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> This helps to explain why we invest so much time and energy into fiction, far more than did any of our ancestors. Is this true? I think story-telling has bee

> This helps to explain why we invest so much time and energy into fiction, far more than did any of our ancestors. Is this true? I think story-telling has been generally prioritized by humans at most place and times. It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. But the OP is some interesting ideas, I'm still trying to figure out the implications. > Our moral evaluations of the main big actions that influence our world today, and that built our world from past worlds, are still up for grabs. And the more we build such shared evaluations, the more we’ll be able to tell satisfying stories set in the world in which we live, rather than set in the fantasy and historical worlds with which we must now make do. Hmm. I think some of the best stories help us work out our moral evaluations and build shared ones. This isn't just something that happens outside of fiction and then affects our consumption of fiction -- fiction, for the reasons the OP outlines in fact, is one of our tools for working it out. We build shared evaluations by telling stories. Story-telling is fundamental to how humans make sense of the world, moral and otherwise, but moral too. I think OP would agree? That is in fact why we fight over it, because we know how powerful it is in this area? Not sure. As a devotee of speculative fiction, I'm a bit offended at the framing that it is something we must "make do" with out of our moral confusion. Like any other genre, there is good and bad, but I think at it's best SF can be a notably valauble tool in helping us self-reflect and develop our moral sensibilities, it is in fact a power that SF has particularly. Sure, there's plenty of lazy SF that avoids reflection or difficult questions, but at it's best it has a particular power to challenge in a way that builds new understandings, precisely by inviting the reader to look at things with fresh eyes instead of the comfort of the familiar and legible.

