People are always amazed by how much "free time" I have. They're also amazed that I don't know who Ally McBeal is. Frankly, I'm amazed that they can't make the connection.
-- Robert Wenzlaff (via Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced.
-- Paul Graham
The function of entertainment is to generate profit and absorb people's time without actually accomplishing anything.
-- BadDalaiLama (via ata)
reconsider whether you need to read fiction at all. If everybody else thought immersing yourself in imaginary worlds was some strange perversion, would you still do it?
-- D_Malik
I feel like you didn't read my post. The point is not entertainment.
I think it would be a useful rationality exercise to take something that millions of people love, that you have contempt for, and sincerely try to appreciate it. The purpose would be to get practice imagining a different point of view, and to see whether you're able to do so.
50 Shades of Grey might not be the best choice for this exercise. I haven't read it. Maybe a better choice would be The da Vinci Code, NASCAR, or professional wrestling. But a book has a definite length that you have to get through to be allowed to say that you honestly tried.
The idea is to start a thread for people to discuss 50 Shades, or something else perceived as trashy, and try--not to find what you might like in it, but to get inside someone else's head and imagine why they might like it. (Of course it could backfire, and leave you less open-minded than before, if you always conclude that your contempt was simply right in the first place.)
I think the biggest problem is that if people succeed at finding something to appreciate in it, they would feel terribly embarrassed to say so. So this can be done with alternate accounts.
Anyone interested? What do you hold in contempt that you might be willing to take a closer look at?