It strikes me that the correlation between “is bad” and “has fanatical fans” is partially due to a common cause—a piece of fiction has to conform to certain popular prejudices entertained by tens of millions of idiots in order to have a really big fan base, and a really big fan base is highly conducive to having a hard core of fanatics—the more people that are interested in something, the more hardcore fanatics you’ll get.
[A] piece of fiction has to conform to certain popular prejudices entertained by tens of millions of idiots in order to have a really big fan base.
I am listening, but not agreeing quite yet. What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?
Restating your point in different words: Popular prejudice is conducive to having lots of fans and the more fans you have the more fanatics will be in the fanbase. “Bad” creeps in because of the popular prejudice.
This makes sense, but going the other way sure doesn’t: Having a set of fanatics does not imply a large fan base, nor does it imply lots of popular prejudices.
I also claim that something can have a large fan base without popular prejudices and something can have popular prejudices without having a fan base. I do agree that with a bigger pool of fans you are probably picking up more fanatics.
So, yeah, I guess the loose correlation makes sense. But it is right?
“What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?”
Star Trek is uber yuppy social democrat space, and Star Wars has an extremely predictable plot with unbelievable magic elements and exactly the sort of bad advice people love (follow your feelings, stop trying to think; our Enemies are Pure Evil).
the sort of bad advice people love (follow your feelings, stop trying to think; our Enemies are Pure Evil).
The only thing that makes these bad advice is context. In the context of activities requiring fast action, following your feelings and not thinking may be excellent advice, for example.
A basketball player finding the shortest path through the opposition to the net will probably epic fail if s/he does not follow his/her feelings, or tries to think. IIRC, even the renowned Bayesian basketball player (who uses an extremely probability-driven strategy) has trained himself so that his intuitive response is to go where the probabilties say to go, rather than actually doing the probability calculations in his head during play.
Most likely it was one of the one or two people who systematically downvote a large number of comments. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s at least one user who appears to periodically downvote all my comments, ever since I first ended up on the top 10 contributors list.
It’s kind of weird to watch, because my karma will drop by dozens of points in an hour, and I can see which comments were voted down. Then, most of the comments that are on active posts get slowly voted back up above zero. Then, sometimes the second downvoter comes through and knocks the marginal comments back to zero or negative. Depending on how old the comments are when the second wave hits, they may get “left behind” and not re-upvoted by readers.
The silly thing about all this is that the downvoters are simply teaching me to ignore any negative scores on my comments, especially if the comments fall just outside the trailing upvote window created by post activity.
“A basketball player finding the shortest path through the opposition to the net will probably epic fail if s/he does not follow his/her feelings, or tries to think. ”
Well, yes, I wouldn’t want to rule out the efficacy of unconscious calculations; trying to use vectors to calculate how to catch a frisbee is likely to be unsucessful. Conscious rationcination is resource intensive and slow.
Where is is bad advice is when people use these processes as a substitute for rationcination; forming of abstract theories on the basis of emotional pleasantness is unlikely to render accurate beliefs. Of course, accuracy isn’t everything.
What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?
The future will be fundamentally better than the past or present. ‘Progress’ will occur. Humanity has a useful role in space. People in red shirts exist only to die.
Mmm… I am not happy pointing at a specifically designed premise of a series as a prejudice. Attacking The Force as prejudice seems petty.
That being said, I could see your comment making more sense from the perspective of, “People who really, actually think you tap into some cosmic life-force by sheer effort of will will flock to Star Wars because of The Force.” I really doubt that was the intent of adding The Force to Star Wars.
You could make the same claim about The Matrix. But really?
I am a little surprised at the responses to this comment. Am I using the wrong definition of the word “prejudice”?
Also, I think that there is a very big distinction between premise and prejudice. If I assume a distopian future awaits so I can write a novel about corrupt governments, would the distopian theme be considered prejudice? Where is the line drawn?
Re: What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?
That advanced techology and humans will coexist in the future. Scientifically, Star Wars and Star Trek look pretty ridiculous. They are action movies—not futurism.
I also think we can think of “prejudices” or pre-judgments common in popular media which aren’t necessarily bad. Star Trek, for instances propagates prejudices toward tolerance, rationality, exploration, etc. So I think there’s a lot of popular media which is also “good.” I guess I may have misread your point—I’m talking instrumentally and you mean aesthetically.
