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Why do so many skeptics like science fiction and fantasy?

Orphia Nay

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Orphia Nay
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Why do so many skeptics like science fiction and fantasy literature?

It puzzles me.

It just seems odd that people who don't believe in the paranormal or the unscientific should love these genres.

Am I missing out? :(
 
First, is there really a statistically different amount of sceptics that would like those genres over the normally expected amount?

Speaking for myself second, I am perfectly capable of separating fantasy from reality.
Reality is nice and well when at work and all that, but when I am looking for entertainment I personally prefer simpler things, preferably if they go boom.
Besides, apart from the people who only read/watch factual autobiography most of humanity turns to some form of fantasy/fiction for entertainment.

My sceptisism only starts coming to the fore when people claim that fiction is real.
 
I'd love to be able to shut my skeptical brain off (to read a different genre), but I can't even do that when I'm asleep.
 
Fortunately, as with all entertainment, if you don't like it, don't read/watch it :)

I for the life of me cannot understand why anyone would read a detective novel and the less said about reality/talent shows the better, but there are massive audiences out there.

I do kind of know what you mean though, as a biochemist by trade I cannot watch any movie/series that shows 'real' use of those techniques. Movies like Outbreak or series like CSI I cannot help but shouting in my head 'It doesnt WORK that way!!!'.
But strangely enough once it becomes fictional enough that it should be clear to anyone that it IS fiction this switches off. Star trek medicine or Fringe I have no problem watching. Odd but true.
 
Cheers, Lukraak. :)

I guess I just have a thing about fiction in general. Odd, because I used to only read fiction. Not anymore... I haven't in ages. But even then, I barely ever read science fiction or fantasy. Douglas Adams being the exceptional example. :)

I have some bug about not wasting time with the fictional when there's so many facts to learn. :con2:
 
The sci-fi part doesn't surprise me at all given that most skeptics seem to have some interest in applying a scientific method and wanting to know just how things work. The best sci-fi tries to explain how things that might not be possible now could be possible in the future.

As for fantasy, I have never been very interested in it but I can see why there is no contradiction between enjoying a good bit of fiction (and knowing it is fiction) and not believing that goblins, elves, pixies, fairies, unicorns, ogres, trolls, witches, wizards and leprechuans actually exist.

Having said that I cannot fathom the popularity of the Golden Compass which seems to me to be a replacement of one kind of "woo" for another.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Why do so many skeptics like science fiction and fantasy literature?

It puzzles me.

It just seems odd that people who don't believe in the paranormal or the unscientific should love these genres.

Am I missing out? :(
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Yes, of course you're missing out. Start reading science fiction *immediately*!!!!! Eleventy etc

Like another poster here, I don't know if there's a statistically significant difference or not.

Another thought that occurs to me is that perhaps skeptics are more willing to *admit* that they read science fiction and fantasy? Or perhaps they don't regard it as "evil" and read it on its merits.

I remember when I was at school reading science fiction that people thought I was a little strange for enjoying stuff that was "just made up". My response was "of course - that's why they call it all *fiction*.... and it would be a bit weird if, when presented with the ability to chose what to read, that I'd chose something I didn't like, wouldn't it?"

Me, I just like it for its escapism. It makes a pleasant change from what I do at work.
 
Edit: I didn't see that the OP asked specifically about literature, rather than fiction in general. I don't read fiction, so my reply is about TV shows and movies.

I usually don't have a problem with supernatural stuff that's part of the show's premise, because it puts the characters in so many interesting situations. What I don't like is when we're required to accept some supernatural or pseudoscientific nonsense that isn't directly related to the show's premise. A few examples:

* The way Superman catches falling people. Would it really be so hard to just have him match their speed and then slow down gently? Instead he has to stand on the ground and just hold out his arms. The only thing this would accomplish is that they would be split into three pieces before they hit the ground.

* Captain America's shield. Did they really have to make it violate conservation of momentum? And if they did, then couldn't they at least have explained it with some technobabble about tachyons or something? What happens if you wear it as a hat, and someone drops a train on your head? Will it just shatter into molecules?

* The homeopathic antidepressants in Pushing Daisies (a show about a guy who can bring people back from the dead by touching their bodies).

* The season premiere of Teen Wolf. Werewolves have a great sense of smell, so he put his head out the window of a moving car and told his friend who was driving to turn right at the next intersection. How does a "great sense of smell" explain that? Was the smell stronger when his nose was 0.1 m from the car than when it was 0.2 m from the car? Even if it was, couldn't it be due to the turbulence or the fact that the car moved forward as he was putting his head out there? Even if we ignore the turbulence, he would have had to move his head back and forth a few times to determine if the effect persisted as the car was moving forward. It would have been so much less annoying if they had just had him say "Keep going in this direction" instead of "turn right over there".

* Many of the things Walter Bishop says on Fringe. Did he really have to say that the universes vibrate at different frequencies?

* Mission to Mars. To many things to mention them all. The engine blew up when it was supposed to slow them down. So they left the ship and used their farting backbacks to get to a satellite in orbit. (Good luck matching its speed, or even finding it). They landed the satellite (why did it have landing capabilities again?) and at the end, the looked at a very tiny piece of a DNA molecule and said that it looked human, except that there are a few chromosomes missing.
 
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Warehouse 13 has several things of which I thought "did you really have to choose that person/place/field of science/pseudo-science?"

Houdini's wallet was the first one, and that was in the pilot. However, once I gave up on criticising those things (because they were too numerous) I enjoyed it much more. I did stop watching it though, but that was because the characterisations became even worse than the quirky cartoonesque way they already were.

ETA: That's an example of things I don't like in fiction; atypical things. Houdini was debunking psychics left right and centre, and yet his wallet would be magical?

