11 KiB
Let's stay on topic: rational or rationalist fiction
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Author: u/PeridexisErrant put aside fear for courage, and death for life*
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Score: 25
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Created: 2015-06-16T07:39:41
Post:
Over the last few days there's been a flood of unrelated posts, on anything from logical fallacies to foreign policy. If it's not related to fiction, it shouldn't be here.
Unrelated posts will be removed with prejudice. Thank you.
Comments:
u/lsparrish [+13] (8 hours later)
Can there please be a common-sense exemption for this rule? I'm thinking of my dyson sphere discussion post, which isn't directly about fiction, but has enough implications for worldbuilding, HSF, and munchkinry that it might be community-relevant. Maybe counts as a deconstruction as well (albeit of a nonfiction story).
u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
There are common-sense exemptions; talking about the mechanics of a Dyson-sphere falls under them, and that post hasn't been touched. Same goes for continuity of consciousness, which is a common transhumanist theme and central to a lot of rational stories.
Where you start getting into trouble is when you start posting things that would be more at home in /r/politics, /r/worldnews, /r/atheism, etc. (We're always going to have some overlap with subs like /r/books, /r/movies, /r/scifi, /r/fantasy, /r/Futurology, /r/transhumanism, etc.) Your mods do possess common sense.
(If you want to do an end-run around these rules, you can do it in the form of rational fiction. I'd probably remove a post asking for discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but there's no way I would remove a rational story about humongous mecha patrolling the border of the Gaza strip. I'd probably remove a post talking about class warfare, but never a rational story which has class warfare as one of its themes.)
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (20 hours later)
My goodness.
I suddenly want to talk about a rational story with humongous mecha patrolling the border of the Gaza strip, but I'm afraid that doing so will come off as just doing it because you said we could.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (20 hours later)
Oh, definitely do it. It's on my ideas scratch pad, but it's going to be stuck there forever because I don't really know the first thing about either culture or what the realities of life there are. I just like the mental image that it conjures up (and partly, because it's a time and place that I haven't seen much speculative fiction from).
u/ArgentStonecutter [+9] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 hours later)
Where should rational non-fiction go? /r/lesswrong ?
Perhaps there should be a note to that effect in the sidebar?
u/qznc [+6] Chaos Legion (4 hours later)
/r/LessWrongLounge/ probably would like such submissions.
u/None [+3] (8 hours later)
But they're all so inactive… urghhhhh
u/davidmanheim [+3] (6 hours later)
I'm trying to turn /r/bayesian into the right place for that type of material. Check it out and see!
u/None [+2] (9 hours later)
[deleted]
u/ancientcampus [+6] juggling kittens (13 hours later)
In theory, maybe, but I find the feel of this community to be very different
u/None [+5] (15 hours later)
Much of what once got posted to LW itself has migrated to the rationalist Tumblr-sphere.
u/ancientcampus [+3] juggling kittens (19 hours later)
Wait, there's a rationalist Tumblr-sphere? Where??
u/MugaSofer [+4] (a day later)
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I feel like I should get on there. It's that, or form a smart people's imageboard.
u/Kishoto [+11] (4 hours later)
As a poster of the unrelated foreign policy question, I have to ask, is it really so important that we stay on topic? It's not as if the other links are falling through the cracks and I, for one, enjoy the discussion links. I like contributing my opinion into an intellectual debate. And this community is one of the larger rationalist communities on reddit. Both /r/LessWrong and /r/LessWrongLounge have much less traffic than this sub. The Lounge's most recent post was a week ago and, before that, a month ago. Not exactly productive to discuss anything.
Regardless though, I see the point. And I understand that off topic posts aren't fun for people who have more specific focuses in regards to this community. :)
u/blazinghand [+9] Chaos Undivided (10 hours later)
I think the fact that we focus just on fiction and the fact that we're a large rationalist community that hasn't dissolved in the way that rationalist internet communities often do are strongly related. This subreddit is like super focused on things I find entertaining and as it stands now it does a pretty good job of staying on those topics. I think this narrow, deep focus is also what causes this community to grow and stick together, though I have no actual data or reasoning to back this up.
u/alexanderwales [+9] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
Just as a reminder, if you see a sub with low activity in it, you should still subscribe to it (if you're not already). Subscription costs you nothing, and in the event that someone starts up a conversation there, it can get propelled to your frontpage rather easily. That helps to break a sub out of the "it's dead because no one uses it / no one uses it because it's dead" cycle.
u/None [+7] (12 hours later)
As a poster of the unrelated foreign policy question, I have to ask, is it really so important that we stay on topic?
