How about The Hardy Boys? I read dozens of these as a young kid, and the thing that stands out in mind now is, there was always an answer to the mystery, one that could be arrived at via clues and deduction. Looking back now, I think they had a major impact on my manner of thinking, reading them as young as I did (kindergarten and 1st grade, I’m talking) such that years later I was inclined to look favorably upon a ‘rationality technique’ when I encountered the idea of one on OB.
Court_Merrigan
That would be a great feature, I think. Ditto on on broad disagreements.
How about some amusing ‘beat’ poetry? Storm, Tim Minchin
Scooby Doo, absolutely. The mystery was always solved; the reason was always given.
How about The Bloodhound Gang on that PBS show Electric Company? Same formula as Scooby Doo.
Although admittedly this is not fiction, exactly.
Big one for me: cutting the Gordian knot of the philosophical antimonies, e.g., those philosophical dilemmas with no answers. Someone somewhere at Overcoming Bias commented that the “useful” parts of philosophy evolved into the natural sciences; the rest became the muted academic wordgames we see today (or something like that—the poster was much more incisive).
And just like that, my interest in those endless philosophical dilemmas dissolved. What a timesaver.
If anyone can locate that post / commenter, I’d be grateful.
That’s great stuff. I feel like I should be taking notes.
To take one example: Aristotle laid down the foundation of what became modern science. Modern science became modern science as we think of it by rebelling against Aristotle’s a priori assumptions; without Aristotle, what science we have today would be very different, indeed.
I don’t think you can so easily dismiss Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, et al: without them we we wouldn’t be where we are today.
This is part of the problem I often detected at OB and see again here at LW: people with little respect for intellectual history.
Saying you’re “Fine” to a doctor, when you are not, would be a little foolish, would it not? As opposed to your standard workaday white lies.
This is ridiculous. A “truth twister”? This isn’t hypocrisy. This is lying. To yourself, mostly. Unless you live in a cave, you tell white lies every day. Ever say Good Afternoon when you didn’t feel like it?
This sort of moral highhorsing gets us nowhere. Stop it, please.
That is a good point.
Sorry, Nazgul. That makes no sense.
3-2-1 Contact—that was the name of that show—not the Electric Company. That’s the bad 80s hit, isn’t it …?
I don’t remember seeing anything called Mathnet. My 3-2-1 Contact memories are roughly 1980-1984, somewhere thereabouts. Yours?
I believe the segment on the Electric Company is where that group derived its name. Although I’m not sure. No taste for that sort of thing.
Agree that fiction that relies solely on spoilers isn’t worth reading. Though I would not concur that textbooks are better than any fiction. Unless school has gotten waaaaaay better than I remember.
Exactly. Descartes laid the foundation for future progress.
I wouldn’t say you need to repeal patents entirely. Just limit them better, and enforce those limitations. Same with copyrights.
Agreed. Discussions of dogmatisms such as libertarianism in any of its forms is boring, boring, boring and now what I’d like to read here.
Not that the original post here is an example of that, per se, although I think it comes close.
Me neither. My daughter’s going to be a test case, though.
I’m talking about from the perspective of a child, MBlume. We live in a society where lots of folks teach their kids lots of silly myths. It isn’t your job to teach your kid to go around exposing them all the time. At least not unless you want to raise an intolerable pedant.
I am living (and about to leave) an Asian society very much like this. It yields some very odd results indeed: corruption, consumerism, lemming-like religious behavior, and vast—feudal—social gaps.