35 KiB
[META] What yet unmentioned qualities of rational fiction appeal to us?
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3c3oj6/meta_what_yet_unmentioned_qualities_of_rational/
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Score: 27
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Created: 2015-07-04T13:36:29
Post:
Most people probably don't know exactly why they like popular blockbusters. This is why I think rational fiction is a rare case: we seem to really like it, and we also have an excellent reason at hand why we like it: the stories make sense and they also reward reader's thinking. But is it actually so straightforward? Do we actually like rational fiction because of its rationality?
Or, as Robin Hanson would say: rational fiction is not about rationality. Okay that's just a provocation, I don't know if that's the case. But if this were the case, what would rational fiction really be about? I remember someone on this subreddit saying that this sub is more about collecting works of fiction that appeal to a certain kind of reader, and this is a bigger driving force than the appeal of rationality.
There are a couple of studies by Timothy Wilson that are relevant:
When people are asked to explain why they feel the way they do, they usually just present a "good story" that is often incomplete or even wrong. This kind of introspection can even lead to a disconnection between their attitudes and their behavior. There appears to be a strong cultural norm in our society to explain attitudes in terms of cognitions about the attributes of the attitude object. It is much more common to hear people say, "I like the candidate because of his liberal views" than, "I like the candidate because my parents were democrats." These kind of cognitions can consists of a biased sample of reasons that imply a different attitude than the one the subject previously held. The new different attitude has a strong cognitive flavor, but behavior remains affectively driven, resulting in a reduced attitude-behavior consistency.
When asked to explain their feelings, people feel compelled to come up with a reasonable-sounding answer (reasonable to themselves and to others). Second, when people attempt to explain an attitude, they do not always know exactly why they feel the way they do. Therefore, the reasons they come up with sound plausible, but they might not correctly explain their feelings, or they might only be a subset of the actual reasons underlying their attitude. In a study two groups were asked to pick a poster to take with them home. The first group just had to choose a poster and go home, but the second group had to explain why they wanted that particular poster before choosing it. Six months later, the first group loved their posters, but the second group hated theirs. This shows how hard it's to correctly specify the reasons why you actually like something.
These is ample evidence that attitudes are often caused by factors other than rational cognitions about the attributes of the attitude object. These other include mere exposure, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, halo effects, and attitudes stemming from people's core values, such as their religious beliefs or the beliefs of their parents. When people in the mentioned studies are asked to think about reasons, rarely if ever do they mention such factors.
It might be strange that after saying all that I ask you to explain why you like rational fiction even though it seems to lead to disruptive effects. But maybe if you keep that in mind, you are more careful in this introspection.
Possible qualities that most appeal to us in rational fiction:
Laurence Tennant termed Ender's Game as geek wish-fulfillment porn, and the same kind of critique has been said about HPMOR: "A largely forgettable, overly long nerd power fantasy --" (su3su2u1)
Rational fictions contains aspects of insight porn, including lots of interesting and alternative ways to think about reality.
Then there is some vague sense of "cold ruthlessness" especially in /u/alexanderwales's works. I can't quite put my finger on it, but whatever it is, it appeals to me quite a lot.
Comments:
u/AppleJuiceBoxes [+25] (3 hours later)
Insight porn is the first thing I thought of when I read the header. And man, I do love a good "cold ruthless" character.
Other things I've noticed:
The feeling of reading something by someone who just gets you.
Much better technobabble. Solid science, when there is any.
The really good works don't crumble when stared at long enough. Worm, for example. I think The Metropolitan Man falls into this category.
Intelligent and wonderful 'antagonists' a la Rationalmort and CelestAI.
Solid and interesting philosophy, when there is any. You won't see any, "Hmm... Does God exist? Are we alone? Alas, it can never truly be known." Or, "Do you think there's life out there, Timmy?"
There is often much less romance in rationalfics. HPMOR, Worm, Ra, FiO, Scott Alexander's fics, etc. I don't know how many other people think this is appealing, but I find it refreshing.Edit: I think the last point has been contested enough to earn a strikethrough. It does not seem to be the majority opinion, but I'll leave it there anyways.
u/Uncaffeinated [+3] (4 hours later)
Technically Worm does have romance. It just doesn't hijack the story.
u/AppleJuiceBoxes [+2] (4 hours later)
Right, we agree. I said "much less."
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+5] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
It seems that I love rational fiction for much of the same reasons that you do.
