Why even bother reading fiction? You learn nothing, its giant waist of time...

There's nothing more worth knowing in non-fiction than in fiction.

>implying any true, real knowledge can ever be obtained
>implying that there are "superior" knowledges than others

Where do these plebs come from?

Then he expressed himself fairly poorly which ironically enough is something that can be helped by reading fiction.

Likewise if one thinks that the message is the only important part of a work of fiction (which is the kind of mindset public school education tends to produce) then you miss on crucial aspect of how that message is delivered (and why books like Crime and Punishment brings more people around to seeing the faults of the worship of reason than say the Ego and its Own does.

To put it another way what the OP is doing is like saying that all food preparation that goes beyond boiling rice is giant waste of time.

Cringe.

I read both fiction and non-fiction. None of it is useful to me.

I mean.... how is this not obvious? I read fiction because it gives me pleasure. What in the hell other reason could there be?

>What was Brave New World about?
Living your life controlled by things that make you feel good. So:
>Suicide?
To an extent. Basically the same idea as Infinite Jest, just attacked from a polar opposite angle in terms of emotional backdrop.

this

>he doesn't know that science FICTION has always been the biggest influence for scientists

>oh!, um--uh--ma'am.. may I acquire some of that radiant ass-I-mean-ranch dipping sauce as well

Dude I'm on 3 weeks nofap don't post this shit on a blue board.

How can Schopenhauer seriously think that male bodies are more aesthetic? I mean look at this shit

That's pretty long on no fap

nofap is retarded

Pretty sure she's black

Masturbating to strangers on the internet is pretty pathetic

Going to the other extreme is retarded.

If you're addicted to masturbation nofap recommends 3 months of abstaining in order to get you accustomed to focusing on real women. You're not supposed to give up masturbation forever

Like some anons may have jokingly or non-jokingly pointed out, everything is fiction to the degree that it's abstracted from reality.

None of what can ever be expressed can truly be experienced as reality, period. We can draw the line, for pragmatic purposes, to what we can experience with our senses firsthand to be referential to reality. However, translate any of what we sense into words and the degree of abstraction becomes too far to even remotely declare that it's reality.

We can talk about nonfiction as an issue of intent, whether it's attempting to be referential to reality or not, but it runs through the mind and pen of an author, which ultimately begets fictions unbeknownst even to the author leaking into the work.

Thus, when analyzing literature (and only literature- the pragmatic mechanics of any other systems such as science or history are irrelevant here) we must look at it not as a matter of intent by author, but of interpretation as a reader. So long as a work, "fiction" or "nonfiction" provides an internally logically consistent system, it's as good as reality, and there are many things that can be pulled from any valid system that work as microcosms or anecdotes for mechanics we might come into contact with pragmatically.

Part of this assumes a critical reader, and a competent writer. Both are incredibly important regardless of genre, or whether it's fiction or nonfiction, as the understanding of a consistent system is paramount to beginning any fruitful discussion on a subject.

Tl;dr: You're a goddamn faggot who needs to take their foot out of their mouth. Go suck a chode, homoboy.

Yeah it took me about 3 months before I transformed into a less socially anxious and more self confident and happier person. The way it was explained to me was that frequent masturbation builds you a tolerance to endorphins, that feel good hormone. So things like enjoying a good home prepared meal or a friendly chat with someone doesn't reward you chemically as it's supposed to. Instead your body builds a new normal of wanting to jerk off and relax so your body gets into a state of depression when you're not in this mode.

So yeah 2-3 weeks into nofap was hard but after that I stopped desiring masturbation so much. 2-3 months in I think was a real reset when I felt like a different person. Accomplished a one night stand for the first time too.

yeah, nofap is retarded.

I only really realised all this at age 29. Am i an idiot?

I'm at my best when I cum right in the morning before my day starts. It's just the best way to wake up in the morning since I'm already hard and a good long session gives me time to fully awaken. The days that I denied myself ejaculation are the days I couldn't get out of bed till the last minute and the days my mind felt clogged with thoughts of violating every female I see.

Ya, fuk nofap.

Every minute I spend reading fiction there's a nagging thought in my brain that I could be reading non-fiction and learning something about the world.

Last time I enjoyed fiction was about 10 years ago.

Not at all, my dude. Many people go their entire lives without thinking about those kinds of things- Fiction is what is fake, Nonfiction is what is real, and all is fine in the world with these definitions.

