scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/7mvsux.md

[D] Rationalist fiction that takes place in the real world

• Author: u/LieGroupE8 ***

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7mvsux/d_rationalist_fiction_that_takes_place_in_the/

• Score: 49

• Created: 2017-12-29T17:50:33

Post:

I find it interesting that despite being a genre which values realistic problem solving techniques, there is no work of "rationalist fiction" that takes place entirely in the real world, devoid of magic or future tech. (As far as I know - recommendations welcome!) I can think of several reasons for this:

1. The real world is hard to exploit. If a character goes off and makes a million dollars by doing something smart, there would always be the lingering question of why, if this actually worked, the author has not already done this for real instead of writing fiction.

2. The real world destroys plot. Plots tend to be unrealistic by nature. A good plot is supposed to have twists and turns, an interesting antagonist, a crescendo to climax, and a falling action that returns things to a calm but significantly changed state. In reality, there are often no climaxes or specific antagonists, just slowly aggregating trends and ever-insidious entropy.

3. Reality is hard to get right. If you build your own magical world, you know everything about it, but if you write about real things, you have to learn real physics, real history, real geography, and so on. Even works that supposedly take place in the real world have little reality-defying caveats; for example, blunt-force trauma to the head in almost literally any work of fiction is just a knock-out button that causes no permanent damage. In reality, it can cause serious brain damage, permanent facial disfigurement, and a visit to the intensive care unit.

4. Exploiting magical or sci-fi worlds is just superfun, and ever since HPMOR, people have been trying to recapture the fun.

That being said, I think a skilled author could overcome these problems. Here are some solutions:

1. By the anthropic principle of storytelling ("If a story is not interesting, we don't tell it"), you are allowed to impose improbable boundary conditions on your story, and also throw in a few bits of luck here and there when it is plausible. For example, you could write about a character who has just stumbled upon a million dollars buried in the woods, and starts using this to their maximal advantage. The initial conditions of the story are not replicable by deliberate action, so there is no question of why the author has not gone and done this. Alternatively, instead of focusing the story on munchkining, you can put the focus on the character's mindset and how they deal with ordinary problems effectively. Most of the fun of HPMOR was seeing how Harry approached problems in his mind; there is no reason this couldn't work for a character navigating family problems instead of wizard problems.

2. An interesting plot can also be forced by adjusting the boundary conditions of the story. Maybe the million dollars found in the woods was hidden by a defecting mafioso who tried to flee and was subsequently killed; now, led by a cunning godfather, the mafia is looking for their lost money that the character has unfortunately already spent. There: now you have an interesting antagonist and a realistic narrative climax (the inevitable escape/gunfight). Alternatively, if the story is primarily about the characters' thoughts, shift the climax inward to be a moment of epiphany, like the beginning of the final arc of HPMOR.

3. Reality is hard to get perfectly right, but not too hard to get mostly right. You only have to learn physics if you insist that the plot must heavily involve technology or grandiose action sequences. Otherwise, you can get away with just having realistic characters and social situations. That's still hard, but it's hard in every story, not just stories that take place in the actual world.

4. Finally, a skilled author should be able to make a story interesting and worthwhile no matter what universe it takes place in.

Many classic authors excel at this. I recently finished reading The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, which I would argue falls firmly in the category of rational fiction as defined by the sidebar. Yes, many of the characters are irrational, but their intricate psychologies are some of the most realistic and well-developed I've seen. The characters are curious about their nature and their purpose; they reason about philosophy and apply it to their own lives; they think about what other characters are thinking, and what other characters are thinking that they are thinking. The character of Ivan devises an entire worldview, a genuinely scathing criticism of religion manifested as "The Parable of the Divine Inquisitor." Later, he is tormented by brilliant and devious characters of his own mental creation in a scene that reminded me of how HJPEV interacted with his own mental projections. (Not that the character of Ivan is anything like HJPEV; he's not, but some aspects of him were good examples.)

