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Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

I'm slowly coming to the highly unpopular view that all fiction is essentially a lie, and therefore damaging. Your brain does not distinguish meaningfully between truth and fiction, at an emotional level. Yes, you can tell stories that capture some sort of essential truth - but writers don't typically hold themselves terribly closely to that standard, and in any case the time is better spent telling of things that actually happened. Every mutilation applied to actual events - in the service of making them supposedly more entertaining - clouds our understanding of them. And it's done on purpose! Inglourious Basterds is an abomination, a deliberate cognitohazard.

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Well... If you also come around to the view that most nonfiction is fiction too... you might find yourself in a pretty nihilistic place.

Those depictions of butterflies are intended to be nonfiction.. naturalism. A precise and true representation of butterflies, an artistic culture that people like Darwin were steeped in.

I was going to reply something similar. We dont have access to much thermodynamic truth and the vast majority of our experience is fictionalised in one way or another when it is later described.

That's a good reason why archaeologists are so keen on digging in garbage. Garbage doesn't lie as much as the written word.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden

The garbage itself may not lie, but the process of turning garbage into history is still storytelling. It's very hard to escape. Most anything meaningful, to us, is a story.

A fully empirical/popperian approach to knowledge isn't workable. Or rather, it's extremely sparse. You have to accept that you know almost nothing.

Well, I guess the full empirical approach would involve a lot of betting and prediction markets?

If you watch or read any business news, people always readily invent just-so stories about why the stock market moved this way or that. So that's the effect you are describing in full effect.

But making many (hopefully successful) predictions in a row is a good yardstick to keep yourself honest buy. See also Slatestarcodex's annual predictions and scoring. Or Bryan Caplan's string of bets.

(Btw, as long as you are not trying to outguess the markets, it's almost too easy to make mostly successful predictions: just predict whatever the market predicts.)

Any reason you're singling out Inglourious Basterds in particular?

In general, though, I do not believe that this problem is at all limited to the kind of art that we commonly dub as "fiction". For example, in the 19th century, travel diaries of colonial "explorers" were a very popular form of literature consumed by the educated classes in the colonial metropole, and they consisted almost entirely of distortions, willful or accidental omissions and often outright lies. Yet, they helped shape the view the West has of "oriental" cultures and peoples, with many of these cliches persisting even to the current age (i.e. "Orientalism").

Therefore, following your logic, all scientific works are damaging.

Any reason you're singling out Inglourious Basterds in particular?

Embellishing stories has kind of a social function: to sugar-coat our vision of life. Reality is scary.

When the author presents a blatant lie just because, it's only annoying. At least for me, that movie and the last one are a scam. Sure, there must be a "profound" explanation of director's intentions.

Most children quickly develop an appreciation for the distinction between things clearly delineated and presented as fiction before they hit double digits of age. It’s quite peculiar to accuse artists of trying to scam you. Have you ever played a video game? What do you think of them?

Not sure the source but there is a rule in fiction that everything has a purpose, as opposed to reality. If the camera stops in an axe, you can be sure someone is going to wield it later.

There is no purpose in those alternate realities, other than being a sadistic fantasy, as another comment points to. Tarantino's universe is very familiar to me. It's based on the series B (or worse) films that we watched as teens.

There is an interesting exploration in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill of the obsessive thoughts that old movies raised presenting extreme situations.

I do enjoy goofy details like Uma Thurman in the plane with a katana in the hand luggage. But this is part of the assumed over-the-top tone. Like you said, it's clearly delineated and presented as fiction. The others not so much. A counterfactual historic movie? Now it seems I'm supposed to learn about the plot before watching the movie, or just avoid Tarantino, because I've had enough of that bs.

> Not sure the source but there is a rule in fiction that everything has a purpose, as opposed to reality. If the camera stops in an axe, you can be sure someone is going to wield it later.

