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[META] A case against rationalist fiction

Post:

After scrolling through all recommendation threads ever created in this sub, I have been severly disappointed by rationalist fiction as a genre. All rationalist stories I have tried to read were tripped by at least one of the following pitfalls:

Abuse of author fiat. As rationalist fiction promotes scientific method, it shows only examples of successul applications of scientific method. Which results into not only overinflated opinion of scientific method, but in boring stories too - because the moment somebody try to use it, you know that they will succeed.
Portraying use of scientific method as rational course of actions. In reality for almost every goal there is more optimal course of actions - that's why we learn scientific method at the graduate level instead of kindergarten level.
Treating results produced by application of scientific method as capable of changing persons mind. Global warming - enogh said.
Downplaying role of emotions. Despite being main motivation for most human activities, emotions often treated as sideshow because they are perceived as not rational in rationalist fiction.

In conclusion I want to emphasize that while scientific method is one of the best tools to advance humanity as a whole, it sucks at being anything that's not "tool to advance humanity as a whole".

EDIT Many members of this wonderful subreddit suggested that all of mentioned pitfalls are part of genre fiat "science works!", just like detective fiat (i.e. Sherlock Holmes can solve any case).

The counter argument is following: there is significant difference between rationalist fiction and detectives - as postulated on sidebar of this sub "The story shows rationalist techniques, which can be applied by readers".

Detectives don't tell me that I can be as discerning as Sherlock Holmes if I emulate him, while rational fiction does tell me that I can be as good as HPJEV if I study hard enough.

EDIT2 Okay guys, you win. eddyekko has made a good enough point in defense of "science works!" fiat that I'll have to reconsider some of my views on rationalist fiction. Kudos to him.

Comments:

u/None:

I'd just like to start by saying that, even though I like rational fiction, I too find Waves Arisen a bit... much; so I accept your criticisms of that one. Waves Arisen is a fic that makes rationality look a bit too overpowered.

As for the others... in HPMOR emotions do get to be very important at the latter end of the story. In fact the main difference between HPMOR!Harry and HPMOR!Voldie is emotions, and empathy and that is shown and talked about. Even Voldie (the most stereotypically rational! character in the fic) admits that his actions, which drove the whole plot, don't really stem from any rational kind of reasoning, but were entirely emotional; he was just bored. And Harry spends a lot of time in emotional distress and thinking about why people feel the way they do.

And in Origin of Species, Red's psychic powers are literally semi-crippled because of his emotions; it is one of the first stories I've seen that show grief as something you can't just magically 'get over', but rather something that has to be processed. So though it is a bit light on the emotional side, it does still do them justice.

And in most rational fiction, the scientific method is usually summarized as: Test your ideas, and make plans based on what you actually think reality looks like. And while there are usually better ways of conducting business in real life (such as just asking experts), in rational fiction these experts don't really exist or there are other reasons for not doing that. 

In HPMOR magic is full of blindspots, of which nobody Harry can access has knowledge of. In that scenario testing his own ideas actually is pretty optimal; and yet even so one of the early scenes people tend to forget about is Hermione berating Harry for thinking that he could make an original discovery so fast/for ignoring books and thinking he was smarter than the entire Wizarding World. In The Origin of Species Red is training to be a Professor; for him applying the scientific method is optimally rational, as it also provides him valuable experience. And even then Red does call Professor Oak for help fairly often.

And furthermore, HPMOR is full of Harry failing to persuade people using results gained via the Scientific Method. His inability to understand why people don't just change their minds when he presents evidence is one of his most grating character flaws (and one of most cited reasons I've seen for why people hate the fic). Some of Harry's best, most emotional moments in HPMOR is when the scientific arguments aren't working and he just doesn't get why. 

And as for the reason that the magnitude of successes outweigh the many failures... it's simple. Rational fiction is fiction. It's not about realistic-abled people trying to solve things rationally. It's about geniuses trying to change the world with nothing but their wits and whatever advantages the setting gives them. In rational fiction we are never reading about some random dude; we're always reading about the equivalents of Alexander the Great and Einstein. And in the same way Einstein failing an university exam and then going on to invent General Relativity isn't bad, Harry messing up in early trials and then inventing his own spells isn't bad either. Rational fiction has to be entertaining, it needs Crowning Moments of Awesome; no one reads fics titled Rational! to not see rationality work. 

