[HN Gopher] Research on whether reading fiction makes you nicer ___________________________________________________________________ Research on whether reading fiction makes you nicer Author : ohjeez Score : 37 points Date : 2022-04-09 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (lithub.com) (TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com) | omarhaneef wrote: | Tl; Dr " Researchers David Dodell-Feder and Diana I. Tamir set | out to check the validity of existing research on the topic. They | ran a meta-analysis on fourteen studies to check whether fiction | reading causally improves social cognition--and they discovered | that reading fiction has a small, statistically significant | impact on social-cognitive performance. In other words, reading | fiction makes you a little nicer and more socially aware." | NikolaNovak wrote: | I wish "according to science" should automatically be replaced | with "according to this one study". Seriously. it builds this | image of "science" as uniform United law-making body; and then | when another study comes out, people see it as "science" failing, | as opposed to working as designed. | | "It's official!" Prefix don't help none either... | [deleted] | adhesive_wombat wrote: | Every time there's some result in physics that doesn't match | with the standard model, say, there's a flood of breathless | "scientists are wrong!" headlines that make it sound like | they're all incompetent bumblers who get embarrassingly shown | up as elitist chancers by the "university of life". | | In reality, the physicists themselves know the models are | incomplete, have painstakingly devised an cutting-edge | experiment to probe that uncertainty and are ecstatic that | there is more to study and that they have a new clue to follow. | Imagine how sad it would be to be a physicist on the day that | the Grand Unified Theory is discovered and physics is complete. | Mordisquitos wrote: | Related to this, and tangentially connected to the topic of | reading fiction, I'll take this as an opportunity to raise | one of the many things that I disliked about Cixin Liu's | _"The Three-Body Problem"_. I honestly don 't understand why | it is held in such high regard, let alone sometimes described | as "hard" science fiction. Spoilers evidently follow. | | One of the initial plot points in the novel is that many top | scientists in fields close to theoretical physics are | misteriously committing suicide. Eventually it is revealed | that they're doing it because an alien civilisation is | surreptitiously using advanced technology to secretly | interfere with human research at the subatomic level or | something of the sort, to the point that the affected | scientists are coming across such contradictory, | counterfactual and inconsistent results that they finally | commit suicide out of despair, shame, or loss of faith in | science. | | The idea that scientists, when faced with sudden nonsensical | results which they cannot explain, would feel compelled not | only to keep this fact to themselves but also to take their | own lives is an unbelievably ignorant take on the workings of | science as a field and a community. | | If an evil power were to somehow alter reality to start | breaking the expected rules of the Universe scientists would | be absolutely _excited_ about it, not suicidal! And even if | they were to eventually despair out of the meticulously | planned inconsistency caused by the evil manipulators, such | that nothing could ever be predicted again, the despair would | happen long after years and years of scientific conventions | making the whole situation _very_ public! | teawrecks wrote: | What if the author thinks that "according to science..." means | "a statistically significant number of studies on this subject | have come to the same conclusion that..."? Like when the media | reported that the LHC had confirmed the existence of the higgs | boson? It wasn't one study, it was a bunch of studies and | experiments over many years that eventually crossed a | confidence threshold. | gigamick wrote: | "Backed by science", "according to science" etc is the new | marketing buzz-phrase and it's very annoying. I think it's a | reaction to the world of conjecture, "alternate facts", and | opinion that dominates us thanks to... well basically thanks to | 6 years of Trump, I guess. | | However whenever I read now "according to science", or | something similar I just baulk. | CoastalCoder wrote: | > It's official According to science ... | | I have trouble deciding how to interpret that phrasing. | | Taken at face value, it suggests the author has an implausibly | bad understanding of science, logic, and thinking in general. | | Given the context, I wonder if it's somehow meant in jest. | [deleted] | KarlKemp wrote: | It's a phrase, and everyone understands what it means. | Wikipedia isn't the worst here, even though it mangles the | grammar: In summary that has authenticity | emanates from an authority. | | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official#Adjective) | | The only problem here is people pretending not to know that | language involves ambiguities, figures of speech, and so on. | | To expand: in this case, two things are happening | simultaneously: first, the author appreciates literature, and | is genuinely happy that their intuitive belief that it is | something "good" is getting a bit of empirical evidence. | | Second, yes, I believe there is a hint of a smirk in the | statement, that, if I were to dramatize it, is a comeback at | all the STEM students in college that were dismissive of the | author's enjoyment of non-non-fiction. It's all in good fun, | however, because the article fundamentally rests on a believe | in the scientific method, just not to the exclusion of other | human endeavors. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-09 23:00 UTC)