Hello, I hope this will be interesting deviation from usual theme, but not very far away...
I was reading http://sunsite.rwth-aachen.de:3080/ftp/pub/mirror/rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/rec/answers/sf/written-faq (basically FAQ-type post from old USENET days, around 2001), and found two interesting points there..
First is said 'law', formulated as ""Ninety percent of everything is crap." . I wonder why it might be like this? Is it due to unability of creators (humans) to produce anything...new, complex en-masse? Is it question of threshold , when work recognized as valuable among other works only if it really different (must be mountain-high)? Is it about how simpler works spread faster and lock any attention at themselves, so more complicated works have less chance to be heard and get positive feedback from readers/viewers? Can situation be improved? Like, I have feeling 99% of so-called porn is crap. I tend to think it might be so bad partially due to very self-narrowing nature of this...'genre' . But in general, why 90% can't be made 75%, or 80% at least? I'm sure even this group tries to improve signal/noise ratio..but when does it work?
Second point was about Sci-fi with "only non-human characters". I wonder if you read any from list provided there, or something else ....
Ninety percent of life is crap. The other ten percent is even more crap. It's all shit.
Go to doctor. Get ketamine prescription. Don´t get on our nerves.
Assuming that drugs are a viable solution for treating depression. Might as well drink alcohol or smoke weed. You are intentionally sabotaging your senses by taking drugs. I'd rather not live in a fantasy world.
I've struggled with anxiety and major depression since I was a kid, and antidepressant medications have made a huge difference in my life. It can take some time to find the right fit for you, but it's definitely a viable option and a literal life saver for many people, including myself. Antidepressants don't sabotage anything, they help increase serotonin levels in the brain, the lack of which causes depression. I'm not telling you to take medication, that's your own choice, but it is a legitimate option and improves/saves the lives of countless people with mental illness. It's not the same as recreational drugs in any way.
EDIT: lol whoops just realized his comment mentioned Ketamine, afaik that's only used for emergency suicidal situations, but my point about antidepressants still stands.
Many antidepressants, such as MAO-Inhibitors, do not increase serotonine levels, they actually decrease/delay the rate of serotonine deconstruction so the SERT molecules stay in effect longer than usual. Ketamine is, by the way, known to be a very powerful emergency medication for suicidal patients and can be applied in many different ways. Intravenal, intramuscular, sublingual (absorption of low ketamine doses from under the tongue), for example. There even is some kind of "super-Ket" out there that can help cure depressions and takes only one shot every 7 - 10 days, depending on the applied dosage.
Usually, ketamine is applied in very low doses so the psychotropic effect isn´t felt much, in more severe cases the psychotropic effects are partially negated by additional application of barbiturates/opioids ...but in this special case, a good, hard and ruthless disembodiment/total dissociation experience (k-hole) could open up new neuronal channels in our little weeping pal...
PS: Never had clinical depression symptoms...everything I know about MAO Inhibitors comes from my experiments with Ayahuasca that includes ingestion of Harmaline seeds (MAO Inhibitor) prior to ingestion of the actual ayahuasca. Partaking in an original ayahuasca ceremony, you´ll get the MAO inhibitor (harmaline seed powder) blown into your nose before you drink what the shaman has brewed...
"I´d rather not live in a fantasy world"...my oh my oh my...you´re a born standup comedian , aren´t you....
Cannabis treats my depression. You state that life is shit, but you don't want to alleviate that shittiness with relatively safe drugs like cannabis, LSD, shrooms, DMT or mescaline?
An even better drug is a horse. Everything else pales in comparison.
Hello...
I'm Mr.Woofles, I'm a amateur writer working on a Novel (This will be relevant shortly.)
Sturgeon Law is bullshit, it's not that 90% of everything is crap but rather people are lazy and fearful. Few people take risks any more, People don't read outside of their comfort zones, people don't have ambition any more. Modern Society is mostly focused on safety and comfort.
I personally took a risk a two years ago and tested the waters with a Zoophilia themed mini-series of writing. It was a big risk and I expected a LOT of backlash... now it's one of my most popular series.
Now sticking a pen in that for a moment, let's just take a glance at Fantasy anything, what three races appear ALL THE FUCKING TIME? Dwarves, Elves, Orcs.... Fantasy is dominated by these races when in all honesty they should have faded because Fantasy by it's nature should be fantastic but authors seem almost terrified to attempt unique races even though many readers seem fond of the strangeness of unique races.