So yes, rational fiction can be boring in the same any other genre can be boring. The moment the detective gets that 'Look in his Eye'; bam! I know that there's about to be a case solving montage. The moment the shonen anime character struggles to their feet for one final attack; boom! I know they're about to win. And so when a rational character starts trying to learn something new about the world, I know that it's most likely going to work. The fun is supposed to be in seeing where this new world-building info takes us, and trying to predict how it might affect the plot going on.

In my opinion, the best rational stories should be mysteries/conspiracy stories; half the fun of HPMOR is trying to figure out the stuff Harry doesn't know and doesn't really learn until he's told (like the Weasley Twin's Prank). A good conspiracy/mystery could actually justify all the conceits of rational fiction (a lack of abliity to ask for help/the need to collect and analyze information personally, the need for tendecy for rationality to work being made enjoyable by the unraveling of mysteries, the importance of emotions being shown via motives, etc...) and personally I find it a shame that there aren't more rational mystery stories.

But there is one; try reading Cordiceps. It doesn't ignore the importance of emotions, in it the scientific/rational method isn't always the best way, AND the mystery is interesting. It's a rationalist!story which shows how being a hardcore gungho rationalist! isn't always the best course of action, and I think it's exactly what you're looking for. 

TLDR: Try reading Cordiceps, it's a good rationalist story that tends to avoid most of the pitfalls you've outlined here.

u/Noumero:

Comprehensive post, kudos.

> Cordiceps

Link: *[CORDYCEPS: Too Clever For Their Own Good](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6178036/chapters/14154868)*.

u/None:
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:D
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u/CouteauBleu:

Oh god my head hurts now. Where am I again?

u/gbear605:

> Waves Arisen is a fic that makes rationality look a bit too overpowered.

To be fair to it, in the early chapters it explicitly states that all of his power from the Shadow Clone is only because he has the extremely lucky circumstance of A) being a demon carrier born to a demon carrier, B) being born in the only village that had the shadow clone technique, and C) being lucky enough to choose the shadow clone as the one technique to learn.

u/Noumero:

What stories, in particular, have you read?

What definition of "scientific method" are you using? In which specific situations it's irrational to use it, in your opinion?

Additionally, I would like to confirm that it's the case against rational***ist*** fiction in particular, not *rational* fiction of which rationalist fiction is a subgenre of.

u/deltashad:

> Additionally, I would like to confirm that it's the case against rationalist fiction in particular, not rational fiction of which rationalist fiction is a subgenre of.


Yes, I am against rationalist fiction not rational fiction.


> What stories, in particular, have you read?


HPMOR, Waves arisen, origin of species...



> In which specific situations it's irrational to use it, in your opinion?


IMO if you are not scientist by trade it's almost always time/cost effective to hire actual scientist than trying to figure out things yourself. That's presuming you really need to figure something out, because most of human desires easily achivable without research at all.

u/Noumero:

> Yes, I am against rationalist fiction not rational fiction.

I think you need to make that more explicit, then. There has been some [unpleasant incidents](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5jvd89/d_outsider_viewpoint_why_rational_fiction_is/) with people picking a strawman's definition of "rational fiction", then accusing all works in the genre of being inherently bad because of it. Ironically, your post as it is now may receive an irrational kneejerk-negative reaction because of it. I advice putting it in bold,

###enormous

...letters at the beginning.

That said, your complaints are sort-of circular then. Rationalist fiction shows successful use of scientific method? *Of course*, it's the entire point: rationalist fiction is fiction *about* successful use of scientific method/explicit rationality techniques, just as detective novels are about successfully solving mysteries, or superhero stories about successful superheroing.

The rest follows: rationalist fiction is likely to have a protagonist who would (even if it's cost-ineffective from some "objective" perspective) strive to use scientific method personally, and likely to have characters who would believe the results acquired this way.

Emotions... I don't think *Origin of Species* or *HPMoR* downplay them that much. Even if it seems this way, see previous point: from rationalist fiction's definition follows that it's likely to have protagonists who would suppress or put aside their emotions.

u/deltashad:

> That said, your complaints are sort-of circular then. Rationalist fiction shows successful use of scientific method? Of course, it's the entire point

Yes, but there is one significant difference between rationalist fiction and detectives - as postulated on sidebar of this sub "The story shows rationalist techniques, which can be applied by readers".

