
Our Favorite Narrative Cliche: A World Filled with Idiots (2013) - jseliger
http://www.davidbrin.com/idiotplot.html
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lettergram
I think what the author touches on, is the same reason Game of Thrones is so
popular.

In game of thrones every faction does exceedingly stupid and brilliant
actions. There are no protagonists (besides maybe the mother of dragons - who
burns people alive), who are ever clearly going to be good people or even win.
It makes you always sit on the edge of your seat and makes the whole story
much more entertaining

~~~
Freak_NL
As a corollary to that type of fictional world view; anyone can die, at any
time, even the protagonists, because the bigger story isn't necessary
dependant on them. It helps create some freshness in story writing.

As it happens I am nearing the end of reading Brin's excellent Uplift series
(spanning six books from the 80s and 90s), where the story often involves
several groups of protagonists and antagonists acting in parallel. It makes
for a nice change from the typical hero-driven stories that do appear to form
the bulk of our fiction.

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bsder
I'd like to reverse the cause-effect relationship here to posit:

People and systems are depicted in fiction as stupid because writers, by and
large, are stupid people.

In reality, the problem isn't that writers are stupid but that writers are
_lazy_ \--unfortunately the result is effectively the same.

Writing a smart character takes a great deal of work. Most authors simply will
not put in that work.

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of the few authors I like simply because his characters
are competent.

~~~
Natsu
Yes, so often we're simply told that this character is the most brilliant
person ever... but then they miss obvious things and simply jump to impossible
conclusions or whatever.

Writing characters that are actually intelligent is really, really hard and I
tend to remember the few characters that seem honestly clever that I really
tend to remember those. I still remember my jaw dropping when L first told
Kira he was coming after him in Death Note because of the clever way that was
executed. Not to mention how both of those characters exhibited a very
different sort of intelligence and you could follow their reasoning process
most of the time.

~~~
slavik81
It was clear that the author of Death Note spent a tremendous amount of time
thinking about the first few volumes before they published anything. It
started densely packed with cleverness, but Naomi Penber was the last fancy
trick for quite a while, presumably because they could not continue to invest
so much time in each page. There was nothing as intricate and clever as Yagumi
Light's hidden desk compartment from that point until, perhaps, the finale.

~~~
Natsu
Oh definitely, the series started out amazing and slowly went downhill to
being rather decent. I think that just shows us how hard this kind of writing
is, even for really talented writers. It takes a lot of thought and time and
cleverness and it's not something that can be just churned out regularly.

------
zappo2938
To Joseph Campbell people identify with an in group and an out group. Have you
ever empathized and cheered for a villain? Where in the psychology does that
come from? A good story requires identifying with the protagonist or villain
protagonist as a friend or someone we become emotionally wrapped in. Some
stories we identify with the out group that we aren't in. First two movies
that come to mind are the early Stars Wars and really to make this point is
Revenge of the Nerds.

The story of Revenge of the Nerds was really needed at the time. Keep in mind
at the time that movie was released gays were still hated, much more than
today and yes there seems to be people in today's government who vocally hate
gays. The movie causes us to identify with the nerds, to see how we might fit
in as an individual, and to see how Lamar with his effeminate javelin throw is
a member of our in group, our team.

Any larger community that doesn't accept gays are a bunch of idiots and there
is a time and still large communities in the United States that don't. In that
case the world is filled with idiots.

> The "we're in this together" spirit of films from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s
> later gave way to a reflex shared by left and right, that villainy is
> associated with organization.

That's not true. First movie that comes into my mind is the Wizard of Oz from
1939. The witch with her obedient monkeys and the wizard are the antagonists.
The Munchkins were not idiots or enemies in the film. They were hard working
people who wanted to get through the day and take care of the their families
(maybe not that exactly). They needed someone who was brave, smart, and
compassionate, to help them face a problem. That is what the hero does.

"Society never works". This completely misrepresents what Joseph Campbell was
explaining about these stories. He would say most people need to conform
because they need at the top of Maslow's pyramid to belong but society only
works if someone with a new and different idea to solve a problem for that era
and time stands alone against the grain of all the people who submit to the
status quo because their need to belong.

It's not that society are idiots. It's that most people need to conform. Also,
society won't work if people didn't conform. Society doesn't need everybody to
be a hero but only a few.

------
dang
Posted at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614).

------
santaclaus
> Today's dominant storytelling technique, in contrast, nearly always portrays
> one or two individuals in dire scenarios, without useful support from the
> societies that made them.

I dunno, that last movie I saw in theaters, Finding Dory, was sort of about
the social support system coming out to save a member of society in some deep
shit...

------
lolc
Sheeple: [https://xkcd.com/610/](https://xkcd.com/610/)

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freshhawk
Hmm, I wonder why the post-war era was generally less trusting of
institutions?

