The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, esp. by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy
Exactly.
Unless they can find the capacity to take joy in things that are merely real. To be just as excited by hang-gliding, as riding a dragon; to be as excited by making a light with electricity, as by making a light with magic… even if it takes a little study...
I can absolutely take joy in things that are merely real. I would be just as excited by hang-gliding as I would by riding a dragon, at least in part because they often feel equally out of my reach.
Here’s why fantasy escapism is compelling: for many people, the problem isn’t physics; it’s psychosocial reality. We’ve been conditioned with such horrific levels of defeatism, akrasia and learned helplessness that we literally cannot conceive of succeeding in any world that looks remotely like this one; the conceptual distance between this world and one with dragons and sorcery is it is probably somewhere near the minimal conceptual distance necessary for our subconscious to say “this is a different enough world that the mysterious forces which keep you depressed and miserable and resourceless and powerless and statusless in your world might not do so in ours.” So your brain gives you permission to fantasize about actually succeeding without berating yourself and feeling stupid for doing so, which is what you’re looking for from these novels.
For example, the vast majority of the time I imagine myself accomplishing anything, it involves timetravel, or something similar. It feels like anything I didn’t do in prepubescent form doesn’t really count. Kinda like “Yes, you opened the safe, but only after the bomb inside went off and damaged the lock, and destroyed most of the valuables within.”
A recent such imagining involved me talking to a psychologist about foreknowledge, and it turned out that most of the predictions I made were about negative things (shootings, 9/11, etc). I answered this observation with “I had a very idealistic upbringing; any world that does not turn out like an action movie with me as a hero is a disappointment.”
Well, that, and there are things that I want that technology can’t give me at the moment, and would be… difficult to get funded. (And the ones that are actually feasible are trappd in Akrasiaban.)
However, most of the things I want that would require technology to advance considerably are rather mundane. Slightly weird, attainable if I’d known in advance and been a rationality ninja at the time, but not magic.
… No, I never did manage to get any of my psychologists to talk about this subject. :P. It was mostly all about akrasia and depression. (Though one of them did let me play with Mindflex, which is a far cry from an FMRI, but provided me with experimental evidence as to where I have Ugh Fields strong enough to turn off a motor… ah, and the thoughts I used that got the machine to full power were made of imaginary friends and kamehamehas.)
Occasionally, the simply real works, though. I recently decided that if none of these tactile display projects are actually going to hit the market (Senseg sounded close a year ago, then went silent, and this is the same pattern set by several others in the field), I’ll just build my own. Unfortunately, this will require people with more comp sci / electrical engineering skill / parts than me, and better-functioning eyeballs would doubtless be useful. So I’m write back to an akrasia-vulnerable task: convincing the nearest comp sci department that I know has the parts/people to help. (Though if anyone wants to beat me to it, the tesla touch strikes me as a good starting point.)
Let’s step back. This thread of the conversation is rooted in this claim: “Let’s be honest: all fiction is a form of escapism.”. Are we snared in the Disputing Definitions trap? To quote from that LW article:
if the issue arises, both sides should switch to describing the event in unambiguous lower-level constituents, like acoustic vibrations or auditory experiences. Or each side could designate a new word, like ‘alberzle’ and ‘bargulum’, to use for what they respectively used to call ‘sound’; and then both sides could use the new words consistently. That way neither side has to back down or lose face, but they can still communicate. And of course you should try to keep track, at all times, of some testable proposition that the argument is actually about.
I propose that we recognize several lower-level testable claims, framed as questions. How many people read fiction to …
entertain?
distract from an unpleasant reality?
understand the human condition (including society)?
think through alternative scenarios?
Now I will connect the conversation to these four points:
Luke_A_Somers wrote “Why would I ever want to escape from my wonderful life to go THERE?” which relates to #2.
thomblake mentions the The Philosophy of Horror. Consider this quote from the publisher’s summary: ”… horror not only arouses the senses but also raises profound questions about fear, safety, justice, and suffering. … horror’s ability to thrill has made it an integral part of modern entertainment.” which suggests #1 and #3.
