The rationality content was my only interest, so I haven’t particularly looked for any other source of anime recommendations. However, I have seen Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away, and all I can say of them is that they were pleasant enough.
Is it possible that some of the reported “rationality content” was more like genre-savviness which is more visible to people who are very familiar with the genre in question?
I think it was more a case of people looking at the works with the hammer of rationality in their hand and seeing lots of nails for the characters to knock in. For example, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya sets up a problem (Unehuv vf Tbq naq perngrq gur jbeyq 3 lrnef ntb ohg qbrfa’g ernyvfr vg, naq vs fur rire qbrf gura fur zvtug haperngr vg whfg nf rnfvyl), but I found that setup fading into the background as the series of DVDs that I watched went on. By the fourth in the series (the murder mystery on the island isolated by storms), it was completely absent.
With Fate/Stay Night, one problem is that I was looking at ripped videos on Youtube, while the original material is a “visual novel” with branching paths, so it’s possible (but unlikely) that the people who put up the videos missed all the rationality-relevant bits.
I’ve not tried Death Note, but I suspect I’d find the same dynamic as in Haruhi Suzumiya. A hard problem is set up (how does a detective track down someone who can remotely kill anyone in the world just by knowing their name?), which makes it possible to read it as a rationality story, but unless the characters are actually being conspicuously rational beyond the usual standards of fiction, that won’t be enough.
I’m also not part of the anime/manga community: I watched these works without any context beyond the mentions on LessWrong and a general awareness of what anime and manga are.
It’s weird how the girls all look like cosplay characters. :)
With Fate/Stay Night, one problem is that I was looking at ripped videos on Youtube, while the original material is a “visual novel” with branching paths, so it’s possible (but unlikely) that the people who put up the videos missed all the rationality-relevant bits.
I haven’t watched the anime, but I have read the visual novel, and the anime does not have a reputation for being a very faithful adaptation. The visual novel at least does share themes that often feature in Eliezer’s work, but I wouldn’t call them “rationality content” as such. More in the manner of Heroic Responsibility and related concepts.
In terms of Death Note, I’ve read the first several volumes and can vouch that it’s a fun, “cerebral” mystery/thriller, especially if you like people being ludicrously competent at each other, having conversations with multiple levels of hidden meaning, etc. Can’t say there’s anything super rational about it, but the aesthetic is certainly there.
Actually I for one gave up Death Note in frustration very early on because I couldn’t help focusing on how much of the real inferential work was being done by the authors feeding the correct answers to the characters. Like when L concludes that Kira must know the victim’s real name to kill him… there were so many reasons that just didn’t work. Kira’s apparent modus operandi was to kill criminals, there was no particular reason to suppose he would respond to a challenge to kill anyone else, so the fact that he didn’t was already weak evidence regarding whether he could at all, let alone what the restrictions might be. Whether Kira knew his real name or not was just one variable switched between him and Lind L. Taylor. L could just as easily have been immune because he eats too many sweets.
While smart, knowledgeable people can often extract a greater yield of inference from a limited amount of data than others, I find that far too many writers take this idea and run with it while forgetting that intelligence very often means recognizing how much you can’t get out of a limited amount of data.
Had better luck anywhere else?
The rationality content was my only interest, so I haven’t particularly looked for any other source of anime recommendations. However, I have seen Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away, and all I can say of them is that they were pleasant enough.
Is it possible that some of the reported “rationality content” was more like genre-savviness which is more visible to people who are very familiar with the genre in question?
I think it was more a case of people looking at the works with the hammer of rationality in their hand and seeing lots of nails for the characters to knock in. For example, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya sets up a problem (Unehuv vf Tbq naq perngrq gur jbeyq 3 lrnef ntb ohg qbrfa’g ernyvfr vg, naq vs fur rire qbrf gura fur zvtug haperngr vg whfg nf rnfvyl), but I found that setup fading into the background as the series of DVDs that I watched went on. By the fourth in the series (the murder mystery on the island isolated by storms), it was completely absent.
With Fate/Stay Night, one problem is that I was looking at ripped videos on Youtube, while the original material is a “visual novel” with branching paths, so it’s possible (but unlikely) that the people who put up the videos missed all the rationality-relevant bits.
I’ve not tried Death Note, but I suspect I’d find the same dynamic as in Haruhi Suzumiya. A hard problem is set up (how does a detective track down someone who can remotely kill anyone in the world just by knowing their name?), which makes it possible to read it as a rationality story, but unless the characters are actually being conspicuously rational beyond the usual standards of fiction, that won’t be enough.
I’m also not part of the anime/manga community: I watched these works without any context beyond the mentions on LessWrong and a general awareness of what anime and manga are.
It’s weird how the girls all look like cosplay characters. :)
I haven’t watched the anime, but I have read the visual novel, and the anime does not have a reputation for being a very faithful adaptation. The visual novel at least does share themes that often feature in Eliezer’s work, but I wouldn’t call them “rationality content” as such. More in the manner of Heroic Responsibility and related concepts.
In terms of Death Note, I’ve read the first several volumes and can vouch that it’s a fun, “cerebral” mystery/thriller, especially if you like people being ludicrously competent at each other, having conversations with multiple levels of hidden meaning, etc. Can’t say there’s anything super rational about it, but the aesthetic is certainly there.
Actually I for one gave up Death Note in frustration very early on because I couldn’t help focusing on how much of the real inferential work was being done by the authors feeding the correct answers to the characters. Like when L concludes that Kira must know the victim’s real name to kill him… there were so many reasons that just didn’t work. Kira’s apparent modus operandi was to kill criminals, there was no particular reason to suppose he would respond to a challenge to kill anyone else, so the fact that he didn’t was already weak evidence regarding whether he could at all, let alone what the restrictions might be. Whether Kira knew his real name or not was just one variable switched between him and Lind L. Taylor. L could just as easily have been immune because he eats too many sweets.
While smart, knowledgeable people can often extract a greater yield of inference from a limited amount of data than others, I find that far too many writers take this idea and run with it while forgetting that intelligence very often means recognizing how much you can’t get out of a limited amount of data.