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Alicorn comments on Skill: The Map is Not the Territory - Less Wrong
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Comments (174)
I don't think that's really a good response to this complaint.
Yeah, but 40 years ago you wouldn't be saying 'gosh what I really need is a good munchkin HP/D&D crossover!'
You'd be saying something like, 'that P.G. Wodehouse/Piers Anthony/etc., what a hilarious writer! If only he'd write his next book faster!' or 'I'm really looking forward to the new anthology of G.K Chesterton's uncollected Father Brown tales!'
EDIT: Thanks for ninjaing your comment so my response looks like a complete non sequitur. -_-
I'd STILL like Wodehouse to write a few more. Unfortunately...
Well, 40 years ago I wasn't born. I tend not to like old fiction. I would be less happy and enjoy fiction less in a world where that was all I had to read, although perhaps I wouldn't know what I was missing (there may even in reality be some genre I haven't found yet that I would adore and am the poorer for not having located yet).
I edited my comment because my first writing was based solely on seeing what article you linked to and then I searched for the specific law you named and decided my reply was inapt. Sorry.
This is pretty much what my entire article is about: there is something like 300 million books out there, like >90% of which is 'old', with no real reason to expect an incredible quality imbalance (fantasy humor is an old genre, so old that practitioners like Robert Asprin have died), and yet, the reading ratio is perhaps quite the inverse with 90% of reading being new books and someone like you can tell me in all apparent seriousness 'I don't like old fiction, I would be less happy in a world in which that was all I had!'
Counterargument: Old writing was written in accordance with old ideas.
The inferential distance between a modern reader and an old writer is likely to be larger than the inferential distance between a modern reader and a modern writer. For this reason, modern writing is generally both easier and more relatable for the modern reader, and we should not be surprised that most modern readers read modern writing.
The exceptions-- old works that are considered classic and revered even by modern readers-- are (nominally) those that have touched something timeless, and therefore ring true across the ages.
Is this distance sufficient to explain the recentism bias? Can you give an example of how a great SF novel like Dune has 'inferential distance' so severe as to explain why more people are at any point buying the (incredibly shitty terrible) NYT-bestselling sequels by Kevin J. Anderson & Brian Herbert than the original?
"At any point" seems highly unlikely, since the sequels didn't exist during the same timespan as the original.
I would be surprised if the number of readers of any given Dune sequel were greater than the number of readers of Dune itself; such would indeed constitute evidence in favor of unreasonable recentism.
However, I think that the fact that the sequels are bought more often now is more likely to be the result of sampling bias rather than an actual reflection of the popularity of the original relative to its sequels.
Well, that's where the sales figures comes into play and why I mentioned them. If every reader first buys Dune and only later - maybe - buys any sequel or prequel, then we would expect Dune to always outrank any of the others. To the extent that Dune does not appear on the rankings... The flow of buyers will reflect popularity.
Of course, some readers will not buy Dune and will read it a different way, but this is equally true of the sequels/prequels! Filesharing networks and libraries stock them too.
I expect that Dune is much, much more common in libraries than any of its sequels, or at least is checked out more often.
This is supported by a quick search of my local library catalog, which reveals that the library system here has zero to two copies of any given Dune sequel, nearly all of which are currently available, but six copies of Dune, only one of which is currently available.
The other library I sometimes visit appears to have zero to one copy of each Dune sequel, nearly all of which are currently available, but four copies of Dune, zero of which are available.
Obviously, this is a limited sample, but I expect that similar trends generally prevail.
Why would you think this? Besides what katydee says about libraries, I've gotten many SF books from my parents' stash over the years. To the point where I had to stop myself from generalizing and rejecting your claim out of hand.
Books, music, and all other art forms, unlike apples, are not fungible, not even items of the same "quality" (however defined).
BTW, I have that collection of the complete Bach in 160 CDs (and have listened to all of it at least twice). And I'm collecting the complete Masaahi Suzuki recordings of the Bach cantatas (which are completely different from the Leonhardt/Harnoncourt performances in the Bach 2000 set), and I might spring for the John Eliot Gardiner cantatas if he manages to issue them as a complete set. I also went to this performance yesterday of an art form dating back all of 60 years (the drums are from the long-long-ago, but this use of them is not), and buy everything Greg Egan writes as soon as it comes out.
Yes, no-one can read/listen to/view more than the tiniest fraction of what there is, but to read nothing old, or to read nothing new, are selection rules that have only simplicity in their favour. There is no one-dimensional scale of "quality".
A point which applies equally to old and new. And ultimately every choice comes down to read or don't read...
I think you're deprecating them too quickly. Let's take the 90% guess at face-value: if you are selecting primarily from just the most recent 10% and quality - however multidimensional you choose to define it - then you need to somehow make up for throwing out 9/10ths of all the best books, the ones which happened to be old!
It'd be like running a machine learning or statistical algorithm which starts by throwing out 90% of the data from consideration; yeah, maybe that's a good idea, but you're going to have a hard time selecting from the remaining 10% so much better that it makes up for it.
Yes, I read your article. I just disagree with you about most of it.
I like some fiction-by-people-now-dead, but I don't like elderly "classics", and if a ban on new books had been implemented at any point in the past I would be the poorer for not having things that have come out since then, even if you grandfathered in series-in-progress. This is not ridiculous just because you think some "quality" metric is holding steady.
There are other things to like about books than your invented bullshit "quality" metric. You know what? I like books that were written originally in my language. That doesn't include Shakespeare; my language updates constantly and books don't. I like fanfiction, and active living fandoms where people will write each other presents according to specific prompts because someone really wanted something really specific that didn't exist a minute ago and riff on and respond to and parody each other in prose around a shared touchstone. That couldn't exist if there were some ban on new material and all these people spent their time quilting instead. I like books with fancy tech in them, and exactly what can get past my suspension-of-disbelief filter changes alongside real technology. I can read Heinlein even with slide rules in space, but damn, that would get old. Hell, I like writing. I like a lot of things that you see no value in and wish to slay. Please step back with the pointy objects.
Calm down, it's just an essay...
I dunno, people used to get a lot out of quilting and knitting - the phrase 'knitting circle' comes to mind. But your contempt for various subcultures aside:
So, 'writing is not about writing'; which is pretty much one of the major themes - whatever is justifying all this new fiction, it's not nebulous claims about sliderules in space or new books being 'better' than old ones or reading like Shakespeare (most of those 300m books are, uh, not from Elizebethan times -_-).
Community is as good an explanation as any I've seen.
I intensely resent this as a debate tactic. Your ability to ask me to calm down is unrelated to what emotions I'm having, whether I'm expressing them appropriately, or whether they are justified; it's a fully general silencing tactic. If I resorted to abuse or similar it might be warranted, but I haven't (unless you count "bullshit", but that's not what you quoted). I do in fact feel attacked by the suggestion that huge swaths of things valuable to me are worthless and ought to be done away with! You did in fact suggest that! I'm a human, and you cannot necessarily poke me without getting growled at.
Do you finish every book you pick up? I don't. I put them down if they don't reach a certain threshold of engagingness &c. The bigger the pile of books next to me, the pickier I can be: I can hold out for perfect 10s instead of sitting through lots of 8's because I can only get so many things out of the library at once. This includes pickiness for things other than "quality". If I want to go on a binge of mediocre YA paranormal romance (I did, a few months ago), I am fully equipped to find only the half-dozen most-Alicorn's-aesthetics-pleasing series about teenage vampires/werewolves/angels/banshees/half-devils/faeries/Greek deities/witches attending high school and musing about their respective love triangles. Having the freedom to go on this highly specific romp through bookspace is valuable. Having the selection available to do it as long as I want without having to suffer through especially execrable examples in the bookspace is valuable.
Unless you enjoy being outraged at a low threshold by something outside your control, this is a trait that you should be dissatisfied with and attempt to modify, not something to be stated as immovable fact. I, note however, that acting like that trait is an immovable fact makes for more favorable status dynamics and a better emotion-bargaining position...
Does not follow. I prefer to feel in ways that reflect the world around me. As long as I also think this sort of thing is an attack, feeling that way is in accord with that preference whether it makes me happier or not. As long as I don't care to occupy a pushover role where I make myself okay with whatever happens to be going on so that people don't have to account for my values, drawing a line beyond which I will not self-modify makes perfect sense; and in fact I do not want to occupy that pushover role.
I derive some of my status from cultivating the ability to modify myself as I please; I'd actually sacrifice some of that if I declared this unchangeable. And I do not declare it unchangeable! I just have other values than happiness.
In any normal social context it would be reasonable to assume that this an overconfident statement deliberately made without caveats in order to enhance bargaining power. Which is fine - humans are selfish.
This being LW where there's a good chance that this was intended literally - this sort of rigidity was exactly why "learning how to lose" is a skill.
Have 7.34 status points for not wireheading (more than you reflectively desire to wirehead). Some things you can counter-signal.
To the extent that people can go on a subgenre binge and be right to do so perhaps we can afford a few writers for relatively virgin genres. Otherwise I find gwern's argument that we'd be nearly as happy reading 20+ year old books pretty compelling (oddly, I don't buy a similar argument for movies, due only in part to movie-making tech advances).
I don't like arguing with angry or growling people, so I'm going to stop here.
You've just gained an immense amount of my respect, which an upvote alone could not properly convey.
Gwern would have gained more respect from me if he withdrew with tact rather than making an exit in a way that also scores a point and reinforces the frame that Alicorn is behaving irrationally*. This doesn't mean I am saying gwern's approach was somehow inappropriate (I'm actively saying nothing either way). Instead I'm saying that being able to withdraw without losing face or causing the other to lose face demonstrates strong social competence as well as the willingness to cooperate with others. Exiting with a pointed tap-out does demonstrate wisdom and a certain amount of restraint but it is still crude and neutral at best when it comes to respect for the other and their emotions.
* Standard caveat for all my comments: Unless explicitly stated I am not making any claim about sincerity or intent when I talk about what effect or social role a given action has.
Tapping out is all well and good, sure. Doing it because people have emotions is worthy of immense respect? Why?
I'd add that it is also a general discrediting tactic. It seems to have been rather effective in this case. According to my analysis of the conversation your comments don't seem any more intemperate, mind-killed or confrontational---in some ways they seem less so. You expressed disagreement with reasoning on something that is significantly subjective. Yet there are indications that perception has been swayed such that you are considered to have been emotional and irrational while gwern is noble and to be honored for what seems to be just claiming the moral high ground and exploiting that advantage.
Not that gwern was wrong in any way in his general point, but I also tremendously enjoyed this particular crossover and second everyone's recommendation (at least, if you've ever attempted "roleplaying" of the non-sexual type).