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  • 516 weeks
    Sebayt

    Sebayt is an Egyptian term for 'teaching literature.' Some person in a position of power (the Pharaoh, perhaps, or a vizier, or someone pretending to be one of the above) would tell a story about the Right Way to do things. For a modern version, consider

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    2 comments · 417 views
  • 574 weeks
    Make quantitative predictions.

    If you do, it'll be obvious when you get things wrong. This may seem undesirable, but is easy to turn to your advantage; generally, the primary way to improve your model of reality is noticing where it breaks, and then fixing that. If you don't notice when you're wrong, you miss out on opportunities to improve.

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    0 comments · 276 views
  • 579 weeks
    Now is the winter of our no content

    Made glorious summer by this sun of fanfiction! (Next up: A Richard III MLP crossover.)

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    0 comments · 302 views
May
3rd
2014

Sebayt · 6:08am May 3rd, 2014

Sebayt is an Egyptian term for 'teaching literature.' Some person in a position of power (the Pharaoh, perhaps, or a vizier, or someone pretending to be one of the above) would tell a story about the Right Way to do things. For a modern version, consider Lord Chesterfield's Letters. I'm not finding this in the descriptions I'm finding now, but when I first came across the term, I remember getting the impression that there was a narrative aspect to it. That is, it's not just someone saying "you should do X, it'll work out great" but a story of someone doing X, and it working out great. "This is how Washington managed a successful transition from revolution to democracy," or "this is how I married a great spouse and have a happy home life."

There are a handful of issues with this as literature, though. First is that fiction and non-fiction have different goals, and it is impossible to serve two masters well. Conflict is the lifeblood of fiction- but, especially if you want to teach decision-making or diplomacy- avoidance of conflict is solid policy. It is easy to write about anti-heroes who ruin their own lives, digging themselves deeper with every step.

In one telling of the tale, a man forgets to look before he crosses the street and steps in front of a bus and is crippled, with a long, slow recovery and great struggle in learning how to walk again. There is drama, pathos, enough to make a story. In another telling of the tale, he remembers to look, and waits for the bus to pass to cross when it is safe, and that day his life does not change. There is only the omniscient narrator's word that there is anything interesting about this story. If you ask Robin Hanson, he will tell you that stories are far- but avoiding the mechanical hazards of modern life is near, and this is a conflict that cannot be easily resolved. (For those not familiar with the idea, think of 'far' as 'idealized' or 'abstract' and 'near' as 'practical' or 'concrete.')

There is an author I enjoy who's written a series of romance novels. The first one I enjoyed immensely; the ones that followed, the relationship of the two protagonists became more and more filled with conflict, and maintained by a sense of destiny and common history rather than genuine mutual respect, which became progressively more unsettling. At one point, I read a blog post by that author where he claimed that he writes about many things so that his readers can notice they go poorly and avoid them. But it seems to me that one should expect consumers of fiction to thoughtlessly mimic the characters in that fiction, just because of how social animals fit in, and how our brains separate abstract opinions from learned actions. "I don't know why I don't go to sleep at the same time every night," he complains. "It's not like the internet won't still be there in the morning, and I'll enjoy it more when I'm rested. I mean, I know about hyperbolic discounting, but that's not enough for me to actually stop."

But perhaps one can write about people struggling with their attitudes that create conflict or prevent them from achieving their goals, and how they work around that. This Octopus Pie strip delights me to no end because the light-haired character makes the classic romance plot mistake, then realizes it, then acts to fix it. If she just asked who the dark-haired character had slept with, and never got upset, then the strip wouldn't be anywhere near as effective. But it's not clear to me that this works for much besides communication difficulties.

This is perhaps enough rambling for now--I feel like I should write a post about my debt to HPMOR at some point, but that will not be this post--but I think I should announce that I have another fanfic that I'm working on, and the excitement about that was enough motivation to finally finish the editing on the chapters I just uploaded, and I'll start the editing on the next cycle of chapters, I think. (If you're interested in editing, send me a message! I could always use more eyes on my drafts.) I think it will have most of the elements that people liked about parts of TNLOYS, and hopefully few of the elements that people disliked about parts of TNLOYS.

Comments ( 2 )

Oh thank god you finally updated!

It's TNLOYS, not TNOLYS. Thanks for the comic rec; are the two featured in that strip lesbians? I am all over that. Sigh. Well, I trawled the archives from the beginning to your link. Not a lesbian in sight... It's really good anyway, though.

2072633

Oh thank god you finally updated!

:D

It's TNLOYS, not TNOLYS.

Thanks, fixed! This is what I get for blogging late at night.

Not a lesbian in sight...

In the linked storyline, Jane is a lesbian, and incidentally I really like Jane's lines in the 8th panel.

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