This is so condescending. The reason I buy used is that the overwhelming majority of books are out of print and not available digitally. Which makes the vandalism especially egregious!
You can buy unmarked used books. Just check. (And if you're buying online the state of the book is expected to be in the description.)
Oh, I recognize your name ... wrong about so many things.
From another one of your comments here:
> No, my argument is that it's totally obnoxious to lend or resell a book that you've written in
But the person who advocated for writing in one's books if desired said nothing about lending or reselling them ... YOU were the first person here, in your response to them, to whine about BUYING such books. Talk about obnoxious!
It seems like me insisting that LLMs are stochastic parrots [presumably that's what you're mad about] is beginning to draw personal attacks on totally unrelated threads. Happens a lot. I used to have an account here with my name on it. HN is simply not a safe place to disagree with prevailing tech ideology.
And his "presumption" is erroneous, absurd, and misrepresents previous commentary.
Whatever. My HN front end has a mute function and I use it for people acting in bad faith. Ta ta.
and so now, some ancient math tehcniques can be unearthed by finding all the layers of writing in a book