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Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of surrogate life. You can learn from them so seamlessly that you might believe you knew something—about ancient Greece, say—before having gleaned it from Mary Renault's novel The Last of the Wine. You'll also retain false information even if you didn't mean to. That seems like a liability: Philosophers have long concerned themselves with what they call "the paradox of fiction"—why would we find imagined stories emotionally arousing at all? The answer is that most of our mind does not even realize that fiction is fiction, so we react to it almost as though it were real.
At the same time, very young children "can rationally deal with the make-believe aspects of stories," distinguishing the actual, the possible, and the fantastical with sophistication, as Denis Dutton has written in The Art Instinct. "Not only does the artistic structure of stories speak to Darwinian sources: so does the intense pleasure taken in their universal themes of love, death, adventure, family conflict, justice, and overcoming adversity." That may help explain why, when stories are done well, we love them so much. Just as artificial sweeteners fool our minds into thinking we're eating sugar, stories—even weird ones like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—take advantage of our natural tendency to want to learn about real people, and how to treat them.
Our brains can't help but believe.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 24 2019, @08:47AM (7 children)
The capacity of your brain to react with the same intensity to fact or fiction was given to you to** be able to empathize with your fellow primate telling you the story of his life, no matter if that fellow is named, nicknamed or just an AC; also irrespective if he offers you a story, just an Oreo or whole box of them, or some special pork American meat - all of them have stories behind.
So, magister, what have you done with your empathy?
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** that and the propensity to fall for propaganda. Or to believe in God(s) or karma. Or to get a believable high from hallucinogens. Or to have something to kill with ethanol, like EF's memories of Mexican parents. But neither of those apply to you, so only the empathy purpose remains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 24 2019, @09:14AM (1 child)
Oh, my dear c0lo, do not be so hard on me! The fall term has just begun, so I have not only to deal with the mentally challenged on SoylentNews! But, of course, this is the main point, many here are entrapped in fantasias. Take khallow, please, for example. For many years we have been trying to edumacate him, to no avail. And the Runaway, who is an old dog who forgot how to lick his own. . . But you see, it is not a matter of empathy, on the larger scale. It is how these idiots can infect the larger populace, sort of like how Trump saying blatant lies and incoherent word-salad seems to validate Republican talking points, even though they are still completely insane.
So, in response, I have empathy for these idiots. I am sorry that they are so incapable of rational thought. But a part of their therapy is publicity. If only their attention span allowed them to realize that they are wrong. This is what makes me feel bad.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 24 2019, @11:44AM
Oh no-no-no-no-no. In spite of the respect and all the other positive feeling I have for you, magister, and no matter how much you'd plead for it, it's not gonna happen.
I could consider him; or use a long pole to prod him; at best, I might even deign to troll him.
But, for the life of me, I'm definitely not going to take him. Not for example nor for indeed anything else at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:11PM (4 children)
This is a good case study for the limitations of empathy. The AC remains a lazy asshole, even if we go through the effort of empathizing with him.
Unless those stories involve steely-eyed muscular men with white hats shooting other steely-eyed muscular men with black hats, it is a complete waste of my time. All these oreos are going to get these ubermen complaining about their figures - they'll have to do a huge set of squats and 6 miles around the track to work that off. You can empathize with that, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24 2019, @11:11PM (3 children)
The story of your life, just wasted time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 25 2019, @02:10AM (2 children)
If you don't know how to waste time, then you don't know how to live.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 25 2019, @07:04AM (1 child)
Yeah, but wasting a whole life on the fiction of libertarian fantasy economic theory! Oh, what a waist! No, really, khallow: what a waist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28 2019, @03:23AM
Sounds like it's not my life that's getting wasted here. Good luck on that!