The part of me that feels like doing away with fiction could be a good idea also would be OK with doing away with many of those other things you mentioned.
If you did away with all those things and everything like them, what would be left? It feels like so little would be left you should be able to give a pretty complete list.
to count things as actually-good rather than merely seemingly-good I’d like them to be connected to a wider web of meaning, rather than isolated.
A popular piece of fiction that many people enjoy creates bonds and shared experiences and ideas. It’s connected to a lot of things many people think and do, and it helps give meaning to their lives. I feel I could replace “fiction” with “culture” here and the argument would be much the same.
What is it you want human activities to be connected to? Fiction is very well connected to other human activities.
You seem to be saying sex in a prolonged relationship is a good thing. That’s sex that builds on and reinforces the relationship. But shared experience of fiction can also build on and reinforce a relationship. People watch movies together, they talk about books they’ve read, they share their opinions and bond over shared opinions. What’s the difference between sex and fiction as relationship tools? What’s special about a relationship in the first place that makes it “less like wireheading” and “more connected” (to what)?
Yes, my actual position on this is much closer to “fiction is bad if it’s not a social activity” rather than “fiction is bad”.
This does not work as an argument against the extremist position, however. Continuing the devil’s-advocate line of thought, I say: if fiction is just good as a social activity because I have friends who like fiction, isn’t that just me being the elephant tied with a chain to a non-optimal social situation?
I am not saying you’re wrong—in fact I think you are right. What concerns me is that I think we should be striving for something better, not justifying the status quo. That’s why I think this is a useful exercise. I’m very skeptical that our current behavior here would just happen to be anywhere near the best we can do. In fact I think fiction is very often more like the ice cream. Our motives for binge-watching an entire series or such are more often self-defeating than good, in any plausible interpretation of the word “good”.
As for the final question—what makes fiction feel more like wireheading than a relationship—my answer is that there’s a real person as opposed to the projected image of a non-real person. The difference is somewhat analogous to the difference between visiting your bank’s website and seeing a large sum of money in the account, and visiting a fake banking website whose sole purpose is to simulate the experience of seeing a large sum of money in your account. The actual relationship with an actual person is good in that it not only creates a sequence of feelings and impressions in the brains of both people, but furthermore creates a richly interconnected dance between the two people which is lacking in fiction.
What concerns me is that I think we should be striving for something better, not justifying the status quo.
That’s begging the question: what’s better and why?
Our motives for binge-watching an entire series or such are more often self-defeating than good, in any plausible interpretation of the word “good”.
Many good things are best consumed in moderation. Very few things have no upper limit on ‘more is better’. The very name binge-watching labels it as an injurious behavior akin to binge drinking. That doesn’t say anything much about fiction generally. (And I think the same applies to ice cream.)
The actual relationship with an actual person is good in that it not only creates a sequence of feelings and impressions in the brains of both people, but furthermore creates a richly interconnected dance between the two people which is lacking in fiction.
That seems like a fully general argument against any solitary activity, and even some activities that are done together (like watching movies) that aren’t about complex interpersonal interaction. (Well, it’s not an argument, it’s a value statement.) You’re free of course to have such values in your own life, but why do you recommend them to others? Plenty of people, like me, enjoy some time apart from others. And there is no social activity which produces the experience of consuming fiction, which I value.
“Fiction considered harmful” sounds like it should mean more than “I, the poster, enjoy / prefer other things to fiction”. There are good arguments that we wouldn’t want everyone to wirehead. But I don’t see a good argument why we wouldn’t want everyone to consume some fiction, as indeed most people do.
What concerns me is that I think we should be striving for something better, not justifying the status quo.
That’s begging the question: what’s better and why?
It’s not begging that particular question… the implicit assumption is that the current state of affairs is far from optimal, not that my particular definition of optimal is correct. In fact part of the point is to explore what values we might hold (and still hold after reflection on those values) that would value fiction. I feel this is a valuable exercise largely because when I do reflect on it, arguments to the effect that fiction is something I reflectively value are rather difficult to make. If I were to discover that I don’t in fact value fiction on reflection, that would be good news: easy life improvement by no longer acting as if I value fiction.
Many good things are best consumed in moderation. [...] The very name binge-watching labels it as an injurious behavior akin to binge drinking.
True. The point I was trying to make is that when I talk to people about this, they tend to give rather high-minded justifications of the value of fiction (usually as a means to other ends, not as an end in itself). While these high-minded justifications may in fact be correct, they seem very different from the motivation which actually causes people to consume fiction. The result of this difference is that the kind of fiction which is readily available on the market is more often “potato chip fiction” as opposed to “baked potato fiction”: still food, but awfully greasy.