Detectives don't tell me that I can be as discerning as Sherlock Holmes if I emulate him, while rational fiction does tell me that I can be as good as HPJEV if I study hard enough.

u/Noumero:

I agree with u/Subrosian_Smithy. Techniques are valid, it's correct to use them in contexts similar to those in rationalist stories to be more effective, but it doesn't mean you would come across situations where their use is *as* effective as in rationalist stories. You can become as good at using rationality as HJPEV, but you won't magically come across an exploitable magical system because of it, just as you're unlikely to encounter your Moriarty if you become as good as Sherlock Holmes.

Rationalist stories optimize for showing off rationality, real life doesn't.

u/deltashad:

> You can become as good at using rationality as HJPEV

The only reason we know that HJPEV is good at using rationality because of his depicted successes.

So if we apply the same definition for "good at using rationality"  to us then we would have to conclude that we would never as "good at using rationality" as HPJEV because our world is not as exploitable. Q.E.D.

u/derefr:

Remember that rationalist stories are also—*almost* always—rational stories. In a rational story, you *don't* just win by author fiat; you win because the things you do would mean that you "logically should" win; you would win with high probability in most universes where you "were" that character facing that problem at that time. (Compare: win probabilities from a given board-state in chess.)

HPJEV didn't win in HPMoR *because* the story is "a story where rationalism wins." Instead, HPJEV wins because the story begins with altered axioms (highly exploitable conditions) and then proceeds along with a highly simulationist storytelling stance from there, letting things just happen as they may. The only reason HPJEV wins is because, under those particular exploitable conditions, HPJEV is the "right person for the job." The only author fiat is in choosing to focus on a character with those traits in the first place.

For an analogy: say that you create a fighting game. Say, then, that you program an AI fighter for that game. If the bot just "got lucky" and won, then narrativizing that success would be author fiat in storytelling. There's no reason to highlight that story over all the cases where the bot lost, so telling it anyway is sort of a selection effect; the "moral" it implicitly communicates is "be more like this", but whatever the audience thinks "this" was, it wasn't what helped the bot win. There's no applicability to your own life, no useful data to update on. So that's bad, in the way you're talking about here.

But if, on the other hand, the AI fighter was programmed in such a way that it can *take advantage* of the rules of the game, such that it *usually* wins given its programming, then there is no author fiat in telling a story about the program winning. The resulting story wouldn't be the result of a selection effect, it's just a central demonstration of a lesson: that under these conditions, these traits *do* help the AI—and you, if you copy them—to win. The AI is still playing by the rules of the game; and the author isn't "fudging" anything by telling the story. The only special thing that happened, was for the programmer to make the AI what it was.

The point of stories like HPMoR—similar to stories about successes in competitive tactics—is that you can learn lessons from them about what kinds of ways particular situations can be exploited to your advantage. If those situations never come up in your life, then those lessons might not be directly applicable. But if those lessons are abstract or general enough, you might be able to find *analogous* or *isomorphic* situations in your own life that can be exploited for *similar reasons*.

u/deltashad:

> For an analogy: ...

Let me extend your analogy. Ordinary fiction use author fiat to tell only about instances in which bot "got lucky" and won, rationalist fiction use author fiat to tell only about instances in which player plays only against advanced AI and lose. And that's the problem - both types of fiction give me distorted image of the world.

What's worse because of distorted image of the world, I can't apply lessons learned in HPMOR because I can never be sure how much real world is similar to it's distorted image.

u/derefr:

> I can never be sure how much real world is similar to it's distorted image

How do you mean?

If you mean that you can't be sure what *lessons* match up with the real world, that's not really a problem: rationality is rationality; it works wherever minds are trying to do logic. Unlike in detective stories, where there might be some type of evidence-gathering technique that doesn't exist in reality, there's no "fake rationality" that these stories invent, that only works in the story. The lessons of a rationalist story are applicable as long as your situation is truly congruous to the ones faced in the story.

If you mean that you can't tell whether your situation is truly congruous... I'm not sure how to help you here. Maybe I can point out that most of the tools of rationality are context-free, and just work to solve a *local* problem as long as they match the *local* context of that problem, without requiring any larger global pattern match up? (I.e. anchoring and framing effects still exist whether or not your setting contains magic or God or whatever else.)

I should mention that the *concrete* lesson probably *isn't* applicable, any more than a magical detective skill learned in a fantasy world would be, but the concrete lesson is rarely the point, and is rarely emphasized as the point in comparison to the more abstract rationality-technique that was employed to derive the concrete tactic.