If you're thinking that I'm mostly describing "good fiction" at this point, rather than specifically "rational fiction," I agree. I would argue that the part of the sidebar on this subreddit labeled "characteristics of rational fiction" is in fact just a set of characteristics of any good fiction. The real distinguishers, some of them at least, lie under the "Rationlist" fiction label. For me, what distinguishes "rational" and "rationalist" fiction from other fiction is subject matter and intensity. "Rational(ist) fiction" has a certain special obsession with optimality, competence, and correct epistemology, just as pornography is obsessed with graphic descriptions of sex. Its characters smolder with that unwavering transhumanist intensity, that desperate craving of understanding, that brutal self-standard of utter competence.

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(These were some thoughts I had while outlining a rationalist short story that takes place in the real world, that I will hopefully get around to writing someday.)

((I also have a bunch of silly rational-ish one-shot parodies of popular movies and TV shows, which I may get around to finishing and posting here sooner or later, but my ultimate goal is to sharpen my writing skills and produce a serious real-world story.))

(((And then, someday, when I'm a good enough writer, I will write a serious Megamorphs recursive fanfic of Animorphs: The Reckoning, and my life's purpose will be complete.)))

Comments:

u/GaBeRockKing [+30] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (4 hours later)

The lack of rational fiction about the real world exists for the simple reason that it's unnecessary. If you want to read a rational story set in the real world, there's a superabundance of rational nonfiction because all stories about people in the real world, with the sole exception of those about people with impaired judgement, feature

• Nothing happening solely because 'the plot requires it'. (because there is no plot)
• factions defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil". (because there exists no objective "good" and "evil", religion notwithstanding.)
• Characters solving problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources. (characters aren't always intelligent, but, barring impaired judgement, do see to fulfil their values as best as they can, to the limits of their understanding of what "best they can" is.)
• A world with consistent rules. (self-evident)

Where fiction shines, with relation to the real world, is deliberately non-rational tales, using the real world to boost character relatability, but fixing all those pesky issues like "lack of objective truth", and "not finding meaning in our short tragic lives" to maximize wish fulfillment.

u/LieGroupE8 [+2] ** (7 hours later)

it's unnecessary

Where fiction shines, with relation to the real world, is deliberately non-rational tales

Disagree. I mean, all fiction is "unnecessary." I expect that real-world rationalist fiction has much less widespread appeal than alternatives, which is why it doesn't really exist [yet]. But if people are willing to read classic Dostoevsky novels set in the real world, I'm sure some people will be perfectly happy reading real-world rationalist novels.

u/GaBeRockKing [+12] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (9 hours later)

The thing is, if you're looking for rational literature, history is as rational as it gets. No writer can better simulate the real world than it can simulate itself. A perfectly rational piece of real-world fiction looks identical to a well written biography anyways.

u/LieGroupE8 [+5] ** (9 hours later)

“Rational”, sure, “rationalist” with HJPEV-like characters, no. Maximally fun and interesting given the constraints, no.

u/GaBeRockKing [+10] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (9 hours later)

“rationalist” with HJPEV-like characters, no.

"Rationalist" still-yes. Just choose biographies about mathematicians or scientists.

Now, HJPEV-like characters aren't particularly common, but that's also because HPJEV-characters aren't particularly believable anyways. If they were, they'd show up more often in non-fiction works.

Maximally fun and interesting given the constraints, no.

To maximize fun, you have to contravene "nothing happens because the plot demands it" or it's just functionally identical to a well-written nonfiction work anyways, so you might as well just read non-rational works of fiction about the real world.

u/LieGroupE8 [+4] ** (10 hours later)

you might as well just read non-rational works of fiction about the real world.

I mean, I think you should read both? But you often won’t find a real-world biography that turns out to be the kick-ass autobiography of a brilliant, transhumanist mathematician who finds a million dollars in the woods and has to fight the mafia with his wits, while coming to interesting philosophical realizations that the reader can apply to daily life. Even though this could in principle happen in real life. I stand by the things I have previously said.

u/GaBeRockKing [+6] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (10 hours later)

But you often won’t find a real-world biography that turns out to be the kick-ass autobiography of a brilliant, transhumanist mathematician who finds a million dollars in the woods and has to fight the mafia with his wits, while coming to interesting philosophical realizations that the reader can apply to daily life

