Fiction can be inaccurate, in a way you do not notice. Then what is your reaction to the fiction about?
For example, someone may incorrectly believe that “if we do X, Y will happen”. Then they write a novel, where the protagonist did X, as a result Y happened, and then everyone was happy. You empathize with the protagonist’s efforts, and you are very happy about their success at the end of the novel.
If your conclusion is “X is good”, I believe that is a serious mistake. This way you are vulnerable to propaganda; as long as someone correctly guesses your favorite Y, they can make you support any X by writing a plausibly sounding novel where X leads to Y.
If your conclusion is merely “Y is good” (without buying the—supposedly incorrect—premise that X would lead to Y), uhm, maybe. There is the same problem on the smaller level: the novel says that situation Y created an emotional reaction Z in people, but maybe in real life, the emotional reaction would be different. People are bad at predicting what would make them happy. Things that seem awesome in far mode can be quite boring in near mode, and vice versa.
When you react to fictional evidence, I think it is very difficult not to include some of the “fictional causality”, which may be actually wrong.
Fiction can be inaccurate, in a way you do not notice. Then what is your reaction to the fiction about?
For example, someone may incorrectly believe that “if we do X, Y will happen”. Then they write a novel, where the protagonist did X, as a result Y happened, and then everyone was happy. You empathize with the protagonist’s efforts, and you are very happy about their success at the end of the novel.
If your conclusion is “X is good”, I believe that is a serious mistake. This way you are vulnerable to propaganda; as long as someone correctly guesses your favorite Y, they can make you support any X by writing a plausibly sounding novel where X leads to Y.
If your conclusion is merely “Y is good” (without buying the—supposedly incorrect—premise that X would lead to Y), uhm, maybe. There is the same problem on the smaller level: the novel says that situation Y created an emotional reaction Z in people, but maybe in real life, the emotional reaction would be different. People are bad at predicting what would make them happy. Things that seem awesome in far mode can be quite boring in near mode, and vice versa.
When you react to fictional evidence, I think it is very difficult not to include some of the “fictional causality”, which may be actually wrong.