So, for example: HPJEV notices an arbitrage opportunity between gold and Galleons. The real world does not have any similar longstanding arbitrage opportunity, because Galleons *are a made-up exploitable part of this setting*. But the lesson wasn't about Galleons; the lesson was about exploiting arbitrage opportunities, and that lesson *is true* even though its concrete referent in the story is made up, and in fact made to be *especially easy* to demonstrate the particular applicability of this technique to it.

Mind you, the situations in a rationalist story aren't strawmen; they don't sport exploitable flaws that have no real-world equivalent. Teaching the skill of exploiting arbitrage opportunities would be pointless if there were no real arbitrage opportunities. The ones that exist in reality (between different stock exchanges, as exploited by High-Frequency Trading, for example) are just much harder to talk about, and also much less exciting to learn about or to watch a character attempt to exploit. The examples in a rationalist story are chosen in order to make the lesson of the advantage a particular tool of rationality gives you more *salient*—**not** in order to give a character with that rationalist tool an "easy time."

u/deltashad:

As I have mentioned in redacted thread detail, I concede defeat in this particular line of discussion regarding genre fiat on "science works!"

u/Subrosian_Smithy:

I think you actually *can* be as good as HPJEV.

The problem is that HPJEV (like many other rationalist protagonists) lives in a highly exploitable universe, and most of his interactions are with people who are not as smart as he is.

The real world is much less exploitable (or at least, it has fewer easy-to-reach low-hanging fruits) and it's generally better at keeping up with you.

u/CouteauBleu:

I don't fundamentally disagree with you, but it's kind of like saying "You can be as strong as Cloud if you train hard enough, it's just that in real life giant swords are way heavier".

u/Croktopus:

well sure, but, it's not like HPMOR is telling you that the universe is realistic. in fact it points out constantly how much of an advantage harry has by talking about how scientifically illiterate its populace is

u/deltashad:

> I think you actually can be as good as HPJEV.

The problem is we know HPJEV is good only by his successes which as we have already established we are unable to replicate

u/None:

[deleted]

u/deltashad:

As have already been mentioned somewhere in the thread "The final tally of Successes to Failures is 165-172."

Coin flip chance that any my plan work out (including plans to invent something) is order of magnitude better than anything humanity has today.

u/darkardengeno:

That's not what that tally is measuring, though. If you knew you had a coin-flip chance of succeeding at anything then you would be incentivized to attempt especially difficult tasks with low probabilities of succeeding.

HJPEV, and other rationalist protagonists, pick their battles carefully. The munchkining he does is primarily based on exploiting the fact that the insular Magical Britain has not yet incorporated several key muggle discoveries. While this specifically is not a situation you are likely to encounter, the general practice of understanding where your comparative advantage lies and capitalizing on it is _very_ useful in real life.

The reason modern research is so hard is because we have so much knowledge that incredibly fine statistical tools are required to meaningfully add to it. Just a few centuries ago, though, a well-educated and well-funded polymath could make valuable original contributions to mathematics, physical science, naturalism, and philosophy in their lifetime.

So what successes, specifically, do you argue we are unable to replicate?

u/deltashad:

The issue with your arguments is that I can use them to defend massively overpowered protagonist in any shit story by saying "well it's not protagonists that is overpowered it's just protagonists happen to find himself in the underpowered world".

> Just a few centuries ago

And I wouldn't mind to read HPMOR if I was living just a few centuries ago. Just as I woudn't mind to believe in astrology if I was living just a few centures ago.

u/darkardengeno:

HPMOR _is_ set a few centuries ago, that's the point! Not chronologically, but culturally and technologically. The reason we don't tend to like overpowered protagonists is because they are narratively unsatisfying; any conflicts with them are boring and one-sided. This is not the case with HPMOR or with most rationalist fiction in my experience.

I think the core of your argument is that rationalist fiction claims to demonstrate techniques which can be applied to real life and you don't believe this claim is true.

If that's your belief, then you are wrong. The techniques Harry uses are applicable in real life, which I know because I myself have had great success in applying them! Knowing not to reject uncomfortable truths, not to throw up mental stop signs when a line of inquiry looks worrying, to make your beliefs pay rent, to investigate confusing phenomena with a scientific approach, _these_ techniques HPMOR demonstrates quite well and they have proven to be exceedingly valuable to me.