That's from Anton Checkov.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun

The authors stated intention was to depict a widely held, indulgent, sadistic fantasy.

time is better spent telling of things that actually happened

How do you know what actually happened outside of your direct experience? Anything that occurred outside the direct experience of a still-living human is known only through the stories people at the time told each other about it: incomplete, imperfectly remembered, biased towards the accounts of survivors who lived to tell their stories or those powerful enough to have their voices heard, even when all involved have the best of intentions of an accurate retelling. Unless the event made a sufficient impact on the physical world (which is itself going to be a very incomplete picture of events) then events older than ~80 years are accessible to us only through such stories.

If you think deliberate fiction is damaging because the human mind doesn't fully distinguish it from truth, even when it knows it to be fiction, then you must hate accounts of "what actually happened" even more: They are often incorrect and yet label themselves as truth, so the human mind is even more likely to take as "truth" something that is incorrect. If the human mind does not always distinguish fiction clearly, then it is even less capable of discerning incorrect accounts of what actually happened from those that are more accurate.

Let's take Inglorious Bastards as an example: What is more damaging, a dark comedy that presents itself as a fiction loosely inspired by actual events? Or a selective sampling of events that presents itself as the truth in denying events like the Holocaust-- something made ever more possible as time passes and those with direct experience die off?

Butterflies in this case are an excellent example of the problems of non fiction as well: The dead butterflies accurately depict what a butterfly looks like by using a pose that shows its full detail a bit better. But in providing that detail it loses the nuance of how a butterfly would look in the wild. And yet a pose from the the wild would give less information about its full visual detail, and no single pose from the wild could fully encapsulate its natural state. This is for one small living thing that we can observe now, today. How much more incomplete of a picture must we have of older events?

If you are disregarding fiction for the reasons you gave, you must also disregard nearly all aspects of prior accounts of human events as being similarly flawed and even more pernicious for their claims of being the truth.

Always fun to type up a 10 minute reply on my phone only to find after I post it that someone has said essentially the same core thing hours previously. ;)

We'll, we're mostly tech folks or appreciative of tech: we don't mind, and even encourage, a few levels of redundancy :)

In this case you never know what will get noticed an upvoted to the attention of others. Some repetition for of various viewpoints, especially when made with different nuances, is a good thing.

Fiction (/well-written fiction at least) is an artform, like music or, um, art, or even design you know? It’s a communication medium meant (amongst other things) to convey something of the human experience that is perhaps intangible or illogical. Fiction is normally very honest and open about not being factual. I take your point though that when people take fictions as truth, whether through the reader’s ignorance, or the writer’s misrepresentation, that can be extremely problematic - that is not the fault of fiction I would argue though, but rather of the context/audience that receives it/the manner in which they interpret it (I suppose there are exceptions like parodies/eg. ‘War Of The Worlds’ or something?). I currently read much less fiction than I used to when I was a kid (my mum was an English teacher), but I can assure you that my brain is almost always perfectly capable of distinguishing between the two on some level. I may choose to suspend my disbelief or feel feelings prompted by the material, but am simultaneously aware that this is not objective reality. I agree with your point though that much fiction/fictionalised material that has been interpreted as real has caused much damage - people really like stories (isn’t this an inherent part of our psychology?) and tend to inevitably construct them around even the most dispassionate material (in the same way we tend to anthropomorphise stuff I guess?). Trick is we need some training to help us ‘read’ media with a questioning/‘between the lines’ sort of rationale/focussed attention/looking for bias/manipulation/being self-aware etc etc…

Not all fiction is attempting to tell a story and pass it off as realistic. A lot of fiction is deliberately and transparently fantasy. A lot of fiction is also metaphorical.

> I'm slowly coming to the highly unpopular view that all fiction is essentially a lie, and therefore damaging.

Does nobody read with a critical eye? I know sometimes I have to give up on a story or series if the things I'm asked to accept pass a boundary, and they're kept consistent.

