It's not useless blather, it's an ad hoc principle added to a scientific theory to make it consistent. After reading some parts of the articles, it seems that general relativity alone allows in some special cases that objects interact in such a way that would lead to contradictions inside the theory. Thus, they impose such a principle to abolish these paradoxes.
No, it is a made up concept that means nothing and makes no predictions. Relativity is not a "scientific theory" in the domains in which the Nabokov/Novikov/Nolikov consistency principle would apply, because in those domains it means nothing and makes no predictions.
Also, if one would take strictly what you wrote, no serious scientists would consider science at all to be real, since the problem of induction states that causality cannot be observed nor deduced within a finite set of experiments. Additionally, I find it funny how you consider such questions as artifacts of mathematics when they are more closely related to epistemology than math itself.
Except I did not consider the question you seem to think I considered. I said that fake fakery is not "real" in the sense that it says nothing about the universe. (It makes no predictions.) We all understand that relativity says something about the universe. (It makes predictions.) In that sense it is real enough, which was eminently clear from my previous statements. In the domain in which the Nabokov/Novikov/Nolikov consistency principle would apply, relativity is not "real" because it says nothing about the universe. (It makes no predictions.)
It seems you have a misconception of science then, as both of your replies make no sense. I'm not sure if I should have used the expression "no sense" in a sentence, because I run the risk of you bringing up other evidently clear points of your view of semantics.
I'd love to take the matter further, but it looks like you're more interested in writing long winded posts about why you don't like a book rather than understanding a physical principle.
Seriously, I really don't care whether you consider Harry Potter a good series or not, I haven't read any of the books and have only seen the first movie, it's just that through two pages your overstated point is that anything which is irrational according to reality (or, more generally, one possible interpretation of the reality proposed by the author) is automatically devoid of meaning.
Notice that the notion of what is true or a rational behavior within a situation depends on one's own view of reality, your whole text is just an attempt to rephrase your opinions, making them look like based on a solid, incontestable vision of science, fiction or whatever, that cannot possibly be purely objective, just to make them seem universally accepted. You'd be really lucky to convince someone arguing that way, this is just sophistry.
Also, you'd only change your mind if someone showed that something has meaning inside your own assumptions, and this is impossible since no one can fully understand your conceptions. This discussion can't possibly lead anywhere.
What I was trying to say was that in theory, it'd make it better, but an increased level of consistency would in reality often have to come at the cost of something else.
Pointless Boy wrote:
But to make it more consistent, you'd have to make it more logical (o rly?) and leave stuff like backwards time travel out.
You make a number of assumptions here, namely that consistency in fiction is the same as logic (it is not) and that backwards time travel is necessarily both inconsistent and illogical (it is not.)
Yes indeed. I'd argue that inconsistency always stems from flaws in the internal logic of a piece of fiction. If the rules of the fictional world are inconsistent, that makes that world less logical. That in turn leads to an increased freedom of imagination, at the cost of credibility.
I don't understand a lot about physics, but I've heard that if a body had to travel backwards in time and arrive at a location in space that is close enough so that the body could have an influence on its own past, then that would require that body to travel faster than the speed of light and to become infinitely big. To my understanding worm holes that will eject you in the past will always eject you so far away that you cannot have an influence on anything that could have had a casual impact on the body that entered the worm hole either. I assume that if you create a fictional universe in which any of that is possible, it always creates logical inconsistencies in the physics of that world, that can be found if you only dig deep enough. I'd be curious if you can point out any logically consistant piece of fiction that involves backwards time travel in the usual sense. (if it instantly creates a parallel universe then you aren't in the actual past, but in a copy-verse, that it'd take more amount of energy to create than you could possibly have at your disposal. or whatever argument)
Pointless Boy wrote:
It restricts what is possible.
No, it restricts how the author can present the story without alienating the reader.
Yes. But there is a part of the audience that won't get alienated either way.
Pointless Boy wrote:
However, Harry Potter is meant to fuel children's fantasies, and that is done by envoking the totally opposite feeling in the reader (that in the world of Harry Potter (almost) anything is possible).
Such feelings can easily be evoked in a fashion that doesn't alienate the reader, assuming alienation of the reader is not the author's goal.
That is true, except that for that part of the audience who won't get alienated either way, it'd probably be more efficient to take the approach that you dislike so much.
Pointless Boy wrote:
I'd say to make them more consistent would actually make Rowling's books worse for what they are.
This is almost a tautological falsehood.
No, there are people who like to escape into worlds where anything is possible. And yes, if a world is less consistent, then more is possible. Maybe I'm reading the book because I'm sick of the self-consistency of this world. Maybe I'm having trouble understanding anything that involves logic, but I like the world of Harry Potter where they can use magic to make their dreams come true (somewhat) and they don't have to care if it makes any sense. Maybe that'd feel like a big relief to me because for the time I'm reading the book, I don't have to worry about logical constraints at all.
And just in case you'll bring it up again, no I don't think logic and consistency are the same thing, but they are closely related in this case.
Pointless Boy wrote:
Consider, for example, a story in which one of the characters is presented as an expert chemist and an MD. He also happens to be a crazed serial killer, and his method of killing is to poison people to death with LSD.
Ok, what's wrong with that? LSD is non-toxic, and both expert chemists and medical doctors would of course know that. Even if the character somehow didn't know that, he'd soon discover it to be the case after he tried to poison his first victim. At least, he would if the story were consistent and crafted so as not to alienate the reader. A good author would simply have the chemist-doctor poison people to death with something that is actually capable of killing people, e.g. heroin. Or if the victims hallucinating hysterically before they die was part of the story, he could use a species of mushroom that contains both psilocybin/psilocin and a poisonous substance, of which there are a few.
If that story is set in an otherwise realistic setting, then you are totally right. The reader would assume that any rules that they know from the real world would also apply to that fictional world. But if the book starts out by somebody entering a magic world through the wall at track 9 3/4, and the reader still assumes that, then he's just being an idiot. Such an introduction should tell the reader, similar to "Once upon a time...", that logic and consistency will play only a minor role in that fictional universe. Introducing high numbers of humanoid alien species that all happen to speak English should f.e. suffice to serve a similar purpose.
Pointless Boy wrote:
Does altering that story for the purpose of consistency and to avoid alienating the reader result in any meaningful change for people who don't recognize the inconsistency, either because they are stupid, ignorant, or lazy readers? Not in the least. It simply makes the story objectively better in every way.
Hm, yea, in your example I'd basically agree. If the book is consistent everywhere else but for that one part, then it could either have been a deliberate decision by the author for whatever reason or just be a case of bad writing. The same goes for some worlds in science fiction, but not for all of them. It's certainly a whole different story with Harry Potter.
Pointless Boy wrote:
I certainly can't claim this is possible for all stories ever told, but I can say that I've never seen a movie or read a book that couldn't be easily fixed in this manner without making substantive changes to the plot, Harry Potter included. (Granted, HP would require many such changes.) Moreover, in most stories, the actual execution of the plot is rather unimportant, it is only necessary that it is done well.