If that isn't enough for you, then what are you expecting? Our world doesn't contain magic to exploit and if it did it would probably already be well exploited. 

This brings me to what I think is the very center of the debate: rationalist fiction often contains settings with large amounts of free energy which the protagonists exploit. What is unrealistic about rationalist works is that the free energy exists in the first place (which is why most rationalist works are fanfics to provide a measure of credibility).

The appeal of rationalist works is watching that free energy be exploited by a reasonably intelligent protagonist and usually antagonist as well. It's fun to see lots of free energy get gobbled up in one go and if it is written well it will demonstrate how _we_ might best find and consume the much smaller specks of free energy in the real world. 

It does not literally promise that we will find huge troves of free energy any more than canon Harry Potter promises that if we're lucky our 11th birthday will be interrupted by a letter from Hogwarts.

u/deltashad:

> overpowered protagonists doesn't feel satisfying, while HPMOR does

Your feelings are subjective and as such don't make good argument in discussion.

> I think the core of your argument is that rationalist fiction claims to demonstrate techniques which can be applied to real life and you don't believe this claim is true.

I have this exact argument about ten time in this thread. The general conclusion in this line of discussion as I see it is that depending on your exact definition of a word 'techniques' you can be right (and I have even admitted it in EDIT2 in the details of the thread) or you can be wrong (as evidenced by several others failing to make a convincing argument with their definition of 'techniques')

>  rationalist fiction often contains settings with large amounts of free energy

I don't have a problem with amount of energy, I have a problem with form the large amount of free energy takes - namely it all takes such convinient form that can be exploited by scientific method, quick thinking or what have you.

In reality free of energy takes a lot of different forms: social unoptimality, psychological unoptimality, philosophical unoptimality, etc... So it makes me suspicious to the distribution of free energy in rationalist fiction

u/Croktopus:

>origin of species

i'll defend rationalist fiction with this one as my example then. certainly it's gonna be more specific than your complaints, but i dont think any of your complaints *really* apply to it. you can argue about whether it's the exception or the rule, but...if only 2 out of 3 are subject to your complaints, that'd be a crappy rule

>scientific method overused and treated as an automatic win

a huge sub-plot of origin of species is that not only is red trying to be a scientist, thus explaining why he uses the scientific method, but also that the results of him using the scientific method were not quite what he wanted. with charmander at the start, it was successful but not new information that he discovered, and with his actual research project the results were super underwhelming and forced him to reconsider how he was approaching the question in the first place.

i would certainly call them both successful uses of the scientific method, but they hardly solved any problems.

and throughout the story, other uses of rational tools are quite prevalent as well (goal factoring, bayesian probabilities, pre-mortems all come to mind), showing that the scientific method doesn't apply to every problem

>scientific method isnt a tool of persuasion

that's another subplot of the story as told from leaf's perspective, in terms of how entrenched people are in their ideals, and the best ways to persuade people coming from laura. the arc where she's writing about the pewter city exhibit is a great example of this point, and the continued arguments in comment sections (woah so meta) are other portrayals of how unpersuasive the scientific method can be

>downplaying role of emotions

this one sort of bothers me, because i feel like the default criticism of rationality in general is that striving to be rational is striving to have no emotions. becoming vulcans is not the goal.

but emotion is HUGE in pokemon origin of species. sometimes in terms of psychological disorders (and disorder-like things), like with red's partition or aiko's dad, but also in terms of just motivations for current activities, like blue's arrogance or impulsive decisions.

it is true that characters (red in particular) are sometimes forced to act against where their emotions would guide them, but that's also kind of the point, and not unrealistic. if im mad at someone and want to punch them in the face, i generally fight that impulse and, well, dont punch them in the face. emotions are great informers, but not great deciders, if that makes any sense. sometimes we can't help but be driven by our emotions, and that sort of thing certainly happens in rationalist fiction, but it isn't virtuous in its own right and doesn't need to be portrayed that way.

u/FeepingCreature:

Hiring people is generally pretty expensive though, no?

u/deltashad:

Yes, but it can be circumvented by hiring scientist from the coutry with small GDP per capita.

u/darkardengeno:

Have you had much success with your strategy of hiring scientists from poor countries to research unusual problems? If so, why do you think the rest of civilization has failed to capitalize on this resource?

u/deltashad:

Okay, let me rephrase what I was trying to say:

