I am very much inclined to analyze your articles because you are indeed very enthusiastic about your theories, which is a rarity these days. On the link there’s a Wordle tag cloud picture of your article.
As you can see, there’s a lot of “argument(s)”,”moral”, “abstract”, “fiction’, and a somewhat humble “experience”.
To the point – fiction in the literary domain is often a method for implying moral concepts. But fiction is, above all, an invitation to imagine. There is a catch. We can imagine a setting, a world, a relationship. But we sometimes cannot imagine that this setting, or world, or relationship, is morally justified, simply because we have an elaborate moral hierarchy to begin with.
Another aspect is that fiction is a theory we know is false, but useful. Beware, Yudkowski – fiction is typically useful when it relates to things that exist or could exist, but only if we are able to observe them one day.
Hence a problem with science fiction – it typically uses big time spans to make reading them books interesting. In the end, as we very well know, science fiction is either too far sighted or too short sighted, but not really useful.
So what the hell am I talking about? Eliezer, in your work there are many useful ideas. “Three Worlds Collide” is more like entertainment.
Eliezer,
I am very much inclined to analyze your articles because you are indeed very enthusiastic about your theories, which is a rarity these days. On the link there’s a Wordle tag cloud picture of your article.
As you can see, there’s a lot of “argument(s)”,”moral”, “abstract”, “fiction’, and a somewhat humble “experience”.
To the point – fiction in the literary domain is often a method for implying moral concepts. But fiction is, above all, an invitation to imagine. There is a catch. We can imagine a setting, a world, a relationship. But we sometimes cannot imagine that this setting, or world, or relationship, is morally justified, simply because we have an elaborate moral hierarchy to begin with.
Another aspect is that fiction is a theory we know is false, but useful. Beware, Yudkowski – fiction is typically useful when it relates to things that exist or could exist, but only if we are able to observe them one day.
Hence a problem with science fiction – it typically uses big time spans to make reading them books interesting. In the end, as we very well know, science fiction is either too far sighted or too short sighted, but not really useful.
So what the hell am I talking about? Eliezer, in your work there are many useful ideas. “Three Worlds Collide” is more like entertainment.