JonInstall pulls out the dictionary in the hopes of “settling” the debate. He’s talking about #1.
Escapism | Noun
″ The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, esp. by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy ”
Exactly.
I can absolutely take joy in things that are merely real. I would be just as excited by hang-gliding as I would by riding a dragon, at least in part because they often feel equally out of my reach.
Here’s why fantasy escapism is compelling: for many people, the problem isn’t physics; it’s psychosocial reality. We’ve been conditioned with such horrific levels of defeatism, akrasia and learned helplessness that we literally cannot conceive of succeeding in any world that looks remotely like this one; the conceptual distance between this world and one with dragons and sorcery is it is probably somewhere near the minimal conceptual distance necessary for our subconscious to say “this is a different enough world that the mysterious forces which keep you depressed and miserable and resourceless and powerless and statusless in your world might not do so in ours.” So your brain gives you permission to fantasize about actually succeeding without berating yourself and feeling stupid for doing so, which is what you’re looking for from these novels.
For example, the vast majority of the time I imagine myself accomplishing anything, it involves timetravel, or something similar. It feels like anything I didn’t do in prepubescent form doesn’t really count. Kinda like “Yes, you opened the safe, but only after the bomb inside went off and damaged the lock, and destroyed most of the valuables within.”
A recent such imagining involved me talking to a psychologist about foreknowledge, and it turned out that most of the predictions I made were about negative things (shootings, 9/11, etc). I answered this observation with “I had a very idealistic upbringing; any world that does not turn out like an action movie with me as a hero is a disappointment.”
Well, that, and there are things that I want that technology can’t give me at the moment, and would be… difficult to get funded. (And the ones that are actually feasible are trappd in Akrasiaban.)
However, most of the things I want that would require technology to advance considerably are rather mundane. Slightly weird, attainable if I’d known in advance and been a rationality ninja at the time, but not magic.
… No, I never did manage to get any of my psychologists to talk about this subject. :P. It was mostly all about akrasia and depression. (Though one of them did let me play with Mindflex, which is a far cry from an FMRI, but provided me with experimental evidence as to where I have Ugh Fields strong enough to turn off a motor… ah, and the thoughts I used that got the machine to full power were made of imaginary friends and kamehamehas.)
Occasionally, the simply real works, though. I recently decided that if none of these tactile display projects are actually going to hit the market (Senseg sounded close a year ago, then went silent, and this is the same pattern set by several others in the field), I’ll just build my own. Unfortunately, this will require people with more comp sci / electrical engineering skill / parts than me, and better-functioning eyeballs would doubtless be useful. So I’m write back to an akrasia-vulnerable task: convincing the nearest comp sci department that I know has the parts/people to help. (Though if anyone wants to beat me to it, the tesla touch strikes me as a good starting point.)
Let’s step back. This thread of the conversation is rooted in this claim: “Let’s be honest: all fiction is a form of escapism.”. Are we snared in the Disputing Definitions trap? To quote from that LW article:
I propose that we recognize several lower-level testable claims, framed as questions. How many people read fiction to …
entertain?
distract from an unpleasant reality?
understand the human condition (including society)?
think through alternative scenarios?
Now I will connect the conversation to these four points:
Luke_A_Somers wrote “Why would I ever want to escape from my wonderful life to go THERE?” which relates to #2.
thomblake mentions the The Philosophy of Horror. Consider this quote from the publisher’s summary: ”… horror not only arouses the senses but also raises profound questions about fear, safety, justice, and suffering. … horror’s ability to thrill has made it an integral part of modern entertainment.” which suggests #1 and #3.
JonInstall pulls out the dictionary in the hopes of “settling” the debate. He’s talking about #1.
Speaking for myself, when reading e.g. the embedded story The Tale of the Omegas in Life 3.0, my biggest takeaway was #4.
Does this sound about right?
I don’t quite see the relevance of this to what I said.