Modern books vs old books / texts

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guitarplayer
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Modern books vs old books / texts

Post by guitarplayer »

I am of the opinion that what generally people talk about are reiterations of ideas that have been around for a very long time. This goes along with what @jacob mentioned elsewhere - there are only so many distinct models people seem to be able to come up with, perhaps due to the physiology of our brain. Still, there can be arguments for/against reading old vs new texts. I throw a few, add more if you can or modify the ones I've given.

Arguments for reading old books / texts:
- source texts that perhaps exemplify more fundamental ideas / root thoughts
- often available for free
- if these are texts studied in mainstream education, potentially can connect with a large pool of people
- more plain text, less pictures and colorful blurbs, cleaner layout (@ertyu 22-07-29)

Arguments against reading old books / texts:
- archaic language makes it painstaking to go through
- people in mainstream education never read them so actually there is barely anybody to talk to about them
- the utility will be very dependent on the subject matter. A calculus or intro to physics textbook from 1970 will likely serve just fine. A psychology, corporate finance, or computer science book will likely not (@ertyu 22-07-29)

Arguments for reading modern books / texts:
- written in contemporary language, easier to read
- contemporary people read them, easier to connect with others
- simpler on average, so more piecemeal acquisition of knowledge

Arguments against reading modern books / texts:
- ideas diluted, sometimes a hit-and-miss if it comes to finding any deep idea at all
- cost money
Last edited by guitarplayer on Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: Modern books vs old books / texts

Post by ertyu »

For old books: more plain text, less pictures and colorful blurbs, cleaner layout

Against old textbooks: the utility will be very dependent on the subject matter. A calculus or intro to physics textbook from 1970 will likely serve just fine. A psychology, corporate finance, or computer science book will likely not.

OutOfTheBlue
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Re: Modern books vs old books / texts

Post by OutOfTheBlue »

You are of course aware that many (most) ebooks and some digitized books can be found online for free…

Old books may not have a digitized (and searchable/audio friendly) version or be out of print, which often makes them harder to access (libraries are not always handy across the world).

jacob
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Re: Modern books vs old books / texts

Post by jacob »

7wb5 rule: Old books have a selection bias towards quality from being "still in print", "recommended by someone so still not superseded", "not thrown in the garbage long ago".

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Sclass
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Re: Modern books vs old books / texts

Post by Sclass »

I’ve been buying old engineering books on eBay. When I say old I mean 2010 editions. Mostly in the subject of digital filter design and control theory. The mathematical content hasn’t changed much in decades.

The only difference is we run the math on more powerful machines now. Machines the author couldn’t program if their lives depended on it. Their grad students do it for them. The intellectual part is the same. A Kalman filter is still a Kalman filter. These books that poor students were forced to buy for $100 cost a mere $3 with shipping now.

Another similar example I saw was a material science book that had updated its current edition to have a homework problem on carbon nanotubes. It replaced the same problem in the old edition that used a Buckey ball. Pretty much the same calculation but a twist to capture royalties in the current day. Gotta force those young students to buy the new book.

My observation is the professors who write this stuff release new editions of the same stuff because they need to maintain the flow of royalties. They’ll tack on some modern applications of the theory at the end of each chapter in the most current edition. Like the one I’m reading right now literally has a picture of a Space X rocket on the cover with interior text cut and pasted from the 2010 edition. Pretty sad.

Textbooks are such a ripoff. In grad school I learned how to take textbooks to the copy center within the Stanford University bookstore and photocopy the five relevant pages I needed in various engineering texts. I have a file full of these little gems that I pilfered as a kid. I hear the young people are just snapping off their iPhones and scanning the pages in the stores these days. It makes sense, like formal ed, there are only twenty or so useful pages in a five hundred page textbook that have any real world relevance. The rest is just filler to justify some academic’s existence on campus.

Such a boondoggle. Silly books that make academics into millionaires. I laugh when I watch zoom meetings with carefully placed academic texts in the background on a shelf behind some insecure person. It’s like a rooster puffing up its hackle feathers. Tells you a lot about what you’re gonna hear.

So my eBay old editions can wallpaper my zoom background. They’re good to flip through if you want to find those two pages you need today.

guitarplayer
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Re: Modern books vs old books / texts

Post by guitarplayer »

This has turned more multifaceted than I thought, thanks for all the input.

A general thought that sparked the thread was something like this:
* if I am in a group setting and talk about texts of Seneca or Epictetus, perhaps very few people would pick up on it,
* if I started talking about CBT and Beck and Ellis, maybe a few more people would get interested,
* if I started talking about 'Atomic Habits', I would get a relatively large audience of certain circles of fb / twitter / reddit / forums' participants.

But in fact many ideas from all of these are the same / similar, or could be derived from first principles.

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