-Definitely the insight porn. There's usually just not enough good-quality insight in other literature, and rational fiction tries to compensate for that.
-Also, it's really, REALLY refreshing to see an actually smart person as the main hero of a story, rather than being stuck as the sidekick or the villain, like they usually are. In the rare cases outside of rational fiction where the hero is "smart", their intelligence is told to the reader, or implied by things like having glasses or using incomprehensible technobabble or having a PhD, rather than actually showing their intelligence in how they USE it to solve problems. Like Jimmy Neutron, who puts his fingers to his ears to block out the noise, then says "Think...think...think...BRAINBLAST!" and suddenly has the solution to the problem. And he's also a strawman who causes every problem that he solves, despite supposedly being the smartest character in the show.
The fact that real intelligence is so commonly depicted as being a bad thing, or only being useful for providing the REAL heroes with cool gadgets, something that's uncool and sometimes even making you evil (by your lust for knowledge and power and immortality, or something), I find to actually be very hurtful. Rational fiction doesn't misrepresent smart people that way, though.
I really like how rational fiction has more realistic characters with more realistic motivations, regardless of whether they're the hero or the villain.
It would be nice if rational fiction had more focus on the characters and their relationships, both romantic and platonic, without hijacking the plot. Part of the problem with this, it seems, is that when you're trying to depict characters realistically, you can't make them fall in love, it has to happen naturally or not at all (unless you have a sufficiently reasonable explanation for it, like in Luminosity). Characters become friends or partners for their own reasons, not the author's. Maybe if you had a LOT of realistic characters and stuck them together enough times over an extended period of time, eventually you'd have some romantic relationships.
That being said, while I would like to see more romance in rational fiction, it's still refreshing the way it is since there is TOO MUCH ROMANCE EVERYWHERE ELSE.
And the more coherent worldbuilding is a big plus as well. It makes it feel like the world in the story can really be explored, rather than being boxed in by contrived coincidences and idiot balls and all the other things that the precious plot might demand in order to not be derailed. In rational fiction, if the characters try to derail the plot, the plot moves with them. The story adapts to the characters' choices rather than controlling the characters' choices because the story is actually driven in large part by the characters choices, (the other driver of course being the setting), rather than author fiat.
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
I kinda wish some rational fics had more romance, actually. Cold ruthlessness interspersed with some "squee!" moments.
u/beisutsukai [+1] (8 hours later)
I think your last point is incorrect. There is a lot of romance in Worm, the same is true for Ra, Scott Alexander's has written stories with romance as a major point (The Story of Emily and Control). You didn't mention Luminosity but romance is central to the plot of it. Unless outside of rational fiction you mostly read romance novels I really don't see why you think rational fiction has a notably small amount of romance.
u/philip1201 [+0] (a day later)
I would really hope Worm falls apart on closer inspection. The way the endbringers are fought is pitiful, Cauldron are idiots, no communal attempts are made to solve or utilise capes effectively, and there is a profound lack of conventional weapons.
u/gabbalis [+0] (5 hours later)
There is often much less romance in rationalfics.
What about luminosity? Well OK I guess if you compare it to the source material...
u/Bowbreaker [+0] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)
I agree with most of what you said except that I'd really like to see a rational(ist) story with plenty of romance that doesn't rely on stupid misunderstandings, misplaced suspicions, lack of respect or outright idiocy. I know that fresh love actually makes you act less rationally in the real world too but what typically happens in some mainstream stories is just painful.
u/derefr [+10] (10 hours later)
this sub is more about collecting works of fiction that appeal to a certain kind of reader
Taking that further: the term "Rationalist Fiction" sounds the same to me as does the term "Christian Music." Both are a description not of genre, but of the clustered preferences of a subculture with shared norms, formative experiences, and some otherwise-uncommon opinions about certain philosophical subjects, that make them hold certain expectations in common about the world.
Or, to follow in going all Robin Hanson: if stories are about venerating group norms (I can't find a post purely on that topic, but this is an ancillary one), then "rationalist stories" must be about venerating rationalist norms. If stories are "narrative" rather than "disconnected sequences of events" insofar as they have some sort of karmic force at work in them, then rationalist stories would be those whose events progress by some engine of rationalist karma.
Exploring what exactly "rationalist karma" would entail is a whole question of its own, though. Some initial thoughts:
A good example might be to compare the reactions of the gods in 2YE (arbiters of the story's rationalist karma) with the reactions of actual mythical gods (arbiters of traditional narrative karma) to similar acts of hubris.
