No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.
No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in, and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with. It is precisely what Socrates warned us about.
I'd say this is a problem with the seller's communication, not the use of the book. If the seller didn't specify that the book was marked up, I agree with your sentiment. The act of writing in a book and selling it isn't the issue, but setting false expectations to whoever you're selling it to is.
> and it's a shallow way of taking notes to begin with
Are we really going to speak down to how someone uses a bunch of paper bound together? That's how they wanted to use it, which is cool, it's just not how you like it.
My intention is less "talk down" and more "Socrates was right." Too much of note-taking is a ritualistic behavior that actually hinders understanding and retention. I think highlighting / circling / crossing out / etc is by far the worst, but margin notes are also bad.
It is very frustrating the number of people who say "it's their property, they can do whatever they want" and similar comments, all of which are missing the point. Yes. It is legal to write on your own property. I know thay. It's my opinion that they're doing something that is guaranteed to harm overall human knowledge: whoever purchases/inherits/digitzes the book has to deal with it. And it almost certainly harms their own understanding of the book.
I printed this out just so I could cross out every line except for one. And now, with renewed mental confusion, I wrestle with my sins against humanity.
We don't even know if Socrates not writing his teachings was a principled stance to begin with, so "Socrates was right" is a shaky place to start your argument. Also "Socrates said writing is bad, so don't write in this piece of writing that you didn't force me to buy" is one of the weirdest pieces of circular logic I've ever come across.
Even if we take for granted that it was principled, it almost certainly wasn't pointed at marginalia. The argument (that Plato put in his mouth, through written text, no less) is that writing that substitutes for internal recollection can't answer back. It's an argument against outsourcing a thought to fixed text. A margin note is the opposite: it's the reader talking back to the text.
You have a personal preference about buying unmarked books, and you retreat to a Grand Unifying Socratic Theory whenever someone challenges it.
> it almost certainly harms their own understanding of the book
What? For all people who ever mark up a book in the margins or highlight passages? How could you possibly know that?
> they're doing something that is guaranteed to harm overall human knowledge
Also what? Human knowledge is necessarily a collaborative effort. Reading a text with another person's notes alongside it is just another way to engage with it. I'll maybe grant you highlighting since it's been shown to not help with retention all that much.
We have a deeper understanding of some of the most famous thinkers in history because we have books that they marked up to help us understand how they engaged with specific texts. This is invaluable for "overall human knowledge."
Herman Melville marked up his copies of Shakespeare's works and that shaped how scholars read Moby-Dick. Did he "harm overall human knowledge" by doing that?
Ok then please explain why Socrates is better than margin notes for an assumed purpose, because that is not reasonable common knowledge.
If by that you meant to suggest that for formal study, some kind of self-review process combined with cold written practice/rehearsal sustained under interleaved spacing, then that is likely the gold standard for comprehension and memorization. But most people don't even know that, either.
But the main premise is we should not assume all book reading is for rigorous self study. Margin notes can be useful for other purposes than direct understanding/retention (I admittedly don't know the psychology evidence for it but many academics routinely write margin notes here and there on (poorly written/edited) papers for purposes of idea generation, scientific criticism, etc. Presumably the Edison example mentioned above would have been more like that.).
You are correct that the reference is a little obscure -- if my memory serves it's Plato's Phaedrus.
Plato argues, in a book, in the voice of his mentor Socrates, that books will destroy knowledge. And the reason is precisely to do with the thing that Socrates is famous for, his Socratic Method of asking his students (or rival politicians or anyone) questions about what they claimed to know, engaging them in a real discussion where we come to things that we agree about and then build that agreed knowledge-base incrementally. For Socrates, a book could never provide that experience; you cannot ask the book a question.
How dare you gatekeep how people interact with literary material? Who(M)ever purchases/inherits/ditigizes/burns a book has to deal with it, and that dealing with could include ignoring it like a grown up, using some whiteout, or if digitizing, using any of the myriad photo editing software available. Sure, maybe don't put your grocery list on a first edition of some rare Chaucer book, but Chicken Soup for the Teenager's Soul? Study guides? Infinte Jest?
A book with notes is a guarantee that the book didn't spend its life sitting on a bookshelf not being read. If people are reading it is a net positive for overall human knowledge.
Lastly, your usage of Socratic teachings is a hollow appeal to authority. Socrates is dead and a modest library in an elementary school would surely have brought him to tears had he known how far we've come as a species, much less the remainder of books currently available.
Probably the most treasured item I own is a novel a good friend of mine gave me as a gift. It was one of their favourite books, and they'd highlight lines and sections that resonated with them by putting brackets around them using a pen. Coming across those sections, and learning a bit more about them in the process, is like finding little nuggets of gold.
But I get where you're coming from as well. I guess it just really depends on the context of who/what/why when it comes to reading.
GP makes no mention of re-selling. They explicitly talk about revisiting. Your comment would have done better as a standalone as opposed to a response to them.
And not that it matters, but "cross out" doesn't imply "destroy beyond recognition." A simple strike-through is sufficient to keep the text legible (so you remember what it is you disagree with).
it's totally obnoxious to buy a copy of a book with notes in it and complain about those notes. 2¢
how are you supposed to know the book has been scribbled on if you buy it online, as you must do for the great majority of used books you might want to acquire?
read the description of the ad when buying.
if it doesn't clarify in the description, ask or don't buy.
Aside from shallow, uncritical notes, consider that annotating in a margin is evidence that a reader is actively engaging with a text.
Very often when I write in margins it's to question or argue against what's written (e.g. "really? what about ...", or "no, contradicts ...") which, to me, seems in line with the dialectic process Socrates promoted. Multiple sides, truth-seeking.
Sure, having a spacious notebook on the side is even better. But it's the same goal, isn't it? Engage more deeply with a text and encourage questioning as you read it, while it's still fresh.
Sometimes you have the drastic misfortune of someone totally off the rails writing crazy crap in it though, or a 3 year old experimenting with crayons. Not what the Stephenson article is about, but that sucks.
Amazon's used prices are usually set by booksellers that base their prices on stuff like this for some books... When you get to like old cheap paperback romances though, or that .01 plus shipping, you might or might not.
I would be pissed if I expected a clean, un-scribbled-on book I wanted and it was represented as such, but got that.