RichardKennaway comments on Fictional Evidence vs. Fictional Insight - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Wei_Dai 08 January 2010 01:59AM

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Comment author: MichaelVassar 08 January 2010 05:46:33AM *  6 points [-]

I think that literary fiction is the best available source of social insight very regularly. I'm particularly partial to Russian Opera as the training wheels version of this actually. Science Fiction, in my experience, is much much less frequently a source of valuable insight, though Vinge's Cookie Monster provided one.

By the way, is this post obvious to most people? I can't tell if it would be obvious to most readers or not.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 21 January 2010 01:13:57PM 3 points [-]

By the way, is this post obvious to most people?

I know nothing about Russian Opera or Vinge's Cookie Monster, nor about your knowledge of them, nor how good you think the "best available" is, nor whether the first sentence was so curiously carefully worded in order to sidestep saying whether you agree with these very regular thoughts.

In short, since I know nothing about you beyond what it says here, I literally have no idea what you're talking about.