
Rational fiction - rayalez
http://rationalfiction.io/wiki/rational-fiction
======
cousin_it
It's complicated. I like HPMOR, but... not necessarily because it's rational?

I mean, Eliezer is an impressive writer whose style resonates with many
people. And it's indeed frustrating to see idiocy in fiction, like in Star
Trek where the most powerful weapon is obviously the teleporter but no one
acknowledges that. We can all agree on these things.

The problem is that removing idiocy doesn't automatically make a piece of
fiction good. It seems like Eliezer has convinced a ton of nerds (I hate the
word but let's roll with it) that they can succeed in writing fiction by
applying this one weird trick. But you need much more than that.

Our enjoyment of stories comes mainly from emotions, which we then rationalize
by saying "I liked that story because the hero was really smart". A few people
have noticed that the actual plotlines in HPMOR are kinda weak, and it's
really the characterization and "epic" style that makes the story work. A
version of HPMOR that was just "smart", with better intrigue but less
emotional appeal, wouldn't attract nearly as many people. A version of Worm
without the raw moments of suffering would be kinda pointless to read. These
things don't come for free if you just try to write rationally.

To conclude, here's a few recommendations:

\- If you want to read a work that succeeds purely based on rationality,
without much emotion or characterization, check out The Metropolitan Man. It's
probably the best example of its kind, and a damn good read too.

\- If you know your way around the Harry Potter universe and want another good
fanfic in that setting, try The Seventh Horcrux. It doesn't give a fuck about
rationality, but it's so amazing that you won't care.

\- If you want something extremely smart, well written, and emotional at the
same time, read anything by Ted Chiang. I'll never stop recommending him.

~~~
notahacker
Ironically, most of the better bits, and indeed the overarching plot thread of
HPMOR are largely down to the _huge gaps_ in various characters' rational
thought. If Harry had made the obvious "let's not trust the sinister guy
that's obviously manipulative and definitely more experienced at it than me"
leap right at the beginning it might have been a much shorter series.

Apart from young Harry picking up some of the flaws in the organization of
Rowling's wizard world in the first couple of chapters in the first few
chapters and the combat lesson scenes, there's really not that much
rationality going on. Most of the rest of it is characters trying to achieve
particular goals whilst being thwarted in large parts by emotional impulses
and glaring oversights the reader is positively screaming for them to notice,
which is pretty much Fiction 101.

Harry as a character in HPMOR works because he's implausibly precocious,
ambitious and devious, which is quite cute in an 11 year old, not because he
[sometimes] draws particularly well-reasoned conclusions. We _do_ judge the
series on whether we like him being really smart, but that's quite different
from him being really rational.

If super-detached and accurate analysis of a situation is what turns you on
then I think Arthur Conan Doyle nailed down the "rational fiction" genre with
Sherlock Holmes over a century ago.

~~~
cousin_it
It's funny how Sherlock Holmes stories were considered very clever at first,
then there was a backlash from authors like Agatha Christie who emphasized
"realistic" psychology and disliked "magical" deductions from surface facts,
and then it turned out that Conan Doyle's approach was right after all,
because his stories predicted most of modern forensics. That's quite a high
bar for future writers of rational fiction!

------
cstross
Someone has stumbled over strict plot-driven hard SF in the classical mold and
decided it's something new.

Not to belittle Eliezer (who I think did something new and interesting) but
you can find a large chunk of these elements out there in SF if you look in
the right places.

(Note, however, that a large proportion, probably a majority, of what is
marketed as Science Fiction is basically swords and sorcery adventure yarns
with spaceships instead of dragons or galleons, aliens in place of orcs, and
technology porn with added technobabble in place of magic. Personally I blame
the fictive family tree of which _Star Wars_ is the most successful branch
...)

~~~
adaml_623
Could you list some good examples? I was wondering about Niven, Egan and
others and realising that I tend to enjoy my fiction without consciously
analysing it.

(Just realised who I'm replying to... maybe you could blog about it)

~~~
cstross
Niven and Egan would be classic examples from different decades (Niven's
post-1977 work, and his collaborations, not so much). I'd also point to Hannu
Rajaniemi's _Quantum Thief_ trilogy, Peter Watts (for world-building -- see
below) and the cultural/linguistic side of C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series
(at least the first five or so books).

