billswift comments on Good Idealistic Books are Rare - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 February 2009 06:41PM

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Comment author: billswift 19 February 2009 12:04:27AM 0 points [-]

"I suspect that idealistic fiction aimed specifically at children is a far greater cultural force than anything they pick up from their school textbooks."

Someone wrote, unfortunately I don't remember the source, I think it was Heinlein, that he preferred writing for children since they liked having things explained to them.

If you want cynical versus idealistic writing, you might try compoaring Ehrlich, the Global 2000 Report, and other environmentalist writers to Julian Simon, especially his "The Ultimate Resource" (the first edition is shorter and more readable, the second mostly updates the statistics) and Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist".