One Sided Policy Debate - The Science of Literature

I think what they're afraid of is something like the sickness occupying Hollywood, where they're very good at following a couple formulas and very bad at doing anything that'll actually amuse the sort of people who watch a lot of movies and have gotten bored of the formulas. Used in moderation this is a good thing, but marketing culture is very bad at taking profitable ideas in moderation.

From hanging out with humanities people and technical people, I'm heavily inclined to put this down to straight-up Hansonian status competition. Humanities people and technical people tend to downplay the value of each other's fields. It provides a gratifying, group-unifying status boost, and brings few consequences because the victims are on the other side of campus. In general this is fueled by subtle misunderstandings between groups.

In this case, humanities people will be overestimating the degree to which the techie's studying literature are simplifying things - for instance they might think that the tech people are actually saying their algorithms can capture the complexity of human reaction to literature, instead of just providing useful approximations. Thus, it feels like an insult to them, and a chance to pounce on the hated enemy, and in the process affirm their allegiance to the ingroup, who after all are the people who really matter. Artificial intelligence, neuropsychology and economics all get similiar reactions.

I would have attributed most of the reaction to people being sick of being spied upon.

High-end IQ people do stoo-pidt things. Like being so supportive of reading that they want less reading to happen rather than the 'wrong' kind of reading. Another example: ignoring that more people are writing for pleasure than ever before because it's 'just' texting and facebook.

I think you are wrong in saying that no one claims benefits from it: claiming benefits is practically all the linked article does. (BTW, your link goes to page two of the article. You may want to fix that. [Edit: Fixed.])

The article gave one viewpoint (and left out the other), and so everyone else is trying to give the counterpoint. (Not that I'm saying it's wrong for the article to only give one side: maybe debates work better for transmitting information than balanced pieces. But it certainly is the correct response to try to steelman the other viewpoint when you see an article in favour of one side.)

Focusing on producing only the media that you think the public wants will discourage imaginative artists from creating new visions of what the public doesn't know they might like.

The most useful aspect of this service would be to prevent people from writing things that people don't want to read. Anything that stops people wasting their time is nice.

No amount of data mining is going to specify the next mold-breaking instant classic, but hopefully it can quantitatively back up a reduction in vampire romance novels, or as the article points out, extremely boringly titled and seemingly boringly written history books.

I think that part of this is a worry that it will invoke Goodhart's law. There's also the issue of feedback loops; people get used to what's on the market, and the market finds it safer to put out whatever people are used to.

In addition to ygert's good comment I want to mentioned that maybe there is a status thing involved too. Maybe you noticed that in the natural sciences and in engineering there is the meme that something is either mathematical or not worth doing. A more extreme form is to see themselves as the most important workers in the world. Ackknowledging that, yes, studying literature to learn what makes a great piece of literature just like studying engineering to learn what makes a great bridge is a worthwhile and valuable endaveour, will hurt their status in the hacker community. Just go to a site like reddit and see how English majors are bashed on by engineering majors.

I am guilty myself of hating the humanities. Until the exact day I realised what the subject is about and that studying at college does not have to be a purely economic decision.

Any initial approach of measuring anything (here: book interests) can be attacked on its simplicty. Neccessarily the first measure will have lots of unwanted special cases and it is just too easy to point these out - especially if they are obviously biased toward economic value.

[Trying to simplify] is a goal of dumbing down books to get stupid people to understand them. That's why people cite 1984. Orwell's newspeech is also about dumbing down intellectual discourse.

It is also easy to laud any approach of measuring based on the gain of information/knowledge it entails and transitively the improvements that gains.

What gets measured gets optimized.

It is always more difficult to see where such a measurement really leads. Extrapolating can be done on different complexity levels.

• The simplest is always to just assume maximization of the measureable (here: maximize fun and by sales monetary gains).

• The next level is to consider effects of the maximization and balancing effects (it may fall short or it might tip the system; here: dumbing down authorship tips with Hollywood-sickness result).

• Another direction is to consider improvements to the measurement. What else might be measured to give authors feedback? And what results from maximizing that?

• The next level is to consider the effect of the public on the process of measurement.

• Ultimately one can envision to model this as part of a societal dynamic stabilizing on a fixed point. I wonder whether prediction markets can reach such a level.

My prediction:

• The public will voice concerns (as already seen in the comments). This alone will initially have little effect as long as profits can be generated by the measure and not much actual change is visible.
• Alternative measures will be introduced by competitors. Some tuned to niches e.g. by measuring not only fun but 'quality'.
• NGOs will monitor companies' (ab)use of the measure(s).
• Policy makers address such issues.
• Consolidation sets in.
• Development over time is documented.

Actually one can always build such a prediction by assuming the topic develops sufficiently to be come worthy of study. The direction in time is mostly math (can it be done) -> technology (how is it done effectively) -> economics (how to generate value from it) -> sociology (how does is affect people) -> politics (aggregate people affects) -> philosophy (reflection and rationalization) -> historics (posthoc documentation)

Damn. I can't write short comments.

Is this just technophobia? Or am I missing something, and this really is a horrible, evil technology that should be avoided at all costs? [That's a rhetorical question -- I'd be surprised if even one LWian held that position]

You seem to underrate the amount of contra-contrasrism on Lesswrong. For most subjects you will find someone on Lesswrong that can take the other side of the debate.

I guess what I'm asking is, what are the psychological roots for the almost-unanimous aversion to this attempt at gathering and using information about what people want?

Take a look at the discussion about Transcendence. You will find a sentiment that a film isn't supposed to be judged by the amount of fun that reader have in the cinema but that the film is supposed to be judged on the way it frames the societal debate.

Pop culture is culture that optimised on short-term enjoyment and pleasing the audience. Serious fiction is supposed to be optimised for more noble goals.

Effective technology that focuses on giving people what they want by looking at what people read is technology that engages in what we label on Lesswrong as "wireheading".

Ugly things happen when you start to pay all journalists by the click instead of focusing on accurate reporting.

Nassim Taleb said on the subject: "Truck driver who read books don't want to read books that are written for truck drivers."

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