Well yeah, but you'll find zero fictional works with those (or rather, similar) qualities that also manage to be rational/ist. I'm not saying you can't find rational/ist works that are also good stories, but you can't find rational/ist works that are also good stories that also stick to the consistent set of rules set by the real world. Because with the real world, the vast majority of stories end up being boring, depressing, or both unless you only tell the stories that are interesting. Writing fiction, you make the story interesting by force, effectively removing any claims to rationality unless you had specifically set up the universe's rules so as to generate interesting stories. And that's why rational fiction sticks to non-real-world-scenarios; that's why they come with a "gimme". It allows writers of those stories to set up their self-consistent world so as to guarantee that, however they write their story, it end up being of interest.

u/LieGroupE8 [+2] ** (10 hours later)

I address this in the main post. Setting up improbable boundary conditions to a real-world story is functionally isomorphic to setting up the ridiculous, ad-hoc laws of physics that you see in most of the stories around here. But,

but you can't find rational/ist works that are also good stories that also stick to the consistent set of rules set by the real world

Challenge accepted.

u/TK17Studios [+12] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (6 hours later)

I have a story that I am writing, that I care about approximately 3x as much as I care about r!Animorphs. It is set in the real world. It was not explicitly meant to be rational, but three separate readers each independently claimed to me that it was more rationalist than r!Animorphs, and one of those readers claimed it produced a similar reality-clarifying effect on his cognition as HPMOR.

So. Uh. There's that, which I'll pick up again once r!Animorphs wraps, hopefully no later than summer.

u/LieGroupE8 [+6] ** (6 hours later)

Assuming you're going to post that here, I look forward to reading it.

u/DCarrier [+10] (14 hours later)

I've written a post on The Goal, which is rationalist and takes place in the real world.

1. If a character goes off and makes a million dollars by doing something smart, there would always be the lingering question of why, if this actually worked, the author has not already done this for real instead of writing fiction.

Here's his Wikipedia page. From the sound of it, that's exactly what he did. He was a consultant. He told companies how to have better business practices, and wrote books about it like The Goal.

2. The real world destroys plot. Plots tend to be unrealistic by nature. A good plot is supposed to have twists and turns, an interesting antagonist, a crescendo to climax, and a falling action that returns things to a calm but significantly changed state. In reality, there are often no climaxes or specific antagonists, just slowly aggregating trends and ever-insidious entropy.

The antagonist was the slowly aggregating trends and ever-insidious entropy. The main character was the floor manager of a factory that was doing great on paper but losing money. He had to find all the ways they shot themselves in the foot and fix them. Maybe some people find that less interesting that killing an evil wizard, but I thought it was awesome.

3. Reality is hard to get right. If you build your own magical world, you know everything about it, but if you write about real things, you have to learn real physics, real history, real geography, and so on. Even works that supposedly take place in the real world have little reality-defying caveats; for example, blunt-force trauma to the head in almost literally any work of fiction is just a knock-out button that causes no permanent damage. In reality, it can cause serious brain damage, permanent facial disfigurement, and a visit to the intensive care unit.

It was mostly fairly abstract. They never said what the factory actually made. Few of the machines involved were named, and the ones that were often didn't have descriptive names. But those details don't matter. He was making a bunch of different products by doing a bunch of different things with a bunch of machines in a certain order and selling the result. Everything else was based around that.

4. Exploiting magical or sci-fi worlds is just superfun, and ever since HPMOR, people have been trying to recapture the fun.

Perhaps, but The Goal was written to educate first and to entertain second. This isn't something I found out about through Archive of Our Own. This is something I found out through my brother who had it as assigned reading for his MBA. And I think part of the reason I loved it so much is seeing clear rational fiction outside of the LessWrong sphere.

u/pje [+1] (5 days later)

Kind of cool that it's MBA reading now; I remember when it was controversial. Goldratt wrote a bunch of sequels, including Critical Chain, It's Not Luck, and Isn't It Obvious? -- and those are just his novels. All very nice examples of "real world" rational fiction and munchkining, with ways that ordinary society has almost been as dumb (in retrospect) as the wizarding world, in missed optimization opportunities.

u/Kishoto [+17] (23 minutes later)

This is a very well developed and thought provoking post. I agree with many of the things you said.

