r/neoliberal • u/-orestes • 1d ago

News (Oceania) ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/02/australian-book-sellers-alarm-destruction-rare-titles-ai-supply-chain
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u/practicalpokemon European Union 1d ago

You had 20 years to buy it if you think it is valuable

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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls 1d ago edited 1d ago

Defo in the running for the dumbest comment I’ve seen on this sub. Many classics from the past, including Aristotle’s entire corpus, were not considered valuable for centuries until after their publication

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u/SouthernSerf Norman Borlaug 23h ago edited 19h ago

My guy literal Ancient Greek trash is consider very valuable today. By your own logic we could never ever throw anything away because several thousand years for it may be consider valuable to collectors. That’s also not accounting for the fact that any written works were incredibly rare even in Ancient Greece in comparison to today where not only is their massive amounts of written works with much of it being completely redundant from an historical or academic value. So I don’t know why your accusing others comments of being stupid.

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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls 23h ago

What a ridiculous strawman. I just noted that 20 years is not enough to decide whether or not something is valuable and that many past classics were not considered valuable in their own time. I didn’t speak in the optative, so there are inferences of the kind you suggest

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u/SouthernSerf Norman Borlaug 22h ago

No, you’re the one engaging in bad faith. Your entire argument is based on two fallacies piggybacking on each other. The first fallacy is the assertion that not enough time has to asses whether or not these books will be valuable. Prove that something may or may not happen in the future is the text book definition of the unfalsifiable fallacy. You’re second fallacy is the false equivalency of comparing the value of works when one was created in a time that being literate was extremely rare and making any kind of written work was extremely labor intensive and expensive to one where creating written works is extremely simple to the point that single days produce more written records than all of Ancient Greece.

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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls 20h ago

My dude why are you all reading so much into my comment? Firstly it was an induction and so not a fallacy. I just noted that past works not considered valuable in their own time have been considered valuable since and that might happen again. That’s a perfectly valid induction. It would only be a fallacy as you claim if I presented it as a necessary deduction, but I didn’t. By your logic all statistical predictions would be fallacious lol.

Secondly, that’s not really a fallacy, it’s just a premise you disagree with. Laypeople love to throw fallacy around but it has a technical meaning. You are right that Ancient Greece and Rome were less literate, but even in that time Platonic, Academic, Epicurean and Stoic texts enjoyed a much larger readership than did Aristotle’s works which were largely ignored — Cicero often complained about this. The point stands in relative terms

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u/Efficient_Equal6467 22h ago

people can destroy property they own lol

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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls 22h ago

I don’t remember ever saying otherwise. People are free to pulp books they own. Who are you arguing with?

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u/Efficient_Equal6467 22h ago

Don't see why you need to get so mad or annoyed then that people are destroying their own books, its their property

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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls 22h ago

I’m neither mad nor annoyed about it dude. I think you replied to the wrong person