Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop
The author reflects on how their experience as a library shelver provided a curated, high-quality intellectual education that contrasts with the current trend of AI-generated content. They argue that the physical act of browsing organized, human-curated collections offers a depth of discovery that algorithmic 'slop' cannot replicate.
My first year of college, I had a work-study job which ended up being one of the most sneakily important intellectual experiences of my life. I was a lowly library shelver, assigned to the shelves labelled A through F section in the Library of Congress filing system: mostly works on religion, philosophy, sociology, and history. I say sneakily important because at first glance, shelving books in a library is super boring. What it amounts to, physically, is reading the label on a book, then placing it on the shelf where it belongs, repeated around a thousand times per shift.
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