That just tells me that you like consistency. You feel that any piece of fiction is clearly improved by it. That's just you and that's totally fine. How do you figure, they'd be objectively better though? Have you never seen somebody preferring something that's not consistent and they weren't even bothered by it? I know many people who watch movies just to go on an emotional rollercoaster. They won't care about consistency, they'd just expose themselves to the emotional part of it exclusively, totally suspending any form of disbelief. Again, adding an element of consistency will restrict the writer, unnecessarily, if their audience only consists of people who don't care.
Pointless Boy wrote:
What will be perceived as good always depends on the readers' demands and expectations to the book.
Part of the reader's demands are, in fact, shaped by the author. For example, when a story starts with "once upon a time," the author has instantly groomed the reader to be prepared for a fantastic, bizarre, and entirely arbitrary fairy tale. Good authors include the correct cues to allow their readers to shape their thinking appropriately, to become what Eco calls a "model reader." An actual reader, whether model or not, may still not enjoy fairy tales, but he cannot deny the author gave a cue to appropriately shape his expectations, and he has nothing to complain about.
I totally agree. Why do you have such trouble with inconsistencies then? There are model readers who don't care about it. At all.
Pointless Boy wrote:
Usually, it is impossible to fulfill all of them at once, so a perfect book cannot exist. When a book doesn't meet the needs of any reader, then it's definitely a bad book (it may still prove to only have been "ahead of its time" though). But books that at least meet the needs of one certain group of readers are impossible (or at least incredibly difficult) to compare objectively in terms of how good they are.
Patently false. Changing LSD to heroin in my above example is inarguably an objective improvement. (We assume LSD and heroin have no meaning other than as potential poisons, that is, for example, no character had a mother that died due to an accidental overdose of heroin. If that's not true, then potential changes to the text must also be aware of any additional meaning the text carries.) In my experience, such improvements are universally available, most authors simply don't care to avail themselves of the opportunity to write good books.
So what if there's a group of people who are involved in an anti-LSD campaign and are quite happy to see a book where LSD is used to kill people? Maybe you should read it in a symbolic sense (LSD is ruining some people's lives, no matter if it's relatively non-addictive, the murderer is the "dealer", etc). Maybe some people would argue that the author made that mistake on purpose so that people actually inform themselves about LSD. They'd all love the book for the same reason you'd dislike it, and you'd be there telling them they're objectively wrong, accomplishing what?
Pointless Boy wrote:
Making something appeal to a broader audience usually makes it less appealing to that subset of the audience that would have been satisfied anyway (because there's less of what they like most in it).
Patently false. If you correct an inconsistency that the "original audience" was already incapable of detecting, then the story now appeals to the original audience plus all people that were bothered by the inconsistency. I do not want Rowling to change her stories or her style. I merely want her to write well.
If that one single inconsistency can be fixed that easily, then you may generally be right. But you are talking about an author trying to achieve consistency, but failing. I'm talking about an author who thinks holding up the inner consistency of their fictional world will only get in the way of their writing. In that case there'd maybe be numerous inconsistencies that couldn't be fixed without ruining their book (that you'd argue was objectively bad in the first place, so of course from your point of view, it'd improve the book. but that's just you)
Back to science fiction, I know that some people enjoy arguing over inconsistencies in those ficitonal worlds a lot. It gives them a feeling of being intellectually superior. Maybe it's just a smart trick by the author? ;p
Consider, for example, a story in which one of the characters is presented as an expert chemist and an MD. He also happens to be a crazed serial killer, and his method of killing is to poison people to death with LSD.
Ok, what's wrong with that? LSD is non-toxic, and both expert chemists and medical doctors would of course know that.
Obviously that's not what is wrong with that. First of all, LSD depresses respiratory activity at a high dosage, progressively more so as it grows. Even though it may remain non-toxic per se in such amount, if fed continuously, at some point the victim will inevitably suffocate. Otherwise, similarly high dosages can also cause permanent damage to central nervous system leading to coma or death. I suppose that is somewhat different from classic poisoning, but then again, drinking a couple tablespoons' worth of undiluted LSD would most definitely kill you anyway, making it far more toxic than, say, water. Oh, didn't you know water was toxic? It's possible to poison a human with pretty much any substance; it doesn't take one to be an MD or a chemist to know. You just have to have enough of it to cause sufficient damage where needed.
I would say the setting you described was wrong because LSD is very expensive and a pain to produce in amounts required to guarantee human poisoning. But if the killer is rich (which I could expect him to be, him being an MD and an expert chemist), and has a vendetta against LSD in particular to skimp upon using more easy-to-come-by chemicals (lead, arsenic, water as said above, whatever), that is not at all implausible. Imagine that his son, arguing on forums all day long that LSD wasn't toxic, ingested four grams of it to demonstrate its safety, and died. People on the forums called bullshit, and desperate and deranged father, being an expert chemist, decided to teach them the toxic effects of LSD the hard way.
Try again. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Obviously that's not what is wrong with that. First of all, LSD depresses respiratory activity at a high dosage, progressively more so as it grows. Even though it may remain non-toxic per se in such amount, if fed continuously, at some point the victim will inevitably suffocate. Otherwise, similarly high dosages can also cause permanent damage to central nervous system leading to coma or death.
An interesting claim, one for which I've never seen any evidence, either in medical literature or from personal experience.
I suppose that is somewhat different from classic poisoning, but then again, drinking a couple tablespoons' worth of undiluted LSD would most definitely kill you anyway, making it far more toxic than, say, water. Oh, didn't you know water was toxic? It's possible to poison a human with pretty much any substance; it doesn't take one to be an MD or a chemist to know. You just have to have enough of it to cause sufficient damage where needed.
Anyway, this is obviously true, and though I didn't specify, is clearly not the scenario I was proposing, because it was a simple argument I didn't care to elaborate upon in defense of future pedantry. Clearly the thrust of my argument was that a murderer poisoning someone with a nontoxic substance is objectively bad storytelling, and as an example of a nontoxic substance I suggested LSD. (Even making a suggestion was not relevant to my argument, I did it as a kindness to readers in order to ground the argument in something real.) Having readers imagine incredibly contrived circumstances in which massive doses of LSD could be construed as being poisonous in any normal sense of the word was not my intent, as you well know.
Consider the difference between your "well ANYTHING is toxic if you give someone enough of it, he could be poisoning his victims with water as far as I'm concerned, hurrrrrr" with "why don't people in the Harry Potter universe use time travel for anything useful?" The former is grasping at straws, while the latter is perfectly natural. Anyway, since you insist on being a pedant where it is uncalled for, consider my scenario modified to:
"In his retirement, an expert chemist/MD owns and manages multiple Starbucks franchises. On the rare days when he goes into his stores, he poisons people to death by surreptitiously putting a small blotter of LSD in each cup of piping hot tea he serves."