> Every mutilation applied to actual events - in the service of making them supposedly more entertaining - clouds our understanding of them.

It's impossible to convey with absolute accuracy any event. I would hazard that any representation no matter how accurate it tries to be will be riddles with inaccuracies or assumptions that are represented through bias.

We're screwed from the outset because we're incapable of accepting all the possible stimuli of a situation (and so are recording devices), and any event is also only a part in a series which adds context.

To that you add that it's impossible to impart your own experience without bias (and the imparting of personal experience is the only way to get details other than what we can record automatically), which adds quite a bit to any event.

Everything is something we're getting through a skinner box, and whether marketed as fact or fiction, you have to make choices on what is true or not. Painting fiction with a broad brush as negative likely won't help in the end. All you're doing is taking the inputs that tell you up front they're not necessarily true in the sense of real events (even if they may try to make you think about fundamental things in ways you didn't consider, which is useful) and removing them to prioritize things that are also untrue in some way, but don't have the decency to own up to it.

"Inglourious Basterds is an abomination, a deliberate cognitohazard."

I have to strongly disagree here. Since it was soo absurd, it was obviously a work of fiction. A surreal funny one at that. A gang of jews that blows up Hitler? Yes, a movie can do that. Anyone taking it literal, has definitely other problems in life.

But I do have a problem with movies, that pretend to be historical authentic - but are not. And are therefore effectivly rewriting history. And sadly most, if not all "historic" hollywood productions fall into that category.

This is where I see the problem - when the lines get blurry.

Thankfully, with the recent increase in the popularity of documentary series, people can see two separate takes of an event, for select events, which make it more obvious to the common person the liberties that are taken to make a good movie compared to tell an accurate story.

If we're all lucky, more people will start realizing that it doesn't stop at Hollywood, and there's no reason to expect the documentary was absolutely correct and without bias either (in some respects documentaries can be much worse since they often purport to be unbiased and correct).

I think the poster is argumenting that even if you recognize it as pure fiction, it still affects you emotionally as if real, at least a little bit.

Yes, it is a real story and real stories should affect emotionally. Otherwise no one would want to see a movie. That is part of good storytelling.

It is just not a real historic story and it does not aim to be one. So I do take a bit offense at the characterization from the parent poster as a abomination.

I actually share some of the sentiment - that it is not wise to numb and confuse the mind only with fiction. But fantasy and fiction is a very core part of what makes us human. Or do you take offense that your dreams at night are not real? Having fantasy and imagination is a good thing. It only becomes problematic when people cannot seperate fantasy from reality anymore. And yes, that is a big problem.

>all fiction is essentially a lie

That's why it's fiction.

You can come the other side and accept that all stories, fiction or not, are pure cultural constructions, and choose ones that benefit you on a daily basis.

Some stories will help you overcome chalenges in your life, others will nurture your respect for people, others remind you people you love.

You choose the lies you believe in, hopefully you find ones that help you live your life.

How would you recommend exploring truths that may end up being too politically charged to explore except through fiction? For some time the only way LGBTQ+ and race relations explorations could only occur through fiction. (Arguably, exploring the trans experience can often be limited to exploration through fiction.)

Perhaps look farther afield?

Eg race relations were pretty bad in the US, but in the UK, culturally still pretty accessible, a black person could always use money to buy status.

I still think in the UK there was limited appetite for nonfiction accounts of racism of UK people. (There may still be limited appetite for effusively positive nonfiction about Travelers, or general nonfiction about the Troubles that may be taking “a side”.)

>effusively positive nonfiction

"Effusively positive" sounds like it would be deliberately distorting reality in order to present a point. I'm sure there's plenty of appetite for accurate documentaries about Travelers.

> "Effusively positive" sounds like it would be deliberately distorting reality in order to present a point. I'm sure there's plenty of appetite for accurate documentaries about Travelers.

