I would strongly prefer that Eliezer not write a compelling eutopia ever. Avatar was already compelling enough to make a whole bunch of people pretty unhappy awhile back.
Really? I assume we’re talking about the Avatar with blue aliens here, not the one with magical martial arts.
When I think about eutopia, I usually start from a sort of idealized hunter-gatherer society too, though the one that first comes to mind is something much different that I read much earlier. But Avatar never seemed that eutopically optimized: too much leaning on noble-savage tropes and a conspicuous lack of curiosity and ambition. And aside from the fringe that you get every time you put sufficiently sexy nonhumans onscreen, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that matches what you’re talking about.
Yes, the blue aliens. Link. Avatar is not that eutopically optimized but it is still a huge improvement on most people’s lives; consider the possibility that your priors for what most people’s lives are like is off.
Interesting. Though absent more information it doesn’t tell us very much; I’d like to know how many people showed these kinds of symptoms after watching—to name three that might cause them by different mechanisms—Fight Club, or Dances With Wolves, or any sufficiently romanticized period piece.
This seems similar to Stendhal syndrome or other unexpected psychological responses to immersion in beautiful stimuli. (Say what you like about the plot, Avatar is visually rather pretty.)
If there’s curiosity and ambition, you’d have to portray a snapshot of a eutopia rather than staple image. Furthermore, if it keeps changing, there are going to be mistakes, though one would hope recovery from them would be relatively quick. And, of course, if the science/tech keeps improving, then it’s rather hard to imagine the details.
I don’t think portraying a snapshot rather than a steady-state society would be much of a problem: media like Avatar almost always captures the societies it portrays at unusually tumultuous times anyway, which is actually the main thing that makes the lack of curiosity and so forth conspicuous to me.
If the movie was about some kind of anthropologist-cum-method-actor trying to blend seamlessly into a stable culture that had never heard of a starship or a Hellfire missile, less inventive behavior on its citizens’ parts wouldn’t be so surprising. But it’s not; it’s about a contact scenario with a technologically superior species, and so the same behavior looks more like borderline-insane traditionalism or sentimentality.
If the movie was about some kind of anthropologist-cum-method-actor trying to blend seamlessly into a stable culture that had never heard of a starship or a Hellfire missile
I’m pretty sure there have been Star Trek episodes with that premise. Of course, everything usually goes to hell around the time of the second commercial break.
I guess that the typical LW reader is much saner that those people, though this guess is based on the fact that I found Avatar boring and unremarkable and on a very liberal amount of Generalizing from One Example.
Right, but 1) we already have evidence that Eliezer is capable of writing a story that a lot of LWers at least greatly enjoy, and HPMoR is nowhere close to being eutopically optimized, and 2) even if the typical LWer isn’t at serious risk, putting 5% of them out of commission is probably not a good idea either.
I would strongly prefer that Eliezer not write a compelling eutopia ever. Avatar was already compelling enough to make a whole bunch of people pretty unhappy awhile back.
Really? I assume we’re talking about the Avatar with blue aliens here, not the one with magical martial arts.
When I think about eutopia, I usually start from a sort of idealized hunter-gatherer society too, though the one that first comes to mind is something much different that I read much earlier. But Avatar never seemed that eutopically optimized: too much leaning on noble-savage tropes and a conspicuous lack of curiosity and ambition. And aside from the fringe that you get every time you put sufficiently sexy nonhumans onscreen, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that matches what you’re talking about.
Yes, the blue aliens. Link. Avatar is not that eutopically optimized but it is still a huge improvement on most people’s lives; consider the possibility that your priors for what most people’s lives are like is off.
Interesting. Though absent more information it doesn’t tell us very much; I’d like to know how many people showed these kinds of symptoms after watching—to name three that might cause them by different mechanisms—Fight Club, or Dances With Wolves, or any sufficiently romanticized period piece.
This seems similar to Stendhal syndrome or other unexpected psychological responses to immersion in beautiful stimuli. (Say what you like about the plot, Avatar is visually rather pretty.)
If there’s curiosity and ambition, you’d have to portray a snapshot of a eutopia rather than staple image. Furthermore, if it keeps changing, there are going to be mistakes, though one would hope recovery from them would be relatively quick. And, of course, if the science/tech keeps improving, then it’s rather hard to imagine the details.
I don’t think portraying a snapshot rather than a steady-state society would be much of a problem: media like Avatar almost always captures the societies it portrays at unusually tumultuous times anyway, which is actually the main thing that makes the lack of curiosity and so forth conspicuous to me.
If the movie was about some kind of anthropologist-cum-method-actor trying to blend seamlessly into a stable culture that had never heard of a starship or a Hellfire missile, less inventive behavior on its citizens’ parts wouldn’t be so surprising. But it’s not; it’s about a contact scenario with a technologically superior species, and so the same behavior looks more like borderline-insane traditionalism or sentimentality.
I’d watch that movie.
I’m pretty sure there have been Star Trek episodes with that premise. Of course, everything usually goes to hell around the time of the second commercial break.
I guess that the typical LW reader is much saner that those people, though this guess is based on the fact that I found Avatar boring and unremarkable and on a very liberal amount of Generalizing from One Example.
Right, but 1) we already have evidence that Eliezer is capable of writing a story that a lot of LWers at least greatly enjoy, and HPMoR is nowhere close to being eutopically optimized, and 2) even if the typical LWer isn’t at serious risk, putting 5% of them out of commission is probably not a good idea either.