Even when people step outside of those races you usually get beast men, horned people, alternate reskins of the staple three races. I doubt it's because people are crap but rather they have a comfort zone they don't like a breach. It frustrates me to no end because at the end of the day they are right because in this social climate being different is the same as being alone.
People aren't crap but rather people are afraid of being anything other than mediocre. No one wants to be mocked, No one wants to take a risk and those who do and succeed are copied to oblivion. Look at Tolkein, Look at Stephine Meyer (I fucking hate the book but damn did it produce no shortage of shitty copy cats.)
Too many clones not enough risk taking.
Hm, yes, but this mostly moves my question one step further - how those 'comfort zones' develop, during human interactions? Apparently, emotional fear is quite big thing nowadays, in many humans, including myself. Strangely enough, but in my attempts to de-anthropocentrize world I constantly run into necesarity of at least understanding human/human interactions... So, why and how humans make themselves (as collective) so universally afraid of making even quite progressive steps....seems to be important. May be it related to way thinking at least in male humans works? I mean, I run endless number of times into my friend over million of details, we always find something to disagree, yet we still find each other (hopefully!) useful for more advanced thinking..yet, without some mutual tolerance and 'forgive me, I was idiot' moves, from both sides ..it probably will not last long? So, may be bigger human collective just suffer from ..humans can only be real friends to small number of humans? And far-end friends tend to be listen to, talked with, and tolerated less and less, especially if there something big to divide them...
Interesting. When I read that, I immediately saw the parallels to the pareto principle (or the 80/20 'law'). The wikipedia page for your Sturgeon's law even lists it as a further reading link.
Basically, you are having a negative formulation of the 80/20 'law' there as a case of co-discovery.
And to answer your question: No, that can't be changed then. The pareto principle is more or less a mark of natural processes. If you need to accomplish anything in the given reality, which requires a web of tasks and items until you reach your goal, you will often find principles from this pareto thing at work. As I said, yours is a negatively colored formulation, so it isn't as bad as one might think: 10 percent of works is rather exceptional. The remainder is just normal to average and some in between are also crap.
And why is that? I would surmise that first of all an author needs to produce something like at least 10 'mediocre' works that he needs to put out for readers to read, before one story comes along that is bombastic. Why? He needs to practice his skills, as everyone else. Even a master author still becomes better the longer he does 'author things' like book research, reading the works of others and just write for himself. And he needs to put out the "still practicing here" pieces to you and see it is being read in order to garner further motivation to keep doing this.
Now if you have three or four stories or works produced around the world in the past which you hold to be the pinnacle, then you compare all the others to that. And due to the above mechanisms you'll see a vast topology around your pinnacle, necessarily much larger and more massive than this apex. Otherwise it wouldn't be an apex.
Hm, thanks for pointing at this ... yes, there seems to be complex interaction between readers, writers, writers-as-readers, both present ones, and past ones, too ....
I believe Sturgeon's Law, but ultimately the problem is in people's expectations rather than people themselves. People are extremely varied in their abilities and aptitudes, and most of these are governed by normal distributions, or bell curves as they're often known. This means that most people are around average ability, with very few geniuses or idiots. People's aspirations aren't restricted by ability, though, so in any given field people of all ability levels will attempt it. Add in the Dunning-Kruger effect (the worse you are at something, the easier it is to think that you're brilliant), and you'll get a flood of mediocrity and a trickle of genius due to sheer numbers.
well, I'm trying to find what exactly makes those distributions appear as we (may be not we, but humans..some of those who were observable) see them ...How much of 'us' actually changeable, and to where it can be moved, to what limit... for example, after some time it seems obvious 'reasoned thinking' not as easy to keep on all the time, it too easily subverted by by some of our endless hierarchical games, and other ...psychological phenomena. Discussion below on drugs (chemical substances) might be interesting, because our thinking internally elecro-chemical process, so some effects materialistically can be done with our own effort as biological beings, some may require external matter, and some may require ..very strange kind of 'cheating' on our own mind...(for example I know my mood changed as daytime/nighttime fade into each other - so, this can be used...if I time my posts accordingly)
Sturgeon's Law is actually cyclical. It pretty much applies to anything, and simply states that, for any group, there will be 10% that is better than the rest, and your goal is to focus on that 10%. The thing being, if you trim down to that ten percent, you have a new body, and of that, well, 90% is crap.
It's basically a philosophy of continuous improvement and refinement.