6 ms·

I met a young and apparently highly intelligent AI researcher the other week who confessed to me that he thought fiction (books but also movies etc) was a waste

• cehrlich 4y ago
  Great question. I always recommend Anna Karenina as the one book everyone should read, but maybe it's actually a terrible thing to recommend to someone who Doesn't Like Reading. I don't have an answer for you, but you got me thinking :)
  • newaccount2021 4y ago
• Antoniocl 4y ago
  It's likely highly dependent on the individual. There's a lot of literature is beautiful, immersive, and speaks to deep universal truths that are harder to capture in other mediums. To steelman his argument, even given that all of this is true, it's a harder sell that engaging with the works is useful to him, on an individual level. For me, Infinite Jest helped me be more empathetic, which was an area I lacked a lot at the time, to the point that reading it was just clearly useful to me. But other than that? It's hard to say. I derive a lot of pleasure from fiction, and find the experiences I get from them to be highly meaningful and to sometimes stay with me for years, not unlike memories of times with good friends. Whether or not that's of value to you as an individual just depends on your values.
• cvoss 4y ago
  Is this person highly cynical about human relationships and emotions and desires? If so, that makes your job a whole lot harder, but you may be able to challenge that by linking a moving work of fiction with an actual closely held relationship or desire in this person's life. But do not expect to be able to just hand him a book and watch it happen. Speaking from personal experience, I frequently require someone to discuss fiction with before it will "hit home", and I'm not even antagonistic to fiction at all. I'm just bad at it unless I can talk it through with somebody who can be my guide.
• janee 4y ago
  Haha sounds like me. I used to read as a teenager but stopped, thinking it a waste of time. Only recently rediscovered my love for sci-fi after randomly picking up Isaac Asimov's foundation series on a whim while waiting for a flight at a book store. Not saying it's the best thing ever or necessarily what I'd recommend. But maybe try and think what genere would be interesting to them and then pick one from someone's top x list. I plan on doing that now using this list https://youtu.be/pP0XnfC1jVM https://youtu.be/pP0XnfC1jVM and am very keen to build a bookshelf now haha
  • bckr 4y ago
    Hello from someone who wrote something very similar in this thread!
• sneak 4y ago
  Stranger In A Strange Land is the chart-topper. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is my personal favorite. Casablanca is also up there.
• emj 4y ago
  I've had the same experience; and I see no one recommendation that will make someone appreciate literature. The argument I heard from a younger AI researcher was that books/stories are just a collection of tropes that get reused over and over. For me it's easier to just recommend Dostojevsky, or perhaps a couple of dystopian classics. Even then not everyone will understand how literature is not just about information which become a story. For me Crime and Punishment was perhaps a bit painful for me as a teenager I remember entering the same state of mind as the main character Raskolnikov from reading it, but it was also a good capstone to connect the feeling from books by Boje, Strindberg and Chekhov.
• pythko 4y ago
  I'd recommend Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang [0]. It's often billed as "speculative fiction", and I'd describe it as a series of short stories that define worlds slightly-to-extremely dissimilar to ours, and explores what that means to the people who live in them. I recall the stories being fun because there's some amount of guessing what will come next in the worldbuilding, and imagining what makes sense within the rules he's establishing, but he also drenches the stories in humanity, and many of them are quite emotional. If you're trying to get him to read a classic specifically, maybe it would help to start with some non-fiction pieces. David Foster Wallace has an essay on what makes Dostoevsky great and worth reading [1]. And there are plenty of other essays and books out there on "why read the classics." If you think presenting your case through the lens of scientific rigor would be helpful, there are numerous studies showing that reading fiction increases empathy with others [2] (and if that's not appealing to him, you're probably in for a very long and uphill battle). For a classic recommendation, I think that similar to the article, Crime and Punishment is a good choice. It's pretty approachable language-wise, it's not crazy long, and it hits all those points of universal themes, some humor, and a deep empathy from the author to his main character. --- [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L... [1] https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/04/feodors-guide-joseph-franks-dostoevsky/ https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/04/feodors-guide-joseph... [2] https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-reading-fiction-increases-empathy-and-encourages-understanding https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-reading-fiction-in...
  • pyuser583 4y ago
    I thought you said “define words slightly-to-extremely-dissimilar to ours.” That sounded interesting. But it was “worlds”, not “words.”