Rationalist karma lets rationalists get away with various munchkinry. It seems like this model closely parallels that of reality, where rationalists "get away with" things like feeding the world's population by generating ammonia from thin air.
The Spirit of Rationalist Karma also punishes those who blithely rely on things to "go the way they do in stories", which is to say, rely on things to work out in the way that The Spirit of Traditional Narrative Karma makes them work out.
u/CellWithoutCulture [+1] (2 days later)
stories are about venerating group norms
Haha oh that's a great take on it! Looking at this closely, how would we tell the difference between genre venerating group norms and a sub-genre of science fiction?
feeding the world's population by generating ammonia from thin air
Never seen it put that say, wow. But we are the munchkin species and we also get away with science, so there is that.
u/neshalchanderman [+7] (3 hours later)
I love the wide creative expanse that Ted Chiang opens in each of his stories. You can sink into those deep green depths.
Rational characters. Realistic worlds. That's what build those vistas for me. They allow me to immerse myself within a story and within a buzzing hive of ideas.
u/ulyssessword [+9] (4 hours later)
Rational fiction surprises me in two ways, the first is the standard munchkinry, unforeseen (but obvious in hindsight) consequences, and the like. The second is by doing things that any sane person would expect to happen, but defying standard literary tropes.
As a recent example of #2, I was reading Book title (spoilers ahead), and the ice freighter spaceship that one of the main characters was an officer of came under attack from an advanced warship (he was in a shuttle at the time). The torpedoes were still a few minutes out, so the captain ordered the engineer to override the safety limits on the engines, the comm officer to try jamming its targeting with their radar array, and a few other measures. The engineer is very good at her job, and warned that the structure of the ship couldn't hold against that much thrust, but acquiesced after being ordered again. The support struts holding the engine in place failed shortly after that, making them sitting ducks. The jamming and other measures were similarly ineffective, and the torpedo hit, destroying the ship and killing everyone on board. This completely blindsided me, because it doesn't follow the standard literary formula of a plucky ship full of misfits consistently defying the odds. Any sane person would tell you that warship vs. freighter is a foregone conclusion, but it sure didn't feel that way.
u/ElGuien [+5] (5 hours later)
Hah. Daniel Abraham (part of the "James S. A. Corey" pseudonym) is good for that. He routinely ignores the existence of tropes and just does what makes sense for his story. It's great.
u/Escapement [+12] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 hours later)
#Some thoughts about rationalist fiction
We are a group who reads fanfiction and other web-published fiction a lot. What are the primary problems and worst troubles that such works to founder upon the rocks of our sensibilities and sink beneath the line of readability?
Well, OK, the first is definitely lack of grammar/spelling/lucidity.
And yes, the second is the common Mary Sue characterization and self-indulgent writing that afflicts rational fiction at least as much as it does the rest of fanfiction/web writing.
However, a close third, in my mind, is what I have come to think of as directionless fiction. When your ship lacks a rudder and isn't even trying to navigate and doesn't even have a port it's trying to get to, the fact that it ends up smashing into rocks an awful lot isn't surprising. This plagues fanfiction, and unedited / unpublished works in general. A lot of stories are written without having a conscious plan of where to go, what they are trying to do, or what will happen next. So many technically proficient writers are writing in fanfiction especially without a plan for even the next chapter when writing the current chapter, and without a plan for the story as a whole.
This tends to result in overblown messes that meander through a bunch of triviality without getting to anything resembling a point. Consider the word counts of the first two Potter novels - 76 944, and 85 141. Now consider how many fics that we've all seen with word counts around the cumulative total length (162 085) where a quarter as many important events happen as in a single Harry Potter novel - probably most of the fanfic I've seen falls into this category. However, when you don't actually have an idea of where you're going, it's hard to cut out the bits that don't matter to getting you there. With no plan, no thought as to what will happen next, the most common strategy is to toss down a morass of words about random trivialities in the hopes that a story will emerge. These fics can be written technically well, and may well have interesting scenes and ideas, but they lack an overarching direction that directs the story and focuses it on important events instead of wasting the reader's time.