One of the Assassin‘s Creed games has an exploration mode, and if you walk by one of the outdoor “classrooms” the narrator will explain that while they show boys and girls learning together, the reality was that only boys were present in the schools, and that the creators here specifically chose to show the way it “should have been“.

They spent some unknown amount of money on this major feature that toured all around their map, tons of real photos and documentary about how they captured the feel, interviews with historians… centering on historically accurate, but when it came to controlling their own wokeness for a second, they had to present the “effusively positive“.

I don’t care what they do, but it was an admission that they didn’t really care about nonfiction, and made me untrustful of the remaining content.

I don't know, seems like a reasonable compromise to explain what changes they made?

> LGBTQ+ and race relations explorations

Every time I watch a fictional movie about some social issue I ask myself: I've just watched an imaginary story that never happened played by actors who actually never experienced it. Now what?

Consider that maybe the social issue has lived experiences that couldn’t be safely explored in nonfiction, or maybe the importance such as being validated that your personal experience isn’t a delusion wasn’t for you.

Additionally chances are that with the way progressive pushes are going (blackface/yellowface/white actors playing nonwhite characters is swiftly going out of style) the actors may actually experience the themes being explored. I’m pretty sure black people playing black people in movies about black race relations may have personal experiences with such!

> (blackface/yellowface/white actors playing nonwhite characters is swiftly going out of style)

We now only have to make sure the chess players are impersonated by real FIDE masters and Queen Elizabeth by someone who has at least 1/8th royal blood.

I’d suggest that to understand this matter in more detail, watching Rashomon might be useful —- but that basically tanks your argument.

The fact that our brains can recall fantasy as reality is a form of "misattribution". It's only one of many ways that our memories are inaccurate, to speak nothing of the various biases and inaccuracies that are incorporated even in the most faithful attempts at recording or reporting factual stories.

To paraphrase a common aphorism - all stories are false, but some are useful.

I hate just dropping a wall of quotes, but I also don't want to say the same thing in more and worse words... so I put my response on pastebin as a compromise ^^ https://pastebin.com/L18AvH13

The Big Brother one was jarring. Too much.

> I'm slowly coming to the highly unpopular view that all fiction is essentially a lie…

This isn't just "not unpopular" but universally, intrinsically understood.

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” ― Pablo Picasso

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZZBfZyJ-2s

> …and therefore damaging.

This claim that "all fiction is damaging" is inconceivable to me. How does one develop empathy if one is incapable of imagining anything other than what they've directly experienced?

Okay, Plato, I guess we should ban poetry for corrupting the youth...

Of course all fiction is a lie.

All words are a lie. All narratives are built of symbols and cliches and agreed upon fictions in an attempt to point to reality. Reality is a thing we cannot touch or experience directly and is always filtered by our tools, experiences and perceptions. Even math might be merely a model, one where we convince ourselves integers actually exist (where does one thing become separate from another when reality seems to be built of atoms with probabilistic shells of elections and waves of electromagnetic interactions?)

As for being harmful? Well, fiction and non-fiction narratives are all powerful tools for shaping how we perceive of our reality. They can be harmful or helpful. Some of our favorite fictions are things like justice, freedom, liberty, or any conception that we all have rights.

Additionally, when we tell fictions we are crafted a world we can aspire to. We make gods and heroes to imagine what it would be like to be better. We make villains and demons to remind us of what we should avoid. Without these I do not believe we would be in a better place. One could even call these noble lies.

Of course, this does mean fiction can be dangerous and should be selected carefully. Ayn Rand has a peculiarly powerful hold over people because her fictions are good at making a deep impression on people. Vacation Bible Schools and overtly Christian education are aimed at controlling the narrative young minds receive. Then there's the constant mythologizing of history done to legitimize modern political stances (e.g. Civil War was some sort of lost cause about state's rights, Mayflower was the first "real" colony, founding "fathers" were near perfect, etc.).

