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Zeusthecat

I Had A Random Thought...

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Yep, that's correct. If you're not paying for spotify it just shuffles whatever artist you're playing on mobile.

 

Counter to eot, I've been adding podcasts rapidly. In the last month or so I've picked up What's Tech, Planet Money, RadioLab (I honestly don't know why I wasn't listening to RadioLab already), Crate and Crowbar, and Reply All briefly before that. I would have listened to much more Crate and Crowbar already except for the sound levels being extremely low. It makes it difficult to hear and understand all the wacky accents.

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Yup the mobile versions, both phone and tablet force you to listen to artists on shuffle. It's not even albums, it's entire catalogues. It's terrible, and I only use it now for working out, or if someone puts up a good sound track for a game I play over it.

I actually really enjoyed listening to the drive club playlist while I messed around with the free version of that.

Spotify has been recommended to me as a way to find new music, but all it does is play related artists, most of those I already know and either love, got bored of or discounted as not liking. My music tastes have changed as I've gotten older too. I listen to less of the angry guitar driven music I did as a teenager (although my favourites are still that) and find myself more attracted to synth based "instrumental" stuff, but have literally no idea who is worthwhile, which spotify doesn't help with.

Growing up with nu-metal really fucked me. I want to capture that feeling, but damn, it's such awful music. If it doesn't have nostalgia attached to it, I inevitably hate it.

The reasons I've mainly focussed on podcasts, is that I listen while I'm at work and while I'm cycling. Podcasts are quiet enough without losing quality that I can hear cars, and hear coworkers. Music tends to shut both of those out, to the point I turn into an antisocial asshole at work.

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If you're interested a mild spread of contemporary rock and rock adjacent music: I uploaded a mix of my favorite records of 2014 last year! Two mixes actually, one that is safe for general gatherings, the other was blistering hardcore nonsense. i tried to balance both mixes to be half women. Didn't totally succeed, but got close-ish. It's here, with band descriptions: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9836-music-of-the-year/?p=334408

 

Unrelated, having listened to a few Culture novels on audiobook, I can't believe nobody has made an RPG from these. It's just perfectly suited, for everything, not the least of which is the scale of the books create an option to make things fairly episodic and self contained (one SC Agents adventure), but also with the option of being a huge sprawling franchise (the goings on of the Culture non-Empire). 

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I have never understood the idea that fiction is a useful way to understand the human condition. Fiction is a 100% created product and all you are learning is what the author thinks about that topic. Every word of dialog, every action, every event is in there because the author wanted it there. This in my mind severally limits its usefulness.  

I am not saying fiction cannot have value. There are tons of examples in history of fiction being used to disguise critique of people and institutions. You set it in a far away land or change all the names, but make social commentary.There is much to be learned about the authors times, but I just think fiction has a much more limited value than many people think.

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How is that different from philosophy? Or any other form of observation about the world? The author takes their experience or their understanding of a possible experience and presents it to the reader, allowing them a window into somebody else's mind. What other means do we have for understanding the human condition?

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Also suggests that Non-fiction doesn't have authorial intent, or authorial bias as it may be.

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Fiction is a 100% created product and all you are learning is what the author thinks about that topic. Every word of dialog, every action, every event is in there because the author wanted it there.

 

I disagree with the idea that the author's original intent with a particular text is the only thing that can be taken from it. The author also chooses what to leave out of the story, and the ambiguities and unknowns are what involve the reader. In filling those blanks, the reader has to be sort of empathetic, but also utilize their own experience.

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I have never understood the idea that fiction is a useful way to understand the human condition.

 

There's increasing evidence that people's acceptance of "others" (gays, cultures they are unfamiliar with, religions they are unfamiliar with, etc) can be heavily influenced by fiction, and television can be particularly powerful (both in positive and negative ways).  If giving people an understanding of someone else's reality, creating empathy and getting people to redefine their worldview don't encompass "understanding the human condition" then I'm not really sure what you mean by that phrase. 

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How is that different from philosophy? Or any other form of observation about the world? The author takes their experience or their understanding of a possible experience and presents it to the reader, allowing them a window into somebody else's mind. What other means do we have for understanding the human condition?

Not sure how its different from philosophy, I have always been turned off by philosophy because of the purposely obscuring language common in that field. The difference is that other forms of observation, psychology, sociology, history etc have a required basis in reality. They are backed up with evidence, facts, statistics and repeatable verifiability. I don't disagree that its a window, I just think its a very limited one.

 

Also suggests that Non-fiction doesn't have authorial intent, or authorial bias as it may be.

Didn't mean to imply that. Of course there is that issue with non-fiction, but fiction lacks the kind of checks that exist in the world of academic non-fiction.

 

There's increasing evidence that people's acceptance of "others" (gays, cultures they are unfamiliar with, religions they are unfamiliar with, etc) can be heavily influenced by fiction, and television can be particularly powerful (both in positive and negative ways).  If giving people an understanding of someone else's reality, creating empathy and getting people to redefine their worldview don't encompass "understanding the human condition" then I'm not really sure what you mean by that phrase. 