I'd like to add that I believe that's the reason that rational works tend to mostly be fanfictions. It's easier to take a world someone gives you (especially a world designed to be cool, entertaining and interesting over sensible) and be like "Oh, this and that doesn't make sense. Here's what the story could look like if it did!"

Mind, I still wouldn't go so far as to say it's easy, in and of itself, but I do think it's much easier than trying to do a rational take on reality since that's kinda just...reality. Lol.

u/Veedrac [+24] (an hour later)

It's not really that reality is hard to exploit. It's that the real world has already been munchkin'd.

Starting afresh gives you a ton of low-hanging fruit.

u/LieGroupE8 [+9] ** (an hour later)

Which is why real-world rationalist fiction would need to be driven by strong, smart, self-actualizing characters in unusual situations, rather than systematic munchkining.

u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (2 hours later)

I recommend Ken Follet books, and other historical fiction / spy thrillers. The Century trilogy is a good starting point.

Though Ken Follet books bend reality a bit by having their characters meet each other and witness historical events a smidge more often than plausible. Like, in A Column of Fire, how plausible is it really that the head of Secret Services grew up in the same town as the leader of Catholic opposition in England, married the spymaster of Protestant opposition in Paris (who happens to be the ex-wife of the Duke of Guise's right-hand man), and that the latter two also met each other several times for unrelated reasons?

You're only limited to sci-fi if you want all your conflicts to be about incredible things. Real life has plenty of optimizing, and you can make interesting stories writing about them.

(a thought that comes is you could probably make interesting stories riffing on Wildbow stories, keeping the social elements, and removing the fantastical parts)

u/RadiantLegacy [+1] *Devastatingly Intelligent * (a day later)

Fantastical parts? Wildbow has very few 'plot twists' that go without a completely rational explanation. A prime example is Twig.

u/CouteauBleu [+1] We are the Empire. (a day later)

I meant fantastical as in "magic" or "biotech" or "superpowers".

u/trekie140 [+3] (3 hours later)

I think What I Learned at SRU qualifies as rationalist if you think of the characters as wanting to optimize the happiness of themselves and their friends. It’s a slice of life dramedy about college students who think critically about themselves and their relationships, emphasizing their psychology and communication.

u/LieGroupE8 [+3] ** (4 hours later)

Thanks (to all past and future commentators) for the comments and recommendations!

u/serge_cell [+2] (5 days later)

Genghis Khan biography can be seen as rational story. From empoverished noble birth warrior to ruler of half of the world. More like Quirell from HPMOR, his rationality was destructive. Using enforced conscription of conquered people into kind of penal companies for human wave attacks ("Hashar"), absorbing whatever war tech he can get his hands on (including early rockets), complete genocide of conquered people if it was advancing his goals, religious tolerance because it was profitable. Discipline, organization, tactic of his troops were rivaling early modern armies. Like evil genius of rationalism.

u/RMcD94 [+1] (14 hours later)

Alternative history self inserts are kind of like that.

Indeed historical nonfiction is at least coherent, and alternative history replicates much of that. There's no good or bad guy, characters aren't rational of course but they all operate in accordance with their internal interests

u/EthanCC [+1] (2 days later)

I don't think #2 should be a problem since rational works should have things happen for real reasons, even at the expense of plot; I think the main reason rational works in the real world don't happen is because of #4: it's boring, compared to magic and supernatural stuff. Why not just read nonfiction? Also, the low hanging fruit has already been picked as far as discoveries go so no finding out new things. There is the potential for spy novels, detective stories, political thriller, etc which already exist as genres since that's something that the author may not have been born in the right time/place to do or decided not to pursue a career in, which is why they are a writer and not a politician to explain #1. As for #3, you don't have to get everything right. If you're doing a Cold War era spy thriller, then you can research the technology, but you don't need to know modern classified technology since the audience probably won't know it either.

u/gregx1000 [+1] (12 hours later)

I can think of one example of rational real world fiction: House of Cards (at least the first two seasons as that's all I've watched and can vouch for). All the characters have constant motivations and the protagonist is able to use that for manipulating them in a realistic fashion. It's one of the reasons I enjoyed the show so much I think.

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