
Re:Reviews 

by TaoPhoenix (980487) <TaoPhoenix@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 22 2011, @11:37PM (#35582498)

Fair reply, but perhaps it doesn't work the same way across all categories. You would be right for fiction novels. However for nonfiction texts, I buy according to what I am or one day want to research. Unless the review is a warning against a badly produced book, reviews for nonfiction are actually irrelevant.

Easy example. I have a strong interest in Buddhism. Seung Sahn in Compass of Zen worked out or re-transmitted an innovation that solves a key problem with many old classical koans. "...Everything is truth, so everything is Buddha. Everything is God, or nature, or mind, or truth. This kind of answer shows metaphysical-style function. However, we encounter many kinds of situations every day that require us to respond more meticulously and clearly. They require some action that works more completely than a mere reflection or explanation of truth. Most situations in our life demand a complete function, some complete action."

This appears on page 232. In a bookstore, a practiced researcher can survey the entire shelf of offerings over a few days, knowing the approximate kinds of answers contained in the 100,000 pages of texts. There is simply no way to determine that a passage like this exists in a text by "heuristic methods" alone.

