Long ago when I first started teaching undergrads, I noticed that while they were equally bad at math and writing, they could more easily see that they were bad at math. So they were happier to get writing assignments. Math assignments made them face the uncomfortable fact that they were bad at something valuable, while writing assignments did not. So students liked my classes better when I assigned writing more.
So far as story-telling goes, it's widely considered that characterization > plot > world-building. So, unfortunate as it is for world-building autists like us, top story-tellers don't miss out much from having somewhat unrealistic worlds if they get the first two right, which encompass what is widely considered to be the essence of literary skill.
I paraphrase you, and others here, as saying that, relative to writing quality, no one cares about ideas of world building, so that's why writers don't team with makers of these.
I suspect that your model is oversimplified. I think you assume that having good ideas and being able to write about the idea eloquently is what makes a better book. But all I read and observe about books and writers says that nobody has a recipe for a popular book. The only working recipe is to be a writer of a previously popular book.
This, I think, is sufficient to answer your question: writers are not eager to collaborate with "idea people" because they know it does not work. The reasons that make a good book are probably intrinsically and irreducibly complicated.
It is analogous to the model of strong nuclear force: it does not lend itself to simple and generic calculations unlike electromagnetic force.
I thought of a simple math model which explains why neglecting hard-to-judge abilities makes sense.
Say you have a hard-to-judge ability X (e.g. writing skill) and an easier-to-judge one Y (e.g. maths). Others have priors over your abilities, which are roughly centred on the averages of these abilities in the population. Since X is harder to judge (i.e. observations are more noisy) than Y, the posterior (e.g.) mean for X will be closer to the prior mean than for Y.
Then to explain your observations in terms of this model: (1) If students are equally bad (i.e. below average) at writing (X) and maths (Y) but writing is harder to judge, then their estimation of X is higher than Y. So they prefer writing.(2) Similarly those who are good (i.e. above average) at maths and writing should prefer maths, since math ability will be estimated higher than writing ability.
If it's possible to develop abilities over time, I guess you'd expect people to work harder on Y than X (all else equal).
Aside from this model, even if some people can accurately estimate X, it might still be safer for them to ignore it and just focus on Y, since others might disagree / criticise / complain about their estimation of X.
Like others say though, I'm not convinced that "world-building" is that that valued / rewarded.
I guess I misunderstood what you meant by having spent a decade exploring recent sci-fi, not thinking it would've meant you did that much reading rather than surveying while never seeming to hit on the sought-after quality.
But I hope you get some answers. It would be interesting to find out. Greg Egan sets a pretty high bar, and I forgot about checking out Stephenson. Eric Steinhart, a philosopher, also sets the bar extremely high in terms of analyses into the nature of high-tech natural divinities, where maximal-stakes human-relatable conflict becomes less relevant and there seem to be fewer elements for gripping stories that aren't highly personalized.
I guess it is similar for me. Out of dozens modern sci-fi authors I read I like only Egan and maybe Stephenson. First chapter of Diaspora is a masterpiece. I was wondering whether people can suggest more good hard sci-fi.
I'm not terribly widely read in sci-fi but 90s Greg Egan still seems eternally relevant. His stories such as Permutation City and Diaspora seem to take personhood much toward its logical limits assuming the truth of functionalism and neural multi-realizability in philosophy of mind. The stories instantiate practically undeniable abstract features of transhumans to posthumans, such as: knowing how to live a practically immortal life, how one's physical location is less important than how one's sensorium and actuators are distributed and interface with the external world, and how something like pure mathematics is a major part of a summum bonum, or highest good. So with Greg Egan, I was led to feel like I would never miss out on much by not being terribly widely read in sci-fi, and also led to feel like non-fictional futurism a la Robin Hanson is sufficient.
The people who are good at ideas usually know that they aren’t so good at writing about them, are are generally interested in collaborating with those better at writing.Who other than you?
