I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask for a summary before committing to reading a book. There are just too many books. In fact this article mentions a bunch of books and summarizes them inline. Good. Gives me more information on whether I should read those books
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But the summary rarely captures what makes the book worth reading in the first place, so your decision is based on inadequate information.
Inadequate information is better than zero information.
In fact the value of most information follows an exponential curve. You tell me a movie is sci fi and I immediately know I'm unlikely to be into it. You tell me it's from A24 and I get my hopes up. You tell me both of these pieces of information and I gotta wrestle with competing signals - but either way the absolute value of the expected value of me watching it flattens out and a bit, I no longer expect it to absolutely blow me away nor make me throw my TV out the window.
Hence I'm pro compression culture. Let me decide whether I want to unpack it.
> Hence I'm pro compression culture
I think the problem is that this compression culture is lossy and fragmented.
Summaries serve a purpose similar to thumbnails in an image gallery UI - the full picture is always available behind a click.
Imagine if you could only see them as 128x128 JPEGs at 50% quality - after they've been reposted with "deep fried meme" filters a few times. No links to the source, and the next bite-sized truncation pushed right after. Later someone reposts them upscaled to 8K.
This is exactly what I feel is happening with the written word.
I don't see that as a problem. You can get much stronger compression if you allow it to be lossy. This naturally flows out of information value decreasing exponentially.
What's the alternative? Reading every single book humanity has produced so you can decide which ones to.. actually read?
Maybe there's some kind of a world this is feasible, but in the modern world, just talking about books, there are literally millions published every year. Hell, just trying to decide which movie to watch, there are probably several thousand "Real" movies produced every year, how do you decide which one to spend your precious 3 hours on?
The alternative is to find people you trust, or who are widely considered trustworthy, and read what they recommend. The canon was invented to solve this problem.
Sorry, are you arguing that it's better to listen to a "trust worthy person" tell you what to read than to read a summary to determine what to read?
Yes. Because a "trustworthy person" is one who has demonstrated their authority, who has experienced the work in its full form, who has the taste and experience to make a determination as to its quality and usefulness, and who is capable of presenting reasoned arguments that support their opinion. Such people exist.
In the current climate, it may seem odd to trust the opinion of a fellow human instead of AI summaries and your personal predilections, but that is exactly what I am arguing we should do.
This reminds me a bit of the "philosopher king" from plato. If such a trustworthy person existed and could be found, that would be superior.
"A little person and his friends go for a walk to return a piece of jewellery where it belongs."
>"A little person and his friends go for a walk to return a piece of jewellery where it belongs."
"Fat old man creeps on his girlfriend's teen-aged daughter."
"Rich guy parties with his friends on Long Island."
"Angsty Teenagers kill themselves."
hard disagree because summaries spoil any suspense or intrigue a novel would have
it's the journey, not the destination
One study showed people exposed to spoilers enjoyed content more than without, on average.
thank you, came here to say that, i read 5 books on good years so i'd rather know before whether i might enjoy them or not