Yes. Off-topic discussions drive away people who would enjoy our main topic. Take it to Lounge.
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (16 hours later)
Hrm, I just posted a link to a TED talk by James Randi, in response to a short story written with James Randi as the antagonist.
James Randi, at least in the TED talk, is very rational. Is this sort of cross-fertilization of topics acceptable, where they cross real life and rational or rationalist fiction?
u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (16 hours later)
Nope. Unless the actual content of the post is directly related to rational or rationalist fiction, it'll probably be removed. (Real-life Randi is rational, but not fictional)
It would work well as a comment in that thread, but not it's own post.
u/Farmerbob1 [+0] Level 1 author (16 hours later)
I'm putting on my Devil's Advocate Hat here.
Randi is discussing fiction. AKA 'magic'
u/None [+5] (17 hours later)
Devil Advocacy denied, on grounds that as Dumbledore, Harry, and Hermione all taught us, the real magic is friendship.
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (17 hours later)
Oh, I thought that was My Little Pony. :P
No problem though. I don't exactly agree with the strictness being enforced here, but I can respect it if the community wants it that way. I figure the moderators will get spammed incessantly if the decision is unpopular.
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (20 hours later)
Or make /r/newrational or something.
The glory of free association!
u/blazinghand [+3] Chaos Undivided (an hour later)
Oh, whew. I was in danger of becoming "that guy"
u/brandalizing [+9] Reserve Pigeon Army (2 hours later)
The title and role of "that guy" is held by all of us at some point. Your time will come.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (3 hours later)
Do common themes in fiction, like my post, count or are they too detached from fiction?
Part of the issue I see is that the production of rational fiction is much slower than the potential consumption of rational discussion
u/alexanderwales [+13] Time flies like an arrow (8 hours later)
I'm not putting on my mod hat to say this, but I think if you want to discuss SFnal or fantasy things, you're probably good. The problem comes when people start posting things that they just want to talk about without first thinking about whether that discussion belongs here. There are thousands of subreddits with a variety of focuses, and I personally think it's better for them to remain focused. Our focus here is already a bit sloppy, which is fine, but if we start in on politics, religion, pets, how your day was, Japanese game shows, etc. we start getting on shaky ground.
What we should probably do is have a weekly off-topic thread as a release valve for those things that you want to talk about with your pals in /r/rational but which don't relate to the focus of the subreddit. Off-Topic Tuesday?
u/None [+6] (8 hours later)
OFF-TOPIC TUESDAY HYPE TRAIN ^WOO^WOOO
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (11 hours later)
Alright, starting on Friday I'll put up the first off-topic thread, and we'll see how that goes.
u/PeridexisErrant [+4] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (16 hours later)
Note to self: set up automod to make this effortless if it's still popular in a month.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (18 hours later)
Automod can do that? I've never used Automod before; that's pretty cool.
u/note-to-self-bot [+2] (2 days later)
Hey friend! I thought I'd remind you:
set up automod to make this effortless if it's still popular in a month.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+2] Finally, everyone was working together. (11 hours later)
That's exactly what /r/TrueAnime does, and it works fabulously for them.
u/Kishoto [+2] (17 hours later)
Sounds like a happy medium. I like this idea.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (5 hours later)
This is true of most genres and mediums.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (6 hours later)
I agree but other genres are able to have specific areas for such discussion due to being larger whereas a splitting of the community here matters more.
u/Kishoto [+1] (7 hours later)
Agreed. It's easy to split when there are thousands of people in the community willing to split off and join the discussion threads. But out community is already pretty small.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (a day later)
Given that's the case:
Should this subreddit be renamed? Is that even possible?
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
It's not possible to rename the subreddit; reddit doesn't allow it. We could take over or create a different subreddit and all move there, but that's (almost always) a death sentence for a subreddit. (The only time you ever resort to that is if the mods go rogue and seriously screw things up.)
The best we could do is a CSS rename, but that might just be confusing. The title of the subreddit is "Rational Fiction" though, the description is clear, and the purpose is explicitly laid out in the sidebar.