Fantasy, real life, problem solving

[erratio]

I have recently realised that i I ever want to be a Serious Intellectual (or even just do things that are cool but challenging, like programming pet projects), I'll need to cut back on my fantasy/sci fi reading  and game-playing hobbies. The reason? My 'thing', that dictates what I find the most interesting, is basically problem-solving. Present me with a complicated system or problem and I will bend over backwards trying to understand it (and then get bored as soon as I sufficiently understand it. This is definitely a weakness of mine, since "I understand what I need to do to get the answer but I can't motivate myself to go through the boring mechanical part" doesn't fly as an excuse at uni). But any competent fiction author is also a decent worldbuilder. And those fictional worlds hold just as much attraction for me as real life science, since a well-built fictional world is a shiny new complex system that I start out knowing nothing about and need to unravel through the hints that the author drops in passing. As for computer games, they thrive on being able to use systems too complicated for a human to calculate by hand, and usually also have giant worlds to explore.
So in short, my brain doesn't distinguish well enough between reality and fiction. And what's more, fictional worlds are almost always easier to understand than real world problems. This makes it more pleasant to read books and play games than to work on real world stuff, since I get a faster payoff. The trick will be to train myself to be able to ignore those short-term gains and go for the longer-term ones that are ultimately more satisfying.

Comments

[lotusvine.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you're not devaluing SF/F in this statement? What are the merits to being a 'serious intellectual'? Why will 'serious stuff' be ultimately more satisfying that exploring imaginary worlds? Do you think you have a bias towards 'serious' stuff because it has more of a more serious weight and prestige to it and others, perhaps your parents, will value it more? Unless of course, you're heading towards career academia! :)

[erratio.livejournal.com]

Why Serious Stuff is ultimately more satisfying: because no matter how absorbing a fantasy world is, it's ultimately a made up system with no or very little connection to anything else. Whereas if I spend some time learning about how drugs affect people's brains, or something like that, I can connect it to other stuff I know about the real world and be able to apply it to real world situations.
Fictional worlds created by a really good author are convincing illusions but unlike real life it's possible to know everything there is about a fictional world, and once you reach that point there's literally nowhere else to go.* The real world has unlimited depth - no matter how much you study a single field there's always more.

*I don't think fanfics count, because that's just making stuff up rather than finding stuff that was already there. Writing your own world is another matter entirely, and could well be as satisfying as the real world, but I doubt I'll ever find out personally.

Finally, a lot of the real world is downright cooler or weirder than anything an author could make up, to the point where if an author included it in a story most readers would mock them for being unrealistic. I'd mention a couple of cool things from linguistics but I suspect they're only really cool to a linguistics nerd like me :)

I won't deny that there's a prestige / conformity aspect to it, but I don't think it's the main reason. I also won't deny that I'm an aspiring academic :)

[erratio.livejournal.com]

PS: My parents have nothing to do with this. My parent's house is basically a SF/F library, and my mother would be thrilled if I'd turned out to be an aspiring author. She still brings it up occasionally, not realising that just because I wrote ok stories in Year 6 doesn't mean I have the inspiration to write a novel :p

[focality.livejournal.com]

I can identify with this. I'm an avid reader but I all too often quit the "serious" stuff but will slog through a mediocre piece of fantasy/sci-fi just to see what happens (and even though it's predictable as hell). Or, I'll prefer to study chess problems or enjoy a good board game rather than the daily challenges encountered at my job, which often lead to breakthroughs for our little publishing venture.

You say the payoff is faster, which I agree with, but isn't also the fact something is finished once the problems are solved? Reality just keeps going, humming along...

(I got to your LJ by clicking on my "board games" interest in my LJ profile. It gives you a list of LJ users and you just click and read. How else is LJ supposed to work? I'm not some weirdo e-stalker.)

[erratio.livejournal.com]

Good point, not sure how much it applies to me though. While I finish almost all books that I start, I'm notorious for getting through 95% of a computer game and then never going back to it. Possibly the grinding is too similar to that of real life?

What kind of 'serious' stuff have you tried to read? The monkey on my back for the last 3 years has been Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglass Hofstadter - fascinating stuff but I inevitably get distracted every chapter or so.

Anyway, hi weirdo stalker guy, and welcome to my LJ :) As you can see, not much is happening at the moment - my friends and I recently got a shipment of board games in and have been playing them constantly!

[focality.livejournal.com]

The only computer game I'm working through (very, very slowly) is Machinarium (http://www.machinarium.net/). It's very much like the PC puzzle-solving games like Myst or Riven. Gorgeous artwork and fun characters. I used to love getting immersed in PC or console games, but now I have little patience for them.

My "serious" reading includes The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale, an actual murder mystery that required the services of what was the nascent form of the "detective" or "inspector." This is a real "whodunit" and inspired detective fiction as well as the science/profession of crime-solving, and the inclusion of detectives/inspectors in police departments. While it's certainly an interesting subject, I feel Summerscale has a tendency to go off way too far on digressions, although not on the scale as Homer or Beowulf or Tolkien. I'm half way through it but haven't picked it back up since summer of last year.

Currently, it's the book Bird Flu (http://birdflubook.com/) by Greger. Much easier going, and there's a family connection since my sister-in-law is part of a research team working with bird flu, so I can ask her stuff.

My gaming time is very limited nowadays. Comes with marriage and home ownership, I guess. That, or I've come to realize many games have you doing the same little things over and over and over for 2-3 hours. Probably why I like Scrabble, Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne.