[jeffrwells]

Here I had Claude rewrite his post into a 300 word version without all the filler.

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d49d81d6-7aab-4730-9c3c-4...

Which I’m sharing as a meta point…I think self help books are declining because there’s a better way to get the information without all the filler. But filler makes the books thick enough to sell at the airport

Also - aren’t LLMs the ultimate choose your own adventure version of the information?

[sinuhe69]

I’ve spent time to read the AI summary (which I normally never do) and the original (of course), and I can tell you the AI summary missed the most important point of the writing. I’d say what they are because it would defy the very purpose of what I’m trying to do.

But I can tell you that it’s enough to refute the AI fallacy many believe.

[sjamaan]

It's a shame grandparent's link gives a 404 now, I'd love to compare the two.

[Gareth321]

Surely this could be corrected by using the correct prompt? If you ask an AI to summarise a book, it's going to cut out 99% of the content. If you wanted to read some of that 99% of the content, you need to be clear about what you want. Otherwise you're leaving the AI to decide. That summary might be good enough for others, but not you. Tell it the focus you would like it to use. E.g. "include anything about the philosophy behind the decision." Whatever your point of interest.

To be clear, a summary will never replace reading 300 pages. But it might be 95% good enough for most people and in most cases, and that's often good enough.

[DoughnutHole]

Most of the time I’ve gotten major value or insight out of a book it’s because it’s said something truly unique or insightful that I genuinely never would have thought of if I hadn’t read it. Your prompt is useless because I might think I care about area A but I’d have my mind blown by area B which your prompt will drop unless it somehow has a perfect theory of my mind.

Sometimes you just have to read to damn book.

[ssgodderidge]

Agreed. There’s also something about “time under consideration.” The relatively slow pace of reading the book opens the door to personal insight that a summary hides. The words themselves might be important, but I’ve found the additional minutes of a book is critical for me to fully apply the concepts to my life.

[sinuhe69]

If I know what the book contains to write a perfect prompt, why would I need a AI-summary?

I don’t say AI cannot summarize or there is no value in book summary, but I’d say that by stripping off most of a book, you almost certainly lose something valuable about the book, even if it is a prescriptive nonfiction. This most valuable part (besides the advices) is very often the part that actually convinced you and help the arguments stick. And without that, information will just stay as information.

[rsynnott]

This makes LLM summaries totally useless, then, surely? Without reading the thing, you cannot know which important bits to tell the LLM to retain; if it can't manage that itself, it's useless.

[jgalt212]

If a standard prompt gives you the wrong or spurious answer, the model is not a good model. In 2026, we should not be having to engineer a summarize prompt.

[globular-toast]

Liquid meals in a bottle, short form videos, mainlining compressed information... all "more efficient", but lacking the colour and texture that makes things interesting and enjoyable. Maybe that's all worth sacrificing, but what are people actually doing with all the time this saves? From what I can tell it just seems to be more of the same.

People tend to spend about a third of their lives working for someone else, a third sleeping and the remaining third split between relaxing and working for themselves. This seems invariant. As people earn more money they just buy more stuff, they have no idea what to do with the extra time from not working as much so just keeping walking the hedonic treadmill.

If you can ingest compressed forms of ten self help books in the time it would have taken you to read one, does that mean you can now evaluate them all together, or include the best bits of all of them? Or are you really just addicted to trying to "get on top" and wasting your precious life away sitting at a computer talking to a fake person?

[wouldbecouldbe]

Don't know if you did it on purpose or not, but this is hilarious.

[Boom890]

Thought so too lol

[gb2d_hn]

Self help books are the most filler heavy books. They often have a useful point, but they just don't need to be a book much of the time. This is unfortunate for the authors who have often put significant time into producing the information. Technical manuals typically need all of their content due to the level of detail, and novels need all of their content because it's the content which provides enjoyment. For self help, people just want to know what they need to do to make their lives better? Maybe the work has to move into academia where we have existing infrastructure for rewarding non profitable work for the good of the public?

[telesilla]

I disagree about the filler. People who read self help books are there for the journey, to feel they too can take on the challenge. Otherwise that brief document about how to fix yourself becomes something without substance, that can't be attached to real changes that are needed.

The most effective self help books I can recommend are Easy Way to Stop Smoking, which needs all the preamble to get the message to your addicted brain, and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I'd posit that reading just one of his entries doesn't leave you with a lifetime commitment to stoicism.

[DanielHB]

It is the same thing with documentaries.

Youtube killed them because it is just a faster delivery of knowledge and information. For super-specific questions chatbots are even faster.

[moffkalast]

Idk, the average youtube video repeats the same question five times, dragging shit out with filler as much as possible to reach the required 10 minutes to qualify for two ad runs. It's become a horrible race to the bottom in terms of quality in recent years, though unlike TV documentaries at least it's possible to skip to the conveniently marked highlight these days.

There was this recent Tom Scott interview where he recommends people start their video with quesiton A, ask B before A is resolved, then when that happens, already ask C, etc. and solve C and D at the very end to keep the viewer engaged. Most people seem to just ask A over and over and over with filler in between until the viewer's head explodes.

[sublinear]

It's funny. Back when we had it so good, I absolutely hated that aspect of a Tom Scott video.

To some extent, his awkward personality didn't help matters either, but he was the only one covering a niche topic I didn't know I cared about. So much of his catalog is unimitable.

After his hiatus and return, I must humbly recognize his genius and real passion.

[lelandfe]

“And as for B, well, your guess is as good as mine”

[XenophileJKO]

In my opinion documentaries are too short anyway. I greatly prefer "The Great Courses" vs a 1-2 hour documentary.

There I can listen to a 6 hours about the Olmec civilization.

[piltdownman]

I think you're confusing video-essays with documentaries tbf.

The notion that 'My Octopus Teacher' or 'Boys State' - to name just two award winners of the last decade - could be replaced with some Youtube AI-narrated slop is just disingenuous in the extreme.

[jtbayly]

404 on your link

[prepend]

I think it may be a meta statement on people who summarize with AI on others behalf. The value doesn’t exist and we’re left wondering if the tool user is making a statement, or messed up, or can’t do anything unless claude does it for them.

[krzat]

Not to mention that you can also ask LLM to summarize any of his books, and get the gist.

Reading an entire book may be more beneficient for habit forming, but most readers probably don't care about this.

[ChaitanyaSai]

One man's filler is another's phatic communication (if done well and not to pad)