I definitely agree though with your point about salience. I think it is an important though inadequate defense of books. Salience can be achieved in many more sophisticated ways than reading, even some YouTube videos create salience on surprisingly complex topics. Books offer more than just this as a medium.
My essay How to Read a Book for Understanding was 90% motivated by annoyance at Andy’s misunderstanding of how books are read differently by different types of readers. I never reformatted this for Less Wrong, but probably should. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/d7bvcp/how_to_read_a_book_for_understanding/
I definitely agree though with your point about salience. I think it is an important though inadequate defense of books. Salience can be achieved in many more sophisticated ways than reading, even some YouTube videos create salience on surprisingly complex topics. Books offer more than just this as a medium.
Great post and thanks for linking to it! Seems like books’ function and utility has gotten more attention than I would have expected.