andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2251 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: This amusing-yet-so-true video directed by Eléonore Pourriat shows a sex-role-reversed world where women are in charge and men don’t get taken seriously. It’s convincing and affecting, but the twist that interests me comes at the end, when the real world returns. It’s really creepy. And this in turn reminds me of something we discussed here several years ago, the idea that alternative histories are made particularly compelling when they are grounded in the fact that the alternate world is not the real world. Pourriat’s video would have been excellent even without its final scene, but that scene drives the point home in a way that I don’t think would’ve been possible had the video stayed entirely within its artificial world. The point here is that the real world is indeed what is real. This alternative sex-role-reversed world is not actually possible, and what makes it interesting to think about is the contrast to what really is. If you set up an alternative history but you do
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1 This amusing-yet-so-true video directed by Eléonore Pourriat shows a sex-role-reversed world where women are in charge and men don’t get taken seriously. [sent-1, score-0.466]
2 It’s convincing and affecting, but the twist that interests me comes at the end, when the real world returns. [sent-2, score-0.63]
3 And this in turn reminds me of something we discussed here several years ago, the idea that alternative histories are made particularly compelling when they are grounded in the fact that the alternate world is not the real world. [sent-4, score-1.122]
4 The point here is that the real world is indeed what is real. [sent-6, score-0.48]
5 This alternative sex-role-reversed world is not actually possible, and what makes it interesting to think about is the contrast to what really is. [sent-7, score-0.641]
6 If you set up an alternative history but you don’t place it in the context of the real world, you’re missing half the story. [sent-8, score-0.772]
7 Alternative history stories come in a number of flavors but a common feature of the best of the novels in this subgenre is that the alternate world is not “real. [sent-13, score-1.187]
8 ” Let’s consider the top three alternative history novels (top three not in sales but in critical reputation, or at least my judgment of literary quality): The Man in the High Castle, Pavane, and Bring the Jubilee . [sent-14, score-0.997]
9 In this book, which takes place in a world in which the Allies lost World War II, hints keep peeking through that the world inhabited by the characters is not reality. [sent-17, score-0.889]
10 Our world is real, and the novel’s characters are living in a fake world (which is imperfectly perceived by the title character, who is thus so dangerous to those in power). [sent-18, score-0.943]
11 It’s a more complex twist on the theme of Man out of Joint, but ultimately the same idea: the people in the novel are living in a fake world which can come apart around them as they recognize that it is a shared illusion. [sent-19, score-0.972]
12 In this one, the pattern of Pavane is reversed, sort of, in that the original world was the one described in most of the novel (the “alternative” history) but then, through some time-traveling mishaps, the story ends up in our reality. [sent-28, score-0.562]
13 Is there something we can learn from this, that the very best alternative history novels recognize our world as the real one? [sent-30, score-1.451]
14 Alternate history could be said to have two purposes: providing insight into our world, and escapism out of it (John Clute makes this point in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, I believe). [sent-32, score-0.482]
15 Rather, my point is that in either case, the thrill or interest comes from playing off the fact that our world is the real one. [sent-34, score-0.536]
16 An alternative history that does not recognize the reality of reality can simply “stack the deck” and in this sense is less interesting to me than a historical novel, or for that matter, than a pure science fiction novel (which, at some level, has to justify its choices). [sent-35, score-1.218]
17 In a sense, all novels are alternate histories, and the issue always arises whether they “couud have happened. [sent-36, score-0.497]
18 ” Genre novels such as Mystic River or those of John Le Carre put in a lot of effort to place their stories within convincing backgrounds—and, in fact, creating these backgrounds is perhaps their main interest. [sent-37, score-0.519]
19 I’d also like to say something about the story “Forlesen” by Gene Wolfe, since it’s so cool, and it presents some sort of alternative history of 20th century America—but I’m not really sure what to say, so I won’t. [sent-38, score-0.578]
20 ) Alternative history novels are a way of exploring causal inference in a speculative way. [sent-43, score-0.718]
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