So your thesis is that kids who get hated on by other kids become interested in SF and DnD for escapist reasons, rather than already being predisposed to those hobbies. This is testable/falsifiable and potentially interesting.
Observations that support your theory:
fiction is a really excellent way to escape and lots of people do use it for that.
all the stuff you say in your post: nerdier, more outcast people like weirder and more magical fictional worlds
Observations that don’t support your theory:
escapist-nerdy interests correlate with other interests that aren’t useful for escapism, like math and taking machines apart. What these sets of interests do have in common is that they use the same abilities.
Dungeons and Dragons is actually a highly social activity. You need at least four people, one of whom is confident enough to extemporize an interactive story.
Other questions that would be good evidence:
Do children whose lives really suck (poor kids, kids from abusive families, kids with disfiguring illnesses) become bookish/gamers/nerds more often? If so, evidence for escapism. If not, evidence for predisposition. I would bet on no, but don’t have a source.
Do nerdy interests correlate more with IQ, or with what you call courage? Again, I would bet on IQ.
Not all fiction is a good way to escape, but you need to look at what kind of fiction I am talking about. I would call it heroic fiction. LOTR, SW and so on. This suggests being unhappy with one’s self.
The math and machines and even software and Linux part: this is IMHO only partially true. I know many non-STEM nerds. Most STEM nerds have some interest in fantasy but not the other way around and IQ may be one of the factors.
I know more people who read and fantasize about D&D rulebooks than people who gather the courage to play it socially.
Having said that, a “social alliance of social outcasts” is a non-typical kind of socializing.
STEM-nerdy interests correlate with IQ, escapist-nerdy ones not. Have you ever read the Dragonlance Chronicles, the No. 1 fantasy of my youth? Point is, it is not actually difficult or complicated. Watching Game of Thrones is leaps and bounds harder, so many names and faces.
Further confounding: indeed children from poor broken families are less likely to do this. What escapist-nerdiness perhaps correlates with is not IQ as such but more like family background where reading books and related activities are respected and pushed by parents. Intellectualism, in a way, bookwormery, but not necessarily IQ as far as escapist-nerdiness goes. STEM-nerdiness is indeed IQ.
Interesting: in Europe, families with a more or less secular Jewish background went from worshipping The Book to worshipping “books”. Literature, reading, intellectualism. Kids of this background were over-represented in this in my experience, because of the family being very approving of bookish stuff. This is intellectual, but yet not necessarily high-IQ. It is closer to liberal arts than hard-sciences, and indeed the most typical career here is historian—a certainly lower-IQ-requirement one than math.
The math and machines and even software and Linux part: this is IMHO only partially true. I know many non-STEM nerds. Most STEM nerds have some interest in fantasy but not the other way around and IQ may be one of the factors.
This sounds plausible and I’ll take your word for it. I know primarily (exclusively?) STEM nerds, so my typical mind fallacy may be inflating the percentage of Star Wars and LOTR fans who also like STEM.
What escapist-nerdiness perhaps correlates with is not IQ as such but more like family background where reading books and related activities are respected and pushed by parents.
To whatever extent escapist-literature-fandom is caused by either high IQ or intellectual parents, it’s not caused by self-hatred, bullying, or lack of manly courage.
So your thesis is that kids who get hated on by other kids become interested in SF and DnD for escapist reasons, rather than already being predisposed to those hobbies. This is testable/falsifiable and potentially interesting.
Observations that support your theory:
fiction is a really excellent way to escape and lots of people do use it for that.
all the stuff you say in your post: nerdier, more outcast people like weirder and more magical fictional worlds
Observations that don’t support your theory:
escapist-nerdy interests correlate with other interests that aren’t useful for escapism, like math and taking machines apart. What these sets of interests do have in common is that they use the same abilities.
Dungeons and Dragons is actually a highly social activity. You need at least four people, one of whom is confident enough to extemporize an interactive story.
Other questions that would be good evidence:
Do children whose lives really suck (poor kids, kids from abusive families, kids with disfiguring illnesses) become bookish/gamers/nerds more often? If so, evidence for escapism. If not, evidence for predisposition. I would bet on no, but don’t have a source.
Do nerdy interests correlate more with IQ, or with what you call courage? Again, I would bet on IQ.
The first truly excellent reply.
Not all fiction is a good way to escape, but you need to look at what kind of fiction I am talking about. I would call it heroic fiction. LOTR, SW and so on. This suggests being unhappy with one’s self.
The math and machines and even software and Linux part: this is IMHO only partially true. I know many non-STEM nerds. Most STEM nerds have some interest in fantasy but not the other way around and IQ may be one of the factors.
I know more people who read and fantasize about D&D rulebooks than people who gather the courage to play it socially.
Having said that, a “social alliance of social outcasts” is a non-typical kind of socializing.
STEM-nerdy interests correlate with IQ, escapist-nerdy ones not. Have you ever read the Dragonlance Chronicles, the No. 1 fantasy of my youth? Point is, it is not actually difficult or complicated. Watching Game of Thrones is leaps and bounds harder, so many names and faces.
Further confounding: indeed children from poor broken families are less likely to do this. What escapist-nerdiness perhaps correlates with is not IQ as such but more like family background where reading books and related activities are respected and pushed by parents. Intellectualism, in a way, bookwormery, but not necessarily IQ as far as escapist-nerdiness goes. STEM-nerdiness is indeed IQ.
Interesting: in Europe, families with a more or less secular Jewish background went from worshipping The Book to worshipping “books”. Literature, reading, intellectualism. Kids of this background were over-represented in this in my experience, because of the family being very approving of bookish stuff. This is intellectual, but yet not necessarily high-IQ. It is closer to liberal arts than hard-sciences, and indeed the most typical career here is historian—a certainly lower-IQ-requirement one than math.
This sounds plausible and I’ll take your word for it. I know primarily (exclusively?) STEM nerds, so my typical mind fallacy may be inflating the percentage of Star Wars and LOTR fans who also like STEM.
To whatever extent escapist-literature-fandom is caused by either high IQ or intellectual parents, it’s not caused by self-hatred, bullying, or lack of manly courage.
Good point—it is the subset of specifically using heroic fantasy is what caused by it. And some other things… like heroes who are socially excluded or self-excluded. The books summarized by this painting were the biggest deal when I was young. Spot the character nerds assoicated with the most :) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Dragonlance_Characters_around_a_campfire_by_Larry_Elmore.jpg