One of the less well understood (especially by non-genre reader) aspects of
hard SF is that the world the story is set in can be viewed as a
character/participant in the plot, or -- in this sub-field -- as a puzzle that
the plot depends on; the outcome of the story simply doesn't work without the
world being set up the way it is. (A lot of stuff is marketed as hard SF that
doesn't fit this criterion; it just has lots of cheap throwaway references to
technology. But the core of the field is about solving the puzzle that the
universe has thrown in front of the protagonists.)

~~~
kbenson
There's also Charles Stross, a personal favorite. Can't imagine why you would
have forgotten to mention him... ;)

------
teekert
Currently reading Dune (I'm at 50%): I work a lot with Bayensian models and I
keep seeing the way Paul Atreides can "feel" the future as a perfect
implementation of Bayesian thinking. He weights every minute detail in a
intuitive way and computes most likely outcomes. Also, the religious parts are
very nicely worked out as planted by Bene Gesserit with a very detailed,
worked-out plan. I love it. Having such consistent, logic based aspects to
fiction makes it feel much more like you can be the hero yourself. It teaches
you something real from a story that is fake. I love books that change me
rather than just entertain me. It's true philosofy.

Some of my favorites and their lessons:

Enders game -> Understanding an "enemy" makes you see their beauty, makes you
not want to be enemies (dehumanizing the enemy is extremely important in
warfare and in propaganda; we boycot evil Putin, we don't think of honest
Russian people who "love their children too", trying to make the best out of
life.).

Atlas Shrugged -> The importance of not ignoring your own wishes in a group
context, the morality of rational self-interest.

Brave New World -> You can either spend time creating or you can spend it
consuming.

1984 -> All the metaphors it provides just makes any discussion regarding
government over-reach so much more efficient.

Little Brother -> Why privacy is more important than security: Your rulers can
be wrong with catastrophic consequences.

~~~
cousin_it
I think when a story is well told, it's easy to overlook how implausible it
actually is. Paul Atreides as a rationalist hero? He's the outcome of a
breeding program for people who can see the future _and_ the rightful heir to
a whole planet _and_ a prophesied messiah of a huge religion _and_ a
supersoldier with insane fighting skills. All of that is set up before the
events of the novel even begin. And then he, um, takes psychedelic drugs and
magically learns what's going on in outer space. And marries a princess.

The real question is what you'd do in a universe where someone else has all
these gifts, but it's not you. Like how in LOTR Aragorn has all the gifts
(rightful heir, supersoldier, engaged to an immortal princess) but Sam is the
real hero. I half wish Eliezer had used that approach in HPMOR instead of
going with Harry as the obvious choice.

~~~
loup-vaillant
There's a Naruto fanfic where the main character is actually Sakura. As
expected, she's the weakest of the bunch.
[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5193644/1/Time-
Braid](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5193644/1/Time-Braid)

In the game Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV), the player character is so much _not_
the hero that he can't even wear the amulets of kings that is given to him at
the very beginning of the game. The end of the main plot actually have you
watch the messiah save the world. Unusual, but refreshing. (Then Skyrim went
back to having the player being the messiah.)

~~~
scott_s
I was enamored with Skyrim, but the more of the plot lines I went through, the
more ridiculous the story seemed. So I'm the best warrior Companion, the best
Mage in Winterhold, the key to the civil war _and_ the dragon born? The first
plot line I went through - Companions - worked fine, because it was the first.
But each successive one fell flat at least a little, because how I was the
best at _everything_.

What I enjoyed was the world they built. The plot was secondary.

