What good rationality can do on a “personal” or “human” level is definitely a great subject, and that’s a huge part of why I liked this post so much.
But one thing I was just wondering about is, given how bloody much of our fiction is dependent upon characters believably behaving in very stupid ways, how exactly would stories have to change if they involved reasonably rational characters living in reasonably rational worlds?
I mean, would ‘romantic comedy as we know it’ even be able to exist like that, for example?
It’s that, “Utopia is a great place to live, but a horrible place to write stories about” thing again, aint it? Does that have to be true, I wonder?
I bet one could write a rationalist romantic comedy. “Do they like me or don’t they like me?” translates pretty easily into “I’m uncertain about whether they like me, and this is causing me distress.”
And even perfect Bayesians can get confused by cases of mistaken identity once in a while.
What good rationality can do on a “personal” or “human” level is definitely a great subject, and that’s a huge part of why I liked this post so much.
But one thing I was just wondering about is, given how bloody much of our fiction is dependent upon characters believably behaving in very stupid ways, how exactly would stories have to change if they involved reasonably rational characters living in reasonably rational worlds?
I mean, would ‘romantic comedy as we know it’ even be able to exist like that, for example?
It’s that, “Utopia is a great place to live, but a horrible place to write stories about” thing again, aint it? Does that have to be true, I wonder?
I bet one could write a rationalist romantic comedy. “Do they like me or don’t they like me?” translates pretty easily into “I’m uncertain about whether they like me, and this is causing me distress.”
And even perfect Bayesians can get confused by cases of mistaken identity once in a while.