If you have half as much knowledge/experience with LSD as you seem to be representing, you will know that won't even result in his victims tripping, much less dying. Also note that in an actual story, as opposed to a one sentence synopsis brought up for the sake of an argument, the method by which the killer was poisoning people would have been described in detail, so it would be clear whether or not the concept of LSD poisoning was sensible in that context. Though I did not further elaborate on the context, since I mentioned LSD was non-toxic, clearly I was imagining a context (such as my modified scenario above) in which LSD was non-toxic and not suitable as a poison in any reasonable sense of the word.
I would say the setting you described was wrong because LSD is very expensive and a pain to produce in amounts required to guarantee human poisoning.
Except, in the setting I lazily described, LSD was clearly nontoxic (because I said as much when talking about it,) which should have clued you in to the fact that perhaps your extension to the example which I purposely didn't elaborate much upon was invalid as a representation of the text's intent. (Implicit in all of my complaints about Harry Potter is the idea that the text represents itself as actually being concerned with internal consistency, among other things. If you believe the text represents itself as nonsensical fluff on par with Leslie Nielsen movies, then the argument is over because we disagree on the premise.)
But if the killer is rich (which I could expect him to be, him being an MD and an expert chemist), and has a vendetta against LSD in particular to skimp upon using more easy-to-come-by chemicals (lead, arsenic, water as said above, whatever), that is not at all implausible. Imagine that his son, arguing on forums all day long that LSD wasn't toxic, ingested four grams of it to demonstrate its safety, and died. People on the forums called bullshit, and desperate and deranged father, being an expert chemist, decided to teach them the toxic effects of LSD the hard way.
Try again. :)
Again, you are manufacturing complexity where none exists solely for the purpose of arguing. Contrast that with my simplifying question about Harry Potter. "Why don't any of the characters in Harry Potter do the most obvious thing with time travel, that is, use it for something incredibly useful?" When presented with the opportunity to travel through time, that's what most people would do. They would go save a loved one, or make a billion on the stock market, or kill Hitler as a baby, or use it to learn how to woo the man/woman of their dreams, etc. Why don't any of the characters in Harry Potter (good or bad, stupid or smart) do that?
It seems you have a misconception of science then, as both of your replies make no sense. I'm not sure if I should have used the expression "no sense" in a sentence, because I run the risk of you bringing up other evidently clear points of your view of semantics.
I'd love to take the matter further, but it looks like you're more interested in writing long winded posts about why you don't like a book rather than understanding a physical principle.
But that is part of my point. The principle you love to so crazily invoke in this argument (implying it's a concept you believe the model reader of Harry Potter should both already know of and believe in, which is insane) is not a physical principle. It represents nothing physical, as far as the current state of "scientific theory" is concerned. A scientific theory is one that makes testable assertions about the universe. It makes predictions. The Novikov self-consistency principle doesn't. There are some mathematical oddities that arise from relativity that are supposed by most scientists to represent something physical, or describe the behavior of physical things. The Novikov consistency principle is not one of them.
Seriously, I really don't care whether you consider Harry Potter a good series or not, I haven't read any of the books and have only seen the first movie, it's just that through two pages your overstated point is that anything which is irrational according to reality (or, more generally, one possible interpretation of the reality proposed by the author) is automatically devoid of meaning.
Incorrect. What I have said is that in fictions in which irrationality and inconsistency are not central features of the story, style, or characters, excessively irrational and inconsistent behavior constitutes bad storytelling. I don't believe irrationality and inconsistency to be central features of Harry Potter's story, style, or characters. Yet the series on a whole is rife with inexplicable and unjustifiable instances of arbitrary irrationality and inconsistency. Therefore, Harry Potter constitutes bad storytelling.
Notice that the notion of what is true or a rational behavior within a situation depends on one's own view of reality, your whole text is just an attempt to rephrase your opinions, making them look like based on a solid, incontestable vision of science, fiction or whatever, that cannot possibly be purely objective, just to make them seem universally accepted. You'd be really lucky to convince someone arguing that way, this is just sophistry.
We aren't talking philosophy here, I have no concern with crazy views of reality and how they pertain to fiction. Most people are mostly capable of evaluating the real world mostly correctly and rationally when they put their minds to it. I have no care for whether there is or is not a spoon, or even whether there are or are not closed timelike curves, or anything of that nature, because it all has absolutely no relation to what I'm talking about. Most people, when presented with the opportunity for time travel, would want to exploit its potential to the fullest. Save Buckbeak? How about Harry saves his @#$%ing parents?! The otherwise mostly normal characters in Harry Potter don't attempt to exploit time travel in a painfully obvious way. The setting of Harry Potter is "a world much like our own where magic is possible," not "a world much like our own where magic is possible and everyone is inexplicably stupid when it's convenient for the author." Anyway, the text gives no explanation for such an astonishing global oversight. Assuming inexplicable stupidity is not a feature of the story, style, or characters, that's just bad storytelling.
Also, you'd only change your mind if someone showed that something has meaning inside your own assumptions, and this is impossible since no one can fully understand your conceptions. This discussion can't possibly lead anywhere.
My assumptions are based in part on the work of the authors I cited originally. You could read them (or read about them and their concepts.) The main reason this discussion hasn't led anywhere is because you make incorrect and irrelevant statements at every juncture, so not only am I forced to continually attempt to explain to you how you aren't arguing about what you think you're arguing about, I have to correct your incorrect arguments about what you aren't arguing about to begin with.
I was merely illustrating how a scenario you have described as contrived, nonsensical, and self-inconsistent could be seen as the opposite if you weren't so adamant at preloading your arguments with words like "nonsensical", "invalid", "clearly", "perfectly", "lazily", "obviously", and other kinds of implicit argumentation boiling down to "anyway, as I said, A = B", because, as you may have known, there are things notably less contrived than attempting to poison somebody with a "non-toxic" substance whose LD50 for humans is estimated to be at least four orders of magnitude lower than that of water when ingested orally. (See Erowid sources here and here for your future references; and yes, you should have noticed yourself how LSD makes your breath heavier as one of the first effects of the onset.) In a criminal setting involving an expert chemist with murder intent, a message to send out to, and every prerequisite to synthesize the needed amount, that actually makes quite a bit of sense, and is actually pretty original as far as poison is chosen. If you think that doesn't make sense, you should get out more and notice how there are things happening everywhere around you that make even less of it.
The target audience of HP (read: those who are supposed to enjoy it) are people who don't ask many questions, are easily pleased, and don't expect clever art-house from a fairy tale setting involving prepubescent boys and girls in a world of magic. It doesn't make it better, but you could have dealt with it already instead of writing dissertation-worthy commentaries on why and how it's bad, which indicates how you apparently have a lot of free time to burn the valuable resource of brain activity on something as important and healthy as a similarly empty game of arguing opinions on the internet. All of this leads me to the following conclusion:
— “Your words are as empty as your soul!”
