Here's the problem with learning through fiction: the only thing you can learn about through fiction is the mind of the author. When you read a Rand novel, you don't learn anything about how objectivism works, you only learn about Rand's imagination of how it works. Similarly, sentience may in fact be mutually inclusive or exclusive of understanding; just because you can describe a circumstance in which something is true doesn't mean it can ever be true.

This doesn't mean that fiction is useless for learning about the world. It just means that fiction does not contain the tools necessary to decide if something is true (or accurate, or possible). Fiction may spark an idea or make an argument, but you must go outside of fiction to see if those ideas have merit.

Granted most fiction wont provide an objective audit of views on any subject, but to say that the only thing you can learn is the mind of the author oversimplifies the cognitive process that takes place during reading, as well as the issues addressed by fiction. Reading in any non-topical sense forces you to evaluate what you are reading and helps create those new connections in your brain. At the same time, many of the deep issues addressed in fiction are completely outside the realm of factual verification.

There are two main pieces to our perception of the world - the bare facts and the larger picture you get from combining the facts. The larger picture is more universal than the bare facts, so it is more useful than a use case.

Plus, and this is often ignored today, big pictures are not entirely mutually exclusive. To use a comp sci analogy let's look at search algorithms:

Use cases are more similar to deterministic partial solution searches (backtracking depth first search, breadth first search) for which the more interesting problems are intractable. Additionally, such search algorithms are very self contained, and it is usually quite difficult to combine them, making these algorithms a one time tool.

On the other hand, big pictures are more similar to stochastic solution spaces searches, which won't get you the best solution, but they'll get you a pretty good one much, much more quickly. And since solution space searches all interface with the same space, they can be mixed and matched depending on what is most useful for the problem domain. For example, with genetic algorithms, once you can make your problem domain fit a standard GA representation, the whole of GA theory can be applied.

But that's also the beauty of fiction in some contexts is that it allows one to explore ideas outside of their usual context and often within the realm of suspended disbelief.

Aldous Huxley, for instance, both in his fiction and non-fiction, and I see no great gap between them other than the mechanisms employed, has profoundly shaped my thought with his writing.

What about fiction that simply describes how people feel, act and behave? Not every story has to be a metaphorical attempt to explain some philosophical concept.

Most good fiction is written with some message. It's not "just a story", but an illustration of a thought, experience, or feeling.

To top it off, I read because it's fun. Why does everything have to have some Franklinesque color of self-improvement?

Yes I've found reading a story and learning through vicarious living to be effective.

That's why my two favorite startup books are High Stakes No Prisoners and Founders at Work.

I personally tend to look down on people who read only non-fiction (though obviously not as much as people who don't read at all). It suggests a lack of imagination. And I think perhaps that's the self-improvement aspect of fiction - it exercises the imagination.

Right, because reading _Godel Escher Bach_, _Shock of the New_, and _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_ (my current reading list) obviously doesn't exercise the imagination.

I said "only." And just for the record, I've read all of Hofstader's books, not just the popular/mainstream one.

EDIT: Ok, not all, just the ones in English. ;-)

And a further EDIT: all three of those books are about "Art" more or less. I can't see how someone who read those books can't read fiction. So I'm guessing you missed "only."

No, I didn't miss the "only". I don't read fiction anymore. No time. I pretty much want everything I read to be full of new knowledge for me.

I think so, it teaches us to form complete views of the world in our head - which allows us to see the world as it is, and as it could be, much more comprehensively.

I read non-fiction books exclusively. I find them to be a nice break from my imagination. I tend to look down upon people who look down upon people.

> I tend to look down upon people who look down upon people.

nice quip, until followed to its logical conclusion ;-)

What can I say? I hate myself. ;)

I think the nature of this site is that we are somewhat critical of the mainstream (digg, etc). I.e. we look down on them. I didn't mean my comment to be taken personally, it is just my opinion, and it may be flawed. But I don't think so.