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jaibot comments on [Link] Diversity and Academic Open Mindedness - Less Wrong Discussion
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Same principle. I wouldn't advise wasting library funds on creationist textbooks, and I would recommend removing factually-inaccurate items from the non-fiction section.
But books are still a better place to hedge against the possibility that my idea-quality-metric is seriously broken, as a matter of economics. I'd still prioritize good ideas over terrible in book acquisition, but with an added component for diversity as judged by my quality metric (aiming for a long-tail distribution as judged by my personal idea-quality metric, for example). You can have many-more books than faculty, so this is a good, economically-efficient way to purchase idea diversity without wasting your very-limited-resource of faculty spots.
Throwing out books has cost (in time and effort to judge quality), so I'd only throw out terrible books if there was some constraint on shelf space or something (and then I'd rather sell or give away than simply toss).
I don't think that the principle is the same. "Book existing in a library" isn't a privileged position like "tenured faculty" or "column in a major newspaper" or "book promoted by a major publisher."
The trouble here is that if you don't observe a taboo on exercising judgment over which ideas are acceptable or worthwhile in presenting to the public, then people with fundamental disagreements with you on such matters, given a position of power, are unlikely to observe it either.
I tend to assume that people with disagreements that fundamental are sufficiently different from me that coordinating on something like this is extremely unlikely in the first place.
Also note that everyone exercises judgment in this regard; even the most self-proclaimed "open-minded" person won't endorse teaching Time Cube in schools. Usually. I hope.
The trouble here is that if you do observe a taboo on exercising judgment over which ideas are acceptable or worthwhile in presenting to the public, then people with fundamental disagreements with you on such matters, given a position of power, are unlikely to observe it anyways.
On a side note, I think that libraries typically stock in accordance with demand and costs, not merit. Am I wrong about this, or am I right yet mistaken in also believing that librarians do a satisfactory job?
I think at this point in history, libraries are irrelevant. In the far past, books etc. were expensie and libraries kept whatever they could get. They were, collectively, the waybackmachine.org of the world. More recently, they would buy what their customers might find most useful for research. A collection of books and especially years and years of journal subscriptions. These would be local copies, with no real archival purpose in holding these, these would always be available somewhere else. Now, I don't know what they do. I have gotten a few books from university libraries in the last few years, so they served to save me some money and/or allow me to read things I wouldn't have spent the money on.
Personally, I've been had at least one nonfiction book checked out of the library at all times for the past several months, and it's allowed me to spend a lot of my transportation time (I read while walking, and while taking public transit) reading up on things that aren't online, which I wouldn't have paid retail price for.
Libraries receive a lot of books by donation, so many books in their stock are not vetted in terms of demand or cost, but they'll sometimes clear out books in a section which aren't being borrowed in order to make room for other books.