Nobody can live at peace within an inconsistent reality. If two pieces of information contradict each other, dissonance is only natural. However, if you don't sweat the small stuff and only look at life in a simplistic manner, the less bad you feel. The more you look into the small stuff, the more it becomes a chain reaction of feeling like shit because something never matches up, and you feel the compulsion to make things consistent either by turning a blind eye, trying to figure things out with patchwork theories, or rigorously devoting yourself to the pursuit of knowledge.

Far as I see it, regardless of age, any step towards a better comprehension of how things work, is a really nice thing to see, 'cause it makes people more interesting to talk to.

But what are your thoughts on nofap?

>hurr durrp al work is ficion new ton's law of relativity iz story lol gravity n the forces that be arent real

Fiction is good for one thing. Making faggots that think too much instead of getting shit done like a true nonfiction patrician.

historical record and observation are inherently reliant on belief

There are people for whom fapping becomes a serious compulsion and affects their social lives in some fucked up ways. If you're not one of those people then fine, but that doesn't suggest that they don't exist, and that nofap can't help them.

>DUDE READING PORN FICTION FROM HUSTLER IS AS GOOD AS READING HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

Found the post modernist cancer cuck promoting stupidity on the basis of cantknownuffin.

Read the post again, faggot. I explicitly denoted that there's a difference between literature, particularly that which involves a narrative, is the focus of what I'm talking about, as topics of science or history are mechanistically different and work under different systems for modern analysis.

Like you say, scientific nonfiction texts are going to be a hell of a lot more useful than science fiction. I wasn't trying to say there's no difference, just that there's no fundamental difference in terms of literature.

Though, I will say nonfiction is easier and requires less effort on a writer's part, as they are provided with an internally consistent system (the real world) to work with when telling a narrative, whereas good fiction writers must build it at least in part from scratch.

See what I talked to the other cuck about, History and Historical analysis work with different systems, and I explicitly said I wasn't referring to them.

What's with Veeky Forums's inability to read basic English tonight?

There are degrees of truth. And methods of historical analyses are better at approximate truth than fiction is. It's sort of how a clock that's two minutes off can never gives you the correct time, but a it's still more useful than a broken clock which is exactly right twice a day.

>See how I backpedaled after someone pointed out a terrible flaw in my pure ideology post promoting stupidity.

geeee

I didn't backpedal one bit. I included the clause in my original post because I'm not trying to make blanket statements on mechanistically different fields/systems.

Guess a faggot like you just wouldn't understand though that people can have nuanced arguments that don't rely on blanket statements.

after enough historical and cultural turmoil, every historical record only becomes closer to fiction

what you believe to be history is an approximation, which has as much approximate truth as a good story written by someone whose ideology was influenced by another (possibly similar) approximation of some kind of history

>DUDE THIS ACCOUNT OF HUSTLER WRITER ABOUT TRANNIES IN ROMAN EMPIRE BEING EMPOWERED BY THE STATE AND LAW IS AS ACCURATE AS GIBBON'S

Kill me I can't stand your stupidity.

So you agree then, that fiction is telanovela tier when it comes to improving critical thinking?

I mean come on. I can spend days reading a fictional story then spend more days analysing it when I could've just searched the main topic and found myself a book explaining the ins and outs of said topic, free of the author's own bias.

Fiction is a waste of time and at worst brainwashing for susceptible young minds.

It depends on the sort of truth you're trying to obtain. Fiction might contain moral and ethical truths, but I'm not going to get an (albeit flawed and partial) approximation of Roman history by reading contemporary fiction. The options are either being in complete ignorance of Rome by only reading fiction, or reading the partial knowledge given to us by academics.

That's why History, and Historical analysis exist within a separate system. Any analysis must acknowledge the meta of the writing itself, including the source, bias, purpose, and the zeitgeist of the time it was written. Literature, and literary analysis (unless you're taking it to a weird meta level) exists in a self-contained system, referential only to the text itself.

In the context of analyzing something historically, it's obvious a work intended to be nonfiction will gleam more of value than something that's intended to be fictional- that's not to say you can't take a work of fiction written in a time and then apply that in a historical fashion (Orwell's works are often analyzed in such a fashion), but such information gained is usually tertiary, and can only answer the question of the zeitgeist of the time at best.

You'll never find something without an author's bias. That was a retarded statement, my dude.

It almost seems as though you're the one susceptible to brainwashing. Let me explain it on a separate level.

Let's take some internally consistent systems (or, attempted consistent systems) such as economics and chemistry. We analyze them using separate means, and each have sets of rules that are unique to them, yet may be mechanistically similar. The concept of entropy and the process of a reaction in chemistry works along a mechanistic principle that includes an activation energy, a higher energy system that works as a transition state, and then a final state that's in a lower state, almost in every reaction. The same principles can be understood by economists, particularly quantitative financial specialists, in trying to decide where the market might go- in fact, human behavior often runs along the same track of reaching an overall lower energy state.