• Bakary 4y ago
  The irony is that if all the highly intelligent and capable researchers, capitalists, and knowledge workers read more fiction the world would probably be slightly less dystopian than it currently is
  • closedloop129 4y ago
    The world could also improve if the readers of fiction would increase their engagement in research, business and knowledge.
  • pas 4y ago
    Meh, that's wishful thinking. Fiction is not a silver bullet. Elon Musk loves fiction, did not make him a decent human being.
    • badtension 4y ago
      Loves fiction as in Iron Man is his favorite avenger?
• drlolz 4y ago
  A person with that attitude doesn’t need a perfect list of books, they need to live more of their life. Fiction will likely find them when they’re ready for it. Seems futile to try to convince them otherwise, if they’re presently writing off fiction and film.
• trane_project 4y ago
  You aren't going to change his mind. What needs changing is his heart.
• jmartrican 4y ago
  Crime And Punishment I would recommend, but only because I have not yet read Don Quixote.
• layer8 4y ago
  As someone who finds most fiction to take much too long to get to any interesting points, I’d like to recommend Greg Egan’s Axiomatic, a collection of thought-provoking SF short stories.
  • arrow7000 4y ago
    I will always upvote a Greg Egan comment. An incredible author. He's changed the way I see the world.
• alfor 4y ago
  You need to dig deeper, only ask questions. What is his current view of the world of humans, etc. Once you have a grasp of that, there is probably a fiction that can show him how his vision is incomplete. We are after knowledge and to be useful and interesting the new knowledge need to be just a bit farther than we are at the moment. (zone of proximal development) Not a book, but for AI I enjoyed watching Joshua Bach interview (consciousness is a simulation) I agree that most movies are a waste of time at the moment. They mostly repeat the same propaganda.
  • layer8 4y ago
    > We are after knowledge and to be useful and interesting the new knowledge need to be just a bit farther than we are at the moment. (zone of proximal development) I feel like I’ve run out of new proximal ideas. I used to devour (not only) science-fiction, but now I find it very hard to find anything whose concepts I’m not already familiar with. Or you have to read through 400 pages to get to just one interesting idea or plot point, and you can’t tell a priori if that will even happen.
    • alfor 4y ago
      Have you read the bible? Or see the biblical lecture of Dr Peterson on Youtube? I am surprised myself to find it useful after the stoics and other quests for meaning. It’ hard for me to suggest without any pointer to where you are. Maybe I don’t have anything for you? What is the last thing you found interesting? How is your life? Family, friends, career, hobies, plan for the next 6 month?
• bazoom42 4y ago
  Perhaps the Harry Potter books? Don’t throw Tolstoy at someone who havent read fiction before.
  • noSyncCloud 4y ago
    Would you really recommend YA to an adult?
    • pas 4y ago
      lot of people watch a lot of YA anime as adults. reading HP is fast and loose fun. the characters are okay, the world is okay-ish, the story is the standard good vs evil, there are some interesting dilemmas and the whole setting makes it a lot more palatable than the classic classics :) (of course there are huuuuuuge plotholes and anyone with a more than two bits of imagination/curiosity starts to pick at the surface of the world it falls apart, like almost anything with magic in it)
    • bazoom42 4y ago
      To an adult who have never read fiction? Yes. You have to start somewhere. People are just suggesting their own favorite books, but nobody started reading fiction with Anna Karenina. But many started with HP and went on to more challenging stuff.
    • pier25 4y ago
      I'm 43 years old and I enjoy reading Harry Potter, at least some of the books. But I will concede I've tried other YA series and just couldn't get on with it.
    • e12e 4y ago
      > Would you really recommend YA to an adult? I certainly would, but probably not Harry Potter (personal preference - I think "magic" has been done better, and I think "boarding school" has been done better). So maybe "Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin, for example.
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      I think the basic impulse is correct, actually. There's a very good chance that a person with this kind of attitude is a poor reader—of literature, at least, if not in general. If you drop them right into the heavy stuff, they'll probably bounce off really fast. It's a skill you have to develop, like when you encounter a new musical genre. Lots of people get stuck at the "this sucks and is probably bad and overrated anyway" stage and don't open their minds and challenge themselves to understand why people like it, when encountering literature early on, similar to how many people get stuck in that same place for any musical genres they didn't learn to appreciate by age 25. At best, they end up reading very light fiction for the rest of their lives—perhaps even YA, which is widely read among adults, in fact. At worst they decide the whole thing's a pretentious sham and they're smarter for not having engaged, which seems to be closer to the case here. Not sure I'd go with YA if you're trying to convince someone of value in literature beyond entertainment, though. But lighter high-school tier literature, maybe. Salinger (but probably not Catcher in the Rye) or Vonnegut are decent choices, being at about the lightest end that'll still (if the reader's open to it) work those muscles. Gotta start small to develop the skills & taste to appreciate the sublime when it's expressed in written words, and to find meaning, enjoyment, and new mental tools that novice readers largely miss—which is why they often think well-regarded literature is boring and stuffy.
