8 ms·

Read your Joseph Campbell before categorically dismissing half of all fiction in human history.

• Alex3917 18y ago
  I've pretty much dismissed all fiction for the reason that unalone mentions: fiction is designed to be interesting. And I don't like reading stuff that's interesting. I mean I do occasionally, but it rarely holds my attention. edit: I have wanted to read Campbell for awhile though, maybe that will be my next book.
  • icky 18y ago
    > And I don't like reading stuff that's interesting. I mean I do occasionally, but it rarely holds my attention. I can totally relate: I hate food that tastes good, and breathing oxygen.
    • unalone 18y ago
      Man was that snarky. You read fiction for the things that interest you. If an "interesting" thing doesn't hold your attention, it's not interesting. I find that some authors remain interesting upon multiple rereads, while others fall apart rapidly. But fiction can say things that nonfiction can't, because with fiction you can create an entire artificial construct just to prove a point.
      • icky 18y ago
        > Man was that snarky. Yes. We methane-breathing anti-gourmets are known for our occasional lapses into snarkishness.
    • Alex3917 18y ago
      Humor, as pg succinctly puts it, comes from novel breakages. (There are academic studies confirming this.) So keeping that in mind, it's possible that something can be objectively funny without anyone actually finding humor in it. (For example, if they don't see the breakage or they just don't care.) Interesting works the same way. Something can be objectively interesting without anyone actually finding it interesting. If this sounds funny, it's because words are defined as used. And there are certain words that are used differently than what they actually mean. For example, if I asked you for an interesting idea you wouldn't tell me the number of penguins in Antarctica, because we all accept that a fact is different than an idea. But if you look in a dictionary, you'll see the word idea defined as if it were a fact, even though we all agree that it's not. Why? Because in practice when people use the word idea it's almost always in the context of "give me an idea of how big this room is" or something like that. I.e., in most cases idea is used as a synonym for fact, even though we agree that this isn't what an idea is. You'd have to look in a really good dictionary and scroll all the way to the bottom of the list of definitions to even get a hint that this is the case, and even then they won't give you a good working definition. So what is interesting? Unalone nails it when he says something different. That is, something that breaks with our mental models of how the world works, but without actually suggesting a new set of more accurate schemas (which would be insightful.) I prefer reading insightful stuff to interesting stuff, which is why I say that reading stuff that's interesting (objectively) doesn't hold my (subjective) interest.
      • unalone 18y ago
        No. Absolutely not. There is no objective study of humor, or of interesting. You can't manufacture it. Different people find different things funny for different reasons. I've taken classes in stand-up comedy, improv comedy, and in general dramatics, and this is the big thing that we learn. While humor can be analyzed, and while there's a craft inherent in modeling a joke, that doesn't make humor objective. And it's the same thing with interest. Some people find things interesting that aren't interesting whatsoever to me. The same is true in reverse. I mean, thanks for agreeing with me, but from what you're saying here I think that you're saying something pretty nonsensical. "Interest" and "insight" aren't objective standards. It's entirely subjective, through-and-through. If you don't like reading because you don't find it interesting, then it's not interesting to you. It's not objectively interesting whatsoever. And usually, insight and interest are matched. If something's saying something new, then it's both insightful and interesting, precisely for the "different" argument that I made before.
        • astine 18y ago
          I don't know, while I might agree that what qualifies as 'interesting' probably is subjective, I think that insight is concrete enough so that you could objectively state whether some was or not with relation to the author or the audiance.
          • unalone 18y ago
            relation to the author or the audiance But that makes it subjective, doesn't it?
            • Alex3917 18y ago
              No, because insightful isn't relative to a person's innate aesthetic preferences, but rather it's relative to the cognitive models they use to understand the world. In the same way that one mathematical object can objectively be larger than another mathematical object, one mental object can be objectively insightful in relation to another mental object.