In contrast, a lot of the virtues of Rational fiction tend to FORCE a degree of planning ahead and strategizing and thinking out the direction of the story. The story having a consistent, coherent background and setting with realistic factions and peopled with coherent people forces a degree of planning ahead to make it all 'makes sense', but even more is due to the tendency to set up puzzles and foreshadowing and explanations and so forth. Doing this properly requires that before you begin writing you have an idea of where the plot is going, how things are going to be resolved, and what is overall going to happen. This means that, therefore, you are able to consider when writing it if the stuff you are writing actually contributes substantially to advancing the plot, or if it's extraneous dross that's going nowhere, or if it's interesting decorating and worth including on it's own merit even though it's not directly important.
Even rationalist fanfiction like HPMOR has a bunch of stuff that's extraneous to the main plot (e.g. most of the Ender's Game pastiches) but at least including that stuff felt like a conscious decision on the part of the author ('yes, this is entertaining and valueable in itself even though it goes nowhere and doesn't matter') instead of the blind flailing that so characterizes (fan)fiction without any planning or goals. Not having a clear goal or ending when starting out writing seems to lead to very frequently not having a satisfying conclusion (or indeed ever concluding - the number of fanfics that are started dwarfs those that are finished). Even more so, if it does end up concluding the reader ends up looking back at the story as a whole and thinking "well, this story would be really good if you edited out about 75% of it". There are ten dozen fics I could recommend to people - if they had taken a big red pen and crossed out like half or more of the wordcount.
Raymond Chandler's famous advice - "When in Doubt Have a Man Come Through a Door with a Gun in His Hand" - creates great pulp writing, and it allows writers to toss out extremely large amounts of words with a minimum of difficulty, but the strategy of having no plan and not knowing where you're going doesn't often create stories that move me or make me remember them. It can work better if you go back and revise your opening when you know where the plot is going - but fanfic authors rarely go back and even fix blatant spelling/grammar errors, much less rewrite entire chapters to work better.
Having ninjas suddenly burst through the wall because you don't know where the story should go rarely feels like a great plot twist, even in Naruto fanfic, if you don't go back afterwards and figure out a place and reason for the ninjas to work into the story naturally. It's much rarer in fanfiction and amateur work to have undirected writing produce a good, interesting plot compared to something more consciously directed and created with an actual focused goal - probably because of lack of editing into a coherent whole afterwards.
u/derefr [+3] (10 hours later)
onsider the word counts of the first two Potter novels - 76 944, and 85 141. Now consider how many fics that we've all seen with word counts around the cumulative total length (162 085) where a quarter as many important events happen as in a single Harry Potter novel - probably most of the fanfic I've seen falls into this category.
I wouldn't make this particular comparison—each Harry Potter book was drafted (there were many drafts), and then edited (by a person who edits books professionally), and then published. Most fanfic is just typed into Word, read over, (sadly optionally) spell-corrected, and then published. Even the best rational fiction resembles the "weekly pulp serial" format much more than it resembles a Novel that's been through the publishing industry.
u/lsparrish [+5] (14 hours later)
Rational fiction has plots that makes sense and characters who don't hold the idiot ball. Real life is governed by rules: the laws of physics and mathematics, and their consequences in terms of human behavior and so on -- we do not always understand them, but they exist. Also, while the people do sometimes "hold the idiot ball", there are reasons (stress, lack of education, low IQ, group coordination issues, mental health problems, etc).
Rational fiction lets us explore a more optimizable universe than reality, where the laws can be understood by the reader and where the characters are more capable of taking those rules and running with them unhindered by self-doubt or realistic uncertainty.
This is a form of escapist fantasy, but also a way of reinforcing a preference: We prefer to know the rules of our reality, and we prefer to be smart enough to use those rules to our advantage.
Non-rationalist works often take the form of a universe that is essentially non-optimizable. The rules that the character knows are just for flavor, and the character doesn't take many opportunities to exploit them. Instead of rules, the world is best thought of as a container for flavors. The scenes, characters, and so on are simply a collection of flavors -- good, evil, smart, stupid, and so on are labels for characters playing certain roles, not coherent descriptions of goal seeking. These conspire to keep the reader interested while they are immersed, but the objective was never to prepare the reader for real-world problems or real humans they will meet.
These works can be frustrating to process for a rationalist. The work may hit all the notes that keep you interested in reading, but does not educate you in a way that prepares you to handle realistic problems. That makes it feel incomplete or like the story was told "wrong", despite the fact that the author achieved their goal of building a fan base and making money through it. So one reason we like rational fiction is because of how silly it makes other stuff look.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Real life is governed by rules: the laws of physics and mathematics, and their consequences in terms of human behavior and so on -- we do not always understand them, but they exist.