• jcalabro 4y ago
  Sounds like it might be a losing battle, but the first thing that came to mind was Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Short, approachable, funny, and confronts topics that probably are interesting to an AI researcher.
• XorNot 4y ago
  He's an AI researcher, tell him to read 2001 by Arthur C. Clake. He doesn't need to read "the classics" he needs to read something proximal to his interests and then figure out which strands he'd like to follow from there. "The Classics" are at this point literary archeology: they've influenced a lot, but unless you're actually inspired to follow that chain back they're just going to wind up seeming "samey" to things that came after because they were already heavily referenced, extrapolated, deconstructed and their essential ideas endlessly debated.
• weberer 4y ago
  >he thought fiction (books but also movies etc) was a waste of his time: there was nothing to be gained there I agree with him for the most part. However, enjoying something while wasting time is its own reward.
• richardjdare 4y ago
  I sometimes recommend Borges (Labyrinths) and Kafka (The Trial, Short Stories) to tech people looking to get into literature.
  • berlinquin 4y ago
    And within labyrinths, the Library of Babel is a good place to start. Circular Ruins and the Pierre Menard/Don Quixote one are favorites.
• dlee766 4y ago
  The Little Prince maybe
• bckr 4y ago
  This is from someone who is woefully under-read, and only remembered my teenage love of sci-fi in the last couple of years. I thought similarly for several years, that fiction was a waste of time. But then I realized I was scrolling through Twitter every day, and that felt like eating french fries as a meal: lacking substance. Reading long form prose increases your attention span and the shape of your thoughts. Reading fiction stimulates the imagination, which opens up the space of ideas that the mind can generate. Fiction is a compressed simulation of life. By reading good fiction one lives more life. Fiction is a cultural touchstone. New relationships open up when there are shared understandings of stories. Good, hard science fiction is a record of what some of the most imaginative scientific thinkers (not necessarily scientists) have pondered. Again, mind expanding. Science fiction stimulates curiosity by asking "what if"? We all have to engage in lower energy activities and "waste time". Watching documentaries is a "waste of time" for someone not engaged in professional research on the relevant subject. Do you use Reddit? That's a waste of time. Having a science fiction book next to the toilet will leave you feeling more nourished after you've done your business (I look forward to using the bathroom when I know there's a delicious book waiting for me that I only read there). Dead tree books are better for someone who has a hard time reading. Studies show there's a big difference in retention between words on a screen and words in print. Dead tree books also benefit from being "things" that can be left in the intended reading location, and give a sense of progress and of conquering when completed. The tactile nature of flipping pages and of breaking in a paperback is lovely. The cover art attracts the eyes to the book. Reading a book is a different action than looking at your phone or computer, and it has a different set of feelings, emotions, thought patterns. There's the smell of a printed book. I love Asimov. I, Robot is easy because it's a collection of very short stories, but it risks being seen as shallow. The End of Eternity is considered Asimov's best novel, and it's not too long. I hear good things about The Last Question. Foundation is lovely. Be right back, going to buy more Asimov.
  • janee 4y ago
    Haha snap! Will def check out end of eternity. Happy reading :)
  • filoleg 4y ago
    > I love Asimov. I, Robot is easy because it's a collection of very short stories, but it risks being seen as shallow. Haha, funny you mention it, because now that I think about it, it hits that attention-span-needed spot right in-between blog/reddit posts and novels. Which, is a pretty nice and gentle way to ease someone into reading novel-sized material. It greatly helps that reading Asimov's short stories today still feels very gripping and relevant, probably even moreso than back when it was originally published. Though this is more of a feeling, as I obviously cannot verify how it actually felt to read it back then.
• starkd 4y ago
  That's a common complaint about literature. I remmeber one person who wouldn't read fiction because they said "it was just all lies". Literature isn't just a recitation of facts, it reflects the organizing principle of our values. It sparks creativity. If the classics feel to archaic or they are too inaccessible, you also might try some contemporary authors. Michael Crichton is very accessible. I think his works can be equally inspiring and creative.