I wonder if this same effect be possible with biography?

 

"human condition:

the positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being, esp. the inevitable events such as birth, childhood, adolescence, love, sex, reproduction, aging, and death"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/human+condition

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You don't have to take any work as gospel, just a new perspective to view your world with and a new type of person to try empathise with when you get to know their world intimately.

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Not sure how its different from philosophy, I have always been turned off by philosophy because of the purposely obscuring language common in that field. The difference is that other forms of observation, psychology, sociology, history etc have a required basis in reality. They are backed up with evidence, facts, statistics and repeatable verifiability. I don't disagree that its a window, I just think its a very limited one.

 

Didn't mean to imply that. Of course there is that issue with non-fiction, but fiction lacks the kind of checks that exist in the world of academic non-fiction.

 

I wonder if this same effect be possible with biography?

 

"human condition:

the positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being, esp. the inevitable events such as birth, childhood, adolescence, love, sex, reproduction, aging, and death"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/human+condition

 

In my opinion, the difference is between telling the facts of an event, and trying to get the reader to feel the impact of an event. It's akin to the difference between a photo and a painting really. One could take a picture of a person standing on a bridge and screaming, but that doesn't necessarily convey emotions as well as "The Scream" does.

 

Also, there's a certain level of accessibility in fiction. If you have something important to say, it would probably touch more people as a fiction piece than a non-fiction piece.

 

Finally, if you're writing about something traumatic, or something that you only have third hand accounts of, I'd imagine it's easier to write it as a fiction piece than try to confront the events head-on and fact-check all your sources.

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You don't have to take any work as gospel, just a new perspective to view your world with and a new type of person to try empathise with when you get to know their world intimately.

I just don't see how useful a single individuals perspective is without any larger data set to back it up. It feels like the anecdote v. data problem.

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I just don't see how useful a single individuals perspective is without any larger data set to back it up. It feels like the anecdote v. data problem.

 

But that mindset disregards people as unique individuals? You can't just get an understanding of the multitiudes of aspects to someone's identity and then say you know them. That's just not how it works at all?

 

At least that's how I feel. Attempting to apply scientific rigor to understanding a human being seems totally backwards to me.

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But that mindset disregards people as unique individuals? You can't just get an understanding of the multitiudes of aspects to someone's identity and then say you know them. That's just not how it works at all?

 

At least that's how I feel. Attempting to apply scientific rigor to understanding a human being seems totally backwards to me.

Uniqueness is kind of the point. To best understand an even you try and ask as many people as possible about it. I don't see how you can take a single person's perspective on things and expand that to the general without a lot of problems. I remember discussing this in one of my sociology classes. Some researchers interviewed a few students at one school about discrimination then claimed it was applicable nationwide.

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Uniqueness is kind of the point. To best understand an even you try and ask as many people as possible about it. I don't see how you can take a single person's perspective on things and expand that to the general without a lot of problems. I remember discussing this in one of my sociology classes. Some researchers interviewed a few students at one school about discrimination then claimed it was applicable nationwide.

 

I think you're taking this too strictly.  I don't think anyone is really suggesting that a single work or author should form the basis for someone's world view.  It's merely another point of view, something to consider.  Hopefully it makes you think about something you hadn't before or further develops a view you share.  I think the problem with your comparison is you're taking something that is quantifiable and trying to contrast it with something that isn't.  How do you assign a value to fear or anger or love?  Can you explain morals through a data set?  Things like these are undoubtedly part of the human condition but you don't prove them with numbers.  You learn about them through experience and sometimes that experience is as a third party.

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Cordeos, out of curiosity, are you an engineer of some sort?  Because I've encountered this exact line of reasoning a couple of times before, but only from engineers. 

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Cordeos, out of curiosity, are you an engineer of some sort?  Because I've encountered this exact line of reasoning a couple of times before, but only from engineers. 

 

Heh, this made me smile because I am an engineer of some sort and I just wrote a post about assigning numbers to emotions like love.

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Uniqueness is kind of the point. To best understand an even you try and ask as many people as possible about it. I don't see how you can take a single person's perspective on things and expand that to the general without a lot of problems. I remember discussing this in one of my sociology classes. Some researchers interviewed a few students at one school about discrimination then claimed it was applicable nationwide.

 

But you asked about how fiction informs us about the human condition. The human condition is not a data set, it's not a policy paper - it's an individual experience. Fiction gets at that in a way that other perspectives do not.

 

As for having checks, the check on fiction is the reader's sense of the world and humanity. A story can ring true or hollow to a reader and that will help determine the extent to which they incorporate it into their view of the world.

 

Another value of fiction is that it allows us to imagine what might be, rather than what is. Sociology, history, psychology, anthropology - these are powerful disciplines (I myself study history), but they are limited in talking about the world that is now or the world that has been. They have a much more difficult time imagine possible other worlds - and I mean this in a larger sense than fantasy and science fiction.

