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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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I think it's a good reason not to use only fiction. I think an important part of being able to reason about complex situations is to be able to reason about simple ones. There's a reason logic classes start off with simple syllogisms. One should, of course, always keep in mind that the author has their own views on the topic and the work itself should be examined through that lens. I actually think this last part is an important part of media criticism that I see less often than I would like. Instead of asking whether a work is "good" in the sense that I enjoyed reading it or that I endorse the message it conveys one should think about what message the author is trying to send and whether the work does so in an enjoyable or engaging way. Reading fiction critically is an opportunity to consider how others or yourself might act (or ought to act) in ways that are analogous or dis-analogous to various actual situations one may find oneself in.

While that often happens with non-fiction too, at least the events in question happened and the author's take can in principle be refuted.

I find this a little confusing. What do you take it to mean to refute an author's take? If you mean an author's description of events that have actually occurred, then no one should be reading fiction for that anyway. If you mean refuting an author's take on what ways it would or would not be appropriate to act in some circumstance then it seems to me fiction author's takes are as open to refutation as non-fiction author's takes.

Reading fiction critically is an opportunity to consider how others or yourself might act (or ought to act) in ways that are analogous or dis-analogous to various actual situations one may find oneself in.

Except fiction can create scenarios that are extremely unrealistic, including in ways that might not be obvious to a young person. For example, a work of fiction that sanitizes violence and its true brutality might lead someone to be more likely to endorse violence in general. Or, conversely, fiction that depicts bad guys being effortlessly incapacitated might lead people to be less likely to endorse lethal violence when it's actually called for. I think, for example, that Hollywood's aversion to depicting gruesome violence (yes, you read that right) contributes to people having terrible intuitions about police use of force. They see movie heroes shooting people in the leg and think that's something police should be doing instead.

I find this a little confusing. What do you take it to mean to refute an author's take?

The author of a work of non-fiction (say, a textbook) might selectively omit certain other historical facts that would have changed how the reader thinks about a particular fact of history, or they might claim certain information is factual when there's actually some dispute about it among experts, or they might make normative claims that are debatable or use language in clever ways to try to sway the reader to the author's point of view.