So there’s this thing people do, it’s harmless enough, but it also sort of hints at a completely incoherent style of thinking. It is absolutely unfair to judge people by random shit they write casually, after all I write like 3 geeked out baboons stacked atop one and other and yet I am a noble and refined rat.
Nonetheless I’m a judgy shit so I do. Ok so the thing? It’s when people use a quote or situation from fiction as a predictor of what will happen in reality. A concrete example from earlier today paraphrased:
p1: I think blah blah thing will happen
p2: Ah but remember men in black? a person is reasonable, people are dumb panicky animals
me: teakettle noises
The causality is utterly confused, MiB cannot be used as evidence, it is written that way because the writer wanted a character to say that. It’s possible a writer wanted a character to say that because the writer believed it to be true, but it’s also possible that it was included for many other reasons.
screeeeeeeeeee
Anyway, share your thoughts. Also your own ridiculous rhetoric irritations.
We’re talking about the humanities, not STEM here. It’s not like there’s a social physics with firm predictive formulas for individual or even aggregate human behavior we can use instead. I get what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree that the narrative priorities of a given author should be taken into account when using fictional works like this, but… Surely you wouldn’t say that Dostoevsky’s The Idiot or an arbitrary Discworld novel haven’t got anything real and useful to teach us about actual human behavior?
If the thing is in fiction because it happens in reality just use an example of it happening.
Made up shit only supports arguments about made up shit.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Fry, his eyes narrowed.
If one known to the commenter is readily available that’s fair I suppose, but sometimes the fictional example can be particularly poignant and the basis of your criticism can be advantageously used to illustrate something specific about a given situation and its broader context or impact that an isolated real event might not. As an example, take this small except from Pratchett’s ‘Small Gods’ - largely a critique of religious fanaticism, group think and in/out group behaviors - in which the fictional philosopher “Didactylos” debates the practice of capital punishment (by way of public stoning) of people who’ve transgressed against the stringent edicts of the central theocracy in that book:
I could instead have used some factual reporting about an instance of religious mistreatment by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran or something, but I frankly don’t think that would have been equally illuminating.
Edit: Separately, as a counter-point to your assertion that “Made up shit only supports arguments about made up shit.”, I’d point out that that doesn’t even apply in the hard sciences. Einstein - with his justified love of the Gedankenexperiment - would have vehemently disagreed. So would Nicola Tesla, without the imagination of whom we probably would have eventually had a moden transmission system for energy, but nowhere near as early.
yeah nah, you’re missing the point. Stuff which did not happen is not evidence of stuff happening and so can’t be used to support a prediction of the future.
What you’re talking about seems to be some broader defense of fiction as having merit in expressing emotions or values which is a different thing entirely.
I get what you mean, but “people are dumb panicky animals” is more of an aphorism on the human condition than an event, so it doesn’t seem like the best example.
If it’s obviously true you don’t need to support it. “The sky is blue” is not annoying. “remember MiB, the sky was blue in it. The sky is blue” is a deranged way of expressing it.
Also I contest that this is obviously true. Massed humans are generally pretty sedate and if anything more predictable, cities are surprisingly stable for example.
Furthermore, “the sky is blue” is not in the least bit controversial, whereas what exactly is blue needs to be supported.
damn I hate green apparently
You’re confusing mathematical proof for rhetoric. They are not the same thing.
A man will not have himself killed for a half pence a day and a petty distinction; you must speak to the soul in order to electricify him.
Yeah and lying to people or bribing them are also good tactics if your goal is just manipulating people you have no respect for. Using them degrades yourself, profanes society, and shows that you have nothing but contempt for your interlocutor.
We are not robots. We are beings of emotion and passion. People are not persuaded by simple logic.
You’re just bitching about human nature. Have you never talked to a human being at all? People don’t speak in formal proofs. People aren’t engaged by formal proofs. You’re not “profaning society” by using the most human forms of communication. Emotion is a key part of communication.
Stop being anti-human.
You seem to have a very extreme view of who I am.
Good use of emotion in discussion: “Imagine if every time you said you loved your wife people complained about how you always had to bring heterosexualilty into things. Wouldn’t you find that really isolating?”
Bad use: “Aren’t I a good person? Don’t you love me? You’re spitting in the face of a thousand years of tradition by being gay. Do you want this family to die out?”
If you are trying to make a factual claim about the future. aka a prediction, and you use as evidence for your beliefs an event that didn’t happen, you are an idiot at best.
Ah, right. I still don’t know that I’d agree (at least to the point of absolutism), although I can see where you’re coming from. I’m not saying I think you’re inherently wrong, so much as that I think your stance is very extreme and inflexible to the point of being unreasonable. Suppose that one were to use a real example of history rhyming without outright repeating as a basis for informing a logical extrapolation pertaining to future events. Like, contrasting societal and political developments of 1930’s Germany to contemporary America. Well, why then would it be less valid or useful to contrast FBI’s early efforts with the Total Information Awareness program, let alone NSA’s later efforts with Orwell’s 1984 or Dick’s A Scanner Darkly? Why would there be absolutely no value in arguing against the infinite distractions of the Bread and Butter Circus of modern entertainment supported by Huxley’s A brave New World or rail against the value of seeking digital immorality for only those who can afford the price of admission by referencing Edding’s The Bin or, hell, CP2077?
Edit: Uh, I am of couse just playing Devil’s Advocate to your hard stance here. One could of course trivially come up with any number of much less justifiable examples, in which case(s) I’d obviously agree with you. I’m not arguing you cannot be right (and often will be), just that I don’t think it’s a universal truth that always applies.
Devil’s Advocate is a movie, you’ve come undone
You know thought experiments are not used as evidence right, but rather to direct the search for evidence.
You go: “if X were true we might imagine finding Y under Z conditions” then we go and do real experiments in order to actually see if this holds true. Using the evidence we support or refute the imagined scenario.
Special relativity isn’t true because of trains mirrors and torches, it is true because it’s true and we know it’s true (in the empirical not logical sense) because we have done measurements of atomic clocks and shit.
but would you assert from that any capital punishment proceeds on these grounds as an axiom of humanity?