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The most popular book of all time.

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Reply 40
Original post by Simes
Well in that case the Harry Potter books need to be split out by:
title
hardback / paperback
issue
different sleeve


haha also latin translation
Reply 41
Original post by NaTaLiiA513
Yup, it out-sold Rowling's Harry Potter series. Pathetic I say. The book isn't even worth reading.


it gets me horny every time...explains y i can never finish reading it...:colondollar:
Original post by Shakz
it gets me horny every time...explains y i can never finish reading it...:colondollar:



:creep::curious:
Reply 43
Original post by NaTaLiiA513
:creep::curious:


lol have u even read it? i mean, its nastier than watching a porno:ff:
Original post by xylas
Your argument has a lot of flaws. You don't propose what a better measure of popularity is. You conflate popularity with 'buying without feeling you need to'. Basically, you commit the fallacy of false consciousness where you get to say what people's reasons for their actions are.


I do? :hmmmm: [I don't think I do but I don't completely disagree with the inference you drew either :wink:]

I don't need to define popularity for you - there's a clear cut definition out there you could easily find yourself.

The title of this thread is "the most popular book of all time" and this was followed up with a list of books ranked in order of highest number of sales. The point I was trying to make was that numbers and popularity don't necessarily go hand in hand.

For e.g. would it be right to assume that attending school is the most popular way of spending your day simply because millions of people worldwide do so? Is it really the most popular or is it the most common? Now, it'd be silly to deny the fact that there are people who actually do enjoy going to school during the day just like it would be silly to assume all Christians/Muslims don't enjoy reading the Bible or the Qur'an (and I have not assumed this).

All we can do is speculate. We don't know people's motives for buying books, so how can we say that a book is popular simply because it's sold a lot of copies? If I purchased 2 million copies of a a celebrity's autobiography because I wanted to burn them, this does not make it a popular book.

This same principle applies here and I stand by what I said in my previous post. Furthermore, the Qur'an and the Bible are a lot more than just books. They were not created to entertain or educate like many other books are. They are central components of two of the biggest religions in the world so it's no surprise at all that so many copies are sold. But, this does not automatically mean these are the most popular books.

If I'm guilty of some sort of logical fallacy (which I don't agree with) for assuming popularity and numbers don't go hand in hand - whoever agrees with the opposite is guilty of the exact same fallacy since they too are making assumptions about a person's actions.
Reply 45
Original post by Anonymοοse
I do? :hmmmm: [I don't think I do but I don't completely disagree with the inference you drew either :wink:]

I don't need to define popularity for you - there's a clear cut definition out there you could easily find yourself.

The title of this thread is "the most popular book of all time" and this was followed up with a list of books ranked in order of highest number of sales. The point I was trying to make was that numbers and popularity don't necessarily go hand in hand.

For e.g. would it be right to assume that attending school is the most popular way of spending your day simply because millions of people worldwide do so? Is it really the most popular or is it the most common? Now, it'd be silly to deny the fact that there are people who actually do enjoy going to school during the day just like it would be silly to assume all Christians/Muslims don't enjoy reading the Bible or the Qur'an (and I have not assumed this).

All we can do is speculate. We don't know people's motives for buying books, so how can we say that a book is popular simply because it's sold a lot of copies? If I purchased 2 million copies of a a celebrity's autobiography because I wanted to burn them, this does not make it a popular book.

This same principle applies here and I stand by what I said in my previous post. Furthermore, the Qur'an and the Bible are a lot more than just books. They were not created to entertain or educate like many other books are. They are central components of two of the biggest religions in the world so it's no surprise at all that so many copies are sold. But, this does not automatically mean these are the most popular books.

If I'm guilty of some sort of logical fallacy (which I don't agree with) for assuming popularity and numbers don't go hand in hand - whoever agrees with the opposite is guilty of the exact same fallacy since they too are making assumptions about a person's actions.


Yeah sorry you do unless my critical thinking skills have gone missing somewhere...

Popularity just means how many people choose a certain thing. From the latin word populum. So basically my biggest problem with your stance is that here we have a clear cut measure for defining how many people have chosen a certain book yet you discount it based on their reasons for doing so. My stance is that we don't need to know their reasons, just the mere fact that they have read/ bought a book counts as them choosing it.

I guess why your school analogy doesn't work is because we know what the reason why people go to school - it is compulsory - whereas we don't for books and this is what you are arguing. Also your book-burning example shifts the goalposts (another logical fallacy-sorry) because we are talking about books that are bought to be read not for some other purpose.

Also I'm sorry but you can't argue that the Qur'an/ Bible are not books in the same sense this thread is describing because that would be a no-true-scotsman fallacy.

So to summarise, there is no reason to not say a book is popular if it has sold many copies therefore popularity can be measured in terms of numbers sold.

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