Our YA tastes are fairly similar, but I actually meant, from a LW sort of standpoint, will I find any good quotes or lessons, any interesting problems or dilemmas, that sort of thing? From the sound of your ‘Some ideas’, it sounds fairly ordinary liberalism (in the old Enlightenment and 1984 sense).
If I’d read them as a kid, I think it would have had a big impact (which my current self would consider to be positive), especially the last book. As an adult, I think the thing to admire is that the author didn’t chicken out in the ending of the 3rd book.
Like I said, nothing that you as an adult would find new, but “fairly ordinary [Enlightenment/ old] liberalism” is a pretty good stepping stone to rationality (How can you rationally question beliefs if an authority always has the answers?). And what kid these days wants to read 1984?
(Note: I personally enjoyed 1984, but I doubt that would have been my reading material of choice when I was 12.)
If you want to get the basic idea, here’s the movie trailer
You might be surprised. When I was a kid of about 12 or 13, one of my friends described a book she’d read lately that she’d found really interesting. It wasn’t until several years later when I read it myself that I realized the book she had been talking about was 1984.
In fact, the most gruesome and disturbing book I can ever recall reading was one that I picked up after my 12 year old sister was finished with it.
The Visitor, by Sheri S. Tepper. It was a post apocalyptic sci fi/fantasy novel which explored a few rather interesting philosophical concepts (although it’s been so long since I’ve read it that I can only remember the context in which they were addressed in the vaguest terms,) but some of the content skirts close to torture porn.
Hmm, thank you. I edited it to “fairly ordinary [Enlightenment/old] liberalism” to show that we aren’t talking about modern “liberal” views (pro-choice, lgbt rights, etc), but even that is probably not right...
Honestly, I did not really know what was meant by “Enlightenment liberalism”, but since it was used as a term to talk about the themes I mentioned, specifically:
The winners make history, power of the media to control and tame masses, bystander effect, even the “good side” can be bad, think for yourself, authority isn’t always right.
I assumed that that was what Enlightenment liberalism was. But from wikipedia-ing, it seems like the closest thing is Classical Liberalism, which is about the rights and freedoms of the governed. So honestly, I don’t think I really understand this term as it is being used in the conversation, and have probably used it incorrectly.
As I’ve said before, there are hundreds of LW readers. At least one of them is bound to be a meany meany-head that downvotes people for all manners for wrong reasons. Don’t worry too much about downvotes, is the best advice I can give.
Almost certainly not as far as I can tell… I imagine a single downvote can always be attributed to rubbing someone the wrong way for some idiosyncratic reason. But downvoting a simple request for feedback is wrong, so voting you back up.
From the other replies I’m assuming you got down-voted to −1 before getting back to 0.
My personal response:
No you aren’t doing something completely wrong.
Asking for feedback in a situation like that is fine—it is not obvious what the initial down vote was for and knowing may have been interesting/informative.
Asking for feedback about a small number of down votes in a heated argument can be annoying as I don’t expect it to get an interesting response.
The later down vote may have been by the initial person, who did not want to explain their initial down vote, or may have been by someone who generally dislikes requests for explanations of down votes. But I would just accept not knowing for sure unless they decide to answer.
You are right; I completely expect that my posts in debates, or on controversial topics are going to be downvoted by people who disagree with me. It happens a lot because a) My opinions are different than many LWers and b) I’m new to all this “rationality” stuff, so I don’t always make as much sense as I wish I did. Sometimes I’m just plain wrong.… That’s alright, and in those cases I generally expect other people to eventually upvote (if I’m not plain wrong) and it all evens out on it’s own.
But when someone asks your opinion on a book and you give it (both the asking and the giving being done in a polite and informative manner) it seems bizarre (and honestly rather rude) that someone would just downvote all of your posts in the conversation without giving a reason.
Note: I sorta wish you could click on the karma and see who upvoted and who downvoted. Not just for situations like this, but (as I mentioned elsewhere) there’s a big difference between a post with 20 each up and down votes, and a post with no votes whatsoever, even though they both ended up at 0.
On the halfbakery website (not exactly a web forum, but similar in some ways) you can’t see names of voters, but you can see the positive and negative vote numbers separately, as well as an icon summarising the overall balance.
Our YA tastes are fairly similar, but I actually meant, from a LW sort of standpoint, will I find any good quotes or lessons, any interesting problems or dilemmas, that sort of thing? From the sound of your ‘Some ideas’, it sounds fairly ordinary liberalism (in the old Enlightenment and 1984 sense).