Now, may I suggest going and doing something more useful with that marvellous intelligence of yours? :}
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
@Pointless Boy:
Let me guess, you read Wikipedia's article on scientific theories, right? I could tell you that defining what is scientific or not is not so straight-forward as you may think, and is one of the greatest questions in epistemology, and that the (unfortunately bad) Wikipedia article is almost exclusively the empiric view of science, but as I correctly assumed, you're not interested in philosophy, a surprising fact given the topic's title.
I'm not making incoherent statements at all, it's just that you are obsessed with a subject, at the point of discussing with me parts of a book I already told you I didn't read, and when anyone tries to discuss how pointless your argumentation is, you avoid the subject by saying you were not addressing that matter and adding more stuff to make it as confusing and tiring as possible.
TASVideos ill needs a writer such as you, perhaps one day I'll see you start something more useful than an empty quote war. Until that day comes, I hope this thread gets locked for at least a week.
@Pointless Boy: I'll go a bit meta on this.
Your initial post in this topic is full of strong words that heavily exaggerate your point of view. You also don't seem to disagree that you think you're objectively right about what you've said. I find the point of view you've presented to be totally smart, valid and interesting and I'm happy to have been confronted with it. However, you are also claiming to be able to objectively judge how good a book is by that criterion you've presented, which I find to be very ridiculous. I have considered the following 3 reasons for why you could be doing this:
a) You are simply trolling
b) You are voicing honest literary criticism, but overexaggerate your point to get more attention. This is something many literary critics do. It's part of their job. Your claim for being objectively right wouldn't have to be taken seriously then.
c) You honestly believe that you are objectively right
d) Some other reason that just didn't come to my mind yet
After the replies you have given and having read the argument starting [URL=http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=250873#250873]here[/URL] in which you seem to be telling Fabian that overusing embellishments in his music is objectively bad* (this may only be my personal interpretation), I'd put you somewhere between b and c, strongly leaning towards c.** If that was to be true, then that would be very bad for you imo, because it means you're tragically trapped inside your own point of view and you'd thereby be unnecessarily limiting your personal and intellectual growth. This is something that p4wn3r has also hinted at already, in slightly different words.
p4wn3r wrote:
Also, you'd only change your mind if someone showed that something has meaning inside your own assumptions, and this is impossible since no one can fully understand your conceptions. This discussion can't possibly lead anywhere.
As long as you're so convinced of your own opinion you are going to win every argument. Not necessarily because you are right, but because winning the argument means more to you than the one who's challenging your point of view. It's pointless arguing directly with anybody who doesn't doubt for a second that they're being absolutely right.
*) For the record, I personally found his heavy use of embellishments to be quite refreshing. I would have probably found it more mind-numbing had his arrangement been more ordinary (because you can hear stuff that is totally usual and ordinary just about anywhere).
As I don't think your point of view is invalid, I haven't really brought up any strong counter-arguments, but only hinted at what points of view they could be based on. I hoped you'd take the time to think about how there could be people who subjectively disagree with your claim that increased consistency always improves a book, and come to the conclusion that you therefore can't be objectively right. The impression that I get now is that you have probably entirely disregarded what I've said instead because it didn't really challenge the validity of your point of view, which seems to be the only thing you care about. You can still feel that you are totally right. And you are. But not objectively. (This means you are only right as long as your criteria of judgement are applied.)
Pointless Boy wrote:
Again, you are manufacturing complexity where none exists solely for the purpose of arguing. Contrast that with my simplifying question about Harry Potter. "Why don't any of the characters in Harry Potter do the most obvious thing with time travel, that is, use it for something incredibly useful?" When presented with the opportunity to travel through time, that's what most people would do. They would go save a loved one, or make a billion on the stock market, or kill Hitler as a baby, or use it to learn how to woo the man/woman of their dreams, etc. Why don't any of the characters in Harry Potter (good or bad, stupid or smart) do that?
Is it possible that somewhere in this world there is a little boy who reads that passage of Harry Potter asking himself that same question, but he'd still continue reading and enjoying the book because he's able to keep up his [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief]willing suspension of disbelief[/URL]? Why'd he be willing to do that? So he can enjoy the book anyway. Not because he's stupid. Then at night when he'd go to bed he'd think about what would have happened if Harry would indeed have travelled backwards in time to save his parents. Omg, Rowling's "bad writing style" has succeeded in fuelling that little boys fantasy!
Now, whether Rowling intended for this to happen or whether it's a lucky mistake, we don't know. But usually we give the author the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway, this boy has now subjectively perceived this inconsistency to be something good. He wasn't bothered by it in the least, but it has fueled his fantasy. *** He had a dream involving time travelling that night and enjoyed it very much. His interest in the actual physics of time travelling has also increased. So can you still say that such inconsistencies are objectively bad? No, it's just a different style of writing geared towards a different audience than the one you are part of. They like that style a lot. You therefore aren't objectively right.
(I hope I don't need to point out that Rowling would have had to leave out time travelling if she wanted her book to be consistent and logical, unless she wants to write a totally confusing book in which people pop up and disappear all the time, that her target audience would have disliked for that very reason. Or introduce an arbitrary reason for why time travel is only possible that one time. Or whatever.)
***) I hope I don't need to argue why inconsistencies are sometimes very effective at doing this, very similar to open endings.
Also, as I've said before, one book can never satisfy all possible readers in this world at once. So even if something improves a book for the majority of people, doing the opposite doesn't make it objectively worse. Maybe the book is only geared to that group of people who'll perceive it as good because of it. As long as there are people who enjoy the book the way it is, it has every right to be that way. "Objectively better" is a totally invalid concept. Diversity is as important as perfectionism. Perfectionism doesn't make anything objectively better.
**) In case it's more of somewhere between a and b, then I have just totally wasted my time. ^^
What I was trying to say was that in theory, it'd make it better, but an increased level of consistency would in reality often have to come at the cost of something else.
While I admit the possibility of that being true in some particular case, I've never seen such a case where it is true. In practice, it turns out that in stories where inconsistency is not a feature of the story, style, or characters, removing inconsistencies doesn't detract from whatever essential features the story, style, and characters do have.
Yes indeed. I'd argue that inconsistency always stems from flaws in the internal logic of a piece of fiction. If the rules of the fictional world are inconsistent, that makes that world less logical. That in turn leads to an increased freedom of imagination, at the cost of credibility.
Does writing internally consistent fiction (when inconsistency is not a feature of the story) limit "freedom of imagination," though? Authors are still free to imagine whatever the heck they want. When they finally distill their ideas down to a final form, I only ask their work be consistent with the cues it provides to readers to contextualize the characters and story. The problem isn't necessarily that Rowling wrote inconsistent fiction, but rather that she didn't properly contextualize it. (Because various cues in the text point toward Rowling intending to write a somewhat serious story, I contend she should have written fiction without inconsistencies, rather than included correctives that allow readers to accept the entire story as, for example, a fairy tale.) Most of the characters in Harry Potter appear to be essentially normal people with essentially normal motivations, various magical powers and caricatures notwithstanding. In that context, why do none of them think to use time travel to accomplish something more significant than saving an animal? (Note that time travel is not the only inconsistency in Rowling's novels, just the one we are focusing on here.)
