work together.

"analysis paralysis" isn't caused by reading too widely. It's a form of executive function disorder, either situational or ongoing, where making a choice is aborted by incomplete evaluation of the available options. Your mind assigns an infinite penalty and non-zero chance of failure, and that blocks consideration of actual chances of success.

One of the effective solutions is to construct a risk table, in which you list out:

- each option - the costs to perform the option - the likelihood of success of the option - the value of success via the option - the penalty of failure via the option - the cost to ameliorate failure of the option

And you never assign a 0 or infinite value to any of those factors; a range of .05 to .99 is usually appropriate.

For binary choices, this can sometimes be short-circuited by flipping a coin and asking yourself if this feels worse than the alternative.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#232

Post by esyir »

Cpoll wrote: post #155
throwaway2077 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

book burning is just one manifestation of restricting the freedom of thought and expression, and it sounds you aren't against that.

Fair point, and I don't have a good counter-argument. I think my problem, if anything, isn't that there's an excess of freedom of thought and expression so much as there's not enough counter-thought and counter-expression. So my shaky position is stuck somewhere between what I've identified as the two evils: Book burning, and the uncritical dissemination and condoning of problematic ideas. (I'm aware there's a furthe…

It's the same situation, but you're fine with one case because you agree with it. That's the fundamental problem.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#233

Post by dsr_ »

edgyquant wrote: post #183
dsr_ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never run up against problems caused by people reading too widely. I have frequently seen problems caused by people who didn't read enough.

I know what you mean by this but when I hear it leads me to be believe that written language is inefficient since a large number of people find reading, even subjects they’re somewhat interested in, boring.

Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#234

Post by esyir »

ausbah wrote: post #217
FundementalBrit wrote: post #92

The British government has a vague law on books which incite terroism... Of course they couldn't actually write an actual list because the book at the top of the list would be problematic.

which would be...?

Well, clearly op was insinuating the quran.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#235

Post by openfuture »

dsr_ wrote: post #231
openfuture wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errr.. reading too widely is a well known problem called "analysis paralysis" or "procrastination" and there are several other labels. (Curious!) people who "don't read enough" are great to have around the ones who read too much, from my pov problems stem from these groups being unwilling to work together.

"analysis paralysis" isn't caused by reading too widely. It's a form of executive function disorder, either situational or ongoing, where making a choice is aborted by incomplete evaluation of the available options. Your mind assigns an infinite penalty and non-zero chance of failure, and that blocks consideration of actual chances of success. One of the effective solutions is to construct a risk table, in which you…

Okay, that's a great suggestion, let me go read some more suggestions on how to do something other than research things /s

You wave away my association of "reading _too_ widely" and "analysis paralysis" by sharing your preferred definition of the latter ... but that isn't really an argument against the association of the two.

I didn't say that analysis paralysis causes reading too widely. I said that they are the same, so if you want to take your definition of analysis paralysis as a given then you could say analysis paralysis can cause reading too widely.

Anyway, all I wanted to communicate with my comment is that when you say that you can do "too little of X" but not "too much of X" then you are biased on X, there is always someone who takes X too far and you may not see it because you've associated those people with something totally different.

Personally I don't believe in "wasted time" or other subjective notions (in the abstract) so for me this whole discussion is lacking context (you can waste time if you have a context; some loss function, otherwise no).

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#236

Post by rayiner »

wolverine876 wrote: post #216
rayiner wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We want the kids to use their freedom and free will, and to think for themselves Says who? The cultures who focus on “freedom” for kids are literally being replaced by the ones that socialize their kids to do what they’re supposed to do.

What 'cultures' are you talking about? By far the most successful in human history have been modern democratic cultures which, very broadly speaking, focus on freedom. But regardless, the kids should grow into free adults. It's self-evident, as Jefferson said and as much of the world has held to be true for centuries now (again to great success). Are you volunteering to give up your freedom? Then I'll take you up on…

> What 'cultures' are you talking about? By far the most successful in human history have been modern democratic cultures which, very broadly speaking, focus on freedom.

Not for kids, which is what we’re talking about here. Read Roald Dahl’s books about British education. That’s the culture that built the greatest empire in history.

“Freedom” for kids, as opposed to rigid socialization, is a mid-20th century detour. And the cultures that practice it, mainly north Americans and Europeans, are either in decline or are being replaced from the inside by immigrants from cultures that don’t.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#237

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #201
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re a teenager who is having an emotional, strongly negative response to seeing fictional acts of sexual behavior in a comic because you can’t have actual sex, that is a perfect opportunity for you to reach out to adults in your life so you can have a clearly sorted talk about how to have a healthy relationship with sex and intimacy.

It takes two to tango.

Precisely, and being comfortable with yourself not having sex is very important. It affirms others have their own agency not to have sex with you and also can teach you ways to love yourself without depending on the dopamine of sex. If you have a strong, overwhelming, negative emotional response to other people having sex, just because you’re not having it then that’s a real issue that can be addressed through whatever support network you have to work on whatever you have in yourself that the actions of strangers having a good time doing something unrelated to you somehow harms you.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#238

Post by rayiner »

BearsAreCool wrote: post #218
rayiner wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, we’re talking about books that have graphic images of sex. They wouldn’t be appropriate even if they involved straight sex. Don’t use LGBT acceptance to promote sexualization of minors.

This is an easy excuse but one I find hard to believe as being at all legitimate. Out of all the things that lead to promoting sexualization of minors I highly doubt that anyone is going to look back on their chidlhood and blame a book. I also can't help but wonder if I was somehow super sexualized as a high schooler or not. Comments like this and people talking about banning books for high schoolers makes me wonder…

Blue state “book ban”: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/school-system...

Nobody thinks the book causes that sexualization. The point is that it’s an implicit sanction from parental and teacher authority.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#240

Post by shagie »

everybodyknows wrote: post #193
kvathupo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Texas legislator's proposed list of banned books, I fail to see why books such as "Bioethics Beyond the Headlines" or "V for Vendetta" should be banned. Indeed, it does concern me that much of the novels are fictional works portraying the LGBT experience. I can't imagine how alienating it must be to students of that group. As an aside, I find it amusing that Shakespeare is never banned on the grounds of sexu…

Most are couched in the slang of Shakespeare's time, an effective filter. How many high schoolers get the Nurse's ribald joke about the very young Juliet learning to "fall backwards" once she had grown older? I didn't, not at all sure our teacher got the meaning either, or if she did, then chose not to explain it ... Check out the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet to see it played well.

Setting: Catholic high school, late 80s. Freshman English class.

We were reading out loud in class the prologue for Romeo and Juliet... and the teacher would occasionally pause the reading to explain the text.

A more full account of the events is in https://everything2.com/user/m_turner/writeups/Shakespearean... which I wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind.

So yes, at least one class of Generation X high school students got every joke in Romeo and Juliet.

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