This point may not be that relevant to the overall set of questions.
That seems like a fully general argument against any solitary activity
I feel like this remark ignores the part before the text you quote (“there’s an actual person”) which is very much not a fully general argument, but rather an argument against solitary activities which are misleading superstimulus telling system 1 it’s achieving things it’s not.
There’s also a big difference between creative activities (spending solitary time writing a book, say) and consumptive activities. It’s certainly possible to spend alone time without the activity being “isolated” in the sense that I mean.
It’s also possible for someone to be entirely creative and not engage in fiction at all while still being “isolated” in the sense I mean. When I imagine a version of me or someone else toiling away at something they love with plans to totally burn it without showing anyone before they die, I feel like something is lost in this sense; not interconnected with the web of life.
Perhaps that’s just a bad intuition I have about my values, and/or perhaps it’s not a thing many other people value. I don’t know.
Beyond that, I think the difference I’m pointing to is that fiction feels disproportionately like a good thing (because it’s designed to). If there is any distinction to be made between what feels immediately valuable and what I’d find valuable on reflection, fiction will tend to optimize for the first. (This is also true of other types of information I might consume, but fiction has particularly large freedom to optimize these differences.)
I think people (not just me) generally develop a kind of “memetic immune system” defense against the types of superstimulus which are present in abundance in their culture. We have a much higher bar for humor on television than in real life, because funny things happen with much greater frequency on television. No matter how much more attractive the people on television are, we adjust our expectations (somewhat, at least) and are able to find the people we meet in person relatively attractive. And so on. This generally gives us the ability to not waste too much time on the superstimulus. (It also means that they may not have similar defenses against superstimulus available in other places; an example is people over-doing recreational drugs when they visit places where more things are legal. The native population of those places is not prone to the same excess.)
the implicit assumption is that the current state of affairs is far from optimal, not that my particular definition of optimal is correct. In fact part of the point is to explore what values we might hold (and still hold after reflection on those values) that would value fiction.
Again, this doesn’t feel like it relies on any attribute specific to fiction. You could say about almost any aspect of the world or our activities that it’s unlikely to be optimal (whatever your goals may be), and so it’s useful to question things—I agree with that. But the rest of your argument does try to be specific to fiction.
I feel this is a valuable exercise largely because when I do reflect on it, arguments to the effect that fiction is something I reflectively value are rather difficult to make.
Speaking for myself, I like consuming (reading, watching) fiction because it’s enjoyable in the moment. I’m quite sure I reflectively endorse this as a positive value; that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things I could be doing with even greater value, but I don’t know what they are, and I don’t think I can find out by questioning the value of fiction.
I feel like this remark ignores the part before the text you quote (“there’s an actual person”) which is very much not a fully general argument, but rather an argument against solitary activities which are misleading superstimulus telling system 1 it’s achieving things it’s not.
Thanks for the correction.
Why or how do you think fiction misleads system 1? When I read a book, I don’t feel like I’m imagining being one of the characters, it feels like I’m watching them from the side. When I suffer from loneliness or sadness or depression, it doesn’t help to read or watch fiction about happy socially fulfilled people; on the contrary, it sometimes causes me pain because it forcibly reminds me about my problems, and the disconnect between me and the heroes is too great.
I do enjoy “escapism” in the sense that fiction can help me forget, while I’m reading it, about my cares and troubles (except in cases like the above). This simply feels like focusing intently on one thing prevents me from thinking about the other in the background. It’s a similar experience, in that sense, to playing a game, holding a mentally challenging conversation, or focusing on a programming problem.
I realize, of course, that I’m describing my personal experiences, nothing more. Yours are different.
There’s also a big difference between creative activities (spending solitary time writing a book, say) and consumptive activities. It’s certainly possible to spend alone time without the activity being “isolated” in the sense that I mean.
A friend of mine really enjoys drawing. From a young age, whenever she had a minute free she’d sketch something, and she’s gotten very good at it by now. She doesn’t care much about giving drawings to people, or keeping most of them; she enjoys the process of drawing, composition, etc.
Is that “creative” in your sense? She values the act of creation more than the finished work. But you think the main value lies in sharing the finished work with others. It’s not surprising that two people happen to have different values. I’m sure there are others who feel like you, and others who feel like her, or like me. But do you think you’re presenting arguments for others to adopt your values? Because if so, I’m not sure I understand them at this point.
fiction feels disproportionately like a good thing (because it’s designed to).
That’s a feature, not a bug! The value of fiction, and the immediate reason for consuming it—for me and I think for most people—is the direct enjoyment of it, not any second-order effects. Since fiction exists in a market, and consumers choose the fiction they enjoy most, and it’s produced by smart people, of course it evolves towards feeling like a good thing. It’s not disproportionate because there’s nothing to be proportionate to—fiction’s stated goal is exactly to make people feel good.
