[petra]

For me, as an avid reader of non-fiction books, for learning, i'm starting to question the value of reading them, compared to a good in-depth discussion with an LLM about a subject, together with reading academic papers and long articles/blog posts.

[telxosis]

I understand what you mean but there is a depth of thought that is hard to capture outside a book.

The main problem is that so many books are really just essays or papers that get stretched to 300 pages because that is what the publisher wants. A great book I don't think has this problem.

I don't see a separation though between books, LLMs, papers and audiobooks. I would add youtube lectures in there too. They are all valued friends in learning to me.

[SnooSux]

Can you recommend any specific "great" books?

[greymalik]

Why not both?

[petra]

Because using the other methods of learning, possible coupled with having a search environment inside the chat for the future, or creating memorization material for the stuff i specifically want to memorize - seems more efficient and effective.

[mckn1ght]

Two things here. First, you have to know what to ask an LLM. A book on a subject is already organized with all the information that could be returned by the same prompts that would lead to it. The prompting effort was essentially already done by the author and publisher.

Second, you’re getting a more compressed and lossy form of that information from an LLM, unless you go to such efforts that it’s be easier to just read the book. It’s akin to a conversation where a friend asks you about a book in finer and finer detail until you either recite the book for them word for word or direct them to just go read the book.

So, I don’t think LLMs are replacements for reading books. They’re complimentary.