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pjeby comments on Fifty Shades of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (86)
This belongs in Discussion, not Main. It's barely connected to rationality at all. Is there some lesson we're supposed to take from this, besides booing or yaying various groups for their smartness or non-smartness?
Downvoted for being trivia on Main.
This is about the rationality of society. It is about how opinions are formed. The idea that the market works by editors identifying books people want, and then being rewarded for their good judgement, was false in this high-profile case.
Which one of these do you claim?
None of the above. See the title of the post.
Understanding why which memes spread in society is important for rationality.
I am not sure what exactly is the lesson here. This is one data point, but what is the proper generalization?
The lesson for the publisher seems to be: always double-check the data; and if you don't understand what exactly they mean, ask an expert.
The lesson for the author seems to be: wait until there is a wildly successful product that no one really understands why is so popular (Twilight), then create something that seems similar and pretend you have data that people will like it even more. But make is sufficiently different to avoid a lawsuit.
The lesson for the meme seems to be: make people believe that many people have seen you and liked you; then they will also want to see you. Once.
Perhaps Alicorn or someone else could write a rationalist vampire novel that does not include characters nor events from Twilight (but with a lot of sexual tension, because that's what Twilight really is about, and 50SoG doesn't even pretend to be anything else), and we could make a campaign for the book, and then Alicorn would have more money, people would have more sanity, and LW would be happy to accomplish something huge in the offline world.
No in this case the publisher made a lot of money with the book.
Case studies are a good tool to understand things on a qualitative level. The value of a case study doesn't depend on whether you can generalize it message into a single sentence.
If you want a one sentence generalisation you however could go with: "Books become best sellers for pretty random reasons that have little to do with quality of the actual book."
I imagine were it anyone else, it would be. But the author is willing to argue ad nauseam about Main versus Discussion, so it's much less drama just to let it be.
Some of us don't let drama steer our lives. Moved to Discussion.
I wish you the best, meyven.