I don't understand a lot about physics, but I've heard that if a body had to travel backwards in time and arrive at a location in space that is close enough so that the body could have an influence on its own past, then that would require that body to travel faster than the speed of light and to become infinitely big. To my understanding worm holes that will eject you in the past will always eject you so far away that you cannot have an influence on anything that could have had a casual impact on the body that entered the worm hole either. I assume that if you create a fictional universe in which any of that is possible, it always creates logical inconsistencies in the physics of that world, that can be found if you only dig deep enough. I'd be curious if you can point out any logically consistant piece of fiction that involves backwards time travel in the usual sense. (if it instantly creates a parallel universe then you aren't in the actual past, but in a copy-verse, that it'd take more amount of energy to create than you could possibly have at your disposal. or whatever argument)
Idle speculation about how certain fake ideas about time travel, wormholes, or faster-than-light travel might integrate with real-world physics is neither here nor there. For one, it doesn't have anything to do with anything. Two, it's unreasonable to suppose the model reader of a children's book would know about all that stuff. The issue is that Harry Potter presents itself as a somewhat serious story, and in the contexts in which it is serious, it has inconsistencies, such as, "why doesn't anyone in the Harry Potter universe think to use time travel to accomplish something important?" (Note that I don't complain about the less serious parts of the story, such as the Dursleys as caricatures of the relatives / adoptive family from hell, which is provided as comic relief. Harry takes the death of his parents, and Dumbledore, for example, very seriously, however, yet he never thinks to use time travel to right those wrongs, nor do any of the supposedly intelligent and essentially normal people around him.)
As to your other question, sure, plenty of stories represent time travel consistently. For example, from what I remember of Groundhog Day, it was entirely consistent with respect to time travel. Bill Murray traveled back in time repeatedly through an unknown mechanism, which eventually stopped due to an unknown mechanism. It's certainly implied to some extent that the temporal prison ended when Bill Murray finally became a "good person," though it's also very clear much more time passed than was shown in the movie. (He learned to play the piano, learned to sculpt, learned to speak a foreign language fluently, etc.) The truth is no reason was ever given for why the time travel started or stopped, which while not terribly satisfying, is perfectly consistent, and doesn't leave you wondering why someone who can control time travel doesn't use it in an obvious fashion. Moreover, Bill Murray actually behaved in a way that's easy to imagine a real person would behave in those circumstances, running the gamut from puzzled, to depressed, to suicidal, to finally accepting his fate and determining to make the most of each day he got -- even if it was the same one over and over again.
Yes. But there is a part of the audience that won't get alienated either way.
Ah, but if that part of the audience won't get alienated either way, how is it not objectively superior to make a modification that will continue not alienating those people, but moreover stops alienating people who will wonder "Uhh, why doesn't just Harry go back in time to save his parents, and Dumbledore, and kill Voldemort? And why doesn't Voldemort just go back in time and strangle Harry instead of casting some spell that's going to backfire because of the power of love or whatever the hell happened? How does any of this make any sense? Hello?"
That is true, except that for that part of the audience who won't get alienated either way, it'd probably be more efficient to take the approach that you dislike so much.
Too true, writing bad fiction is terribly easy. Rowling has done a lot of it.
No, there are people who like to escape into worlds where anything is possible.
I don't see how that's relevant to the discussion of whether or not stories that don't intentionally feature inconsistency should be consistent.
And yes, if a world is less consistent, then more is possible.
A baseless assertion. Are there more rational numbers than integers? It seems to me that if your argument hinges upon the contention that "the set of stories which are consistent or inconsistent" is larger than the "set of stories which are consistent or inconsistent but properly contextualized" you need to prove it. Good luck. (I also don't really see how "more things are possible" is relevant to the discussion of whether or not stories that don't intentionally feature inconsistency should be consistent. I thought the goal was to have good fiction, not to have every story possible regardless of merit.)
Maybe I'm reading the book because I'm sick of the self-consistency of this world. Maybe I'm having trouble understanding anything that involves logic, but I like the world of Harry Potter where they can use magic to make their dreams come true (somewhat) and they don't have to care if it makes any sense. Maybe that'd feel like a big relief to me because for the time I'm reading the book, I don't have to worry about logical constraints at all.
But if you don't care if anything makes any sense, how is it bothersome if a story happens to make sense? Why does reading a story which makes sense mean you "have to worry about logical constraints"? Obviously it doesn't. If you don't care whether or not anything makes sense, then your enjoyment is not reduced if the story happens to make sense. You suggest some people read fiction to escape into worlds where anything is possible, but are those people really searching for unintentionally inconsistent nonsense, or simply a fantasy world of magic and enchantment?
Anyway, I don't feel the need to spend much time or effort refuting this, you and I both know you are just grasping at straws. But if you are really desperately searching for a book that lacks the "self-consistency of this world," there are plenty of good ones that take the trouble to make nonsense and lack of consistency meaningful features of the story. And if you are honestly searching for a poorly written book that misrepresents itself and then subjects the reader to unintentional (but obvious) inconsistencies, well, Harry Potter is a good choice. We both know you aren't. No one is.
If that story is set in an otherwise realistic setting, then you are totally right. The reader would assume that any rules that they know from the real world would also apply to that fictional world. But if the book starts out by somebody entering a magic world through the wall at track 9 3/4, and the reader still assumes that, then he's just being an idiot. Such an introduction should tell the reader, similar to "Once upon a time...", that logic and consistency will play only a minor role in that fictional universe. Introducing high numbers of humanoid alien species that all happen to speak English should f.e. suffice to serve a similar purpose.
Harry Potter is so very far from "once upon a time." It's true that there is magic in the Harry Potter world, as indicated by things such as walking through walls at track 9¾ at a train station. But Rowling also goes to great pains to represent Harry Potter as a world virtually identical to our own, save for a secret, underground society of magic that is hidden from normal people who are just like you and me, and exist in a world just like our own. Those privy to the magic even have a smug superiority about them, feeling themselves better than mere muggles. For some of them, those feelings have turned to hatred. Harry Potter, for all intents and purposes takes place on our Earth, and we are pathetic muggles reading about things we could never otherwise witness, because we aren't cool enough. There's also the fact that magic in Harry Potter isn't presented as nonsensical fairy tale magic where anything and everything happens at the whim of contrivance. HP magic is scientific. Students go to school and study it. They practice flicking their wands just so, practice mixing reagents, memorize phrases and practice saying them, etc., precisely because magic, it seems, has logical rules that need to be learned and followed.