If there is any distinction to be made between what feels immediately valuable and what I’d find valuable on reflection, fiction will tend to optimize for the first.
This tends to be true of any market product, because people are impulsive and irrational buyers who don’t reflect much. But for people like me who value fiction mostly for the fun experience of consuming it, reflection doesn’t necessarily suggest something else. The conflict may arise mostly if you think you’re consuming fiction for purposes other than having fun—because, indeed, it’s not optimized for those other purposes.
I think people (not just me) generally develop a kind of “memetic immune system” defense against the types of superstimulus which are present in abundance in their culture.
That’s true. I should point out that fiction is a much more ancient superstimulus than e.g. modern supertasty food or superattractive actors. Audiovisual special effects are new, but fiction as text and fiction as theater have existed for millenia.
If you did away with all those things and everything like them, what would be left? It feels like so little would be left you should be able to give a pretty complete list.
A popular piece of fiction that many people enjoy creates bonds and shared experiences and ideas. It’s connected to a lot of things many people think and do, and it helps give meaning to their lives. I feel I could replace “fiction” with “culture” here and the argument would be much the same.
What is it you want human activities to be connected to? Fiction is very well connected to other human activities.
You seem to be saying sex in a prolonged relationship is a good thing. That’s sex that builds on and reinforces the relationship. But shared experience of fiction can also build on and reinforce a relationship. People watch movies together, they talk about books they’ve read, they share their opinions and bond over shared opinions. What’s the difference between sex and fiction as relationship tools? What’s special about a relationship in the first place that makes it “less like wireheading” and “more connected” (to what)?
Yes, my actual position on this is much closer to “fiction is bad if it’s not a social activity” rather than “fiction is bad”.
This does not work as an argument against the extremist position, however. Continuing the devil’s-advocate line of thought, I say: if fiction is just good as a social activity because I have friends who like fiction, isn’t that just me being the elephant tied with a chain to a non-optimal social situation?
I am not saying you’re wrong—in fact I think you are right. What concerns me is that I think we should be striving for something better, not justifying the status quo. That’s why I think this is a useful exercise. I’m very skeptical that our current behavior here would just happen to be anywhere near the best we can do. In fact I think fiction is very often more like the ice cream. Our motives for binge-watching an entire series or such are more often self-defeating than good, in any plausible interpretation of the word “good”.
As for the final question—what makes fiction feel more like wireheading than a relationship—my answer is that there’s a real person as opposed to the projected image of a non-real person. The difference is somewhat analogous to the difference between visiting your bank’s website and seeing a large sum of money in the account, and visiting a fake banking website whose sole purpose is to simulate the experience of seeing a large sum of money in your account. The actual relationship with an actual person is good in that it not only creates a sequence of feelings and impressions in the brains of both people, but furthermore creates a richly interconnected dance between the two people which is lacking in fiction.
That’s begging the question: what’s better and why?
Many good things are best consumed in moderation. Very few things have no upper limit on ‘more is better’. The very name binge-watching labels it as an injurious behavior akin to binge drinking. That doesn’t say anything much about fiction generally. (And I think the same applies to ice cream.)
That seems like a fully general argument against any solitary activity, and even some activities that are done together (like watching movies) that aren’t about complex interpersonal interaction. (Well, it’s not an argument, it’s a value statement.) You’re free of course to have such values in your own life, but why do you recommend them to others? Plenty of people, like me, enjoy some time apart from others. And there is no social activity which produces the experience of consuming fiction, which I value.
“Fiction considered harmful” sounds like it should mean more than “I, the poster, enjoy / prefer other things to fiction”. There are good arguments that we wouldn’t want everyone to wirehead. But I don’t see a good argument why we wouldn’t want everyone to consume some fiction, as indeed most people do.
It’s not begging that particular question… the implicit assumption is that the current state of affairs is far from optimal, not that my particular definition of optimal is correct. In fact part of the point is to explore what values we might hold (and still hold after reflection on those values) that would value fiction. I feel this is a valuable exercise largely because when I do reflect on it, arguments to the effect that fiction is something I reflectively value are rather difficult to make. If I were to discover that I don’t in fact value fiction on reflection, that would be good news: easy life improvement by no longer acting as if I value fiction.
True. The point I was trying to make is that when I talk to people about this, they tend to give rather high-minded justifications of the value of fiction (usually as a means to other ends, not as an end in itself). While these high-minded justifications may in fact be correct, they seem very different from the motivation which actually causes people to consume fiction. The result of this difference is that the kind of fiction which is readily available on the market is more often “potato chip fiction” as opposed to “baked potato fiction”: still food, but awfully greasy.