A more coherent example (or, a closer analogy), would be between how the field of biology addresses classification of species, evolution of species, and the death of species. It's almost mechanistically identical to the way linguists view language- with many of the same rules, including where the cutoff point is for the divergence in linguistic stock (genetic stock) to denote a new language (species).

Systems may deal with entirely different things, yet use the same mechanistic processes. A truly good work of fiction, that portrays a logically consistent system, may contain many of these mechanisms that a reader can perfect their understanding of just by looking at it from a different angle. In a lot of ways, this removes the limitations of reality in trying to create analogy and trying to promote understanding of things.

Living in a world where there are such things as facts to memorize, rather than concepts and mechanisms to learn and perfect must be so dull. I implore you to try to think critically one of these days.

kek

Lol then give me an example of fictional writing that does exactly that. Gives you a better understanding of a subject matter that you couldn't have learned from a regular textbook. If anything fiction is just used to get the reader interested in the subject so they can later learn more on their own with actual academic text, not the other way around.

>You learn nothing, its giant waist of time
I'll give that girl's giant waist some of my time. Oh yeah

Many of kafka's works include microcosmic human parallels to how bureaucracies function, that one might be able to think about in order to grasp how an ordered and hierarchical system works to cut down on overall use time and save time/money. That's not to say a business textbook, or study into political structure wouldn't be able to yield similar understandings, but that it still has the value in that it assists people's understandings by way of a cohesive narrative that can relate to people's lives.

Textbooks are fine, and incredibly helpful in trying to understand the rules of the systems they herald. They aren't the best at promoting the fundamental understanding of what it means to work within a system in many cases- there are a lot of writers that go the extra mile to do this, but for the most part, it's assumed that if you're a scientist, for example, you recognize that what is in textbooks are theories that are a part of a consistent system, not the absolute truth.

Often times, it's these realizations of how systems can be separated and integrated, as well as other similar meta mechanics that fiction excels at. Issues of subjectivity and objectivity, realism and idealism, and other abstract human or non-human concepts can be condensed into parables that serve as reflections of concepts and ideas.

It's alright to have a preference, and certainly some people have more difficulty understanding the human aspects of things. Low functioning autism cases can be treated medically, although I don't know of many cases with which the subject has regained normal levels of human empathy. I'm with you, friend.

You can do better by reading the law code of your country + the budget.

Next.

Neither of which are literature. Also, you might be able to gain an understanding of how a single country has their policy set up, but that won't necessarily give a better understanding of how the mechanisms work between levels of management.

You're providing databases of raw information, but I'd honestly stress that those are useless without the knowledge of the mechanisms that lead to the outcomes represented as 'facts'. Fiction excels in its ability to provide the analogue- the concept that there are various levels for which different operations are mechanistically similar, which isn't found in anything BUT fiction, as an analogy is inherently fictitious in the modality of application.

Going back to a previous example lightly talked about, analysis of Orwell's novels alongside Historical texts that discuss Soviet society has allowed philosophers and psychologists to advance our understanding of how the mind accepts varying degrees of authority in a non-binary fashion, and how animals assimilate knowledge based on a ranking system of authority. It has also helped people understand the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance, and continues to highlight the importance of consistency in knowledge bases.

You can learn a lot of the same principles of logical consistency and their applications, as well as authority checks from a computer science textbook. But the nuance of the mechanism is given the human analogy, which can be used in tandem with understanding of nonfiction text to generate a more holistic grasp of a mechanism or subject.

Again, if you prefer to do things in a way that doesn't use human analogy, that's fine and not impossible. I'm merely arguing there is a use to fiction, not that it's necessary for all, nor that it's the key ingredient to knowledge. There is help-there are a lot of support groups I know that have helped Autistic people to empathize better, as well as articles that can help you to understand yourself better. Here's one, in case you fancy reading it (presumably nonfiction): autism-help.org/story-adult-empathy.htm

I'm here for you bud.

Literally why would I want to do that?

Last night I spent over two hours meeting and talking with a girl only to be bored, wishing I were at home with a book. She asked me to call her some time and I will 100% prefer to save my time and money, beating off and reading instead of listening to any more inanity just for the hopes of getting my dick sucked.

Women are overrated.

