[jdbernard]

The problem with using fiction as a discourse about possibilities is that fiction is governed by the rules of the author's mind, not the rules of reality. So the fidelity of the model being used to drive the discourse is directly dependent on the congruence between the author's internal model of the world and reality, which can often be deceptively far apart. This is especially bad when the subject is entertaining, because most of us read fiction for entertainment, not logical discourse. So we create scenarios that are entertaining rather than realistic. And the better the author is the more subtle the differences are, but that doesn't mean they go away. It feels like a somewhat common experience in my life that I'm discussing some topic with somebody, and I have subject matter expertise based on actual lived experience, and as the conversation goes on I discover that all of my conversation partner's thinking about the subject was done in the context of a fictional world which misses key elements of the real world that lead to very different conclusions and outcomes.

This is not to totally discard fiction as a way of reasoning. With regard to hypotheticals beyond our current reach it is often the only way to reason. So it's valuable, but we have to keep in mind that a story is just a story. Hard experience trumps fictional logic any day. And I can't assume that the same events in real life will lead to the same outcomes from a story.