Venkatesh Rao

We’re talking selectorate theory for creative work, where instead of people/citizens/voters we’re talking about the hundreds or thousands of details that go into individual works by individual creators. Goes up to millions or billions for group works like movies.

The thing that fiction and engineering share is that they are like democracies. There is a HUGE group of interchangeables. Details that don’t really matter by default, but can occasionally matter as a function of strategy or chance. Eg: color of a wheel, drink the hero drinks.

This makes both harder work than respective “theory” cousins. Math for engineering, nonfiction for fiction. If you want to build an airplane, you HAVE to bind every detail even if you don’t care. If you’re doing airplane math, you can throw away details you don’t care about.

For eg. if you’re doing fluid dynamics, throw away everything except the shape/geometry. If you’re doing controls, throw away everything except the differential equation. But real planes have: paint colors, tire vendors, seat cover material choices.... about 10k more detail.

Same with nonfiction. If you’re writing a cryptography paper, “Alice” and “Bob” will do. They’re even expected. Or just “user” or “customer” in other kinds of writing. In fiction, you do have to come up with an apt-enough name that it feels like a story about a person.

Nonfiction/math are like absolutist dictatorships, where the set of interchangeables is much smaller than in a democracy and does not include most who would be included in a democracy. They can be suppressed/disenfranchised. Though sometimes they may fuel a popular uprising.

Sometimes you may choose to elevate a detail from interchangeable to influential. Hercule Poirot and James Bond are names loaded with symbolism that shape the story. Otoh, Ross, Rachel, Monica, Joey, Chandler could easily be a million other names and it would make no difference.

Fiction and engineering are so full of detail because they must either become part of reality (engineering results in real things) or present a sufficiently realistic illusion of it to allow immersion. But the theoretical cousins don’t need to be.