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How about The Hardy Boys? I read dozens of these as a young kid, and the thing that stands out in mind now is, there was always an answer to the mystery, one that could be arrived at via clues and deduction. Looking back now, I think they had a major impact on my manner of thinking, reading them as young as I did (kindergarten and 1st grade, I'm talking) such that years later I was inclined to look favorably upon a 'rationality technique' when I encountered the idea of one on OB.
Any fiction that can't stand up to spoilers isn't worth reading. I would never recommend fiction that I haven't reread, often many times - I'd rather reread a good (or even fair) book for relaxation than get irritated trying to read something that drags. And if you're not reading it for relaxation, textbooks are better than any fiction.
Agree that fiction that relies solely on spoilers isn't worth reading. Though I would not concur that textbooks are better than any fiction. Unless school has gotten waaaaaay better than I remember.
In response to
Rationalist Fiction
How about Scooby Doo?
It's elementary, but I spent a lot of time on it back when I was 3-4 and would have continued watching for somewhat longer if they hadn't started introducing stories where the magic WAS real.
The moral "it's ALWAYS natural" and the extremely repetitive plots (repetition is, I suspect, very good for kids) are basic but definitely positive.
Only saw one or two episodes, but I think Kimba the White Lion may also have had positive but elementary rationalist messages.
Scooby Doo, absolutely. The mystery was always solved; the reason was always given.
How about The Bloodhound Gang on that PBS show Electric Company? Same formula as Scooby Doo.
Although admittedly this is not fiction, exactly.
As a physicist, I've always been partial to Maxwell's work -- he deduced the induction of a curled magnetic field by a changing electric field solely from mathematical considerations, and from this, was able to guess the nature of light before any other human.
I've mixed feelings about Descartes. The pull of the Cartesian Theater has muddling effects in serious cognitive philosophy. On the other hand, by making the concept explicit, he did make it easier for others to point out that it was wrong.
Exactly. Descartes laid the foundation for future progress.
There's a huge difference between being considered historically important and having discovered substantial truth. The Bible is historically important. It helped lay the foundations of Western culture. This is hardly disputable. It does not, however, contain much in the way of truth. Nor do the works of Plato and Aristotle.
To take one example: Aristotle laid down the foundation of what became modern science. Modern science became modern science as we think of it by rebelling against Aristotle's a priori assumptions; without Aristotle, what science we have today would be very different, indeed.
I don't think you can so easily dismiss Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, et al: without them we we wouldn't be where we are today.
This is part of the problem I often detected at OB and see again here at LW: people with little respect for intellectual history.
In response to
Rational Me or We?
One of the ways that I think that OB could have been better, and that I think LW could be more helpful, is to put a greater emphasis on practice and practical techniques for improving rationality in the writings here and to give many more real-life examples than we do.
When making a post that hints at any kind of a practical technique, posters could really make an effort to clearly identify the practical implications and techniques, to put all the practical parts together in the essay rather than mixing them throughout 15 paragraphs of justification and reasoning, and to highlight that practical part of the post.
The practical parts could be extracted and placed together somewhere in order to have one single place that people can go to easily find them. Perhaps the LW software could provide some kind of support for distinguishing the practice sections of a post, and the extraction and aggregation of the practical howto sections could be automated.
Hear, hear. Practice and practical techniques. Isn't that what we're after here?
and if an expert says "all matrices are orthonormally diagonalizable", it sounds equally impressive, but it is false as false can be.
But there are simply far too many areas of life involving putative "orthonormally diagonalizable matrices" for any one individual to be able to rationally investigate. At some point you have to take someone's word for it; so rather than taking one expert's word, you're likely better off trusting a community of experts. A current example might be with global warming - most scientists seem to feel it's a major issue.
Unfortunately, though, radical changes in thinking come usually come from the margin, e.g., Galileo. The hard part, it seems to me, is to distinguish between mere status quo convention and genuine expert agreement.
Repeal the concept of patents. They aren't property, they're anti-property, a variety of special authorization to extort, no different in principle from the pre-Gandhi salt monopoly in India.
I wouldn't say you need to repeal patents entirely. Just limit them better, and enforce those limitations. Same with copyrights.
If you're sympathetic to libertarian ideas, I'm surprised you're not interested in furthering discussion about libertarian
"A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Not every conversation on the Internet has to be about libertarianism. Anyone who can't accept that about any of their pet topics is a commenter we can't afford to have.
Agreed. Discussions of dogmatisms such as libertarianism in any of its forms is boring, boring, boring and now what I'd like to read here.
Not that the original post here is an example of that, per se, although I think it comes close.
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I'm...assuming this isn't the same Bloodhound Gang which went on to record The Bad Touch and Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo?
I believe the segment on the Electric Company is where that group derived its name. Although I'm not sure. No taste for that sort of thing.