Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

newrepublic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 45 posts

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#31

Post by simianwords »

perching_aix wrote: post #28
simianwords wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that the kind of people who obsess the conspiracy of "alternative facts" are the same people who uncritically take everything presented by modern science as truth. Except when it comes to economics of course!

Do you picture millions reading science journals, or are you willfully conflating media reporting as what's "presented by modern science as truth"? In my impression people peddling distrust in modern science are not exactly in it to improve its honesty, nor are they calling out genuine gaps most of the time. It's more a side effect if and when it happens at all, with the actual goal being political control play inste…

> In my impression people peddling distrust in modern science are not exactly in it to improve its honesty, nor are they calling out genuine gaps most of the time.

I agree, but in this case I'm trying to be the person who's trying to improve its honesty. There's so many lies in modern non fiction (and science) and I hope they will all be uncovered soon and a nice post-mortem will take place. It is important to understand how much we were misled.

This is after all the scientific process and it will continue and get better - I have no doubt in it.

I'm trying to clarify my position here: I won't name them but there are obvious things that non fiction (by elite academics) got wrong before but were only uncovered as wrong when society evolved to understand the subject matter intricately enough to criticise it. Until then we all had to pretend as if the elite academics pushing their jargon laded slop in non fiction columns as obviously correct.

I don't want to go on a tangent here but an important part of uncovering truth is by the emergent property of a critical mass of people understanding a concept. Society itself takes part in uncovering truth. Until then elite academics either produce gems or slop because there's only so much intelligence that comes from a single person (or a few people).

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#32

Post by simianwords »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #29
simianwords wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that the kind of people who obsess the conspiracy of "alternative facts" are the same people who uncritically take everything presented by modern science as truth. Except when it comes to economics of course!

People who question modern science don't have a higher epistemic standard. They just offer something worse, like a youtuber who convinced them that eating plants was bad for them.

>People who question modern science don't have a higher epistemic standard.

I hope this changes. There is much need to question modern science using a higher epistemic standard.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#33

Post by lacunary »

soupfordummies wrote: post #17
lacunary wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going back to the late 90s I've been able to consistently buy books I want from my local B&N. I got most of the programming books I used to build my skills that led to my career there. My young adult kids buy books there now. They keep great hours and it's a pleasant experience. I recently went on a whim, at 8pm on a weekday, and found the best novel I've read in years. What am I missing?

What’s the novel :)

The Obscene Bird of Night by Donoso

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#34

Post by thfuran »

jfengel wrote: post #23
bondarchuk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was dead, I vouched for it, I think it's a good point. Form does not determine the truthfulness of content.

It does nod in its direction, though. Or at least it used to. Mass production printing was high overhead, and publishers had reputations to protect. That wasn't perfect but they'd usually try to avoid the worst propaganda. (Or at least shove it off onto an imprint with less of a reputation. Or into a category, like Self Help, where people know its shaky relationship to truth.) It was far from perfect. But these days…

Printed propaganda goes back at least as far as the early 1500s, and written propaganda goes back thousands of years.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#35

Post by diego_moita »

I am worried.

I do agree that the bigger picture of learning non-fiction is richer. We now have other ways to learn non-fiction: Wikipedia, Veritasium, Gemini, etc.

But only books can provide you something we may call a "coherent worldview". They are the ones that stitch together different pictures into a coherent whole.

I can think of a lot of books that gave me that: E.Gombrich's "Story of Art", Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", ... honestly, even Julia Childs' "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" or Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" (his other books are crap, b.t.w.).

True, we still have universities' textbooks. But they're very narrow in scope.

The thing about non-fiction books is that nothing else can provide the same combination of depth and scope.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#36

Post by diego_moita »

stogot wrote: post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

Some of the biggest lies in history where, indeed, made with books. Examples go from "Malleus Maleficarum" to "Mein Kampf" to even "Chariots of the Gods".

But there is a difference in efficacy. It is harder to lie in books than it is in social media. Books are like trees, they grow slowly, they're a discourse that spans months or years. On this timeframe it is easier to debunk lies. Social media is different. A lie can pop and spread there in one or 2 days. Once someone debunks it there are already 200 more replacing it. They are like bacterial infestations or japanese knotweed, much harder to combat and control.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#37

Post by baubino »

abeppu wrote: post #22
wewxjfq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author clearly means professional publishers, who have editors and fact-checkers. Self-published books already lack trust. The reply also misses several other points the author makes, which I find ironic because it kind of goes into the direction the author bemoans: The author wrote a longer article to lay out his thoughts and it sure took him time to write and any reader time to read and digest and here is a qui…

Do publishers really have fact-checkers? My understanding was that support for authors is now relatively minimal, even for established authors, and no one really has the time or resources to second-guess everything an author has claimed. I take as a key example Naomi Wolf learning after her book was "done" that a significant chunk of it was based on a misunderstanding of an admittedly confusing 19th century British l…

> an academic trying to do similar work in multiple articles would have gotten review from peers on each article

Academic books are also peer-reviewed.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#38

Post by duttish »

diego_moita wrote: post #36
stogot wrote: post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

Some of the biggest lies in history where, indeed, made with books. Examples go from "Malleus Maleficarum" to "Mein Kampf" to even "Chariots of the Gods". But there is a difference in efficacy. It is harder to lie in books than it is in social media. Books are like trees, they grow slowly, they're a discourse that spans months or years. On this timeframe it is easier to debunk lies. Social media is different. A lie c…

I think this was more true before LLMs could put together a book in 5 minutes.

Though you can probably post rage bait 500 tweets in that time. So maybe the overall point still stands when thinking about it.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#39

Post by watwut »

wewxjfq wrote: post #20
stogot wrote: post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

The author clearly means professional publishers, who have editors and fact-checkers. Self-published books already lack trust. The reply also misses several other points the author makes, which I find ironic because it kind of goes into the direction the author bemoans: The author wrote a longer article to lay out his thoughts and it sure took him time to write and any reader time to read and digest and here is a qui…

Professional publishers do not fact check nor used to fact check. They had editors for langauge.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#40

Post by qsera »

perching_aix wrote: post #27
qsera wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can lie, but that lie will remain in the books that have gone into circulation. A lie on the internet can be reversed or erased after it has been consumed by millions of human eye balls.

Which is why the Internet Archive, and similar, more specialized services are so important.

"Important" does not sustain it. Even youtube, something that provide huge entertainment value would not have sustained if not for advertising revenue.

The point is that IA it is an anomaly soon to be dead or worse, taken over.

Post reply on HN