(here and below "research" = "coming up with significantly more effective than previously known scientific solution to your problem", notice distinction between "research" and making some progress and publishing papers)

Doing research is hard. Doing research is freaking hard. Doing research is so hard that doing almost anything is easier. That's why any rational human being should try doing research only as the last resort solution to any given problem.

u/melmonella:

Good thing then that I haven't seen any ratfic describe anyone doing any *proper* research then, or recommend it as a general solution to problems. It's mostly tricks humanity discovered 2-3 hundred years ago, with a dash of 50-year old science added in once in a while as a spice.

u/Croktopus:

pokemon origin of species has an original research subplot

it's shown to be very frustrating at every step and the protagonist is forced to revise his hypothesis multiple times. and after 50 chapters he still hasn't discovered what he wants to discover, all he's done is published an article that says "yeah this might sort of be the way this works, but i have no idea why or how and the correlation is super weak and there are a bunch of confounding factors and jeeze i need to do some more experiments"

u/melmonella:

Scientists cheap enough to hire easilly are usually shit enough to not be worth hiring. You aren't the only one hiring on the market.

u/None:
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u/None:

I will go down the criticism in order.

1. The scientific method is hardly omnipotent in these stories. In fact, the success rate of the characters in rationalist fiction is pretty reasonable relative to the average, largely because of the power of their adversaries. For example, HPMOR!Voldemort is several times more powerful than Canon!Voldemort, and many many times as dangerous. HPMOR!Harry might be more powerful as well, but Canon!Voldemort is incapable of arranging for the death of a single teenager, even when no one in canon takes even nominal precautions against the thousands of possible modes of attack.

2. Characters in rationalist fiction typically use the informal, generalized scientific method, essentially relying on two principles: test your ideas, and base your plans on what you expect reality to look like when you check. This is too generalized to be specifically optimal, but it is almost never net-negative. If you don't know the particular optimal strategy, it can stand in.

3.  Actually, the lack of general acceptance and use of science and rationality is frequently used as comparative advantage. To use HPMOR again, (because it is the quintessential example) Harry frequently wins because his opponents fail to think for even a moment or two. 

4. This one is just plain false. Under the HPMOR understanding of rationality, it is merely a set of tools. You use it if you have an interest in winning. The nature of that interest is orthogonal to the use of rationality. Lex Luthor in the Metropolitan Man seeks to kill an omnipotent superbeing, Bella in Luminosity/Radiance seeks to become one.

5. That is totally separate from my experience. I have found that seeing beliefs as models of expectation that respond to evidence has let me avoid many mistakes, and also to deduce what I actually think is true.

u/deltashad:

* Power of adversaries should play no role into determining success rate of the scientific method - if you are significantly more successful than you should be than there should be explanation (i.e. some precog messing with you) instead of metaexplanation (i.e. if you are not successful then you will be crushed by Voldemort)

* It can stand in, but empirically there is almost always obvious better way as evidenced by proportion of scientists in our population and by teaching scientific method at graduate level instead of kidergarten or school level.

* My point still stands. I.e. Harry easily convinces Malfoy while any real person would have whipped ten reasonable arguments against Harry results

* That's exactly my point - rationalist fiction pretends that rationality is orthogonal to everything else while in reality there are a ton of biases which influence what you research, how you research, etc

u/melmonella:

>by teaching scientific method at graduate level instead of kidergarten or school level.

I had it taught to me at school level, grade 8 or so? Possibly even earlier, I don't remember.

>My point still stands. I.e. Harry easily convinces Malfoy while any real person would have whipped ten reasonable arguments against Harry results

I'd like to hear them.

>in reality there are a ton of biases which influence what you research, how you research, etc

...gee, if only, say, hpmor ever talked about biases. Or it's author ever wrote, like, a whole book on the subject. Rationality is partly *about* recognising what biases you have and correcting for them.

u/None:

1. The power of the villains is always the outside explanation - the main characters in *Dracula* are exactly as strong, collectively, as they need to be to eke out a win against the vampire. If you put them against the vampires in Hellsing they would be ground up in seconds (see edit). If you want an inside explanation, one is provided - the characters are rationalist in an irrational world, and have the advantage that entails. The characters are always usually creative and intelligent, much more so than in standard fiction. This, incidentally is another advantage of the genre; the target market allows someone to write a character that is really smart without alienating people or relying on fake intelligence.

