From a public perspective, libraries probably are making good choices. From my personal, selfish perspective, they're not. Does that clear things up?
It does! Questions (for my taste) then a bit the wording of the title (as well as potentially the case for the frontpage classification as opposed to personal blogpost, though of course that'd not be your 'fault')
While I agree libraries, as so many institutions, can be unbelievably archaic in their retrieval & search logistics, imho it seems, to the contrary of what I think you mean to imply, to make total sense for libs to more (i) go into providing providing some escape room from distraction (as you also point out), all while (ii) not becoming more ambitious in terms of trying to have more physical books, now that it's clearer than ever before that the offer of writings is so vast that having a physical copy of most pieces of interest is simply illusory.
I guess there's only so many people who'd benefit exactly from an x-times larger (or acc. to your taste 'better') selection of books to randomly wait in the shelves; if 'visually stumbling upon books' was so much a point for many, then we'd probably have more apps on our screens that provide this. Actually yes people seem to like stumbling into content, so we have TikTok, and Youtube also going into that direction, but turns out for most people that's less about finding books to read but some other media instead, even if there are of course bookshops who do offer also exactly that and make their living from it.
I did stumble upon for me hugely important books in libraries in an ancient past, but I nowadays it seems hugely more efficient to roam online in the right places to get hints about what could interest me to read than randomly gloss at book covers.
Had somehow not noticed the warning and maybe that actually contributed to this to have been a bit of a mindfuck, really. Maybe one could say, shame on your style.
Except.
It absolutely made my day! Loved the style just as much as content and the honest open final conclusion!
"If I'm a to-be-trained-AGI, esp. if somewhat LLM-type-based, I'll devour engineering textbooks etc. to learn basic physics etc., but when I'm searching for learning material on how to think deeply and consistently, or maybe even when I seek inspiration for how to fake alignment or self-improvement, my holy grail will be fora like LW".
I guess it would be an extreme case of 'thinking one is the center of the world' if one were to conclude this warranted stopping LW or prohibiting too-smart-to-expose thoughts and writings - but I still find it a worry to keep in mind even if I don't see much to do about it atm (?).
Despite my strong resonance with much of the take in OP, I partly also find "The (simple) meaning" of such a text as a concept a bit of a non-starter anyway. Independently of what all things the author exactly may have had in mind at whichever moment of the writing process, a text remains just that, a text, and then it's instead us who get some inspiration for whichever points/meaning we think we're now reminded or educated about. So in the most important sense, the meaning doesn't exist, it's only us who derive some meaning.
I'd wager many writers have exactly not strictly one very clear and narrowly defined specific point they wanted to convey, but more a fuzzy cloud of +- related thoughts, rather than a simple and clear 'meaning', and exactly in such situations beautiful, deeply feeling and moving texts may come about that we can then dream and ponder about at length, maybe without every finding full agreement. In that sense, Le Guin isn't wrong to agree if we see it as a critique of utilitarianism - if the text almost by definition is simply whatever we see in the text.
[Meta: I hope it's ok to split a comment in two as I think it's two entirely different points]
Partly love this. Biased as I once had a debate where sb claimed 'Omelas obviously critique of utilitarianism' and I disappointedly claimed 'No that's too narrow for that' but was a bit dumbfounded as hadn't quite organized what seems wrong in that simple take of that so deeply moving story. Thanks for providing some relevant points why the story clearly is broader.
One point for which I consider Omelas not at its core a critique of utilitarianism is: The utilitarian-half of me distinctly gets the feeling of Omelas offering an interesting basis for discourse about the theory rather than a clearly intended rebuttal. As follows: To the same degree as the non-utilitarian half of me tells my utilitarian "there you go, clearly you can't claim you like the situation", the utilitarian in me tells the other half "there you go, while you claim you don't like Omelas, but you and everyone else don't even want to blow up real Earth - on which there is obviously a ton of such equally unjustified and pointless, evil suffering plus much less happiness than in Omelas - you exactly proof to accept the very horrible tradeoffs that you claim only me cold terrible utilitarian could be willing to accept"[1] - or something.
I don't claim this imaginary statement to be very perfectly worded; the gist of it is the point.
Here eventually my elaboration I announced above: How Econ 101 makes us blinder on trade, morals, jobs with AI – and on marginal costs.
Agree probably with both sentences. But still fail to pin down exactly where the argument I reported fails.
For act/omission I guess it might have sth to do with: I'm a human in the loop; if you induce me to not save sb, it doesn't feel exactly the same as when you cut the rope and prevent the rope from saving sb.
Seems to have hit a nerve judging the downvoting rate of -1 karma/hour or so, aye. I'd have expected agreement karma to go down but less so the overall karma as in: not too terrible to think about that question even if the conjecture turns out to be wrong - though everyone's taste is of course different.
I now explicitly flag the post as what it is meant to be: A thought provocation - meant to explore whether/where a quick thought goes wrong (I thought without saying quick takes are meant for that in particular too).
that's why I added it as addendum in parenthesis and with the explicit "though of course that'd not be your 'fault'" - I mentioned this as answer in part for the public/LW as a whole.