Why do most people think that fiction is so much better than non-fiction...

Why do most people think that fiction is so much better than non-fiction? Everyone I've spoken to thinks that fiction is some transcendent thing that gets to "hidden truths" and is the be all and end all of books. I personally value non-fiction more.

I would much rather read about people that have done things or learn about the natural world or how brains work. To give you an idea, some books I've read recently are: The Worm at the Core, Wisdom of Trees, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and The Vital Question. All of these books were written by intelligent people, authorities in their subjects, and each page had knowledge and interesting personal stories to impart. I didn't have to wade through non-existent actions of a fake character doing things to eventually get to, at some point at the end of the novel, the whole point of the book which was previously hidden under fancy prose and flowing language which is superfluous to the meaning I'm trying to reach in the first place.

I completely understand WHY people read fiction, but it's pretty annoying that they think it's superiour.

Poetry > Non-Fiction > Fiction

there is no difference between these categories, we live in simulacrum anyway

Seriously, go on Reddit's /r/books and you'll find 100% of them think fiction is greater than non-fiction. They think that non-existant characters doing non-existent things and "truths" hidden behind fancy prose and flowly, superfluous language is undeniably better than non-fiction.

why dont you watch 30 mins of msm nerd. come back and tell me about your binaries

meh people like different parts of storytime. personally i like the bits with pirates and interior decoration.

Fiction is art, nonfiction is not.

what an art snob, next you'll say video games aren't art. baka

And? Does that make non-fiction worse? Not at all. Non-fiction has just as many benefits as fiction.

Not saying it makes it better or worst. Just an incite into why some people perfer fiction. Some enjoy experiencing art more than cramming facts in their head.

when I say I read mostly non-fiction I don't mean soulless, dry textbooks. I have read textbooks from cover to cover (Essential Entomology) because I'm professionally interested in the subject, but most of the books I've read are smaller, personal books which tell personal stories or impart knowledge about how our brains work or what someone does in their daily life. It's all very personal and sometimes quite light and humorous. I'm not reading dusty and arcane tomes.

There's no reason not to consume both.

Personally I just fucking hate when you present fiction as actually imparting some fundamental understanding of the world. Like, 1984 is totally a piece of political philosophy, right? You shouldn't bother with those silly social sciences when you have such masterpieces. It's pseudo-intellectualism at its finest.

you mean insight not incite, and the two aren't mutually exclusive. carlyle's history of the french revolution or mandeville's fable of the bees or aristophanes' the clouds or plutarch's lives all are transformative political works of art. any hardline definition between the two and you lose the greatest works of both. there are of course bad examples of the combination of the two where you get palahniuk and dfw fact laden "fiction".

>in a simulacrum
i.e. in a fiction. after all the hard knowledge is absorbed fiction is all there is. to suddenly truncate all the fictional branches off the fictional tree of life is to be left with nothing but a stupid proposition. Fiction is the free mind at play, and Fiction as a genre is superior to Non-fiction precisely because of this. And the best minds so engaged have absorbed and recombined more hard knowledge than (you) have yet absorbed, user. It is the realm of hard observation and new ideas. It teaches both how to see and how to read/write IN GENERAL, not with respect to this historical premise, or that scientific hypothesis.
The majority of this is of course addressed to OP.

Couldn't agree more, if I understand your post. I put more value on an actual scientist than some author who writes fiction about a particular topic. Just because it's art doesn't mean it's some godly transcendent form of absolute truth and is better than everything else.

You get more out of those pieces with philosophy already read.

If you think reading fiction is useless, you're a brainlet and/or reading the wrong fiction. Obviously fiction has useful information in a more incoherent than non-fiction books. How could it be otherwise? Both are necessary

Can you read fuckwit? When did I say fiction is useless.

good numbers.

Why did you post that picture instead of some city map or chemical formula? That's the answer

Implying what, exactly? Because I read non fiction I'm only concerned with cold hard formulae? That's a bit of a jump mate.

Because people have been schooled through non-fiction, science, etc., which often pulled them away from those subjects if they weren't inbornely inclined to them.

Are you saying portraits aren't art?

But again, it's odd to think that all non fiction is of this variety. Non-fiction can be about adventure and tales about people's lives just as much as it can teach you about hard science. I like both realms.

>Non-fiction can be about adventure and tales about people's lives just as much as it can teach you about hard science.
Yeah, but then you get into a bunch of other prejudices.
>Why are you reading about someone else's Life™?
>Why are you writing about someone else's Life™?
>Based On A True Story marketing
>Isn't that boring? They don't really do anything!
>They're bullshitting, there's no way he did That!
And so on. People also feel non-fiction is necessarilly utilitarian, and you have to do what you read, when that's kind of antithetical to sharing experiences at all (i.e. why people talk about the makes they made, but you shouldn't).

And if you write fiction then you have an agenda or are an escapist. Not to say that doing either well takes a lot of work.

All in all, books are just tricky to talk about... Everyone just likes to pick sides. We're tribal by nature. We follow our own cultural scheme of things. In the end we all die, so I say just like what you like. Whilst this sounds hypocritical to my OP, I was just dismayed at the idea that people can be so sure THEIR form of literature is better than others. I should probably take what I've said here and start caring less.

You sound fundamentally underage. Seriously. Save your posts, read them again in 12 months (if you haven't killed yourself by then). They will guaranteed make you vomit as hard as I am vomiting right now.

What have I said that's offended you, my precious little flower? What's upset you. Tell papa.

Go on, my son. It's okay.

Exactly you can be impressed by the complex mechanisms of an engine and also the aesthetic beauty of a painting. You can say the engine is well made but would you really call it a masterpiece?

Can someone name a work of non-fiction that they'd consider a masterpiece?

Why do you think that non-fiction works can't be masterpieces? Why? Seriously, explain this. It makes no sense. Because something isn't "art" to you, it can't be a masterpiece? So you're saying that reading a science book by a PhD that has spent his entire life learning his subject and writes with passion and immense knowledge is just trash bullshit compared to some made up story?

Nonsense.

I'm unrhetorically asking you to name one. It's not a challenge, I'm curious.

Whatever I say you'll just respond with "yeah yeah facts smacts, it'll all be proven wrong and it's just cold dead non-art."

>I should probably take what I've said here and start caring less.
Don't care, do.

Fucking infuriating. I just had a conversation with someone that thinks his best type of fiction book "contain more information - philosophical, historical, mathematical, scientific, etc. - than any nonfiction book I've ever personally read."

Fucking hell. Utter shit.

>Won't/can't name a single one.

Two different sides of the spectrum:

Walden - A brilliant account of natural living. Almost like fiction in a way, in that it portrays a single character going about his life. Real insight into solitary living. Covers the same emotional depth as any fictional story.

Selfish Gene - passionate, knowledgable, groundbreaking. Dawkins before his religious bullshit. Real science written wonderfully.

Welp.

Today I learned (from Reddit) that there are people out there that think just because it's FICTION, it contains more knowledge than actual anything written by an actual scientist or a leader in any other field.

I can't express how much I fundamentally disagree with this. THIS is what I take real issue with.

How can you possibly think that some author without formal training and writing fictious events can have superiour knowledge and insight in maths and science. You think that just because someone like Pynchon or Camus or Nabokov or any other "high level" is a better mathematician (insert any scientific field) than Hawking JUST because it's fiction and has some emotional hidden, flowly and obscure and arty language? What you've said there is that one particular fiction book can contain MORE scientific knowledge than an actual science book... Do you actually think that one of your self important, "deep" authors knows more about genetics than Richard Dawkins just because they are always deep and brooding?