The title should make things clear enough, so let's start with my description of the target, rationalist fiction: fiction that tries to teach the audience rationalist cognitive skills by having characters model those skills for the reader.
So for example, Luminosity is to a large extent about the questions "What do I want?, What do I have?, and How can I best use the latter to get the former?" Oh, and using empiricism on magic.
Another example is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which goes more in-depth about the laundry list of human biases. In fact, many of the more iconic moments (measured by what I remember and what other people like to copy) are about biases to avoid, rather than about modeling good behavior.
This thread is about ideas, from general to specific, for rationalist fiction. I'll give some obvious examples.
General idea: having a rational character encountering magic or amazing technology is a great chance to showcase the power of empiricism. (Has anyone gotten on this one yet? :3 )
Story idea: Okay, so we take the Dresden Files universe, and our rational protagonist is some smart kid who just started a summer job as an assistant radio technician or something. It turns out he's got one in a hundred magical talent, enough to cut off his budding career, he manages to find the magic community, figures out just enough, embarks on heroic quest to run a magitech radio station. (Okay, this last bit isn't obvious - for one, more character development would probably have him wanting something else. For another, the obvious thing is to take over the world if Luminosity and HPMOR are anything to go by.)
Specific idea: A character could model the skill of testing stuff by testing stuff. When characters are performing a big search, have someone actually stop to think about false positives, or more generally "how could things be going wrong, and how can I prevent that?", and have it actually be a false positive once.
But really, there's an explosion of possibilities out there to explore, and I feel like we have "Rationalist meets magic. Rationalist does science to magic. Rationalist kicks butt with magic" fairly well-covered. We have all these different biases categorized, with corresponding right ways to do things, and there are plenty of good behaviors we can try to teach an audience without the empiricism-fodder and high stakes that is a fantasy setting. Or even if you do a Dresden Files fic, you could ignore the empricism stuff and just, like, pick a habit from Anna's checklist and write a short story :D. Here's an idea I quite fancy, I'll save everything else for comments:
General idea: Giving people the benefit of the doubt and managing to lose arguments when they need to be lost is the closest thing to a rationalist superpower I have. Can I work that into a story somehow?
Story ideas: A James Herriot sort of thing, where the protagonist has their daily life (Maybe veterinarian, or materials scientist, or line cook, or model rocket hobbyist), and relatably goes about it, occasionally giving people the benefit of the doubt and losing arguments, and sometimes using other rationalist skills, and usually ending up on the right side of things in the end. At this point it might be too subtle to actually teach the audience, one solution to this would be a designated person in-story to periodically notice how awesome the protagonist is.
General idea: On the follies of letting guilt motivate you.
Story idea: Once upon a time Kay (future superhero) and Pluto (future villain) were union busters. Together they crippled and broke up almost all the unions in the city, often through illegal and unethical means. One day they realized they do something Truly Horrific, and they realize what monsters they are. They quit busting unions, but the damage is done.
~10 years later, Kay is working as a repossession agent, while Pluto has become a community organizer. Pluto has managed to organize the workers at a factory that once had a union. Pluto convinces the workers to go on strike, and he appoints himself ringleader of the newly established (but not legally recognized) union. The factory owners start sweating, and the call Kay for assistance.
Kay refuses, saying that she still feels guilty for the atrocities she committed as a union buster. So the owners turn to Plan B: importing temporary labor from out of state. While this plan isn’t viable in the long-run, the factory owners figure it will scare their original workers into backing down. When the replacement labor arrives, Pluto panics. He fears that his plan to re-establish a union (and cleanse himself of his union-busting sins) is about to go down the drain. That night, he and a few other armed accomplices storm the motel where the out-of-state laborers are staying, and declares them hostages.
The rest of the story is about Kay trying to free the hostages, and Pluto becoming increasingly corrupted by his desire to undo the horrible things he did in the past. Kay becomes a hero not just for rescuing hostages, but because she can resist the temptation for closure.
Nice story :)
The way this plays out feels Joseph Campbell-ey, with Kay even refusing a literal call before the tension ramps up. Which is not bad at all from a literary perspective, but might cause audiences to see things in terms of the structure of the story rather than as a lesson. So hm, what are some ways to vividly show our protagonist doing the best with what they have rather than living in the past, or than selling out / giving up.
Or maybe Kay has given up initially, and then over the course of the story rekindles an explicit desire to do what's ... (read more)