Ritalin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Vaniver 30 June 2013 01:22AM

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Comment author: Ritalin 30 June 2013 04:58:05PM *  2 points [-]

Likewise, I find myself shocked when I meet people who don't care about fictional characters the way I do.

Comment author: ikrase 01 July 2013 08:08:07AM 2 points [-]

I've been really shocked by the super-emotional-effects from fiction that you seen in Tumblr fandom and the like. On the other hand, I get extremely emotionally affected by opera, so I don't know. This chapter was certainly a punch in the gut though, but I came out of it feeling more 'victory - whatever the cost' than you.

Comment author: Ritalin 01 July 2013 11:01:30AM 1 point [-]

Wow, there's really no escaping the Typical Mind Fallacy. I find it very hard to connect to what's going on in an opera.

As for Victory At All Costs, this isn't Star Trek or a shounen anime; the amount of willpower and smarts you put into things increases your base rate of success, but there are some tasks that are just plain too hard, and sometimes you're just unlucky and roll a Critical Fail.

Comment author: ikrase 01 July 2013 01:54:44PM 0 points [-]

Although I do tend to come out of cathartic tragic operas, plays, etc with a kind of transhumanist "look upon the tragedies I avert and despair" bent. But seeking, for example, how the Universe still manages to kill Gilda is a lot different from this sort of thing.

Comment author: ikrase 01 July 2013 01:37:58PM 0 points [-]

Of course. But that still is pretty close to Ardent Harry's actual resolve.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 01 July 2013 01:33:04PM 0 points [-]

After decades of constant fiction consumption, I've just stopped taking it very seriously at object level. I imagine I used to be much more responsive to what storytelling beats the narrator pulls instead of how they pull them back when my brain wasn't hypersaturated with familiar fiction schema most anything will fit into.

Comment author: bramflakes 30 June 2013 05:05:04PM 0 points [-]

I'm a poor visual imager, so perhaps I find it more difficult to empathize with characters when my experience of them is words on a screen (interspersed with blurry outlines of what I imagine is happening in the scene). I notice that I get more emotional reactions when I'm watching a movie, for example.

Is there any research investigating this sort of thing?