The biggest effect of rational fiction for me was feeling the “warm” glow of the ingroup in the fiction I consumed. I could empathize with the characters. I think this kind of effect is inherently good, as feeling like you’re a minority with no culture is bad and encourages homogenization.
I was already a “rationalist” before reading rational fiction, and the fiction works have always struck me as much weaker than the content on our forums. On using them to “convert” other people to rationality … Well one of my friends really took to HPMOR, and they did have a high point of vowing “to always be a scientist,” but it didn’t have any observable effect and they didn’t even finish reading HPMOR. HPMOR is also probably the most educational of all the current stories.
Hi I’m curious as to what you mean by “weaker”—does this mean it teaches fewer concepts or it teaches them less well, or maybe that the concepts don’t stick as well in reader’s minds? Would the more widespread appeal of fiction be able to account for this (say, lower probability of retention complemented by higher numbers of readers)?
I definitely think the more broad appeal of fiction does make it worthwhile as an outreach effort (though it needs to be explicitly educational. Mother of Learning, for all its good writing, doesn’t teach how to think better.). The concepts touched in the fictional works (that I remember) were all very low-inferential distance from the common culture, so they were confined to beginner concepts without an in-depth overview. For example, the Frozen fanfic by Wales touches on AI safety and effective altruism, and is fun and beautiful, but I did not learn anything from it.
As you say, fiction teaches less concepts and teaches them less well. I do think it might teach more memorably though.
The biggest effect of rational fiction for me was feeling the “warm” glow of the ingroup in the fiction I consumed. I could empathize with the characters. I think this kind of effect is inherently good, as feeling like you’re a minority with no culture is bad and encourages homogenization.
I was already a “rationalist” before reading rational fiction, and the fiction works have always struck me as much weaker than the content on our forums. On using them to “convert” other people to rationality … Well one of my friends really took to HPMOR, and they did have a high point of vowing “to always be a scientist,” but it didn’t have any observable effect and they didn’t even finish reading HPMOR. HPMOR is also probably the most educational of all the current stories.
Hi I’m curious as to what you mean by “weaker”—does this mean it teaches fewer concepts or it teaches them less well, or maybe that the concepts don’t stick as well in reader’s minds? Would the more widespread appeal of fiction be able to account for this (say, lower probability of retention complemented by higher numbers of readers)?
I definitely think the more broad appeal of fiction does make it worthwhile as an outreach effort (though it needs to be explicitly educational. Mother of Learning, for all its good writing, doesn’t teach how to think better.). The concepts touched in the fictional works (that I remember) were all very low-inferential distance from the common culture, so they were confined to beginner concepts without an in-depth overview. For example, the Frozen fanfic by Wales touches on AI safety and effective altruism, and is fun and beautiful, but I did not learn anything from it.
As you say, fiction teaches less concepts and teaches them less well. I do think it might teach more memorably though.