Narratives are powerful. Worth noting Plato came to your same conclusion in his Republic. Essentially deeming all myth and plays and stories as too dangerous to be allowed.

> All words are a lie.

I'm having a hard time believing that you believe that. e.g. Take the words "All", "words", "are", "a", and "lie"—they are all lies?!

I can't think of a way most of these words could even conceivably be a lie; a lie is most usually a statement or sentence, or built from those. To say that words "are a lie"..well, I think I must misunderstand you, yet reading the rest of your comment, it seems you meant the literal meaning. Although mostly you talk of narratives and fictions.

Also, it seems you are using "a lie" to mean "false", the way people sometimes do, although they are two very different things. "All words are untrue/false" doesn't sound so impressive, I guess, or "No words are true" etc.

When I say all words are a lie I am aiming for the same observation of Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" or the old koan about the finger and the moon.

Arguing about whether it's a lie (i.e. intentionally deceptive) or "just" untrue in a non-legal setting seems pedantic.

Words lie to us. They make all appearances at being the thing we are referencing without a lick of their reality. Worse, we sometimes forget that words are just agreed upon fictions and use arguments about those fictions instead of getting at the reality of the matter.

I don't think it's pedantic at all. It seems to me rude of you to say so. It's a very important distinction in everyday life, including in HN comments, between saying something that isn't true, and actually lying.

No-one thinks the word "pipe" is a pipe, nor does it claim to be a pipe.

And amid your claims of words being totally unreliable and deceptive, you seem to think I will know exactly what you mean by your words. Etc. Let's agree to disagree.

You are extremely pedantic. This is a fact, and in no way an insult even if wrong, despite that you may dislike it.

All ten of your last ten comments are you attempting to teach strangers, without having been asked, despite not being an expert, based in your beliefs, without evidence.

It seems likely that the reason you feel insulted is that you know that it's true and don't want to face it

Hehe ok, that sounds damning.

> All ten of your last ten comments are you attempting to teach strangers, without having been asked, despite not being an expert, based in your beliefs, without evidence.

So I looked.. ready to face an unpleasant truth about myself. I was pleasantly surprised that "All ten" is nothing like true.

1. > Yup, better would be "pronounce a surname from a non-English speaking culture in a way that sounds reasonably correct."

Here I was agreeing with the parent.

2. > > "A" as in the "au" in "caught"

> Not an expert, but I can't offhand think of a language where this is even approximately how a is pronounced—which ones are you thinking of?

Parent and others evidently agreed as they soon changed the line to "A" as in "ah" (like "ah, I see"). Someone replied to my comment with a helpful link, my next comment was to quote from their link what I'd learnt from it, in the hope others could learn that too.

Hmm I notice most of these threads now have your comments added, the kind of comment which more nearly fits your description of mine, I have to say.

The next two comments are in this thread, me objecting to "All words are a lie".

4. My next comment was in response to an AskHN, Why is Martin Gardner no longer popular

> Well, first I'd want to confirm or not the assumption in the question: Isn't he? Popular compared with when? etc.

I see you have replied to that one too now, in part :

"HN has too many people who attempt to look wise by doubting things without cause, when the actual wise thing is not to discuss your doubts, but to address them

Unfortunately, the normal behavior is invisible, so people randomly admonishing one another gains the false appearance of being regular...

> Popular compared with when?

The past.

The sentence makes this clear and unambiguous, as does our lack of time travel. "

Ok.. that's getting creepy and silly. Please stop commenting on my comments. Your initial damning criticism of me seems to apply much more nearly to you, as is extremely common when advice or insults are given on this planet. Bye. I will report you immediately if you continue doing this. It's nowhere near OK. Stay away from me.

(I looked at 5 further recent comments of mine, none of them at all fit your description. There's a few like "That's a fascinating book, and led to a fascinating wikipedia rabbit hole, thank you!" I'm puzzled how you came up with your "All ten", I think you didn't even look. Very strange.)

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