I used to think this way about poetry since I thought you could just freeverse anything, and my teacher said that quote about poetry being like tennis, where if it didn't have the net it's not really the game. In my mind fiction is like that. It's easy to criticize writing if you don't write it. I learned that about poetry, some of these poets would spend years just thinking of the right arrangement of words to explain what they mean.. Fiction is that way with literary tools, the allusion, the juxtapose, the zuegma, etc. in a way that expresses the individuals intent. I want to see that humanity and understand my own. And frankly it's just entertaining and fun.

How about keep jerking your desensitized ADD dick alone in your room until orgasms don't feel good anymore. Too many young men are succumbing to porn addiction and can't disillusion themselves to it being self-abuse in the long term and don't want to admit to it. The same excuses drug abusers and gamblers use too.

>I love to waste time studying abstraction rather than collect raw information I can use to reach an ultimate truth to further humanity.

That's you.

Listen. I'm not saying poetry and fiction are useless, I think it, but I'm not saying it directly because a lot of useless things are enjoyable. Like women and video games. I just want anime man here to admit that fiction is purely for entertainment, for expression, for fun. If you're reading it for any other purpose than that it's just a waste of time.

Orgasms feel fucking great though, why are you brainlets automatically taking an extreme polar opposite stance as a weak argument to a rejection of an extreme stance?

The nofap extreme stance isn't as extreme as you think it is. It's abstaining for a few months in order to develop a healthy relationship to both sex and masturbation. We're not going full celibate monk.

2 week involuntary Zoloft induced nofap here

Oldfag checking in. I've spent the last 14 years of my life reading exclusively textbooks and non-fiction constantly. I've learned a lot about my field, but my life feels flatter without it. Story is powerful.

nice one
have a (you)

Do you not understand what that user is writing? Can you give a genuine summary of what you think their point is?

>He thinks base secondary sexual characteristics are aesthetic.

Pleb detected

I was about to fap and you stoped me. I will try this because i think you're right: I would just now masurbate and lose the desire to speak to anyone. Now i feel like going out.
But you need patience to get the girl and right now i feel my sex drive sky rocketing, wat do?

>Why even bother reading fiction?
Why bother eating luxury foods for the pleasure of taste? Why bother owning any luxury item for quality of life and comfort like a leather recliner vs. a hard wood stool? Why bother enjoying yourself in life and having recreational time at all? Everyone should study and then go straight into the coal mines, that's exactly how life should be.

My niggas right here

>You learn nothing,

I'm going to finally try this. My record is 2 weeks, I want to finally reach at least 2 months.

What do you take learning to be? The acquisition of facts? This is the problem with today's youth. An intelligent person to them is the one best equipped to win Trivial Pursuit.

YOU get nothing from reading fiction because you don't understand analysis.

Now I love nonfiction, however, needing your lessons presented in neat, straight-forward essays is the most ludicrous depiction of the intellectual I've ever heard.

Learn to think critically; as it stands, you are symptomatic of Western decline.

>best for knowledge and intellectuals discussion

Clothing and make-up are magic designed to make women's frumpy bodies look appealing.
When totally naked females look absurd. Male bodies are far more aesthetic.
Also since you seem to be dumb, aesthetic isn't just a synonym for "things one finds sexual"

They're both good in a way.

In some ways I would say male perfection is better than female perfection.

>Western decline

>its giant waist of time
you made this thread entirely for this, didn't you

Yes, you learn nothing, while it can have a "lesson", that lesson is based in a purely fictional world created to suit the ideology of the author, and is thus worthless :)

...

Why is nofap a good solution?

>he hasn't read Heidegger
>he still has a pig-disgusting anglo-simplistic notion of what truth is
>he doesn't realize there is more truth in the works of Shakespeare than all encyclopedias in the world

Was positivism and all the crippled offspring it bore the definitively worst school of thought ever conceived?

why do Veeky Forums fags think reading is always about learning shit?

>waist
top tier bait, nice going.

holy shit more pizza ads, i wanted to get spammed with ads i'd go full normie and watch youtube or something

Perspective, motherfucker, do you get it?

Reminder that there is literally nothing wrong with logical positivism

So?

No reason you have to abstain, just tone it down and don't be a weak minded cuck who can either have all or nothing

Don't be retarded, just masturbate less

same

youre pretty much equally retarded if youre equating this full blown philistinism/proud american ignorance with analytic philosophy

fucking tards responding to another mini richard dawkins, is there a mod in here with a delete thread button?

just stfu an go read your story book while i smash the business world to pieces and give you a world to live in

Sure they say the same about heroin

>its giant waist of time.

you do learn correct grammar and spelling, though. think about it.