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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

That’s why Brave New World is a much stronger prediction. People don’t want the State to take their Freedoms because that’s not American.

But when a Lucury&Socialization brand comes and promises to make your life Better for the low price of your excess brainwaves… lovely! Sign me up for soma that.

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I hate when someone says „BNW is actually a better prediction“ (you also never hear it the other way around). Both works are pretty much orthogonal e.g. we can have the NSA spying on citizens AND the hedonistic complacency from BNW simultaneously.

Precisely. They are works of literature, not predictions.

Examining science fiction through the lens of prediction is so reductive and flattens the whole experience of reading, in my view.

Your argument is identical to: “I hate when people project matrices onto lower dimensions; do they not see how that loses information? People should only ever deal with matrices in their original form, that way no data is ever destroyed. If the analysis cannot make use of the matrix in its original form, then it shouldn’t happen at all”

I disgree, to be honest. There are readings of science fiction that simplify themes and ideas don’t miss the point as thoroughly as does a predictive one does.

I remember a comment from a similar discussion a few years ago; Huxley indoors in our homes, Orwell outside on the streets.

Do you also hate when people say 3+4i is closer to 5i than 5?

> That’s why Brave New World is a much stronger prediction.

Agreed, but I fear we get the best from both worlds.

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