One Sided Policy Debate - The Science of Literature

kremlin

On HackerNews, this article was linked. The general idea is that companies are studying what people like to read, to help authors produce books that people like to read.

Now, for me, when I look at this idea, I see some down sides, but I certainly see some benefits as well.

Almost none of the commenters on NYTimes seemed to see any benefit whatsoever to studying reader behaviour. There were a few who saw the downsides as more mild than the other commenters. But most of the commenters basically saw this technology as some sort of 1984-esque idea that will turn all books into uninteresting, unimaginative pieces of paper that would better serve as a door stopper than as something for literary consumption. Out of 50 comments that I've read, only one person has said something along the lines of, 'This technology can possibly offer something to help authors improve their books'.

Is this just technophobia? Or am I missing something, and this really is a horrible, evil technology that should be avoided at all costs? [That's a rhetorical question -- I'd be surprised if even one LWian held that position]

I guess what I'm asking is, what are the psychological roots for the almost-unanimous aversion to this attempt at gathering and using information about what people want?

On HackerNews, this article was linked. The general idea is that companies are studying what people like to read, to help authors produce books that people like to read.

Now, for me, when I look at this idea, I see some down sides, but I certainly see some benefits as well.

I guess what I'm asking is, what are the psychological roots for the almost-unanimous aversion to this attempt at gathering and using information about what people want?

From hanging out with humanities people and technical people, I'm heavily inclined to put this down to straight-up Hansonian status competition. Humanities people and technical people tend to downplay the value of each other's fields. It provides a gratifying, group-unifying status boost, and brings few consequences because the victims are on the other side of campus. In general this is fueled by subtle misunderstandings between groups.

In this case, humanities people will be overestimating the degree to which the techie's studying literature are simplifying things - for instance they might think that the tech people are actually saying their algorithms can capture the complexity of human reaction to literature, instead of just providing useful approximations. Thus, it feels like an insult to them, and a chance to pounce on the hated enemy, and in the process affirm their allegiance to the ingroup, who after all are the people who really matter. Artificial intelligence, neuropsychology and economics all get similiar reactions.