The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that non-fiction at least purports to be true, while fiction doesn’t. I can decide whether I want to trust what Herodotus says, but it’s meaningless to speak of “trusting” the Sherlock Holmes stories because they don’t make any claims about the world. Imagining that they do is where the fallacy comes in.
For example, kung-fu movies give a misleading impression of how actual fights work, not because the directors are untrustworthy or misinformed, but because it’s more fun than watching realistic fights, and they’re optimizing for that, not for realism.
Kung-fu example is interesting. Let’s continue. If you speak about “actual fights” as “actual kung-fu fights” or “actual fights where one of fighters use kung-fu” then how many people saw any of that in real life or know how they are working or participated personally in one of them? And if the number of such people is really low and you do not have one of them as your instructor, then how do you know that your kung-fu class is closer to real fights than those kung-fu movies?
I do not state that kung-fu movies or Sherlock Holmes cites are correct representations of reality (it would be quite strange), I say that the most of other representations (=models of reality) are more or less the same order of magnitude of correctness, and should be considered as such. If you go to kung-fu class with hope that it will help you to fight in the dark alley with 4 thugs, you are in a problem. Your best chance there is to flee and you’d better go to the running club twice a week then. I got a one-handshake experience of that where champion has been beaten hard because of incapacitated friend whom he couldn’t leave.
The stories of SH do not make any claims about the world and nether the less represent some aspects of it quite correct while Herodotus makes such claims and represents it at least skewed and at most completely false, probably honestly mistaken.
I state that you can personallydistill knowledge of reality and useful practical tricks (=more correct model of reality) from fiction books as well as from non-fiction books if you know where to look.
P.S. real fights ARE fun to watch, you can see it by the number of downloads, but even these videos are usually illegal or hard to find, so the numbers are not very representative
P.P.S. This probably do not stand for current Hollywood production, such as Marvel series, from which there is really few things to distill into knowledge, though even they could be educational in some way.
I do not state that kung-fu movies or Sherlock Holmes cites are correct representations of reality (it would be quite strange), I say that the most of other representations (=models of reality) are more or less the same order of magnitude of correctness, and should be considered as such.
Are you actually suggesting that, for example, General Relativity, or Evolution by Natural Selection, theories with vast amounts of data backing them up, and a litany of verified predictions about the world, should be treated as having “roughly the same order of magnitude of correctness” as a Sherlock Holmes story?
I feel like Isaac Asimov answered this question with far more eloquence than I can muster:
My answer to him was, “John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
No, I’m not suggesting this, it would be strange. These are things of different domains. Science is the only domain where the knowledge can be verified by some means. E.g. by predictions.
I’m not the expert in general theory of relativity neither I am the one in theoretical physics, so I cannot speak of these fields with any confidence—how close to reality they are in their current state of development.
I’m suggesting consider all the information coming to you (except info in the scientific domain which you can and should verify by some means, including personal experiments and network/tree of trusted sources) as generally fictional, and update your beliefs correspondingly.
Science is the only domain where the knowledge can be verified by some means. E.g. by predictions.
No, that’s not true. Science is the only domain which can make causal models about the world. That’s a far higher standard than “verifiable knowledge”. People can certainly verify historical and biographical events. I can read about, for example, the history of the Roman Empire and know that Hannibal defeated a Roman army at Cannae in the Second Punic War. I can read about Gustavus Adolphus and know that he perished leading a cavalry charge at Lützen on November 6, 1632. What I don’t know is the why. Why did the Romans put themselves into a position where they could be enveloped like that? What was Gustavus thinking, leading a charge and putting himself at great personal danger? Furthermore, I don’t know what would have happened if things had turned out differently.
That is the difference between science and history. Both tell you what happened. But only science develops detailed theories that explain why and which allow you to make predictions about the world where things would have turned out differently.
The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that non-fiction at least purports to be true, while fiction doesn’t. I can decide whether I want to trust what Herodotus says, but it’s meaningless to speak of “trusting” the Sherlock Holmes stories because they don’t make any claims about the world. Imagining that they do is where the fallacy comes in.
For example, kung-fu movies give a misleading impression of how actual fights work, not because the directors are untrustworthy or misinformed, but because it’s more fun than watching realistic fights, and they’re optimizing for that, not for realism.
Kung-fu example is interesting. Let’s continue. If you speak about “actual fights” as “actual kung-fu fights” or “actual fights where one of fighters use kung-fu” then how many people saw any of that in real life or know how they are working or participated personally in one of them? And if the number of such people is really low and you do not have one of them as your instructor, then how do you know that your kung-fu class is closer to real fights than those kung-fu movies?
I do not state that kung-fu movies or Sherlock Holmes cites are correct representations of reality (it would be quite strange), I say that the most of other representations (=models of reality) are more or less the same order of magnitude of correctness, and should be considered as such. If you go to kung-fu class with hope that it will help you to fight in the dark alley with 4 thugs, you are in a problem. Your best chance there is to flee and you’d better go to the running club twice a week then. I got a one-handshake experience of that where champion has been beaten hard because of incapacitated friend whom he couldn’t leave.
The stories of SH do not make any claims about the world and nether the less represent some aspects of it quite correct while Herodotus makes such claims and represents it at least skewed and at most completely false, probably honestly mistaken.
I state that you can personally distill knowledge of reality and useful practical tricks (=more correct model of reality) from fiction books as well as from non-fiction books if you know where to look.
P.S. real fights ARE fun to watch, you can see it by the number of downloads, but even these videos are usually illegal or hard to find, so the numbers are not very representative
P.P.S. This probably do not stand for current Hollywood production, such as Marvel series, from which there is really few things to distill into knowledge, though even they could be educational in some way.
Are you actually suggesting that, for example, General Relativity, or Evolution by Natural Selection, theories with vast amounts of data backing them up, and a litany of verified predictions about the world, should be treated as having “roughly the same order of magnitude of correctness” as a Sherlock Holmes story?
I feel like Isaac Asimov answered this question with far more eloquence than I can muster:
No, I’m not suggesting this, it would be strange. These are things of different domains. Science is the only domain where the knowledge can be verified by some means. E.g. by predictions.
I’m not the expert in general theory of relativity neither I am the one in theoretical physics, so I cannot speak of these fields with any confidence—how close to reality they are in their current state of development.
I’m suggesting consider all the information coming to you (except info in the scientific domain which you can and should verify by some means, including personal experiments and network/tree of trusted sources) as generally fictional, and update your beliefs correspondingly.
No, that’s not true. Science is the only domain which can make causal models about the world. That’s a far higher standard than “verifiable knowledge”. People can certainly verify historical and biographical events. I can read about, for example, the history of the Roman Empire and know that Hannibal defeated a Roman army at Cannae in the Second Punic War. I can read about Gustavus Adolphus and know that he perished leading a cavalry charge at Lützen on November 6, 1632. What I don’t know is the why. Why did the Romans put themselves into a position where they could be enveloped like that? What was Gustavus thinking, leading a charge and putting himself at great personal danger? Furthermore, I don’t know what would have happened if things had turned out differently.
That is the difference between science and history. Both tell you what happened. But only science develops detailed theories that explain why and which allow you to make predictions about the world where things would have turned out differently.
// People can certainly verify historical and biographical events.//
Certainly not. Often you cannot verify even current events, how can we talk about things what have been (or not) long ago?
History is the most fiction of all.
And science is not.