cousin_it comments on Rationality Quotes January 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Gondolinian 01 January 2015 02:23AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 12 January 2015 10:48:56PM 10 points [-]

In the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), Guinness recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the boy promise to stop watching the film, because, as Guinness told him, "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him (though some sources say it went differently). Guinness is quoted as saying: "'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities."

Comment author: gwern 02 February 2015 04:14:43PM *  2 points [-]

"For example, I wonder if a person over the age of twenty who likes robot anime is really happy. He could find greater happiness elsewhere. Regrettably, I have my doubts about his happiness."

--Hideaki Anno, "Skill Up"; ("From Newtype, April 4, p. 4, article entitled 'Skill Up'." Interview ~April 1995)

Comment author: hawkice 08 February 2015 05:15:31AM 0 points [-]

I imagine it would be quite hard to be happy. In a society that demands that only a certain portion of your life can contain imagination and impossibilities and robots and dinosaurs and make-believe in general, the most make-believe-y stuff has real social costs.

As a small child I remember imagining dramatic stories all around me. It's hard to escape the conclusion that if my mind wandered quite so much today, had such a focus on the unreal and imaginative, there would be almost no place in the world at all for me. Sadness would follow in the wake of all vivid diversions.

Thank goodness television is socially acceptable! While most of it is hardly fictional at all, at least that element of life hasn't been completely subtracted from adult society.

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