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Comment by stronglikedan | Hacker News Reader

The problem with ebooks is that you cannot be 100% certain that you're reading the original text. That can only be preserved in physical copies. That's why the destructive book scanning for AI is such a tragedy. There's already plenty of examples of original texts being surreptitiously revised, and it happens with videos too.

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That's not a problem with Ebooks writ large -- a zip file of a bunch of HTML documents aren't likely to randomly change on you. It's a problem of some evil vendor's "ebook ecosystem", where one day your copy of 1984 could vanish from your library. Most of the ebooks I've been reading lately are all public domain classics from Standard Ebooks.

I was shocked to discover that "How To Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie was heavily rewritten by his wife after his death. I had two copies of the book, and sure enough, one was the old version and the other the new. The new one did not withstand scrutiny.

Your comment is mentioned in a recent video that I was watching. I remembered reading the hackernews thread but oh man it felt so joyful seeing your comment on the video and I was surprised/amazed so much so that I have come here.

I wonder how you feel about it? Did you know about this video and I'd be curious to hear your response about it :-D

It made me realize that people might actually be scouring through the internet and the hackernews comments that we write along the way might even be showed by people to perhaps an even larger audience. Wow.

[0]: I Found the BANNED Chapter of "How To Win Friends and Influence People": [https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281](https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281)

Hacker News' founder Paul Graham also recommends that you read the original version[1]. I'm curious to see examples of what was changed in the revision. I read it myself a long time ago, but I don't know which one it was and wondering if I missed out on the better version.

[1] https://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html

May I ask: what was different? This is the first time I’ve heard of this and I’ve only seen what was, likely, the new edition.

My original copy was printed in 1977. His wife's version that I have was printed in 1981.

Parts V and VI were removed from the wife's version.

The removed sections:

1. Letters That Produced Miraculous Results - cut because correspondence norms had massively changed between 1936 and 1981

2. Seven Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier - cut because its 1930s-era perspectives on marriage and domestic life didn't age that well

Personally, I think some of the edits in the remaining sections are more controversial than the removal of those two sections. I think the revision lost quite a bit of Dale's charm and just felt a bit less idiosyncratic in a bad way.

Well no, you can only be 100% certain you're reading the text found in that book. Books often change over releases. It's not some sacred tome containing an ever-updating reflection of the author's ideals. It's just the draft at the time the book was printed.

> The problem with ebooks is that you cannot be 100% certain that you're reading the original text.

That's equally true of print books. Misprints happen.

Not the same thing. The kindle ebook you "purchased" could have different text each time you open it up. A movie you stream could be different every time.

Reading your comment I wonder if the parent comment is different each time, because "does the ebook text change reading-to-reading" is not the question being discussed.

What's being discussed is "original texts being surreptitiously revised". The comment you're responding to isn't a nonsequitur.

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