------
beeboop
This is honestly really cool and I was thinking only weeks ago how I wished
there was a resource like this. I am not often a fiction reader because I find
the characters frustratingly stupid or the situations unrealistically easy in
pretty much every fantasy book. Wheel of Time is full of characters making
decisions so rash and stupid that it's hard to imagine someone in real life
ever doing it. The main character is thrusted into greatness and power without
any effort and continues to do great things with little effort. This is a
common trait in most fantasy books.

When I read fantasy, I want something inventive and clever in a setting I find
interesting. HPMOR had a fair share of silly parts and the author seems a bit
full of himself, but it was overwhelmingly the most intelligent fantasy
writing I've ever read (an admittedly small sample size). It's sad that my
favorite piece of fiction writing was a Harry Potter fanfiction.

~~~
mikekchar
Based on what you are saying, I would recommend reading some Japanese manga.
Manga follows a different story structure from western fiction. In western
fiction you usually start the story with conflict. The main characters resolve
the conflict and the story is over. Manga follows the Chinese epic structure
where you start off with a section that simply defines the rules of the
universe and introduces you to the characters. Often it is quite light and
humourous. About halfway through the crisis develops. Quite often this is
rather hard on the reader because something incredibly nasty happens to their
now beloved characters. The rest of the story talks about how the characters
resolve the conflict.

The main advantage of this story structure is that by setting up the rules at
the beginning and spending a great deal of time introducing the characters,
you have the opportunity to examine the actions of the characters in the
conflict section knowing their constraints. That way the actions and reasoning
are much easier to follow and to relate to.

I'd like to give you advice on what to read, but I tend to enjoy fairly
childish, light stuff ;-) Although not fantasy, Barefoot Gen is pretty amazing
(should be on everybody's reading list IMHO). I don't personally like it, but
Akira is also quite good.

~~~
Sherlock
Care to give some recommendations for a newcomer to that genre?

~~~
mikekchar
It's hard to give recommendations because the stuff I read is probably not
what most people would like ;-) Especially, I tend to like sports manga which
is pretty far from fantasy. (Currently Yowamushi Pedal is fuelling my cycling
addiction!)

I mentioned Barefoot Gen, which is a very early manga and a classic that is
actually taught in Japanese schools. It's not fantasy, though. It tells the
story of the author's experiences around the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

For fantasy things, Full metal alchemist is an alternate-earth scenario with
magic. It is extremely good. One thing that doesn't actually fit the epic
story format because it is a series of short stories is Mushishi. I highly
recommend it, although I've only watched the anime. Akira is a cyber-punk,
distopian future manga which is very highly acclaimed. Personally, it is not
my taste, but it is excellent. Another interesting manga which has no actual
heroes is Death Note. It's another one I don't like because all of the
characters are really nasty, but some people really, really like it for that
reason. I asked my wife (who is Japanese) for a suggestion and she mentioned
Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (Legend of the Galactic Heroes). I haven't read it but
Wikipedia indicates it was originally a series of novels. It seems Viz
publishes both the novels and manga in English. Ghost in the Shell is a very
good sci-fi manga, but I have to admit that it is years since I looked at it,
so I can't really remember it.

One manga which I love is actually a baseball manga called Touch. If you read
that, you will see the manga story structure very easily.

I started reading manga as a means to learn Japanese. At the time I had only a
passing interest in graphic novels and comics. Over time I got quite hooked on
it. But I only read in Japanese, so I tend to read things which are quite
easy. There are very complex manga stories which are aimed at adults, but
unfortunately I haven't spent much time looking at those things.

Of course the 2 current most popular mangas aimed at young boys is Naruto and
One Piece. Naruto just finished. It has some very powerful moments and the
story is quite good. I've found that there are quite a lot of useful ideas
that you can take away from the story and apply to your own life. However, the
characters are one-dimensional (on purpose, I think) so I suspect it wouldn't
appeal to the original poster. One Piece is also quite good (the first chapter
is actually really worth reading on it's own and can stand by itself even if
you don't read anything else). Again, it is aimed at a young audience and the
characters are very static. There are some extremely moving moments, though.

Hope that helps a bit. As I said, it's hard to give recommendations because
some people will look at that list and probably absolutely hate some of the
things on there. There is an unbelievably massive amount of manga being
written and I truly believe there is something for every taste. However, the
examples above are pretty easy to find in English and are all quite famous. If
they don't meet your taste, I hope you'll explore a bit further on your own.

------
al2o3cr
From TFA: "Characters act as real humans would." and "Story's plot and
characters aren't propelled forward by a lack of communication or by idiocy."

Good thing, because "real people" never do things because they're misinformed,
impulsive, etc...

