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I apologize for not speaking with concepts you have a concrete understanding of. I sincerely do, this is not a snipe. "People would be happier reading only the

I apologize for not speaking with concepts you have a concrete understanding of. I sincerely do, this is not a snipe. "People would be happier reading only the best fiction" "It’s easier to figure out what the good old fiction is, than it is new fiction there’s also more good old fiction than good new fiction" "people write too much new fiction. they also read too much" "Society shouldn’t subsidize economically inefficient things like new fiction" "We might go so far as to suggest a Pigovian tax on new works because they encourage their own consumption" "The uses of fiction are much less than one might think, and many of those uses are propagandistic, dangerous, or both" "Subsidizing the nonfiction market may be justifiable" Those are the final summations, in order. Seven statements, each of which I find entirely delusional. So by "dozens of levels", the above represents at least seven out of twelve of them. I cannot think for a brief moment that a large chunk of Hacker News would rest easy with any, or even a few, of those statements. It is, of course, entirely plausible that his entire piece is a work and to be read contextually as a clever bit of sarcasm or an attack, at which point it simply fired right over my head.

MichaelGG 12y ago
All those statements seem pretty well-founded. Fiction is dangerous because it has an overly powerful way to change thoughts as it isn't constrained by what's true. The other points seen very straightforward and are pretty much what I've run into while trying to find SF to read. The only complaint I'd have is that good new SF tends to be more accurate and believable, due to the surgeries authors actually seeing how tech and science has progressed. Older works tend to feel dated because the tech surpasses what they've envisioned. Yet, only sometimes. E.g. reading Asimov's Robot series, I didn't feel the effect of things being so dated. So given I'd probably be more content with the top works from time past, he's correct that creating new works is simply not as valuable as it used to be. Even if this is an uncomfortable conclusion (I want Culture novels and loved Altered Carbon), it seems accurate.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >Fiction is dangerous because it has an overly powerful way to change thoughts as it isn't constrained by what's true. Exactly how is this unlike any other speech-act, including plain declarative sentences that just happen to be filled with rhetorical tricks? Most fiction is not actually propaganda, even if the git galleries of High Literature prefer to focus on the subset that is.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    It's unlike it because it's far easier to establish emotional connections and paint a rich world full of counter factuals. Fiction can easily establish itself as a reference point for future ideas, such as on AI. This is only worth mentioning because it points out that there are potential downsides. It makes the real bottom line of the article more acceptable. That is, we don't need to encourage art creation, that the public isn't gaining much by having strict copyright for art.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      If you learn to write fiction you'll understand that almost all human thinking runs on 'narrative logic.' Human brains are basically story machines. There are (IMO) good evolutionary reasons for this. Even science at its best is just an occasionally successful attempt to stop using narrative logic to reason and to use other cognitive modes instead. Politics, economics, and law are almost entirely fuelled by narrative logic and rhetorical persuasion, which is its close cousin. >That is, we don't need to encourage art creation An exercise I often suggest is to imagine a world with no aesthetics at all. Everything is rendered in standard fonts, designed strictly for intelligibility. Colour isn't used at all. There's no personal adornment, no make-up, no jewellery. Photography and painting have never been invented. Nor has music. Nor have story-telling and metaphor - all communication is strictly factual and literal. Graphic design doesn't exist. Nor does product styling. Buildings, cars, clothes, everything is 100% functional with no decoration of any kind. Do you want to live in this world? Point is aesthetic expression is everywhere. It's not until you try to imagine a world without it that it becomes obvious how much of an obsession it is for humans.
    - 12y ago
- foolrush 12y ago
  Key point “good” is a seductive bait word. Art / language is emergent in nature, as is our modeling of science and other realms. As such, some work may not meet the privileged notions of “good” until long after an author has offered her work. And this doesn't begin to touch on Barthe's / Foucault's reading of authorship and its relevance. Likewise, work may become “not good” based on an equal number of complex facets. So in this emergent light, are you specifically requesting citation, or would you prefer to create, and in turn judge and explore, the meaning of a text yourself?
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Fiction is dangerous because it has an overly powerful way to change thoughts as it isn't constrained by what's true. This is a fundamental feature of language. Fiction is a feature of words. Story is the very basis of a technologically aggregating culture like ours. We describe things that do not exist, so that we may build them.

MichaelGG 12y ago

All those statements seem pretty well-founded. Fiction is dangerous because it has an overly powerful way to change thoughts as it isn't constrained by what's true. The other points seen very straightforward and are pretty much what I've run into while trying to find SF to read. The only complaint I'd have is that good new SF tends to be more accurate and believable, due to the surgeries authors actually seeing how tech and science has progressed. Older works tend to feel dated because the tech surpasses what they've envisioned. Yet, only sometimes. E.g. reading Asimov's Robot series, I didn't feel the effect of things being so dated. So given I'd probably be more content with the top works from time past, he's correct that creating new works is simply not as valuable as it used to be. Even if this is an uncomfortable conclusion (I want Culture novels and loved Altered Carbon), it seems accurate.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>Fiction is dangerous because it has an overly powerful way to change thoughts as it isn't constrained by what's true. Exactly how is this unlike any other speech-act, including plain declarative sentences that just happen to be filled with rhetorical tricks? Most fiction is not actually propaganda, even if the git galleries of High Literature prefer to focus on the subset that is.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  It's unlike it because it's far easier to establish emotional connections and paint a rich world full of counter factuals. Fiction can easily establish itself as a reference point for future ideas, such as on AI. This is only worth mentioning because it points out that there are potential downsides. It makes the real bottom line of the article more acceptable. That is, we don't need to encourage art creation, that the public isn't gaining much by having strict copyright for art.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    If you learn to write fiction you'll understand that almost all human thinking runs on 'narrative logic.' Human brains are basically story machines. There are (IMO) good evolutionary reasons for this. Even science at its best is just an occasionally successful attempt to stop using narrative logic to reason and to use other cognitive modes instead. Politics, economics, and law are almost entirely fuelled by narrative logic and rhetorical persuasion, which is its close cousin. >That is, we don't need to encourage art creation An exercise I often suggest is to imagine a world with no aesthetics at all. Everything is rendered in standard fonts, designed strictly for intelligibility. Colour isn't used at all. There's no personal adornment, no make-up, no jewellery. Photography and painting have never been invented. Nor has music. Nor have story-telling and metaphor - all communication is strictly factual and literal. Graphic design doesn't exist. Nor does product styling. Buildings, cars, clothes, everything is 100% functional with no decoration of any kind. Do you want to live in this world? Point is aesthetic expression is everywhere. It's not until you try to imagine a world without it that it becomes obvious how much of an obsession it is for humans.
  - 12y ago
foolrush 12y ago
Key point “good” is a seductive bait word. Art / language is emergent in nature, as is our modeling of science and other realms. As such, some work may not meet the privileged notions of “good” until long after an author has offered her work. And this doesn't begin to touch on Barthe's / Foucault's reading of authorship and its relevance. Likewise, work may become “not good” based on an equal number of complex facets. So in this emergent light, are you specifically requesting citation, or would you prefer to create, and in turn judge and explore, the meaning of a text yourself?
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Fiction is dangerous because it has an overly powerful way to change thoughts as it isn't constrained by what's true. This is a fundamental feature of language. Fiction is a feature of words. Story is the very basis of a technologically aggregating culture like ours. We describe things that do not exist, so that we may build them.