It strikes me that the correlation between “is bad” and “has fanatical fans” is partially due to a common cause—a piece of fiction has to conform to certain popular prejudices entertained by tens of millions of idiots in order to have a really big fan base, and a really big fan base is highly conducive to having a hard core of fanatics—the more people that are interested in something, the more hardcore fanatics you’ll get.
I am listening, but not agreeing quite yet. What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?
Restating your point in different words: Popular prejudice is conducive to having lots of fans and the more fans you have the more fanatics will be in the fanbase. “Bad” creeps in because of the popular prejudice.
This makes sense, but going the other way sure doesn’t: Having a set of fanatics does not imply a large fan base, nor does it imply lots of popular prejudices.
I also claim that something can have a large fan base without popular prejudices and something can have popular prejudices without having a fan base. I do agree that with a bigger pool of fans you are probably picking up more fanatics.
So, yeah, I guess the loose correlation makes sense. But it is right?
“What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?” Star Trek is uber yuppy social democrat space, and Star Wars has an extremely predictable plot with unbelievable magic elements and exactly the sort of bad advice people love (follow your feelings, stop trying to think; our Enemies are Pure Evil).
The only thing that makes these bad advice is context. In the context of activities requiring fast action, following your feelings and not thinking may be excellent advice, for example.
A basketball player finding the shortest path through the opposition to the net will probably epic fail if s/he does not follow his/her feelings, or tries to think. IIRC, even the renowned Bayesian basketball player (who uses an extremely probability-driven strategy) has trained himself so that his intuitive response is to go where the probabilties say to go, rather than actually doing the probability calculations in his head during play.
I’d like to know why this has been voted down.
Most likely it was one of the one or two people who systematically downvote a large number of comments. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s at least one user who appears to periodically downvote all my comments, ever since I first ended up on the top 10 contributors list.
It’s kind of weird to watch, because my karma will drop by dozens of points in an hour, and I can see which comments were voted down. Then, most of the comments that are on active posts get slowly voted back up above zero. Then, sometimes the second downvoter comes through and knocks the marginal comments back to zero or negative. Depending on how old the comments are when the second wave hits, they may get “left behind” and not re-upvoted by readers.
The silly thing about all this is that the downvoters are simply teaching me to ignore any negative scores on my comments, especially if the comments fall just outside the trailing upvote window created by post activity.
“A basketball player finding the shortest path through the opposition to the net will probably epic fail if s/he does not follow his/her feelings, or tries to think. ” Well, yes, I wouldn’t want to rule out the efficacy of unconscious calculations; trying to use vectors to calculate how to catch a frisbee is likely to be unsucessful. Conscious rationcination is resource intensive and slow.
Where is is bad advice is when people use these processes as a substitute for rationcination; forming of abstract theories on the basis of emotional pleasantness is unlikely to render accurate beliefs. Of course, accuracy isn’t everything.
The future will be fundamentally better than the past or present. ‘Progress’ will occur. Humanity has a useful role in space. People in red shirts exist only to die.
Okay. I guess I was thinking of “prejudice” as in “anti-specific-group-of-people.” But yeah, pro-humanity or pro-future prejudice makes perfect sense.
that you can tap into some cosmic life-force by sheer effort of will? you must have seen some of the pseudo-scientific nonsense in ’treck, too.
Mmm… I am not happy pointing at a specifically designed premise of a series as a prejudice. Attacking The Force as prejudice seems petty.
That being said, I could see your comment making more sense from the perspective of, “People who really, actually think you tap into some cosmic life-force by sheer effort of will will flock to Star Wars because of The Force.” I really doubt that was the intent of adding The Force to Star Wars.
You could make the same claim about The Matrix. But really?
I am a little surprised at the responses to this comment. Am I using the wrong definition of the word “prejudice”?
Also, I think that there is a very big distinction between premise and prejudice. If I assume a distopian future awaits so I can write a novel about corrupt governments, would the distopian theme be considered prejudice? Where is the line drawn?
Re: What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?
That advanced techology and humans will coexist in the future. Scientifically, Star Wars and Star Trek look pretty ridiculous. They are action movies—not futurism.
I also think we can think of “prejudices” or pre-judgments common in popular media which aren’t necessarily bad. Star Trek, for instances propagates prejudices toward tolerance, rationality, exploration, etc. So I think there’s a lot of popular media which is also “good.” I guess I may have misread your point—I’m talking instrumentally and you mean aesthetically.
Promotes rationality? Star Trek? Where?