~~~
restalis
That was my first reaction too (and it was quite disappointing to see it
reflected in another post so far below). From an educational POV, having an
all-out rational play is valuable (up to a point), but that's it. It is like
observing chemical reactions in a sterile medium, not in a natural one.

------
klunger
With the exception of "teaching rationality" as an explicit goal, the
"Characteristics of rational fiction" are just basic guidelines for writing
good fiction (science fiction, if you include the "topics" characteristic).

When an author break's their world's own rules or has a character make an
obviously irrational choice to drive the plot, it is annoys the reader and is
considered poor writing. This is true of all writing, regardless of whether
the author considers it rational or not. Good sci fi and fantasy often
involves the characters deconstructing their world's rules and using those
character's unique insight into the world to somehow solve the plot. Brandon
Sanderson -- who writes epic fantasy that would never be considered "rational
fiction" \-- is famously good at this.

That being said, I have grown tired of rehashed old tropes and am glad that a
new spin these is emerging. Hopefully some fresh work will come from it.

~~~
Anderkent
> basic guidelines for writing good fiction

I think what 'good fiction' is varies from person to person. Those for whom
realistic motivations etc are important will like books that other fans of
'rational' fiction like; but there's tons of hugely popular books that have
none of this.

Assuming that people making bad choices for plot reasons bothers everyone is
just typical mind fallacy; clearly it doesn't, otherwise many of the most
popular books wouldn't sell.

~~~
klunger
Well, the popularity of a book is not directly correlated with the quality of
it's writing. There are some truly awful bestsellers out there, along with
many more undiscovered gems.

Most professional authors, writing instructors and critics would probably
agree that these characteristics are just generally solid guidelines for good
fiction writing (I speak from experience as a long-time hobbyist fiction
writer).

------
radu_floricica
A shrewd thing to do is read HPMOR's author notes and take reading
recommendations from there: [http://hpmor.com/notes/](http://hpmor.com/notes/)

A few that really stand out:

The Ethshar books - to parapharse EY, the author creates the world and the
characters, then he throws them together and watches what happens.

Vorkosigan Saga - if EY's Harry has an inspiration, it's Miles Vorkosigan.

~~~
mrob
Seconding that recommendation for the Ethshar series. The setting was
originally designed for a tabletop RPG, and the characters often act like
rule-exploiting "munchkin" gamers. Eliezer Yudkowsky's recommendation is here:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/s7/lawrence_wattevanss_fiction/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/s7/lawrence_wattevanss_fiction/)

------
colllectorof
I always though that both good mystery and science fiction fit most of those
criteria listed. Except deconstruction, which I can happily live without.

Of course, neither SF not mysteries are actually like the stories this page
links to.

~~~
eru
Deconstruction doesn't have to hit you on the head. Eg Watchmen is an
enjoyable story, but also a deconstruction of its genre.

The weirdest form of deconstruction is `unconstruction'
([http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnbuiltTrope?from...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnbuiltTrope?from=Main.UnconstructedTrope)):
"An unbuilt trope is a work that seems like a deconstruction but is actually
the Trope Maker itself."

------
kijin
> _Characters act as real humans would._

That by definition rules out any semblance of reality in so-called rationalist
fiction.

Real humans only act rationally some of the time. They're especially incapable
of acting rationally when under extreme stress, such as when a mythical
creature is trying to kill them.

People often do things for no particular reason. Some people are in fact evil
just for the sake of it. Lack of clear communication is actually a big problem
in the real world, just not in a way that is commonly portrayed in sitcoms.