So when those oh-so-smart and oh-so-smug magicians have at their disposal the ability to travel through time, and not a one of them think to use it for something incredibly obvious like saving Harry's parents, saving Dumbledore, or thwarting Voldemort in the past, well ... this muggle begins to wonder what the hell is going on.
Hm, yea, in your example I'd basically agree. If the book is consistent everywhere else but for that one part, then it could either have been a deliberate decision by the author for whatever reason or just be a case of bad writing. The same goes for some worlds in science fiction, but not for all of them. It's certainly a whole different story with Harry Potter.
How is Harry Potter any different than my example? Harry Potter bludgeons readers with bafflingly moronic plot holes an uneducated child can spot. It's bad writing.
That just tells me that you like consistency. You feel that any piece of fiction is clearly improved by it.
Incorrect. Again, the problem with Harry Potter is that it presents itself as an essentially serious, consistent world. (Our world, plus some magic.) Then it bludgeons the reader with bafflingly moronic plot holes an uneducated child can spot. Fairy tales lack logical consistency and I don't feel they would necessarily be improved by it. But fairy tales correctly direct the perceptions of the reader with cues such as "once upon a time." Harry Potter sends mixed signals and then gets a kid with down syndrome to kick you in the nuts.
That's just you and that's totally fine. How do you figure, they'd be objectively better though? Have you never seen somebody preferring something that's not consistent and they weren't even bothered by it? I know many people who watch movies just to go on an emotional rollercoaster. They won't care about consistency, they'd just expose themselves to the emotional part of it exclusively, totally suspending any form of disbelief. Again, adding an element of consistency will restrict the writer, unnecessarily, if their audience only consists of people who don't care.
If the audience you speak of doesn't care about consistency, then how is it not objectively better to write a story that will also appeal to people that do care? The emotional rollercoaster is still there whether or not the story makes sense. A bomb exploding is still a bomb exploding. The people that don't care still don't care, and the people that do care are now having a good time.
Also, "adding an element of consistency" is not the only way to correct an inconsistent work that misrepresents itself to the reader/viewer. For example, add "Directed by M. Night Shyamalan" to the beginning of any movie and all of a sudden anything goes. It's quite simple. You are also unduly obsessed with some ephemeral concept of not restricting authors or whatever, which has nothing to do with anything. Is the goal to write good stories or to somehow have every story that could ever be written?
I totally agree. Why do you have such trouble with inconsistencies then? There are model readers who don't care about it. At all.
You misuse the concept of model reader here. Read Six Walks in the Fictional Woods if you want to know more. A "model reader" is not someone who can enjoy any fiction, no matter how poorly written. It is the reader that is implied by the text itself. When the text represents itself as mostly serious, and taking place in a world not far removed from our own, with characters very similar to essentially normal people in the real world, then when those characters repeatedly overlook a painfully obvious use for time travel that any normal person would think of, and that glaring inconsistency isn't an intentional feature of the story, then the author has failed. I understand some (most) people take their coffee brainless and just don't care. That's irrelevant. The ones that don't care that the text doesn't make sense wouldn't care if it did.
So what if there's a group of people who are involved in an anti-LSD campaign and are quite happy to see a book where LSD is used to kill people? Maybe you should read it in a symbolic sense (LSD is ruining some people's lives, no matter if it's relatively non-addictive, the murderer is the "dealer", etc). Maybe some people would argue that the author made that mistake on purpose so that people actually inform themselves about LSD. They'd all love the book for the same reason you'd dislike it, and you'd be there telling them they're objectively wrong, accomplishing what?
I decidedly would not tell them they were objectively wrong for liking the book for the reason that they irrationally hate LSD. I would tell them the book was not well-written, though. You trying to come up with stupid nonsensical examples for reasons to justify stupid nonsense is also getting really tiring. First of all, trying to justify an obvious error with arbitrary contrivance is just unconvincing. Have some self-respect, you're better than that. Secondly, if you really want to argue in support of spreading lies and misinformation, then HITLER HITLER HITLER OBAMA HITLER, QED. The point is not that you could conceivably find at least one person that would enjoy used toilet paper. The point is for readers not to be surprised by used toilet paper randomly being in the middle of a book. (Unless, of course, the point actually is to shock readers with used toilet paper randomly being in the middle of your book. I don't believe that was Rowling's intention, though. Hence, she is a bad writer.)
If that one single inconsistency can be fixed that easily, then you may generally be right. But you are talking about an author trying to achieve consistency, but failing. I'm talking about an author who thinks holding up the inner consistency of their fictional world will only get in the way of their writing. In that case there'd maybe be numerous inconsistencies that couldn't be fixed without ruining their book (that you'd argue was objectively bad in the first place, so of course from your point of view, it'd improve the book. but that's just you)
But that's the whole point. Rowling screws up simple stuff that could easily be fixed if she just bothered to think about it. Instead she just strings together arbitrary sequences of equally arbitrary events, having her characters jump from one stupid contrivance to the next. When there's so much low-hanging fruit to be had, the only conclusion that can be drawn is she's either stupid or lazy, and either way she's still bad.
I was merely illustrating how a scenario you have described as contrived, nonsensical, and self-inconsistent could be seen as the opposite if you weren't so adamant at preloading your arguments with words like "nonsensical", "invalid", "clearly", "perfectly", "lazily", "obviously", and other kinds of implicit argumentation boiling down to "anyway, as I said, A = B", because, as you may have known, there are things notably less contrived than attempting to poison somebody with a "non-toxic" substance whose LD50 for humans is estimated to be at least four orders of magnitude lower than that of water when ingested orally.
Except the "opposite" scenario is yours, not mine. My quite obvious intent was to express how stupid a murder mystery would be if the author doggedly and without explanation had a murderer supposedly kill people by means which are clearly not harmful. I offered a bare bones "real world" example only as a kindness. You then invented your own scenario whereby LSD could be used as a poison, which is immaterial, and had nothing to do with my argument, or even my scenario, which I then elaborated upon because you insisted on being pedantic. A murder mystery where the author doggedly and without explanation has a murderer supposedly kill people by means which are clearly not harmful is stupid. It makes no sense and contradicts the reality which all stories are parasites of. (Unless of course not making sense is the point of the story, which we are not assuming is the case.)
(See Erowid sources here and here for your future references; and yes, you should have noticed yourself how LSD makes your breath heavier as one of the first effects of the onset.)
All I see there is a lot of stuff confirming that LSD is perceived as universally safe and nontoxic to things that aren't rabbits, and that it seems pretty darn hard to use LSD as a poison. And as you well know, many substances affect different people differently. Do you suppose it's possible LSD doesn't make some people breathe heavily? Or maybe it generally does but people in really good shape don't notice?
In a criminal setting involving an expert chemist with murder intent, a message to send out to, and every prerequisite to synthesize the needed amount, that actually makes quite a bit of sense, and is actually pretty original as far as poison is chosen. If you think that doesn't make sense, you should get out more and notice how there are things happening everywhere around you that make even less of it.