spoonjim 6y ago
One of the most insightful Internet comments I’ve read. Science Fiction can illuminate questions of moral reasoning by abstracting away all of the pesky complications that make the answer to most real moral dilemmas “it’s complicated.”
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  I appreciate the compliment, but your analysis makes me worry! The pesky complications that make things complicated is part of moral reasoning, abstracting them away to simplicity can be a dangerous recipe for immoral and instrumentalizing reasoning! I think of it instead like SF can give us an "alien anthropologist's" view of ourselves, seeing ourselves from a different perspective for a momentary forgetting of assumptions that may not be serving us or... maybe we were over-simplfying abstracting away the complexities when we shouldn't have been! Then like in a planet of the apes moment, "But it's our planet after all!" SF can be complexifying as much as simplifying!
tootie 6y ago
It's actually a major thesis of the book Sapiens that the use of fictive language is what allowed Homo Sapiens to become the dominant species. Shared stories helped solidify social groups and allowed disparate tribes to recognize each other. The most important stories and myths are obviously religious ones. And I think to your point, ancient peoples debating those stories with far more fervor than any flame war on a Star Wars forum. I say this pretty comfortably as an atheist but even if you're a believer than at least everyone else's religious myths are fiction.
- labster 6y ago
  You may think that we believers are all that way, but we aren’t. As a Discordian, I believe that everyone else’s religious myths are true. Even the false bits are true in a dialectic sense. Such is life here in Plato’s Cave. Stories are also deep magick for Discordians. They are perhaps the only tool we can use to get someone to change their mind about something important. It is only when, at long last, the fiction weaves its spell to transplant your sense of identity elsewhom that you feel true sympathy.
  - ajkjk 6y ago
    Are you... serious? I am really not sure how to ask this question without it sounding offensive. I am not sure, and wikipedia suggests that Discordianism is a parody of a religion.
    - esperent 6y ago
      I think you're over simplifying the wiki article: > According to self-proclaimed "crackpot historian" Adam Gorightly, Discordianism was founded as a parody religion. Many outside observers still regard Discordianism as a parody religion, although some of its adherents use it as a legitimate religion or as a metaphor for a governing philosophy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism Although I doubt many people consider it a religion, it's certainly an interesting philosophical view and makes as much (or as little) sense as many other schools of philosophy or theology.
tcbawo 6y ago
Through all of history, history was proverbially "written by the victors". However, the permanence of a pervasive digital memory might be playing the spoiler to that would-be whitewashed history. And in some perverse sense, it may be blocking us from developing any history.
- kiba 6y ago
  Wrong. History's written by whoever happen to write anything and then interpreted by future generations, whether that's historians or not. The confederate are losers, and yet folks after the confederates were able to erect statues commemorating their losses. It also help create a false notion that only history written by winners create the narrative that everyone accepted.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    A side issue, but I think it may be just cause to wonder who the victors of that conflict actually were in the end... turns out, it may have been 'white people' generally on 'both sides', after a brief period of "reconstruction" that could have ended differently but didn't. All those statues were erected after that period -- indeed they do look kind of like victory statues, curious isn't it? Who won what before erecting those statues, hmm? The proverb of course isn't literally always true, it isn't only "the victors" who write history. But the powerful do have a disproportionate (but not exclusive) influence on what gets remembered how (what gets remembered how is a factor of both what historical record is left and who can advance their interpretation of it). The victors tend to be more powerful than the vanquished, if they don't appear to be then there might be some confusion over who won what exactly.
    - chmod600 6y ago
      I haven't heard that interpetation of history. It sounds dubious to me... after all, slavery was abolished, and the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. And the South was set way back, economically, compared to the North.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. I think it likely that more is invested from about the time of widespread access to fiction than before, but not sure if it far more.
erikbye 6y ago
> It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. Of course it is obvious. People waste their lives away consuming fiction in the way of books, netflix, video games, politics. The luxury of doing that en masse simply was not possible if we go ways back. Hell, just in my lifetime this has changed. 25 years ago I heard of no one watching ten episodes of a series in one sitting. I believe most people now spend far more time with and engaged in fictions than reality. People even think that the fictions media create are real. Most news are editorialized and fictionalized. What is presented is not reality. What people spend most of their time on a phone on, social media, are to a high degree fiction. That is not reality you are engaging with. Reality is closer to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid than the top.
- ChrisSD 6y ago
  25 years ago, so 1996? Yeah people did that with VHS tapes. Console games, both solo and parties, were things that carried on into the night. Civilization on the PC was infamous for "one more turn" in to the wee hours of the morning.
  - erikbye 6y ago
    That was a niche group. Now it is most people. I should have wrote «Very few» instead of «no one.»
    - izacus 6y ago
      [Citation needed] really. Handwringing over "time wasting" activities is as old as time, whether it's video games, TV, newspapers/radio or gambling, drinking and dicing.
      - erikbye 6y ago
        No handwringing, I do not give a fuck what people spend their time on, it is their life. Just saying I think people are wholly absorbed in fictions these days in ways rivals anything in the past. Today fictions permeates everything, and most seem unable to separate it from reality. Half the US population even believes outlandish conspiracy theories.

spoonjim 6y ago

One of the most insightful Internet comments I’ve read. Science Fiction can illuminate questions of moral reasoning by abstracting away all of the pesky complications that make the answer to most real moral dilemmas “it’s complicated.”

jrochkind1 6y ago
I appreciate the compliment, but your analysis makes me worry! The pesky complications that make things complicated is part of moral reasoning, abstracting them away to simplicity can be a dangerous recipe for immoral and instrumentalizing reasoning! I think of it instead like SF can give us an "alien anthropologist's" view of ourselves, seeing ourselves from a different perspective for a momentary forgetting of assumptions that may not be serving us or... maybe we were over-simplfying abstracting away the complexities when we shouldn't have been! Then like in a planet of the apes moment, "But it's our planet after all!" SF can be complexifying as much as simplifying!

tootie 6y ago

It's actually a major thesis of the book Sapiens that the use of fictive language is what allowed Homo Sapiens to become the dominant species. Shared stories helped solidify social groups and allowed disparate tribes to recognize each other. The most important stories and myths are obviously religious ones. And I think to your point, ancient peoples debating those stories with far more fervor than any flame war on a Star Wars forum. I say this pretty comfortably as an atheist but even if you're a believer than at least everyone else's religious myths are fiction.