Not every bad guy has a complex machiavellian scheme going, and it usually
doesn't take an equally complex theme to bring them down. A lot of the time,
it's just a matter of who has bigger guns. Often, the villain really has lousy
op-sec, as the Silk Road guy did.

If you like reading stories with carefully designed worlds, hyper-analytic
heroes, and clever puzzles, that's fine. But none of the features that
distinguish rationalist literature from other kinds make them better works of
literature, only better didactic tools for some purposes. Hammers are good
tools for hitting nails, but that doesn't mean hammers are superior to other
tools in any other respect.

My favorite parts of HPMOR are the war games, especially the big battle that
takes place in the woods where every team comes up with creative strategies.
None of the strategies work perfectly as intended, and there's a lot of
improvising as well. That scene was so fun, and I could totally see it
happening, precisely because of the healthy and realistic mixture of
rationality, spontaneity, stupidity, and plain luck. Sadly, I can't say the
same for the last few chapters of HPMOR. It contains too much complex scheming
for the sake of scheming. That's just as pointless as being evil for the sake
of evil.

My favorite novelist is Ursula Le Guin. Her works are set in lovingly
designed, beautiful, and compelling worlds; but her characters display just
enough inconsistency, thoughtlessness, and impulsiveness to make their plights
relevant to ordinary humans. She manages to build tension and leave the reader
longing for more without resorting to cheap puzzles or turning the heroes into
masters of manipulation. And she does it without the pretense of teaching
anybody anything. Haven't we long outgrown the age when every bedtime story
had to have a clear moral lesson?

So let's take rationalist fiction for what they are: didactic tools. They're
neither more realistic nor have any more literary merit than other types of
fiction.

~~~
userulluipeste
"Some people are in fact evil just for the sake of it."

It's interesting that many of us do not (either because can not or do not want
to) realize it as a fact. Such "plain evil" people are usually just labeled as
people with mental disorders, with such or such "syndrome" when the causes can
not be clearly identified. These people are noticed and taken care of when
their "illness" is severe, rendering them dangerous and foolish, but it's
reasonable to expect that a lot of people with some moderate forms of such
(so-called) affections to stay free and "ready for action" all their life.
These kind of people do exist in real life and are part of daily play.
Abstracting them away appears in itself like an irrational thing.

------
nickpsecurity
Sounds great. I always wanted a genre like this and didn't know it existed
past the rational titles I've read. Got some more reading ahead of me. Thanks
rayalez!

------
ck425
I can't find links atm but much of what this refers to is just creating a hard
magic system and sticking to it. Brandon Sanderson wrote a couple of very good
essays on this topics doing with Sanderson's rule of magic which day much the
same thing.

------
clickok
Insofar as "rational fiction" is rational, it's just good fiction[0].

If we tack on the requirements that it "teach rationality" and "deconstruct"
some setting, then maybe you might justify it as a separate genre, but in all
of the works that I've read (and I've read the entirety of HPMOR, as well as a
few others on that list), they seem to miss why characters might behave in an
apparently irrational fashion.

See, there's a convention in fiction where sometimes the author can't describe
the precise evolution of their fictional universe in a step-by-step manner,
and so they just skip to the next incident in the plot, or maybe paper over
how some feat was accomplished with a weak explanation. As long as it doesn't
interfere with the point of the story, it's just something you, as the reader,
are supposed to accept. For example, to provide a scientifically plausible
explanation of the biomechanics of Prometheus' regenerating liver[1] would
detract from the thrust of the myth, and might also have been difficult to do
given the state of medical knowledge in Ancient Greece.

Deconstructing things is fine (and usually shows up to some degree in _all_
fanfics, not just self-consciously rational ones). It's a fun intellectual
game to wonder just how exploitable various magic systems are, but perhaps the
story that Rowling wanted to tell hinged less on precisely how magic worked
than on the timeless tale of plucky schoolchildren successfully killing their
teacher in a secret dungeon. Ah, youth.

But the problem with HPMOR and related works is that, when you start trying to
enforce optimal decision making at _every single point in the story_ , you
tend to end up ruining the story either through reducing it to absurdity (c.f.
the conclusion of the book, which involves multiple simultaneous decapitations
using transfigured nanowire), or doing so much worldbuilding that the plot
starts to collapse under its own weight.

HPMOR barely hangs together thanks to the efforts of Rowling, who managed to
paint a sufficiently vivid universe that Yudkowsky could write ~137,000 words
in order to tweak the magic system and also do a pastiche of the mock battles
in _Ender 's Game_.

And as far as teaching rationality goes, I'm skeptical. It wasn't that Harry
was transcendentally rational, just that almost every other character was
exceedingly dull. The places where he demonstrates his supposedly amazing
thought process tended to be when blackmailing people who could _easily_
retaliate, a couple of basic experiments, or jargon-dense recapitulations of
obvious ideas[2].

Not to mention that the dubious rationality of a plan for creating safe AI
whose first step involves writing a fanfiction for a children's fantasy
series. I've seen Yudkowsky justify it in various ways, but it seems to me
that he just likes to write and tried to make his personal project more
relevant to his broader goals.

I know, I know, that's probably excessively snarky. But still, it is
_exceedingly_ frustrating to see people advocating for more "rational" fiction
without understanding how fiction works. I haven't read everything listed on
the site, but for my own part, "rational" fiction is far from a silver bullet;
in most cases it's just a necessary (but not sufficient) criteria that good
fiction has to fulfill.

\---

0\. "Actions should be logical and follow naturally from actions that precede
them." via,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_\(Aristotle\))

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus#Hesiod_and_the_Theo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus#Hesiod_and_the_Theogony_and_Works_and_Days)

2\. ... about half of which were wrong or incomplete. Charitably, you might
say this reflects Harry's precocious but not-fully-developed mind, or if you
were less positively inclined you might say that teaching people incorrect
things is the opposite of promoting rationality

------
scottmcdot
Is anyone selling hard copies of 'Harry Potter and the Methods of
Rationality'?