Rational fiction lets us explore a more optimizable universe than reality, where the laws can be understood by the reader and where the characters are more capable of taking those rules and running with them unhindered by self-doubt or realistic uncertainty.
I really liked this point of yours. Fiction is a possibility for us to live in an universe which is easier to understand. Real life math is incredibly complicated and would take aeons to understand because there are so many branches in it.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+12] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 minutes later)
Rarely have to check the integrity of my suspenders of disbelief. Even if I don't always agree with the rationalist slant.
u/cellsminions [+1] (2 hours later)
I would absolutely agree with this. The stories I've read on here are captivating in that I can start reading and then finish a story seemingly on the same breath, only to find that hours have gone by. There are very few times when I'm reading stories posted here where the immersion is broken. Even little hiccups add up, making other reads some degree of jolting as I have to regularly re-immerse myself in the world.
u/None [+9] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/thyratron [+2] (9 hours later)
I need to see a man about a candle
What is this a reference to?
u/xamueljones [+6] My arch-enemy is entropy (11 hours later)
Probably a D&Dd reference where a candle can be abused for infinite wishes.
u/thyratron [+1] (a day later)
Thanks
u/None [+2] (21 hours later)
A rational DnD fanfic "Two Year Emperor" by /u/eaglejarl
It used to be free, but is for sale now on Amazon
u/eaglejarl [+1] (23 hours later)
Point of interest: before it was put up for sale, it was given away for free as a tarball that included author's notes, cover, etc. Chances are pretty good that if you ask around on /r/rational you could find someone with a copy.
(This is more of interest to others than to you directly, since I suspect you pulled it down.)
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)
Out of curiosity, how were you able to sell a book that heavily relies on copyrighted D&D stuff including things that are not open source in the form of the SRD? Did you get WotC to license it or is there some other law you could exploit?
u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)
I stripped all the copyrighted material. Names of everything were changed -- spells, action types, exact numbers, etc. If you knew what it was before you'll still recognize it, but there's nothing left of the actual copyrighted D&D material. It requires some reworking -- there needs to be more explanation so that readers who aren't ready familiar with the world's rules by knowing D&D will be able to follow what's going on. That wasn't as bad as you might think, though -- I never assumed that my readers knew all the D&D rules.
And, of course, there's been a heavy edit. All the bits I thought weren't actually that great were removed, new stuff was added, etc.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)
Isn't the whole premise that the dude finds himself inexplicably in a world that functions according to D&D rules? I mean without that all the rules you decide on either seem completely arbitrary or they remain the same D&D rules as before, just hidden behind a thin facade. Thus pretty much being nothing more than exploiting a loophole in order to make money from WotC's IP.
Or am I missing something here?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
The rules of any fantasy universe are arbitrary until explained. I'm explaining them.
u/embrodski [+3] (3 hours later)
I think a fair bit of it is exploiting a system in new and interesting ways. I believe that's a large part of the draw of The Martian, and the fact that the system that's being exploited is real-world physics is icing on the cake.
u/None [+4] (2 hours later)
I love nitpicking and demolishing worlds to death.
u/ThatDamnSJW [+2] (6 hours later)
I'd say I like the idea that every character has their own story going on, even if you can't see it. The best rational works have people other than the protagonist doing their own things, and munchkining nearly as well.
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (16 hours later)
for me, it's as simple as the fact that webfiction is free, and rationalist webfiction tends to have a decent enough grasp on grammar/spelling/syntax that I can stand to read it long enough to see whether I'm interested in the story.
u/ben_sphynx [+2] (a day later)
Actual fiction about science. Generally, what is called science fiction is not about the characters thinking in a scientific way to discover stuff about their environment.
Some of the rationalist fiction, however, has significant sections of characters working out how things work, by observing, thinking about the observations, forming a testable hypothesis, testing it, and drawing a conclusion from the results. The observations that start it all off may be fictional, but the reasoning process to get from observations through a hypothesis and experimentation is very much the process of real science, and can be very interesting.
u/Ridingh00d [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (20 hours later)
Honestly...
I realized a while ago that I can enjoy basically anything as long as the writing style is not too shit (and the writer knows how to use correct grammar & spell check). Though I do also enjoy it the same way as others here do.
