Just like there are rules for writing non fiction, so there are rules for writing fiction. One thing I notice when I look at stories, even good ones, is how few of them do justice to the other. Pan’s labyrinth has an evil Facist officer and a heroic child and freedom fighters. It never stops to make the officer human. It never stops to ask if maybe the Facists were better than the communists for Spain.
Almost any story or fiction, aside from rationalist fiction, shows people like this. Cardboard cutouts where the author is certain of their own view on who is right and wrong, good an evil. It’s almost only in rationalist fiction that I’ve consistently found writing where the opponents of the protagonists have goals that are coherent and self-contained. Where enemies have integrity and think for themselves.
Hmmmm. On the other hand, not every story has to depict a conflict between people who earnestly believe in competing ideals. It’s fine to have stories about low-minded people for whom ideas either mean nothing (opportunists) or who don’t really interrogate their own beliefs. Most people in the world are like that and stories can and should reflect them. It’s fine to have stories showing the evil in an ideology or system. Still, the fact that these things can exist doesn’t mean they should be the norm.
In Srdjan-Land, most writers would adhere to or strive to write according to roughly https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing and https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/level3intelligent. When writing about an ideology opposed to their own beliefs, especially an ideology that was socially taboo or they strongly personally disliked, writers would try as hard as possible to make sure that their presentation of that ideology passed the ideological turing test.
Dissent 