2. That analogy would imply that personal finance is less important than finger-painting. And again, there is a distinction between the formal method that involves peer reviewed papers and grants and what-not, and the informal method. 

3. This is one example, and one that is not analogous to real life in most circumstances. In the global warming debate, the correct side engages with the deniers, but they don't trick the deniers into deriving the results themselves. Harry can hardly be said to easily convince Malfoy. After all, Malfoy tortures him, and Draco's position at the end of the story is rather ambiguous. 

4. Exactly! The point of rationality is to limit bias. It is a set of tools designed to grind your implicit probabilistic model of the world down to the correct one. To give an example, once again, Harry selects against emotionally appealing explanations (Hermione is in a better place) in favor of harsh realities (It will take powers far beyond his to have a chance of reconstructing her).


EDIT: Before anyone says that Abraham van Helsing *does* beat Dracula in the lore of Hellsing, you know what I meant.

u/Trips-Over-Tail:

I don't know what you are reading, but rationalism is not all about the scientific method, it is about overcoming the cognitive frailties inherent to human thought that lead to making mistakes. That should include sloppy thinking like the straw Vulcan type you reference in which emotions are ignored despite being a part of our reality that needs to be taken into account (which is usually the first thing I run into when talking to someone who styles themselves as an intellectual without doing the necessary groundwork). *Pokemon The Origin of Species* has played particular attention in the story to the consequences and management of powerful emotions, with extremely varying degrees of success on the part of the characters, and yet, progress.

Furthermore, negative results in science are not a failure of the scientific method, they are valid outcomes of its successful application. It only fails to produce valid results if it is not used properly, or with incorrect assumptions (and exposing those is a part of both science and rationality). If the stories you are reading all depict characters who are somehow always able to devise correct hypotheses in advance of doing any actual investigations, then yes, that is poor rationalist fiction. That's not been my experience, however. Off the top of my head, of the rationalist stories I've read that feature application of scientific methodology (which they don't always do):

[HPMOR ](#s "Investigating the inheritance of magic: Harry's hypothesis was correct because he'd secretly run the experiment in advance before daring to use it as a tool to turn Malfoy. Therefore it was not a true hypothesis, and though the methodology was correct, it was not a genuine application of the scientific method.")

[HPMOR ](#s "Investigating how magic actually works: Every experiment Harry and Hermione could think of from the start of the story to the end brought them no closer to understanding the fundamentals of magic (for example, the relationship between specific incantation and specific effect). They had a few minor successes regarding what individual spells were acting on (ie the Comed-Tea exploiting reversed causality), but nothing regarding how magic generates these effects or how magical commands can access them.")

[Pokemon OoS ](#s "Investigating how Charmander uses the Ember move: Low-hanging fruit already known to science, Professor Oak carefully prompted Red into exercising his scientific skills to figure it out for himself: his mentor meant for him to succeed provided Red's skills were minimally competent.")

[Pokemon OoS ](#s "Investigation the relationship between psychic potency and the unknown Pokedex statistic in Spinarak:  While Red did find some correlation, it was extremely weak and the particular distribution of exceptions was such that his hypothesis of their being a direct relation could not be supported by his study. Red deals with his disappointment by reminding himself that negative results are also an important contribution to science, if rarely groundbreaking. This is reinforced when that very study earns him his Researcher's License.")

In these stories and others the main characters use other rationalist techniques that do not involve scientific research, and characters untrained in science are often depicted using such techniques or knowledge for non science applications [such as ](#s "Malfoy's social talents, Hermione's grasp of effective delegation, or Blue's adaptive battle strategy") that serve their own goals. None of them are perfect rational actors either, which means they do make mistakes, especially outside of their own particular expertise, and are not always amenable to rational arguments or scientific evidence.

[HPMOR ](#s "Though Draco Malfoy eventually capitulated, his initial response to the discovery that his Bloody Purist ideology was wrong was to paralyse Harry and curse him with a torture spell out of sheer panic.")

Ultimately, though, depicting characters being successfully persuaded by rational argument or scientific evidence isn't for the purpose of celebrating rationality and science, it is for the purpose of establishing those particular characters as rational actors in their own right who can contribute rational actions (or at least understandably flawed attempts at rational actions) to the story.

