Well, for starters, Austen was mainly concerned with making good decisions about whom to marry, which for women of her time, place and class was by far the most important thing to worry about ever—their husbands all but owned them, and divorce was punishable by shunning. If there was an 80,000 Hours for young ladies in Regency England, it would have been called “400,000 hours” or maybe “Literally the Rest of your Life or Until the Bastard Dies,” and Jane Austen would have been its founder. People who think Austen wrote romance novels are badly misreading her: in Sense and Sensibility she mercilessly punishes Marianne for following her heart when her heart was stupid, and in Persuasion she vindicates Anne’s hard choice to turn down a poor man she loved on the advice of a trusted friend. These books are about winning.
But more than identifying the right problem, Austen actually is quite a keen observer of cognitive biases. She didn’t call them that, of course, since they technically hadn’t been named yet, but Emma is basically about confirmation bias—“She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made every thing bend to it,”—and the central conflict in Pride and Prejudice is Elizabeth’s need to change her mind about Darcy at the cost of appearing inconsistent to her friends and family. Austen isn’t interested in stupid or wicked characters, but in intelligent, well-meaning people who make bad decisions for predictable, preventable reasons. There are more examples (I seem to recall a nice planning fallacy in S&S) but I don’t want to spend too much time digging up quotes right now.
Would you write a Sequence for Main on “Jane Austen: Rationalist”? Sure sounds better than “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. Say, a series of 6 posts analyzing her classic novels the way you did in this comment, in more detail, with quotes, links and references?
I can see a world of good that could do:
Show historical context of some of the ideas of instrumental rationality
Break the stereotype that the majority of LWers are loser geeks who only read SF/F, and mostly fanfic, to begin with
Draw attention of the forum that some classic “earthfic” can be a worthwhile reading
Introduce the rationalist ideas to the new and mostly female crowd of Jane Austen afictionados
Contrast it with the false rationality of the straw vulcan trope
If anyone else wants me to I’ll probably have time to put something together next month (I’d need to reread the books). I’m not sure there’s enough material for a whole sequence though. I don’t remember Mansfield Park as very promising, and once you’ve said “generalizing from fictional evidence” you’re probably pretty much done with Northanger Abbey.
Feel free to elaborate.
Well, for starters, Austen was mainly concerned with making good decisions about whom to marry, which for women of her time, place and class was by far the most important thing to worry about ever—their husbands all but owned them, and divorce was punishable by shunning. If there was an 80,000 Hours for young ladies in Regency England, it would have been called “400,000 hours” or maybe “Literally the Rest of your Life or Until the Bastard Dies,” and Jane Austen would have been its founder. People who think Austen wrote romance novels are badly misreading her: in Sense and Sensibility she mercilessly punishes Marianne for following her heart when her heart was stupid, and in Persuasion she vindicates Anne’s hard choice to turn down a poor man she loved on the advice of a trusted friend. These books are about winning.
But more than identifying the right problem, Austen actually is quite a keen observer of cognitive biases. She didn’t call them that, of course, since they technically hadn’t been named yet, but Emma is basically about confirmation bias—“She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made every thing bend to it,”—and the central conflict in Pride and Prejudice is Elizabeth’s need to change her mind about Darcy at the cost of appearing inconsistent to her friends and family. Austen isn’t interested in stupid or wicked characters, but in intelligent, well-meaning people who make bad decisions for predictable, preventable reasons. There are more examples (I seem to recall a nice planning fallacy in S&S) but I don’t want to spend too much time digging up quotes right now.
Wow, I never thought of it like this!
Would you write a Sequence for Main on “Jane Austen: Rationalist”? Sure sounds better than “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. Say, a series of 6 posts analyzing her classic novels the way you did in this comment, in more detail, with quotes, links and references?
I can see a world of good that could do:
Show historical context of some of the ideas of instrumental rationality
Break the stereotype that the majority of LWers are loser geeks who only read SF/F, and mostly fanfic, to begin with
Draw attention of the forum that some classic “earthfic” can be a worthwhile reading
Introduce the rationalist ideas to the new and mostly female crowd of Jane Austen afictionados
Contrast it with the false rationality of the straw vulcan trope
If anyone else wants me to I’ll probably have time to put something together next month (I’d need to reread the books). I’m not sure there’s enough material for a whole sequence though. I don’t remember Mansfield Park as very promising, and once you’ve said “generalizing from fictional evidence” you’re probably pretty much done with Northanger Abbey.
Maybe a single Discussion post then, on the book of your choice, to gauge interest?