Besides the non-sequitur section about individuals acting stupidly for plot
reasons in horror movies, this shift also fits another pattern. One of people
being more educated and more able to communicate and discarding some of the
ideology of: those who rule us must be our honourable betters.

I personally feel the evidence is more on my side than Brin's. Especially the
ethical behaviour of humans when layers of abstraction are added in between
their choices and the consequences.

Perhaps he can write another piece about how modern propaganda has implanted
the ridiculous cliche in our heads that Kings don't actually rule by divine
right _and_ that time spent as a serf who always submits to authority won't be
repaid in the next world. That cliche is even more widespread!

~~~
matt4077
> I personally feel the evidence is more on my side than Brin's.

Sometimes the evidence is so obvious, we don't even see it. I – and most
people frequenting HN – have the fortune to be living in a time and place of
70+ years of peace. That's a "black swan" event when viewed from history, and
institutions & political leaders quite possibly have contributed to it.

The same could be said about the economy, civil rights and science.

But even if you disagree with that, there's a difference between "they're all
corrupt and idiots" and "they failed". It's quite unlikely that we manage to
systematically elect people with a below-average IQ, or below-average moral
standards. Therefore, it'd be more constructive to assume good faith and
consider that some of the problems are actually hard to solve.

Fundamentally (in discussions such as this), this would require a bit of
ethical behavior itself. First among them: Consider the best possible version
of your opponent's argument. I. e. nobody is suggesting a return to a King <->
serf relationship model.

~~~
freshhawk
I'm not really following, I agree that it's a very peaceful time, that's not
at issue is it? It's also less individually corrupt now than in the past I'd
say.

The argument in the essay is that the idea that leadership and the masses are
stupid and corrupt compared to intelligent individuals (not the average
person, but a cliche heroic individual) is propaganda, which wasn't present in
the past.

I think that's ridiculous and it's much more likely that the idea of there
ever being benevolent and intelligent rulers (compared to this intelligent and
ethical individual) was the propaganda, which is working less effectively now.

Hence the King/Serf jab, obviously we now know more than those in the past
did, and reject the propaganda that the King rules by divine right and is
superior to the rest. This is similar to what I'm saying is happening now.

------
olalonde
An even bigger cliché is the "new technology is evil". I've been thinking
about it for a minute and can't even come up with a movie that depicts recent
or futuristic technology in a favorable light.

~~~
tpeo
Transcendence, Interstellar and Gravity. I haven't actually watched neither
Interstellar nor Gravity, but from what I know neither of them portray
technology in a bad light. But Transcendence does overall portray technology
in a good light, though the majority of the movie is just the movie makers
playing with the audience's luddite fears.

Still, it's a damn bad movie.

~~~
andrewflnr
Technology saves humanity in Interstellar, so there's that.

------
heisenbit
Worth reading now in the light of the recent election that was rich in
villains, riveting storylines on a background of a society (aka. the idiots,
Feds, Washington, Establishment) is broken beyond repair.

------
bertiewhykovich
Shlock. The writer is satisfied with the world he inhabits, is not
particularly aggrieved by the powers that be, has not been particularly failed
-- and therefore takes umbrage at the suggestion that the established order
might not be both benevolent and competent.

But guess what? This isn't the general experience! Most people are constantly,
crushingly immiserated and failed -- a societal "failure mode," as he so
charmingly terms it, has already come to pass. It's unclear, in fact, that
we've ever /not/ been in a failure mode -- begging the question of /why/
things are so consistently fucked up.

~~~
pdimitar
I couldn't have said it better myself. I had my finger on your exact objection
to the author of the article but couldn't articulate them well. Respect to
you.

The author lost me the moment he introduced the "paradox" of a writer thinking
the societal systems are inefficient but they would dial 911 as soon as
there's trouble. So...

(1) Both things are _not_ mutually exclusive at all. Nobody is expert in
everything.

(2) What does this guy think the writer should do? Grab a kitchen knife and go
be a hero? Outside the USA you can get _jailed_ for assaulting a burglar. He
should do some net reading because I suspect him of being too USA-centric.

(3) You can write about heroes while fully realizing you're not one. Takes
culture and education to do, and it's very far from impossible. Example: the
writers of Spiderman whom the author likes aren't superheroes themselves yet
they portrayed the superhero quite well.

The whole thing is written in a way that somehow makes you feel the author is
salty and strongly dislikes people who criticize the current public systems.
"Be respectful for the work previous generations have put for your future, you
ungrateful whippersnappers!", that's how he sounds to me.

I'll admit he makes several good points (like the horror "plots" which were
probably already beaten to death as far back as the 1950s) but there are parts
of his article I find to be very biased.

------
dschiptsov
Brexit, Trump, 86% popularity of Putin, mass media, TV shows, Javascript -
what other evidences are needed?