Except the scenario where a serial killer is injecting people with grams and grams and grams of LSD is your scenario, not mine. I agree, your scenario is strange but believable, and perhaps would make an interesting story. It's not my scenario, though, in which death by LSD is not believable, and would therefore be inconsistent.
The target audience of HP (read: those who are supposed to enjoy it) are people who don't ask many questions, are easily pleased, and don't expect clever art-house from a fairy tale setting involving prepubescent boys and girls in a world of magic.
I don't know what clever art-house is, but would the target audience you purport be alienated if HP didn't have inexplicable inconsistencies? Magic and trolls and snakes and quidditch and whatever the heck else you want are all still perfectly fine in a world where characters are smart enough to wonder whether they should use time travel for something useful or not. So how does fixing a story thusly not make it objectively better? You've as much said your purported target audience doesn't care one way or the other, because they aren't thinking about it.
@Pointless Boy:
Let me guess, you read Wikipedia's article on scientific theories, right? I could tell you that defining what is scientific or not is not so straight-forward as you may think, and is one of the greatest questions in epistemology, and that the (unfortunately bad) Wikipedia article is almost exclusively the empiric view of science, but as I correctly assumed, you're not interested in philosophy, a surprising fact given the topic's title.
I'm not making incoherent statements at all, it's just that you are obsessed with a subject, at the point of discussing with me parts of a book I already told you I didn't read, and when anyone tries to discuss how pointless your argumentation is, you avoid the subject by saying you were not addressing that matter and adding more stuff to make it as confusing and tiring as possible.
TASVideos ill needs a writer such as you, perhaps one day I'll see you start something more useful than an empty quote war. Until that day comes, I hope this thread gets locked for at least a week.
Another valiant ad hominem attack. "You're just reading wikipedia, I'm not, therefore you're stupid and I'm right!" But to answer your question, no, I don't care what wikipedia says about the nature of science because it really has nothing to do with the discussion to begin with, even though you think it does. Insofar as you think science has anything to do with anything, you strangely seem to demand that readers of a children's book have a vast, encyclopedic knowledge (knowledge exceeding that which can be found in crappy wikipedia, even!) of whatever it is you think is important just to understand the book! How insane!
What I've been trying to talk about the whole time is Lem's and Eco's thoughts on more or less objective criteria on which fiction can be evaluated in many cases, having to do with how text represents itself to the reader, and whether the text stays true to that representation and maintains internal consistency for the reader with respect to that representation. (It's harder to talk about that stuff when you have a text which intentionally misrepresents itself for effect, but I've been fairly careful to repeat ad nauseum I am ignoring such cases because I don't believe that Rowling (or most authors) intend to write stories that are inconsistent and confusing in that manner. Some admittedly do. I'm not talking about them or their stories.)
Obviously the time travel in Harry Potter doesn't make sense. Any reasonable person would eventually hit upon the idea of using time travel to accomplish something meaningful to that person, like saving parents, or a beloved teacher, or making money, or something. Harry Potter is a world filled with supposedly reasonable people that know about time travel and don't attempt to use it in that way. The author's best attempt at an explanation is to say three books later that 100% of the time travel devices in the world were stored in one place and they were all destroyed on accident, and no one knows how to make any more! It makes no sense and is stupid and still doesn't explain why supposedly intelligent people never thought to use them before. Discussion of closed timelike curves and mathematical artifacts of obscure field equations from graduate level physics is immaterial.
[Blahblahblah you think you know what makes fiction good and bad, sometimes good things can arise unpredictably from anything therefore anything can be good in some respects.]
I am not and never was concerned with whether or not people like HP, or whether or not it (or anything else) inspires little boys to dream whatever things they dream of, or whether or not people think HP is good or bad (obviously lots of people think it's good ... and?), or whether or not anything in particular can lead to anything in particular through enough contrivance or coincidence.
I started my discussion with two citations having to do with more or less objective criteria on which stories can be evaluated. Eco's blurb was concerned with how a story represents itself to the reader, and whether or not the representation gives appropriate clues to the reader to allow him to most effectively understand the intent of the text. Lem's blurb was concerned with semantic meaning and further criteria by which we (subjectively) evaluate stories that lack semantic meaning.
In a later post I offered Harry Potter as an example of a story that both misrepresents itself to the reader and has the fatal flaw of inconsistency, which renders at least that portion of the story void of meaning, and the implication that my personal evaluation of the empty portions of the story was negative.
The proper way to respond to disagreements with what I was actually talking about would have been something like, "I don't think Harry Potter represents itself as seriously as you think it does. Though it does have many analogues to the real world, it is more akin to a fairy tale than a serious novel for the following reasons, so nonsense isn't undesirable, to the contrary, it may even be apropos." And then I might have responded with something like, "The books maintain one continuous story arc throughout them, and tend to address increasingly grave concepts as the characters age. Whereas the first book may have been mostly pure fantasy, the later books dealing with issues like teenhood and death aren't, don't you think?" And then the other person might have responded with, "No, I still felt like they were still just fluffy fairy tale novels." And then I might have said, "Oh, ok. We have different interpretations of how the text represents itself."
Instead someone responded with, "Hey, here's some incredibly obscure scientific mumbo jumbo that doesn't have anything to do with anything, but it PROVES that the time travel in Harry Potter is consistent! Why would anyone ever use time travel to save their beloved parents!?!?!??!"
(Because various cues in the text point toward Rowling intending to write a somewhat serious story, I contend she should have written fiction without inconsistencies, rather than included correctives that allow readers to accept the entire story as, for example, a fairy tale.)
I have not read all HP books, but that's an interesting point. I also seem to remember some indications that it's a "serious" story (beyond the level of seriousness of a fairy tale), but many more that it's purely fantastic. In any case, multiple inconsistencies indicate that the story doesn't attempt to be self-consistent.
The issue is that Harry Potter presents itself as a somewhat serious story, and in the contexts in which it is serious, it has inconsistencies, such as, "why doesn't anyone in the Harry Potter universe think to use time travel to accomplish something important?"
I guess I have somewhat ellaborated why that's actually a non-issue (to many people). It seems you aren't accustomed to the idea of a willing suspension of disbelief. I have included a wikipedia link in my last post. I could try to dig up further references if you're interested.
As to your other question, sure, plenty of stories represent time travel consistently. For example, from what I remember of Groundhog Day.
Thanks. I'll try to read/watch it somewhen. I was referring to consistencies within the rules of physics in the fictional world actually. I do realize that those inconsistencies would alienate a lower number of readers than more obvious inconsistencies within the plot of the book.
And yes, if a world is less consistent, then more is possible.
A baseless assertion. Are there more rational numbers than integers? It seems to me that if your argument hinges upon the contention that "the set of stories which are consistent or inconsistent" is larger than the "set of stories which are consistent or inconsistent but properly contextualized" you need to prove it. Good luck.
