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It's a shame that you have such disdain toward capital L literature because some of the best writing on fiction is done by people who share your criticisms. I

It's a shame that you have such disdain toward capital L literature because some of the best writing on fiction is done by people who share your criticisms. I fail to see the difference between your dismissal of fiction and a mathephobe's statement "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." I don't know how an intelligent person can argue in good faith that fiction is not only meritless but basically useless. It takes very little effort to look around and see how untrue that statement is.

cbd1984 12y ago
> "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." No. The complaint is more "why are we studying this instead of something else", and the various values of 'something else' have made a better case than Literature has. Not just practical utility, but mind-expansion (pure math), understanding the world (history, especially recent history), and understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology).
- lotsofcows 12y ago
  "understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology)" You just defined fiction.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    If you said that the purpose of fiction was to help us understand others, you'd have a lot of authors very mad at you.
    - anonbanker 12y ago
      I eagerly await a list of some of these authors.
graycat 12y ago
> "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." That can be tough to see, even when there is a lot of value in the real world. Some of what some such math has going for it is being part of a rock solid directed acyclic graph of theorems and proofs that are about the highest quality thinking. e.g., little risk of being wrong, on the planet. Next, much of the math is both quite abstract and general, both so much so that in principle, and sometimes in practice, a lot of applications are possible. Next, some of the intention is to prepare for the future, and, since that future is not here yet, now we have to guess at what the most solid tools will be. > I don't know how an intelligent person can argue in good faith that fiction is not only meritless but basically useless. That claim is stronger than I made, but, still, my main criticism is that, according to 20th century standards of intellectual safety and efficacy, fictional literature looks poor in comparison, in particular, because it (1) does not make clear just what it is claiming to be true and (2) fails to give solid evidence for much in such claims. So, as information or knowledge we don't much know what we have. To be a little nicer to fictional literature, at times it can describe situations in human experience, say, suffering. But, for one, the experiences, e.g., the suffering, are not given a solid description, that is, are not documented with good facts and references. E.g., we have famous fictional literature about the French Revolution, but from all that literature I read, and, indeed, the history courses, it was never explained that due to The Little Ice Age there had just been three years of crop failures so that many peasants were starving. Should have been mentioned. For another, solid solutions are rarely even considered, much less often presented. So, such fictional literature can make a reader feel some pains but be helpless at alleviating the pains -- incompetent. I said long ago in high school, if a writer of fictional literature actually has something important to say, then they should write an essay.

cbd1984 12y ago

> "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." No. The complaint is more "why are we studying this instead of something else", and the various values of 'something else' have made a better case than Literature has. Not just practical utility, but mind-expansion (pure math), understanding the world (history, especially recent history), and understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology).

lotsofcows 12y ago
"understanding fellow human beings (sociology and psychology)" You just defined fiction.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  If you said that the purpose of fiction was to help us understand others, you'd have a lot of authors very mad at you.
  - anonbanker 12y ago
    I eagerly await a list of some of these authors.

graycat 12y ago

> "when will we ever use this stuff in the real world." That can be tough to see, even when there is a lot of value in the real world. Some of what some such math has going for it is being part of a rock solid directed acyclic graph of theorems and proofs that are about the highest quality thinking. e.g., little risk of being wrong, on the planet. Next, much of the math is both quite abstract and general, both so much so that in principle, and sometimes in practice, a lot of applications are possible. Next, some of the intention is to prepare for the future, and, since that future is not here yet, now we have to guess at what the most solid tools will be. > I don't know how an intelligent person can argue in good faith that fiction is not only meritless but basically useless. That claim is stronger than I made, but, still, my main criticism is that, according to 20th century standards of intellectual safety and efficacy, fictional literature looks poor in comparison, in particular, because it (1) does not make clear just what it is claiming to be true and (2) fails to give solid evidence for much in such claims. So, as information or knowledge we don't much know what we have. To be a little nicer to fictional literature, at times it can describe situations in human experience, say, suffering. But, for one, the experiences, e.g., the suffering, are not given a solid description, that is, are not documented with good facts and references. E.g., we have famous fictional literature about the French Revolution, but from all that literature I read, and, indeed, the history courses, it was never explained that due to The Little Ice Age there had just been three years of crop failures so that many peasants were starving. Should have been mentioned. For another, solid solutions are rarely even considered, much less often presented. So, such fictional literature can make a reader feel some pains but be helpless at alleviating the pains -- incompetent. I said long ago in high school, if a writer of fictional literature actually has something important to say, then they should write an essay.