book destruction is normal. book recyclling too. i think I learned about paper recycling in primary school, and I'm now seeing people outraged (outraged!) that books get pulped and turned into toilet paper. even some media and people I normally like are rage farming with this.

we need to destroy some books or there would literally not be room for all books in the whole world. some books are rare because nobody wants them. some go out of print or get pulped for excellent reasons.

@lzg for example, nobody, including me, needs the Java 7 and Java 8 manuals that were previously collecting dust on my shelf

i love my books but I am under no illusions that they're valuable for anybody else in the world. people love to bring up a hypothetical child in a hypothetical library where books can be donated, but this doesn't exist. storage fees exist.

librarians, publishers, second hand dealers know that books are objects of varying value from one moment to the next. sometimes they get disposed of, like other objects. they are not sacred.

this reminds of me that trend of people discovering old tiled floors under their houses vynil or ceramic. sometimes those were rightfully covered because they're ugly AF. cover them back! cover themmmm

i once watched a guy proudly said "we uncovered the original tile floor, unfortunately it's full of swastikas"

@kaoudis @lzg I think part of the reason is that they aren't interested in Java and the like, instead books are selected for training&destruction specifically because they can't be found elsewhere which means they are relatively rare.

Also, there is a possibility that *your* copies will be the last surviving resources to decipher this arcane technology after the apparently imminent AI apocalypse :)