But fiction is fiction, and to think that skeptics wouldn't like things which are openly untrue is a bit weird.
 
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I was a huge sci-fi fan before I ever became skeptical. As a young ( and thoroughly believing ) Catholic lad, I believe it was reading science fiction that led me down the path to skepticism.
 
We understand allegory, metaphor, and that sometimes the representation of a thing isn't the thing itself. Thus we can read a sci-fi story and understand that the important part isn't how many souls the evil empire trapped in an intergalactic prison, but rather the nobility of those who oppose such an evil force.

Fiction--including science fiction and fantasy--offers us a glimpse at human nature that we may never otherwise experience in our day-to-day life, and that's enjoyable. Science fiction and fantasy can do that all the more clearly by removing historical biases. No side in reality is universally good or evil. The USA did some horrifying things in WWII, and the South wasn't completely composed of brutal psychopaths who thought the height of entertainment was flaying blacks alive. Make the opposition a demonic force, and you can make the good/evil element infinitely more clear. Or, you can go the other way--there's no question that the Nazis needed to be destroyed, so a story calling into question the validity of war that focuses on WWII isn't going to go well. Make it an interplanetary empire, though, and suddenly the subtleties of cultures and the validity of full-scale warfare can be extremely easy to portray. Once you eliminate the cultural baggage that comes along with nonfiction, the field's far more open and allows a good author to make a much more nuanced presentation of extremely complex themes.

Lukraak_Sisser said:
I do kind of know what you mean though, as a biochemist by trade I cannot watch any movie/series that shows 'real' use of those techniques. Movies like Outbreak or series like CSI I cannot help but shouting in my head 'It doesnt WORK that way!!!'.
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I've been thrown out of two viewings of movies for this. When my family watched "The Day After Tomorrow" my brother-in-law and I started proving, with references, just how dumb the ideas were. When we got out the encyclopedias we were locked out of the room the TV was in. The second time was watching "The Core" with a bunch of geologists. A few of us started drawing diagrams and equations showing the stupidity of the movie, and when we erased the board for the third time we were told to leave by people with pointy-ended rock hammers. :D

But strangely enough once it becomes fictional enough that it should be clear to anyone that it IS fiction this switches off. Star trek medicine or Fringe I have no problem watching. Odd but true.
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It's the Uncanny Valley. If it's similar enough to reality that you can reasonably expect the laws of reality to hold true, deviations are extremely apparent. However, if it's so different that you can't assume the laws of reality hold true, you can easily accept the laws of the story's reality as long as they are consistent. Which honestly is another reason I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy: the good versions show me a world that's completely different from my own, which frankly is fun. It's the same concept as vacationing in a different country.
 
I don't care for SciFi/Fantasy. If it's really good, I might read it or watch it, but I prefer mysteries.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Cheers, Lukraak. :)

I guess I just have a thing about fiction in general. Odd, because I used to only read fiction. Not anymore... I haven't in ages. But even then, I barely ever read science fiction or fantasy. Douglas Adams being the exceptional example. :)

I have some bug about not wasting time with the fictional when there's so many facts to learn. :con2:
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Had plenty of time to read both fic and fac. Enjoy both in many fields - also have watched much film and tv. Also, have noted SF fans generally (and that, by me, is more the ones who hit conventions TEND to be a)more intelligent that average, b) more interesting than average and c)more sk/ceptical than average - and the religious ones are usually more fun to talk with.
 
Read all or most of: Holmes, Queen, Father Brown, Thinking Machine, Continental Op, Thin Man, well, just say Hammett, Christie, Sayers, Poe, Dover's, Hardwicke, and so on.............- but, also and more, SF and F, Few westerns or war, but some.
 
I would say skeptics like science. I think that we know science fiction and fantasy is just that, fiction and fantasy.

I think I grew up believing SciFi was what is possible, and later that lead to what is real now, and what can we achieve in the future. Space flight, Moon landings, geosynchronous satellites, all from SciFi novels, but based on real, possible, credible science. Pseudoscience is not.

(I tend to enjoy many different type of novels - historical, biographies, naval, non fiction. The last two books I've read are "The Devil in the White City", and "The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History", currently reading "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson and "The Hunger Games", and the next book will be "11/22/63" by Stephen King. So I don't read any particular type of book.)
 
I suspect the statistics are a bit skewed here on the online JREF forums. People who hang out on online forums in general tend to skew a bit geeky. Beyond that, of course, there's the science connection. Skeptics tend to like/be interested in science--science fiction tends to be about science.

I know that a lot of my early skepticism comes from science fiction. When you're imagining alien worlds and alien cultures, it's hard (for example) to take the whole concept of a geo-centric, human-centric deity seriously. What about the aliens? Do they have their own gods? If so, which ones created the universe? Would slime molds from Sirius IV really accept that some human-looking guy on some far off star died for their sins? Imagining far-off worlds really helps put our own in perspective.

But I suspect the main thing is the common element of science. Many SF writers are active skeptics. Many are fruitcakes full of woo, too, but overall, an interest in science and skepticism frequently go hand-in-hand.
 
Bikewer said:
I was a huge sci-fi fan before I ever became skeptical. As a young ( and thoroughly believing ) Catholic lad, I believe it was reading science fiction that led me down the path to skepticism.
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You sound exactly like me.

In any case, I've always loved science fiction (based in reality) and fantasy. But when I view the real world, I approach it with eyes wide open and brain fully skeptical.
 
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The real world is great and all, but sometimes I like to imagine a world with magic, or the effectively magic sufficiently advanced technology.

I think it's important for skeptics to have a good imagination, as long as they never confuse that with reality.
 
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