I liked this post but I think it would have been helpful if you were more clear between two claims you could be making:
‘Reading books is (sometimes) an optimal medium of consuming information, given ~altruistic goals’
‘Reading books is (sometimes) valuable given ~non-altruistic goals—e.g. it is pleasurable, exposes the reader to culture, etc.’
I think you move fluidly between arguing for both 1 and 2, which can be a bit confusing, especially because the framing of the post seems like you wanted to mostly argue for 1.
FWIW I basically think both are true, but with heavy emphasis on the ‘sometimes’ in 1. For that reason, I’d mostly be interested in a post which talks about when and how books can be optimal ways of consuming info (rather than stuff arguing for 2 which I expect ~everybody agrees with).
I liked this post but I think it would have been helpful if you were more clear between two claims you could be making:
‘Reading books is (sometimes) an optimal medium of consuming information, given ~altruistic goals’
‘Reading books is (sometimes) valuable given ~non-altruistic goals—e.g. it is pleasurable, exposes the reader to culture, etc.’
I think you move fluidly between arguing for both 1 and 2, which can be a bit confusing, especially because the framing of the post seems like you wanted to mostly argue for 1.
FWIW I basically think both are true, but with heavy emphasis on the ‘sometimes’ in 1. For that reason, I’d mostly be interested in a post which talks about when and how books can be optimal ways of consuming info (rather than stuff arguing for 2 which I expect ~everybody agrees with).