āThe key is that you need to show people using an EA mindset (thinking about consequences and counterfactuals, remembering that everyone is valuable), even if they arenāt working on EA causes. Show people characters who do incredible things and invite them to contemplate the virtues of those characters, and you donāt need to hammer too hard on the philosophy.ā
...so I suppose Iād say that (1) is important, but mostly when blended with (2). Rational fiction isnāt uniquely instructive; instead, it takes lessons a reader could learn in many different ways and drives them deeper into the readerās identity than other media might be able to. Thereās an element of āI didnāt know people could be like thisā and an element of āthis is the kind of person I want to be.ā
Iād guess the second element is more important, since most people have heard about actual moral heroes outside of fiction, but they may not have a sense of how such people think about/āexperience the world.
I shared some thoughts on this topic on a similar thread posted last year. An excerpt:
...so I suppose Iād say that (1) is important, but mostly when blended with (2). Rational fiction isnāt uniquely instructive; instead, it takes lessons a reader could learn in many different ways and drives them deeper into the readerās identity than other media might be able to. Thereās an element of āI didnāt know people could be like thisā and an element of āthis is the kind of person I want to be.ā
Iād guess the second element is more important, since most people have heard about actual moral heroes outside of fiction, but they may not have a sense of how such people think about/āexperience the world.