That's not my point. I'll reword it to "There are less restrictions to the imagination of the reader within the fictional world of the book." As a reader I don't have to worry if what I imagine is possible in the Potter-verse if there are numerous inconsistencies within the book itself.
The same is true for the author and you could attribute that to laziness, but only if there is nothing else that the author did perfectly well. Rowling has simply focused on something else.
By the way, one of her goals seems to have been to write many sequels and finish them before her audience reaches adulthood, so she couldn't have made them totally perfect. It made more sense for her to make them just good enough. This is somewhat besides the point when we argue about the books, but important when we make a judgement on whether she's a good or bad author. To clarify, I do agree that her books could have been better, but I disagree that making them consistent would have objectively improved them.
But if you don't care if anything makes any sense, how is it bothersome if a story happens to make sense?
Because the reader's freedom of imagination is then restricted within the fictional world of the book. Something that I speculate a younger audience to usually perceive as something negative on a sub-conscious level.
I'm sure anyone could come up with further arguments.
You suggest some people read fiction to escape into worlds where anything is possible, but are those people really searching for unintentionally inconsistent nonsense, or simply a fantasy world of magic and enchantment?
That it's unintentional is only your assumption. I guess it's generally a world where they don't have to obey too many rules.
But Rowling also goes to great pains to represent Harry Potter as a world virtually identical to our own, save for a secret, underground society of magic that is hidden from normal people who are just like you and me, and exist in a world just like our own.
I think to have connected those worlds is nothing more than a pretty smart trick by her so children are more inspired to dream of entering that world too or even theorize that it really exists. It makes the book more immersive for them. I think any indication that it's a purely fantastic and inconsistent world generally overrides any contradicting indications, but I don't have anything at hand to back that up. That's actually a pretty interesting topic.
Students go to school and study it. They practice flicking their wands just so, practice mixing reagents, memorize phrases and practice saying them, etc., precisely because magic, it seems, has logical rules that need to be learned and followed.
Good point. They probably go to school so children that go to school too can identify with the characters of the book more easily. This comes at the cost of imposing some logical rules the world has to obey, but I don't think they restrict the readers' freedom of imagination by a lot. I don't think the concept of a magical school was introduced to make it more realistic. In fact, I haven't interpreted the series as trying to be particularly realistic at all. It seems that you have, which is fine. But any conclusions you'll base on your interpretation won't be objective.
Incorrect. Again, the problem with Harry Potter is that it presents itself as an essentially serious, consistent world. (Our world, plus some magic.)
My perception is that it's more like a magical world where anything is possible, plus somehow connected to our real world. I suspect that to be the more common interpretation because usually we perceive what is unusual as more important.
You trying to come up with stupid nonsensical examples for reasons to justify stupid nonsense is also getting really tiring. First of all, trying to justify an obvious error with arbitrary contrivance is just unconvincing. ...
The point is not that you could conceivably find at least one person that would enjoy used toilet paper. The point is for readers not to be surprised by used toilet paper randomly being in the middle of a book.
I wasn't trying to be convincing. I have no intention of winning this argument. I know you could come up with counter arguments to everything I say. Pretty much anybody can do that. That's why I'm not a big fan of arguing over pointless matters until one of the parties gives up. I see no point to it. I think we've both expressed our opinions sufficiently that further continuing the arument won't be very beneficial to either of us.
Yes, my examples were thought up very badly. I took a minimal effort. I'm sure you can come up with a better one that will make you see that there exist some people that like stories for being inconsistent, if you just tried. They won't like them for being inconsistent itself, but for what taking away the element of consistency does to the story.
I don't remember Harry Potter as being consistent except for when the event of time travelling occured, so I don't think the analogy to "being surprised by used toilet paper randomly being in the middle of the book" is very fitting. It may very well be fitting for certain works of science fiction though.
Anyway, all I'm trying to say is you can't judge art objectively. Your counter-argument is that you can add certain positive features to a piece of art to make it better, and that it wouldn't come at a cost. (I hope we can agree that as long as it comes at a cost, the improvement is only subjective.) I have hinted at how adding consistency can make a book subjectively worse by restricting the freedom imagination of young readers, and poorly illustrated how resolving the inconsistencies can actually be fun to the reader (it can be fun to adult readers too because it'd make them feel intellectually superior to the author). Also, there is a number of readers who are used to suspending their disbelief and thus perfectly immune to alienations caused by inconsistencies. For them, there are no negative side effects at all.
Edit: Pointless Boy wrote:
What I've been trying to talk about the whole time is Lem's and Eco's thoughts on more or less objective criteria on which fiction can be evaluated in many cases
Yea, more or less. What I actually remember you to have said suggested is that they are totally objective (and then insulted pieces of fiction that don't adhere to these criteria, and thereby also insulted anybody who likes those pieces of fiction), and that I disagree with.
Another valiant ad hominem attack. "You're just reading wikipedia, I'm not, therefore you're stupid and I'm right!" But to answer your question, no, I don't care what wikipedia says about the nature of science because it really has nothing to do with the discussion to begin with, even though you think it does. Insofar as you think science has anything to do with anything, you strangely seem to demand that readers of a children's book have a vast, encyclopedic knowledge (knowledge exceeding that which can be found in crappy wikipedia, even!) of whatever it is you think is important just to understand the book! How insane!
(Takes a deep breath)
You have a short memory, let me remind you what happened. Someone posts a short story, you say why you don't like it, someone contests you, you say again why the story is bad and that you don't like Harry Potter. In the middle of your text, you say "this principle is not scientific, it has no meaning at all". Then I respond to you "it does have meaning and is scientific". You reply that it's not, I say "you think it's not because you have a misconception of science", after that you say "science doesn't mean anything, I'm talking about Harry Potter" and continue with this.
First of all, when you brought that argument to support your idea, it depended mostly on your claim that it was not scientific. I only posted at that specific subject to tell you that it was, but you quickly turned it to "this principle doesn't mean Harry Potter is good, it doesn't matter if it's scientific or not", when I have repeatedly said that I haven't read the books and neither was interested in discussing whether it's good literature or not.
I just tried to correct one thing you said, I gave up because you insist on bringing down a statement I never said in the first place. What the hell makes you think I consider encyclopedic knowledge necessary to understand Harry Potter? I never expressed my opinion about it!!! I am in no position to do so because I haven't read the book!!!
All this obsession seems that you're only arguing on proud and don't care whether the things you write are plausible arguments that lead to constructive criticism, nor want to learn anything, and only wants to get everyone here tired to death until they stop arguing with you. If that's all that matters, you have succeeded with me, I've already wasted too much time reading your posts.
P.S.: Feel free to call it ad hominem or any fancy latin term you want, but no one in these forums has any reason to believe a random video game site user's monologue to be relevant, especially when he doesn't care about the validity of his claims and is well known for starting polemics for absolutely no reason.
And, seeing your reaction, I think you actually read it in Wikipedia :P