This point may not be that relevant to the overall set of questions.
I feel like this remark ignores the part before the text you quote (“there’s an actual person”) which is very much not a fully general argument, but rather an argument against solitary activities which are misleading superstimulus telling system 1 it’s achieving things it’s not.
There’s also a big difference between creative activities (spending solitary time writing a book, say) and consumptive activities. It’s certainly possible to spend alone time without the activity being “isolated” in the sense that I mean.
It’s also possible for someone to be entirely creative and not engage in fiction at all while still being “isolated” in the sense I mean. When I imagine a version of me or someone else toiling away at something they love with plans to totally burn it without showing anyone before they die, I feel like something is lost in this sense; not interconnected with the web of life.
Perhaps that’s just a bad intuition I have about my values, and/or perhaps it’s not a thing many other people value. I don’t know.
Beyond that, I think the difference I’m pointing to is that fiction feels disproportionately like a good thing (because it’s designed to). If there is any distinction to be made between what feels immediately valuable and what I’d find valuable on reflection, fiction will tend to optimize for the first. (This is also true of other types of information I might consume, but fiction has particularly large freedom to optimize these differences.)
I think people (not just me) generally develop a kind of “memetic immune system” defense against the types of superstimulus which are present in abundance in their culture. We have a much higher bar for humor on television than in real life, because funny things happen with much greater frequency on television. No matter how much more attractive the people on television are, we adjust our expectations (somewhat, at least) and are able to find the people we meet in person relatively attractive. And so on. This generally gives us the ability to not waste too much time on the superstimulus. (It also means that they may not have similar defenses against superstimulus available in other places; an example is people over-doing recreational drugs when they visit places where more things are legal. The native population of those places is not prone to the same excess.)
Again, this doesn’t feel like it relies on any attribute specific to fiction. You could say about almost any aspect of the world or our activities that it’s unlikely to be optimal (whatever your goals may be), and so it’s useful to question things—I agree with that. But the rest of your argument does try to be specific to fiction.
Speaking for myself, I like consuming (reading, watching) fiction because it’s enjoyable in the moment. I’m quite sure I reflectively endorse this as a positive value; that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things I could be doing with even greater value, but I don’t know what they are, and I don’t think I can find out by questioning the value of fiction.
Thanks for the correction.
Why or how do you think fiction misleads system 1? When I read a book, I don’t feel like I’m imagining being one of the characters, it feels like I’m watching them from the side. When I suffer from loneliness or sadness or depression, it doesn’t help to read or watch fiction about happy socially fulfilled people; on the contrary, it sometimes causes me pain because it forcibly reminds me about my problems, and the disconnect between me and the heroes is too great.
I do enjoy “escapism” in the sense that fiction can help me forget, while I’m reading it, about my cares and troubles (except in cases like the above). This simply feels like focusing intently on one thing prevents me from thinking about the other in the background. It’s a similar experience, in that sense, to playing a game, holding a mentally challenging conversation, or focusing on a programming problem.
I realize, of course, that I’m describing my personal experiences, nothing more. Yours are different.
A friend of mine really enjoys drawing. From a young age, whenever she had a minute free she’d sketch something, and she’s gotten very good at it by now. She doesn’t care much about giving drawings to people, or keeping most of them; she enjoys the process of drawing, composition, etc.
Is that “creative” in your sense? She values the act of creation more than the finished work. But you think the main value lies in sharing the finished work with others. It’s not surprising that two people happen to have different values. I’m sure there are others who feel like you, and others who feel like her, or like me. But do you think you’re presenting arguments for others to adopt your values? Because if so, I’m not sure I understand them at this point.
That’s a feature, not a bug! The value of fiction, and the immediate reason for consuming it—for me and I think for most people—is the direct enjoyment of it, not any second-order effects. Since fiction exists in a market, and consumers choose the fiction they enjoy most, and it’s produced by smart people, of course it evolves towards feeling like a good thing. It’s not disproportionate because there’s nothing to be proportionate to—fiction’s stated goal is exactly to make people feel good.
This tends to be true of any market product, because people are impulsive and irrational buyers who don’t reflect much. But for people like me who value fiction mostly for the fun experience of consuming it, reflection doesn’t necessarily suggest something else. The conflict may arise mostly if you think you’re consuming fiction for purposes other than having fun—because, indeed, it’s not optimized for those other purposes.
That’s true. I should point out that fiction is a much more ancient superstimulus than e.g. modern supertasty food or superattractive actors. Audiovisual special effects are new, but fiction as text and fiction as theater have existed for millenia.