~~~
eru
No, at least not legally. Harry Potter's author is not happy with people
selling fan fiction.

------
PhasmaFelis
This kinda seems like a recipe for boringly perfect, flaw-free characters.

~~~
endtime
I don't think this is even slightly true of the protagonists of the two most
popular examples of the genre (Worm and HPMoR).

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Glad to hear it, but the article writer hasn't conveyed it well. It really
sounds like he's describing fiction about the clash of hyperrational
superminds who aren't held back by petty things like "mistakes" or "emotions."

Also--the article mainly uses the term "rationalist fiction," which is fine,
but the title is " _rational_ fiction," which is rather a turn-off. It reminds
me of L. Ron Hubbard rattling on about how he doesn't write fantasy because
fantasy is for stupids who can't write good, and he is a smart because he
writes science fiction which is for smarts.

The whole tone of the article is kind of self-congratulatory. If that doesn't
reflect the actual stories, well, good.

------
angersock
I tend to find these stories (such as the much-lauded HPMOR) annoying and
honestly kind of tiresome.

Some of the examples from this very page:

 _Rationalist stories make a deliberate effort to reward reader 's thinking,
and teach him to get better at it._

Because presumably women are incapable of rational thought, amirite?

 _Characters are gaming the system, they understand and exploit the rules of
the world, they cheat and manipulate it into the desired outcome. Hero 's
brain is his main "superpower" and his primary advantage over others._

The story is built around beep-boop sociopaths, and naturally this is lauded--
not hard work, not soft skills, not being friendly, but calling out people on
their bullshit and tricking them into getting what the character wants.

 _They use: \- Rationality and logic \- Intelligence and cunning \- Knowledge
of science and technology \- Creativity and inventiveness \- Psychological
manipulation and Social Engineering \- Complex Machiavellian plots_

So, in the future, it'll be even more awesome to be a scumbag rich kid who has
read _The Prince_ a few times. Swell.

 _Characters act as real humans would. No one is just evil for the hell of it,
conflicts are driven by differences in values, and the villains(to the extent
there even are villains) have a real and honest point to their actions._

 _Story 's plot and characters aren't propelled forward by a lack of
communication or by idiocy._

 _Nobody important is stupid. None of the main heroes or main villains hold
the IdiotBall._

The thing that's missing here? Most real humans are irrational, they are
petty, they do things for the lulz. Conflicts often arise _despite_ having the
same values. Cruel and dickish people are often cruel and dickish out of spite
or laziness.

~

The thing I dislike about so much of this rationalist stuff is that, honestly,
it breaks apart like so much driftwood when confronted with the jagged
incongruities of how real people work.

Intelligence is resented, systems are illogical kludges, people are
unpredictable...this sort of thing is just popcorn reading for folks that are
more comfortable reading pandering fiction than facing the harsh and chaotic
and unforgiving world outside their computer.