labster 6y ago
You may think that we believers are all that way, but we aren’t. As a Discordian, I believe that everyone else’s religious myths are true. Even the false bits are true in a dialectic sense. Such is life here in Plato’s Cave. Stories are also deep magick for Discordians. They are perhaps the only tool we can use to get someone to change their mind about something important. It is only when, at long last, the fiction weaves its spell to transplant your sense of identity elsewhom that you feel true sympathy.
- ajkjk 6y ago
  Are you... serious? I am really not sure how to ask this question without it sounding offensive. I am not sure, and wikipedia suggests that Discordianism is a parody of a religion.
  - esperent 6y ago
    I think you're over simplifying the wiki article: > According to self-proclaimed "crackpot historian" Adam Gorightly, Discordianism was founded as a parody religion. Many outside observers still regard Discordianism as a parody religion, although some of its adherents use it as a legitimate religion or as a metaphor for a governing philosophy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism Although I doubt many people consider it a religion, it's certainly an interesting philosophical view and makes as much (or as little) sense as many other schools of philosophy or theology.

tcbawo 6y ago

Through all of history, history was proverbially "written by the victors". However, the permanence of a pervasive digital memory might be playing the spoiler to that would-be whitewashed history. And in some perverse sense, it may be blocking us from developing any history.

kiba 6y ago
Wrong. History's written by whoever happen to write anything and then interpreted by future generations, whether that's historians or not. The confederate are losers, and yet folks after the confederates were able to erect statues commemorating their losses. It also help create a false notion that only history written by winners create the narrative that everyone accepted.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  A side issue, but I think it may be just cause to wonder who the victors of that conflict actually were in the end... turns out, it may have been 'white people' generally on 'both sides', after a brief period of "reconstruction" that could have ended differently but didn't. All those statues were erected after that period -- indeed they do look kind of like victory statues, curious isn't it? Who won what before erecting those statues, hmm? The proverb of course isn't literally always true, it isn't only "the victors" who write history. But the powerful do have a disproportionate (but not exclusive) influence on what gets remembered how (what gets remembered how is a factor of both what historical record is left and who can advance their interpretation of it). The victors tend to be more powerful than the vanquished, if they don't appear to be then there might be some confusion over who won what exactly.
  - chmod600 6y ago
    I haven't heard that interpetation of history. It sounds dubious to me... after all, slavery was abolished, and the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. And the South was set way back, economically, compared to the North.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

>It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. I think it likely that more is invested from about the time of widespread access to fiction than before, but not sure if it far more.

erikbye 6y ago

> It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. Of course it is obvious. People waste their lives away consuming fiction in the way of books, netflix, video games, politics. The luxury of doing that en masse simply was not possible if we go ways back. Hell, just in my lifetime this has changed. 25 years ago I heard of no one watching ten episodes of a series in one sitting. I believe most people now spend far more time with and engaged in fictions than reality. People even think that the fictions media create are real. Most news are editorialized and fictionalized. What is presented is not reality. What people spend most of their time on a phone on, social media, are to a high degree fiction. That is not reality you are engaging with. Reality is closer to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid than the top.

ChrisSD 6y ago
25 years ago, so 1996? Yeah people did that with VHS tapes. Console games, both solo and parties, were things that carried on into the night. Civilization on the PC was infamous for "one more turn" in to the wee hours of the morning.
- erikbye 6y ago
  That was a niche group. Now it is most people. I should have wrote «Very few» instead of «no one.»
  - izacus 6y ago
    [Citation needed] really. Handwringing over "time wasting" activities is as old as time, whether it's video games, TV, newspapers/radio or gambling, drinking and dicing.
    - erikbye 6y ago
      No handwringing, I do not give a fuck what people spend their time on, it is their life. Just saying I think people are wholly absorbed in fictions these days in ways rivals anything in the past. Today fictions permeates everything, and most seem unable to separate it from reality. Half the US population even believes outlandish conspiracy theories.