If I’d read them as a kid, I think it would have had a big impact (which my current self would consider to be positive), especially the last book. As an adult, I think the thing to admire is that the author didn’t chicken out in the ending of the 3rd book.
Like I said, nothing that you as an adult would find new, but “fairly ordinary [Enlightenment/ old] liberalism” is a pretty good stepping stone to rationality (How can you rationally question beliefs if an authority always has the answers?). And what kid these days wants to read 1984?
(Note: I personally enjoyed 1984, but I doubt that would have been my reading material of choice when I was 12.)
If you want to get the basic idea, here’s the movie trailer
You might be surprised. When I was a kid of about 12 or 13, one of my friends described a book she’d read lately that she’d found really interesting. It wasn’t until several years later when I read it myself that I realized the book she had been talking about was 1984.
In fact, the most gruesome and disturbing book I can ever recall reading was one that I picked up after my 12 year old sister was finished with it.
Which one was this?
The Visitor, by Sheri S. Tepper. It was a post apocalyptic sci fi/fantasy novel which explored a few rather interesting philosophical concepts (although it’s been so long since I’ve read it that I can only remember the context in which they were addressed in the vaguest terms,) but some of the content skirts close to torture porn.
Honest question as to why the down-voting?
The OP asked for stories that could be positive for young adults/kids. One of the original examples included Thundercats.
Not sure, maybe something to do with:
...which was true given my background but quite possibly not for those with a less fundamentalist upbringing.
Hmm, thank you. I edited it to “fairly ordinary [Enlightenment/old] liberalism” to show that we aren’t talking about modern “liberal” views (pro-choice, lgbt rights, etc), but even that is probably not right...
Honestly, I did not really know what was meant by “Enlightenment liberalism”, but since it was used as a term to talk about the themes I mentioned, specifically:
I assumed that that was what Enlightenment liberalism was. But from wikipedia-ing, it seems like the closest thing is Classical Liberalism, which is about the rights and freedoms of the governed. So honestly, I don’t think I really understand this term as it is being used in the conversation, and have probably used it incorrectly.
I apologize, and thanks for the info.
Seriously??? My post asking for honest feedback as to why I got downvoted, itself got downvoted? Am I doing something completely wrong here?
As I’ve said before, there are hundreds of LW readers. At least one of them is bound to be a meany meany-head that downvotes people for all manners for wrong reasons. Don’t worry too much about downvotes, is the best advice I can give.
This is a notional second upvote from me for the parent comment.
Downvoted for making too much damn sense for my taste.
Almost certainly not as far as I can tell… I imagine a single downvote can always be attributed to rubbing someone the wrong way for some idiosyncratic reason. But downvoting a simple request for feedback is wrong, so voting you back up.
No idea here either. FWIW, I never take downvotes seriously until a post gets to −2.
From the other replies I’m assuming you got down-voted to −1 before getting back to 0. My personal response:
No you aren’t doing something completely wrong.
Asking for feedback in a situation like that is fine—it is not obvious what the initial down vote was for and knowing may have been interesting/informative.
Asking for feedback about a small number of down votes in a heated argument can be annoying as I don’t expect it to get an interesting response.
The later down vote may have been by the initial person, who did not want to explain their initial down vote, or may have been by someone who generally dislikes requests for explanations of down votes. But I would just accept not knowing for sure unless they decide to answer.
You are right; I completely expect that my posts in debates, or on controversial topics are going to be downvoted by people who disagree with me. It happens a lot because a) My opinions are different than many LWers and b) I’m new to all this “rationality” stuff, so I don’t always make as much sense as I wish I did. Sometimes I’m just plain wrong.… That’s alright, and in those cases I generally expect other people to eventually upvote (if I’m not plain wrong) and it all evens out on it’s own.
But when someone asks your opinion on a book and you give it (both the asking and the giving being done in a polite and informative manner) it seems bizarre (and honestly rather rude) that someone would just downvote all of your posts in the conversation without giving a reason.
Note: I sorta wish you could click on the karma and see who upvoted and who downvoted. Not just for situations like this, but (as I mentioned elsewhere) there’s a big difference between a post with 20 each up and down votes, and a post with no votes whatsoever, even though they both ended up at 0.
On the halfbakery website (not exactly a web forum, but similar in some ways) you can’t see names of voters, but you can see the positive and negative vote numbers separately, as well as an icon summarising the overall balance.