Kaj_Sotala comments on Knowledge is Worth Paying For - Less Wrong

45 Post author: lukeprog 21 September 2011 06:09PM

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Comment author: kilobug 22 September 2011 06:39:50PM 0 points [-]

I agree with most of your estimates. The only one with which I disagree is the 2, I would put it near the level of the 1, maybe at 90%, but doesn't matter much. You're reasoning on 5 years, which is a relatively short time frame, but that's not the main problem either.

There are two problems which are not really accounted in your estimates, IMHO :

  1. Black Swans : the probability is very low, but we can't rule out some catastrophic outcome, like fanatics (from Tea Party or whatever) seizing power and wanting to ban evolution-related books. The odds are very low, but who would have predicted Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler or the Rwanda genocide ? I just don't want anyone to hold the power to massively terminate copies of books easily, even if I'm pretty sure they won't use that power. Because I'm just "pretty sure" of it. So I want to steer the future in a direction in which they just can't hold the power. A dystopia like The Right to Read is not impossible either. And yes I know about the fallacy of using fictional evidence, but let me use it as a lossy compression to convey a concept in a few words.

  2. The actual consequences of DRM, even without any intent to abuse from them : you can't (easily) lend or give the ebooks for example. And what about the future ? When your Kindle dies in 10 years, what's the chance that you can't transfer the ebooks on the new device you bought ? Those problems are real and serious too.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 23 September 2011 09:09:30AM 2 points [-]

When your Kindle dies in 10 years, what's the chance that you can't transfer the ebooks on the new device you bought ?

Personally, I tend to agree with Vornaskotti on this:

Of course, I don’t really control the books I buy from Amazon, who still has the power to close my account and at least in theory render all my books unreadable. In my case the same applies in here as with comics: I don’t really care. I’ve been getting rid of useless crap in our apartment in a steady pace for a couple of years, but for a long time the bookshelves stacked three novels deep have been The Great Untouchable. This year I conquered it too, and I’ve been taking my books to an antiquarian by the bagful.

It seems that I very rarely re-read books, even those I really like. If I do, it’s ten years later or so, and with that kind of frequency I can bloody well buy the book again, unless I want to borrow it from someone.

Comment author: fiddlemath 24 September 2011 01:52:08AM 0 points [-]

There's a difference, though. The space an ebook occupies is far cheaper than the space a physical book occupies. I can see selling or giving physical books to reclaim their space, but, so long as you have any index whatsoever, getting rid of ebooks seems silly.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 24 September 2011 08:26:27AM 0 points [-]

The quote didn't say anything about getting rid of ebooks? (It only said that if those ebooks happened to get lost, it wouldn't really matter.)