  • e12e 4y ago
    > I remmeber one person who wouldn't read fiction because they said "it was just all lies". "Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself." - Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
    • pyuser583 4y ago
      Was that one person Plato?
• pas 4y ago
  There are quite a few recommendations for the classics, but if someone doesn't enjoy the slow burn of those deep books, maybe they should start with something lot more dopaminergic: animes and movies! PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan. So, movies. I only saw The Shawshank Redemption a few years ago, and it's really really good. Classic. Human. Touching. I'm not even sure how to characterize it except yes, really go see it, it's really at the top of the power distribution of movies. 12 Angry Men. At this point it's the cliché of old but good movies. At this point it's a satire of a socially interesting movie due to its naivete, yet for someone who seems a bit close minded it might be just the right thing. (Or not? :D) The Pianist. Again, simple. Brutal. Or the recent Joker. . . . But really when it comes to AI and fiction. Blade Runner. If that's not fiction that's worth investing time into, then what is? Even typing this I've got the chills thinking about Roy Batty.
  • pyuser583 4y ago
    The Blade Runner that in theaters was terrible. There were tons of crappy voice overs explaining what was going on. Theological content was removed - the “confession” scene where the robot murdered his creator, the stigmata-style wounds, the dove flying up to heaven. Even the famous “I’ve seen things …” speech was gone. When home movies became a thing it was re-edited. It became a classic in the “cuts.” I don’t know if there’s a lesson there. Maybe “don’t worry about re-editing stinkers.”
  • filoleg 4y ago
    > PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan. I totally agree with everything on this list, except Akira and NGE. And I am saying that as someone for whom NGE is the all-time personal favorite piece of animated media (and I like Akira a lot too, just not as much). Akira and NGE are pretty much deconstructions of genres, and are really heavy on at least some basic level of previous exposure and understanding of the context. I am fairly certain that if you make someone without much previous exposure to the context watch Akira, you will get a very resounding "what the fuck did you just make me watch". Watched it in a movie theater myself around 5 years ago, and it was definitely a wild ride. With NGE, I rewatched it many times, partially because I almost always discovered something new on subsequent rewatches. The rest of the ones you've mentioned are great for easing-in though, and are not shallow even in the slightest. I would also add Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex series to the list of recommendations.
• alexashka 4y ago
  Right, a waste of his time, today. Not yours or anyone else's. Doesn't literature teach that it's different strokes for different folks? :) There is no need for anyone to convert others to their hobby of choice - his challenge was a response to you huffing and puffing, not a genuine request.
• writeinpencils 4y ago
• sifar 4y ago
  It depends on what their interests are. For this person, perhaps something in science fiction. I second Asimov, especially the robot & foundation series. Or may be Dune.
• e12e 4y ago
  Many good tips so far in this thread. If your friend reads a lot of papers, they might be able to "leap" into classics without being bogged down by the language and sometimes dense prose - but I'd still err on the side of accessible for getting someone into reading for pleasure. I'd recommend for example (in no particular order - just some great books imnho): Earthsea quartet by LeGuin Dune by Herbert South of the Border by Murakami Islands in the Net by Sterling Foundation trilogy by Asimov Speed of Dark, by Moon Accelerando, by Stross Murderbot diaries, by Wells A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vinge (and Rainbow's End by same) 2312, by Robinson And many more, I'm sure :)
  • pyuser583 4y ago
    Phillip Dicks short stories can be read again and again. There are plenty of “minor” ones that haven’t been made into movies.
• grantcas 4y ago
  [dead]
• michaelsbradley 4y ago
  The Man Who Was Thursday https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1695/1695-h/1695-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1695/1695-h/1695-h.htm
• novok 4y ago
  That person is just on a personal mission right now. Once he has achieved his internal goal, the space for leisure will start opening up to him. People who like video games, but are on a mission about their new thing don't really feel like they want to play video games, even though they played them a lot in their past for example. Also some people are just missing things neurologically that make certain things compelling for most people. Some people just don't care for music much because it doesn't do much for them and concerts are kind of confusing enjoyment wise. Same with many people in software for watching sports, they're just not that into it. For others, it moves them greatly. Maybe he doesn't create the internal world required for fiction when he reads fiction. So either he is on a mission (people who are noticeably good at something tend to be) or they are just missing the thing that would make it enjoyable for them.
• ANumberlessMan 4y ago
  Maybe something like "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde? Something that rattles the foundations of life in a playful, unexpected way.
• jonjacky 4y ago
  "I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already." -- Nick Jenkins