Talk:The Singularity Is Near/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

"non-fiction" book is highly misleading

The book fits Wikipedia's own definition of fiction: "Fiction is the form of any work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and theoretical—that is, invented by the author." Regardless of how the book was published, the page should call it science-fiction or just fiction as that accurately portrays the contents of this book. Linket (talk) 03:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

non-Fiction is a narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are believed by the author to be factual. These assertions and descriptions may or may not be accurate, and can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question; however, it is generally assumed that authors of such accounts believe them to be truthful at the time of their composition or, at least, pose them to their audience as historically or empirically true. Reporting the beliefs of others in a non-fiction format is not necessarily an endorsement of the ultimate veracity of those beliefs, it is simply saying it is true that people believe them (for such topics as mythology, religion). Taken from the wikipedia page on non-fiction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.186.43.80 (talk) 20:56, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

This is was discussed long ago but I don't see the archives, so I'm reverting the change. The LC classification of the books is QP which is non-fiction. Fiction is PZ. The Library of Congress and every other library system has thought this through, we don't need pioneer a new interpretation of non-fiction. Fiction and non-fiction does not mean "false" and "true". As you quote above "whose assertions are believed by the author to be factual". Religious books, of all religions, are considered non-fiction, even though clearly many people think most to all of them are false. Silas Ropac (talk) 00:05, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I deleted the phrase "non-fiction" because "futuristic work" was not among the specific types listed at non-fiction. But even if the two concepts are compatible, "futuristic" would still be a much more precise description than "non-fiction" because "non-fiction" doesn't have a clear meaning in this context. If one describes a political or technological event in 1900, it could be either fiction or non-fiction, but for a similar event in the future, the two categories are indistinguishable. MvH (talk) 12:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)MvH

The Library of Congress classified the book as non-fiction, that was the basis for me changing it back. So is your thesis that every book about the future is fiction? I'm just trying to understand the scope your thinking on this. 174.53.79.246 (talk) 19:08, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

At the moment, the word "non-fiction" is used to endorse the content of the book. If the goal was to simply indicate the genre, a neutral way to do that would be to include it in the box on the right where one finds information like "year, ISBN, etc.". In that box it could say: genre: non-fiction. MvH (talk) 03:20, 7 April 2015 (UTC)MvH

I'm just trying to understand the bigger picture. Do you think that the Library of Congress classifications are wrong across the board? Or only wrong in certain cases? Can you point to other books in WP where they've been the purposeful decision to hide the LC classification? It just seems like a very slippery slope. The article labels it non-fiction to distinguish it from fiction. It's not fiction like Snow Crash is fiction or Neuromancer is fiction. You'd agree there is a difference between those books and this book? The difference in my mind is this book is clearly as the sun shines non-fiction, because as written above the "assertions and descriptions are believed by the author to be factual". Do dispute this notion, that Kurzweil at the time of writing believed his assertions and descriptions where factual"? Silas Ropac (talk) 18:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Marking it non-fiction absolutely does not "endorse" the book, that's a absurd notion. The book title sounds like novel, but the book is not a novel, so mentioning it is non-fiction is highly relevant and useful. Here are some other books labeled non-fiction in the lede:

• The World Without Us
• Pale Blue Dot (book)
• Beyond (book)

If I wrote a novel about space base on the moon, that's fiction. If I wrote a dry sober account of a how a space station on the mood would operation, that's non-fiction. It doesn't matter if I'm "right" or not. Silas Ropac (talk) 19:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

These are good examples; mentioning "non-fiction" in the lede is more common than I thought. When I looked for examples, I looked mainly at controversial political books (e.g. Michael Moore), because they fit the description "believed by the author to be factual". Those didn't have "non-fiction" in the lede, so I figured that the same would apply here. But you give good examples, that settles the issue. MvH (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2015 (UTC)MvH

Great. Yes I agree a lot of non-fiction books don't say "non-fiction" in the lede. I think it makes sense here mostly because of the "sci-fi" title. It would be very easy to think this is a novel. This came up years ago but I didn't see it in the archive, hopefully this will be preserved.

I think perhaps your underlying desire is to label this book as very speculative compared to a solid science book like A Brief History of Time. Hawking is mostly relaying facts which are widely agreed on by the Science community whereas Kurzweil is mostly filled with his own speculations some of which probably have very little support by anyone. It feels like there's an important distinction there.

But I think it's beyond the scope of WP to make that judgement. You'd have to understand the entire field at the time of publication, etc. I think the Analysis and Criticism sections address this problem somewhat. For this book some of the reviews question his entire premise, which essentially questions every prediction in the book. I think it's great WP preserves and presents those criticism. Your average reader stumbling on the book would likely never do that research to find those dissenting voices. I think the best we can do is present both sides. Silas Ropac (talk) 21:26, 9 April 2015 (UTC)