I should also think that reserving understanding of applied scientific methodology for graduate level education is wholly irrational, responsible all by istelf for a wealth of the world's ills and displaying an abject contempt for human ability. Overcoming our biases and cognitive frailties is a difficult and life-long effort, but learning how to do proper science could easily be taught in the early teens, or even before ten. The statistics is harder, but the practice and habits of thought could easily be drilled much earlier. Just about all rationalist fiction requires that you buy into this premise, as much as fantasy requires you accept magic or science fiction demands you to accept FTL travel. Even if you don't agree, you can chalk that part up to the "fiction" side of things.

u/ben_oni:

You were right the first time. Rational*ist* fiction sucks. I don't think the problem is intrinsic to the definition, just that the people producing it don't really know how at this point in time. As the amount of such fiction increases, we'll have larger sample sizes demonstrating what does and doesn't work, and the quality should rise naturally.

u/eaglejarl:

> EDIT2 Okay guys, you win. eddyekko has made a good enough point in defense of "science works!" fiat that I'll have to reconsider some of my views on rationalist fiction. Kudos to him.

Wow.  That is fantastic -- very few people are willing to be convinced of anything, so kudos.

I'm obviously late to the party, but I would like to add a couple of points to the debate for potential future readers:

First, I think it's important to define 'science' and 'scientific method' up front.  Rationalist stories generally use an informal definition of the 'scientific method' that is simply "Make a hypothesis about how the world works, then test it."  (Note that "testing your hypothesis" might mean asking an expert instead of doing an experiment.)  That's a thing that works for everyone, reader and character alike.  I don't remember ever seeing a rational/ist work that showed the more formal process of science that involves double-blind randomized studies and statistical analysis.  If you're using the formal definition then I absolutely agree with your point that "In reality for almost every goal there is a more optimal course of actions [than using the formal scientific method that involves double-blind randomized studies and statistical analysis]."  I don't see how you can debate that the *informal* definition is non-optimal since the only alternatives are magical thinking and purely random behavior.  

Second, anthropic principle applies to essentially every story, rational/ist or not.   Biographies aren't written about Joe Sixpack, they're written about Albert Einstein and Muhammed Ali; likewise, fiction isn't written about TvWatcherGuy, it's written about someone who has an interesting idea and runs with it, or an unusual ability and uses it, or an unusual and funny set of circumstances,  etc.  If you ding rationalist stories because the hero is above average then you would need to ding every story in every genre.  The way I think of it is that that every story gets one Suspension of Disbelief token to spend on its premise and must be judged by what comes after that.  The token might be spent on "there is a galactic civilization linked by FTL drives that violate our current understanding of physics" and then you would judge the story on how well it worked within that frame.

u/CouteauBleu:

I feel that everyone who answers this is going to / did put a list of nitpicks *a la* "rationalist fiction definitely can't have the problems you mention (or if it has them they're not that bad) because [nitpick] and [other nitpick] and this one time in HP:MoR Harry *failed* at something" (I'm caricaturing, I love you guys), but I definitely think you've hit part of a larger problem.

I'm a little put off by the Science chapters in HP:MoR for the reasons you mention, and I didn't really like the way Origin of Species handled it either. (I don't remember what was the science-related thing I read in Origin of Species, and I'm not going to dig for quotes, btw).

On the other hand, you could maybe have picked a less click-bait-y title to make your point :P

u/NebulousASK:

For your first point, try Luminosity.  It's an excellent example of how rationality doesn't guarantee success.

u/deltashad:

That's exactly the problem - while there are some works which avoid some of the mentioned pitfalls, I have yet to see story which avoid all of them.

u/Trips-Over-Tail:

If you know of any author, especially non-professional writers, who manage to avoid every pitfall and cliche in writing and genre fiction, by all means, show me My New God.

u/melmonella:
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Um. I mean. Book 2?
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u/None:

This is an old thread, but I'll put this up:

People who put their stocks in rational fiction are, more often than not, people who don't have a life. Your audience is basically people who live the world through the internet and books, piling things up from the lens of a ubiquitous observer rather than someone who is muck-deep in the shit. It's basically the peanut gallery being given a foot in the story.

A mind into the average rational fiction consumer can be displayed by the people who make "How I'd Survive \[Movie X\]" videos.

The argument against rational fiction as a whole can be made with the instance of a fender bender. If your first reaction isn't "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT" and instead "I have my insurance memorised and a call reference in my pocket", then rational fiction is for you.

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[META] A case against rationalist fiction

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