So my liking of rationalist fiction is less to do with rationalist fiction and much more to do with the fact that it usually attracts at least vaguely competent writers, so I have to spend less time looking through the crap that is FF to get to the gems.
If I have to read 'instantley he instantly died' or something similar one more time...
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (20 hours later)
For me, one thing I enjoy a lot is the levels of strategy and planning you can often find in a rationalist work. In a lot of fiction, a person asks about the protagonist's childhood because he's interested, or it's backstory time, or because they want to soapbox about how terrible it is. In a rationalist work, he asks as part of a highly manipulative strategy to get you to contrast how it was with how it should have been as a larger part of his overarching plan to seduce you away to his side of the conflict.
In an average story you can read between the lines and maybe you'll find an easter egg if you're lucky, but most of the time you just find disappointment. In a rationalist story there's almost always something else going on, and if you look hard enough you can see huge churning cogs and interconnected events behind the small peephole you have the view the characters.
That, and I dislike it when characters use their resources in an ineffective or silly manner. This happens less in rationalist stories, which is nice.
u/ElGuien [+0] (4 hours later)
An interesting article you linked there ("insight porn"). Several things I want to talk about in relation to it, and this post.
Dreams ordinarily fool us; despite their incoherence, we accept them as fully real while we are in them. ...
Dreams demonstrate that our brains (and even rat brains) are capable of creating complex, immersive, fully convincing simulations. Waking life is also a kind of dream. Our consciousness exists, and is shown particular aspects of reality. We see what we see for adaptive reasons, not because it is the truth.
I am extremely interested to know to what extent this is true in your experience. From my personal experience, I don't understand how anyone can ever be fooled by a dream. I literally have never had the experience where I'm in a dream but not aware that I'm dreaming. Further, in all cases but one dreaming has been very indistinct; I can't understand how anyone could possibly be fooled into thinking they're fully awake to the extent of needing "tricks" to check. Isn't it immediately obvious?
With regard to the second point, this article: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00577/full was interesting.
Back to rational fiction. I think the general point of "insight porn" is a factor, although it's rare to find an actually new insight. It's more that it's interesting to experience different perspectives on things, and the kind of subject matter we often deal with is not common elsewhere.
I find that the quality I care about most in fiction (or any work) is that it's well thought through. This doesn't necessarily mean consistent or rational (or accurate), but rather that...Argh. I struggle to capture this concept in words. My brain is suggesting things like "high entropy" or "meaningful". It's that every element is there for a reason; carefully considered. It's like Bach's music, when he plays with a theme, and continues, and continues, and just when it would start to get repetitive, he moves on. It's when you observe someone at the pinnacle of skill: their every action is significant, every move speaks volumes. It's, I suppose, "fitness for a particular purpose," especially where that purpose is nontrivial. I'm not exactly saying that rational fiction is all like this, but there is some correlation. Similar to "rewards readers thinking," I guess; "is worth thinking about." "Amenable to analysis." You can have some confidence that there is something there, rather than "just because" arbitrariness, which often happens when people don't think things through properly.
The other major correlation is self-awareness [of characters]. I generally don't have a problem with suspension of disbelief, but I do find it difficult to sympathise with characters that don't show any evidence of self-awareness. Closely related is Yudkowsky's "spark of optimisation" of "Level I Intelligent" characters.
As to "real reasons," well, it's hard to say. All I can say is that I clearly get something out of it; my best guesses as to the "abstract" reasons are above, even if what's actually going on is rather more mundane.
(By the way, regarding insight porn: Mencius Moldbug's Unqualified Reservations was addictive reading. For what it's worth, I think his descriptive insights and general approach to analysis are an interesting perspective to keep in mind. However, his normative prescriptions are very shaky. It can be hard to separate the two; he engages in that time-honoured tradition pointed out by Hume as the is-ought problem.)
u/MugaSofer [+2] (19 hours later)
From my personal experience, I don't understand how anyone can ever be fooled by a dream. I literally have never had the experience where I'm in a dream but not aware that I'm dreaming. Further, in all cases but one dreaming has been very indistinct; I can't understand how anyone could possibly be fooled into thinking they're fully awake to the extent of needing "tricks" to check. Isn't it immediately obvious?
I think you're often semi-consciously aware that it's a dream, but definitely not all the time. I've had dreams that were literally indistinguishable from my everyday life.
Everyone's dreams are a bit different.