 

All those disciplines also require a degree of fiction to work. This is especially true of history, or at least it's the one I'm most familiar with. Any topic a historian addresses is necessarily going to require a degree of conjecture, of creation interpretation or at least of emphasizing certain elements over others in order to create some coherent narrative. By the same token, no work of fiction is entirely fictional - the author will always, by definition, bring parts of themselves and their experiences - real experiences - to the work. The line between fiction and non-fiction is blurry.

 

I suspect there might be something deeper about the nature of knowledge going on here, but I'll let you respond first.

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I think you're taking this too strictly.  I don't think anyone is really suggesting that a single work or author should form the basis for someone's world view.  It's merely another point of view, something to consider.  Hopefully it makes you think about something you hadn't before or further develops a view you share.  I think the problem with your comparison is you're taking something that is quantifiable and trying to contrast it with something that isn't.  How do you assign a value to fear or anger or love?  Can you explain morals through a data set?  Things like these are undoubtedly part of the human condition but you don't prove them with numbers.  You learn about them through experience and sometimes that experience is as a third party.

I just find a fictional experience to be completely devoid of value. It is so perfectly controlled by the author that I don't see what can be learned from it. For example the difference between, Child Soldier by China Keitetsi, which is a memoir of a child soldier is, in my mind, far more valuable in understanding humanity than a fictional book on the same subject.

 

I actually get quite annoyed at things like A Beautiful Mind where the movie is factually incorrect and sensationalizes Nash's illness. 

 

Cordeos, out of curiosity, are you an engineer of some sort?  Because I've encountered this exact line of reasoning a couple of times before, but only from engineers. 

I majored in history and sociology, I work in IT.

 

But you asked about how fiction informs us about the human condition. The human condition is not a data set, it's not a policy paper - it's an individual experience. Fiction gets at that in a way that other perspectives do not.

 

Another value of fiction is that it allows us to imagine what might be, rather than what is. Sociology, history, psychology, anthropology - these are powerful disciplines (I myself study history), but they are limited in talking about the world that is now or the world that has been. They have a much more difficult time imagine possible other worlds - and I mean this in a larger sense than fantasy and science fiction.

 

All those disciplines also require a degree of fiction to work. This is especially true of history, or at least it's the one I'm most familiar with. Any topic a historian addresses is necessarily going to require a degree of conjecture, of creation interpretation or at least of emphasizing certain elements over others in order to create some coherent narrative. By the same token, no work of fiction is entirely fictional - the author will always, by definition, bring parts of themselves and their experiences - real experiences - to the work. The line between fiction and non-fiction is blurry.

 

I suspect there might be something deeper about the nature of knowledge going on here, but I'll let you respond first.

Biography is also a look at individual perspective especially autobiography. 

 

There is tons of speculative work in history, political science in terms of looking at what ifs and trying to project trends into the future.

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ll those disciplines also require a degree of fiction to work. This is especially true of history, or at least it's the one I'm most familiar with. Any topic a historian addresses is necessarily going to require a degree of conjecture, of creation interpretation or at least of emphasizing certain elements over others in order to create some coherent narrative. By the same token, no work of fiction is entirely fictional - the author will always, by definition, bring parts of themselves and their experiences - real experiences - to the work. The line between fiction and non-fiction is blurry.

 

This is actually the biggest obstacle in my dissertation right now. I've reached a level of knowledge about my subject that has me painfully aware of how much any statement, even an ostensibly factual one, is leaving out and what that says about my own perspective on history.

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Cordeos, your perspective is so alien to me I don't even know how to engage with it. The idea that a story that has been crafted by another human being to tell something to others is worthless boggles my mind.

 

Conversely, nonfiction tends to me to be intensely irritating because, as Gormongous says, I'm much too aware of its inherent fictionality through omission and interpretation while pretending to be otherwise. Especially most popsci stuff reads more false to me than a lot of fiction (say Munro) which can be so honest and insightful that I definitely feel it has expanded my appreciation for others' points of view.

 

Oh, I'm an engineer for what it's worth.

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I just find a fictional experience to be completely devoid of value. It is so perfectly controlled by the author that I don't see what can be learned from it. For example the difference between, Child Soldier by China Keitetsi, which is a memoir of a child soldier is, in my mind, far more valuable in understanding humanity than a fictional book on the same subject.

 

The writing might be controlled by the author but not the interpretations of it.  It's entirely possible for two people to read the same thing, get different meanings out of it, and for them both to be correct.  If you personally don't find value in such things, that's fine.  But to me a raw presentation of facts is less valuable and interesting than a nuanced take, at least in areas where there is no right answer.

 

I'm curious what your opinion of video games is then.  From how I'm reading your words, I guess they have no value to you because they're all created?  Is Gone Home devoid of value because it was entirely crafted by Fullbright and not "real"?

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