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Lumifer comments on Fiction Considered Harmful - Less Wrong Discussion
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Oh, I see. To clarify, by "imagination" I mean not just all kinds of mental imagery, but imagining things with an implication that these things are not real.
Are you making a general argument against any kind of leisure, then?
In a strict sense, no. But I absolutely do believe that many people spend their time poorly, by having way too much "leisure", and by choosing inefficient leisure activities.
I tend to agree with abramdemski that switching contexts often is the barrier to productivity, not necessarily doing "leisure" activities. If you enjoy your work then there is no substantial difference between leisure and non-leisure. This is of little help to people with boring work, but you can usually change your job.
And not all leisure activities are equal. When I visit my parents, I'm amazed by how much TV and movies they watch. I don't think they are worse than average in this regard, in fact, they probably watch less than your average American. Strangely, they seem annoyed when I don't want to watch movies with them. I was told to "take a break". It's not that I chose against leisure, as many times I was doing something I consider leisure. Rather, there are many activities which completely dominate watching movies or TV to me, and I chose one of those instead. I'd say reading fiction is not much better than watching TV.
Do you think it's just your personal opinion or something more than that?
In other words, people have preferences (e.g. white wine vs red wine) with which you could disagree, but about which you can't say that they are "right" or "wrong". All you can say is that your preferences are similar or different.
Some people, of course, add "and those with preferences unlike mine are moral degenerates who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes", but those tend to be not very reasonable people.
So, do you think the attiudes to leisure and how to spend it are mere preferences which can be tut-tutted but tolerated -- or are they a blight upon humanity which needs to be fixed?
Nowhere did I say that people who use their time inefficiently are a blight. I'd really only call people who are actively being harmful a blight.
I recommend that people evaluate whether reading fiction, watching TV, or whatnot, is the best use of their time. If they think these activities are acceptable, I see no reason to argue further with them. I might believe they are mistaken, which I think is perfectly reasonable.
Do you believe they are mistaken instrumentally (it's not a good use of their time for their goals) or they are mistaken about what goals to pursue?
The former. Whenever someone complains to me that they don't have time to do something they (claim to) enjoy greatly (let's call it activity X), but I know that they spend a lot of time watching TV, reading books, etc., and I'm confident that they enjoy TV, etc. less than activity X, it's pretty easy to conclude they use their time poorly. And I don't think I'm unjustified in that belief.
Well, there is the issue of revealed preferences...
It's certainly possible that they don't actually prefer what they claim to. I don't see any reason to argue with people about that.