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cousin_it comments on Open Thread: October 2009 - Less Wrong
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Translation: we shouldn't discourage new fiction, because we need more fiction that supports my worldview (which by the way happens to be good and true).
Alicorn, no offense intended, but your rationality just seems to switch off when you start talking about your politics. This isn't the first time I notice that.
Thats a highly ungenerous interpretation of alicorn's argument. Her argument holds up no matter what the underrepresented group is. It could be men's right activists or Ron Paul activists– all the argument requires is that previously small, unpopular and underrepresented groups become larger, more popular and better represented. If the world gets more racist we're going to need more white power books, as much as I would hate such a world. An evaluation of the groups that become popular isn't suggested by the argument.
Group underrepresenatation isn't even necessary, either. A more general form of the argument carries as long as you agree that "[fiction] isn't a completed project[;] [s]topping the production of fiction in its tracks now would leave us with a corpus of stories that" is suboptimal in some way.
Cf. DH7
Nope, doesn't work. Why do you think new fiction would make the corpus more optimal in any way?
Because the criteria of optimality change over time. If civilization ever becomes so static (or so cyclic) that I agree with people 50 years ago about what makes for a good story, then you can stop writing new fiction. As is, there certainly are some old works that were so good for their own time that they're still worth reading now, despite the differences in values. But I can't fail to notice those differences, and they do detract from my enjoyment unless I'm specifically in the mood for something alien.
If the criteria are always changing & devaluing old works, why do we read things like Gilgamesh or the Iliad or Odyssey? Did they have nigh-infinite value, that they could survive 3k+ years?
As far as I can tell this is just the "spirit of the times" point restated by people who can't be bothered to read our long-winded exchange.
It makes the corpus more complete, if nothing else. Of course we don't want to write all possible books; that's just the useless Library of Babel. But that's physically impossible anyway; within the range that we can apprehend, I'm inclined to say that more books about more topics is better.
The concept of "underrepresentation" itself is politically motivated, not just the choice of particular groups.
I guess. And maybe there is a political critique to be made of Alicorn's argument. But then it needs to be more developed then a snarky translation. There are no obvious ideological blinders in alicorn's comment and it certainly doesn't reduce to you translation.
Edit: removed screaming. Disregard this comment.