I am speaking purely as an speculating layman, but hasn’t Europe failed economically and militarily compared to American and Asian countries?
Inda
Karma: 52
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.
Perhaps the reason we don’t know of them offhand is that preventing big obscure potential harm never gets much status among our species.
I think, with our limited capacity for social consensus, and our high-IQ bias towards being contrarian, having the norm of bashing (not censoring per se) pro-censorship ideas is beneficial.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
I think just not answering or downvoting is enough. You can point out that there is not sufficient evidence for you to take the time to study this long document which also seemed crackpotty to your quick skim. That is the truth, after all. If the crackpot repeatedly spams, well spamming warrants a ban.