When can Fiction Change the World?
I suspect that a nontrivial percentage of the people reading this became involved with the community because of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. So to the extent that those who were drawn to join the community because of that source are making the world a better place, we have at least one clear example of a novel having an important impact I’ve made a living through self publishing novels for the last five years (specifically Pride and Prejudice variations, that is Jane Austen fan fiction). Recently inspired by conversations at EA Virtual and worries made more emotionally salient by GTP-3 examples, I decided that I wanted to put part of my professional time towards writing novels that might have a positive impact on conversations around AI. As part of this I did some thinking about when fiction seemed to exert an influence on public policy, and then I looked for academic research on the subject, and I think there are people in the community who will find this write up about the subject interesting and useful. Theoretical Model I identified four common mechanisms that seemed to be involved when fiction had a large impact on opinions. This is not an exhaustive list, and there is some overlap and fuzziness around the boundary of each concept. Radicalizing the already convinced: A classic example is Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel about a slave unjustly suffering written in the 1850s that was credited with helping to spark the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin did not introduce anyone to the idea that slavery was bad, or convince anyone who thought that slavery was a fine peculiar Southern institution that it was actually evil. However it seems to have radicalized Northern attitudes towards slavery, and it was part of the moment when enough one issue voters on slavery existed that the party system broke down and allowed the new abolitionist Republican party to win congress and the presidency in 1860. Research has been done via surveys to find out if readers o