~~~
api
Mostly agreed.

Fundamentally a perfectly rational world is unrealistic. Humans do behave
irrationally, even insanely. Humans also behave sub-optimally because they are
trapped in systems full of crazy perverse incentives. The world itself is full
of paradoxes and chaotic feedback loops; the best intentions rationally and
logically executed can and do lead to perverse outcomes that would not and
maybe even could not be forseen.

Sometimes a rational investigation terminates with a big WTF. People see UFOS
or Bigfoot all the time, and they're not all nuts. What are they seeing? Not
enough information. The universe doesn't present you with all the evidence so
you can tie a neat bow around it. It presents you with a dirty noisy
incomplete data set so you can ponder it forever. (See also: bounded
rationality. Bayesianism deals with this problem by defining truth as a float
instead of a boolean, which I kind of like. Bigfoot might 0.0137384 exist.)

The universe gives us Fermi paradoxes and dark energy and Godel's
incompleteness theorem.

That being said, I do like the aversion to the idiot plot. It's a big pet
peeve of mine. I also like stories where all the characters have depth. To me
that's just good characterization, something often lacking in genre fiction.
Even if the villain (or the hero) is mad or irrational, there is some depth to
it and they have their reasons however twisted these might be. But a lot of
that is just good writing.

I also like the aversion to the deus ex machina, which is also lazy writing.
If there is some kind of super-thing that intervenes, it should too be
developed as a character with depth.

~~~
angersock
So, that's kind of an interesting point, right?

If a character behaves rationally, like beep-boop minmax profits and losses
and proceed from there, then it really doesn't matter whether they have depth
or not, because it won't really impact the story.

The entire point of a character with depth, like say Harold Lauder in _The
Stand_ , is that that depth gives a reader insight into why they do what they
do during the story. It provides tension between what is obviously the
correct/logical thing to do, and then trying to predict what the character
will actually do and why.

If characters are purely rational computational entities, it doesn't really
matter what their backstory is, what their motives are, or anything else. The
story rapidly devolves into a mere exercise in the reader checking the
author's math.

~~~
nitrogen
_The entire point of a character with depth, like say Harold Lauder in The
Stand, is that that depth gives a reader insight into why they do what they do
during the story. It provides tension between what is obviously the correct
/logical thing to do, and then trying to predict what the character will
actually do and why._

First question: did you read through _all_ of HPMOR?

 _beep-boop, sociopath, scumbag rich kid, etc._

Second question: why do you call out the author of the article for using "him"
instead of "her/them/xer/it/whatever", then proceed to use incredibly
demeaning terms and guilty-by-association smears against another oppressed
subgroup, the true nerds? Your comments have been drenched with slimy, wet,
arrogant hypocrisy.

\----

 _The thing I dislike about so much of this rationalist stuff is that,
honestly, it breaks apart like so much driftwood when confronted with the
jagged incongruities of how real people work._

Maybe you are using too narrow a definition of "rational". It's easy to break
something apart like so much driftwood when you're attacking a strawman.

------
rcyn
the death of art