I have somewhat (un)related question to Robin and others: Who are good sci-fi writers over the recent 30 years?
I have grown up reading sci-fi of 1950s-1980s. Then I have spent a decade trying to explore recent sci-fi and have been dismayed by how hard it is to find modern sci-fi of similar quality.
Here's an alternative explanation, one that passes the razor: there is extremely little value in working out the details of potential future worlds. Because that skill itself has essentially no value, you've observed it to not be valued. But it's not some complicated thing with the relative legibility of different skills. It's simply not important.
Harry Potter is the most popular speculative fiction story of all time. Its worldbuilding is frequently incoherent and contradictory. The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies. Cohesive worldbuilding, above a low baseline, is simply not a relevant skill.
But why would you care about consistent world building enough to split the money or even just limit the ability to tell your story as you want to?
I mean you yourself have pointed out most of what ppl both want to do when writing a story and what they want from a story is to hear little tales about what kind of ppl deserve status of what norms are good etc etc.
Sure, some ppl do want to signal how smart or rational they are by designing a coherent world or simply enjoy that for its own sake but the same effect that makes ppl who hate doing math tend to see it as less important means that the ppl who aren't good at making coherent worlds don't see that as particularly valuable.
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Indeed, I don't even see the value in making sci-fi coherent except insofar as I find it aestheticly pleasing. If you want to make real predictions you can write non-fiction so why would the kind of ppl who don't find it aestheticly important to be coherent (no doubt correlated with lack of interest in doing so and hence lack of skill) find it worthwhile to exert effort to make it so?
Consistent world-building is good, but does it sell? "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Religion comes to mind - hugely successful as stories, terrible accuracy.
I suspect that SF authors generally place less importance than you do on their worlds’ details being consistent with their worlds’ gross characteristics, *and* perceive the costs of collaboration as being higher than you do.
Worldbuilding ends up as role-playing game settings instead of novels.
So far as story-telling goes, it's widely considered that characterization > plot > world-building. So, unfortunate as it is for world-building autists like us, top story-tellers don't miss out much from having somewhat unrealistic worlds if they get the first two right, which encompass what is widely considered to be the essence of literary skill.
I paraphrase you, and others here, as saying that, relative to writing quality, no one cares about ideas of world building, so that's why writers don't team with makers of these.
I suspect that your model is oversimplified. I think you assume that having good ideas and being able to write about the idea eloquently is what makes a better book. But all I read and observe about books and writers says that nobody has a recipe for a popular book. The only working recipe is to be a writer of a previously popular book.
This, I think, is sufficient to answer your question: writers are not eager to collaborate with "idea people" because they know it does not work. The reasons that make a good book are probably intrinsically and irreducibly complicated.
It is analogous to the model of strong nuclear force: it does not lend itself to simple and generic calculations unlike electromagnetic force.
I thought of a simple math model which explains why neglecting hard-to-judge abilities makes sense.
Say you have a hard-to-judge ability X (e.g. writing skill) and an easier-to-judge one Y (e.g. maths). Others have priors over your abilities, which are roughly centred on the averages of these abilities in the population. Since X is harder to judge (i.e. observations are more noisy) than Y, the posterior (e.g.) mean for X will be closer to the prior mean than for Y.
Then to explain your observations in terms of this model: (1) If students are equally bad (i.e. below average) at writing (X) and maths (Y) but writing is harder to judge, then their estimation of X is higher than Y. So they prefer writing.(2) Similarly those who are good (i.e. above average) at maths and writing should prefer maths, since math ability will be estimated higher than writing ability.
If it's possible to develop abilities over time, I guess you'd expect people to work harder on Y than X (all else equal).
Aside from this model, even if some people can accurately estimate X, it might still be safer for them to ignore it and just focus on Y, since others might disagree / criticise / complain about their estimation of X.
Like others say though, I'm not convinced that "world-building" is that that valued / rewarded.
I guess I misunderstood what you meant by having spent a decade exploring recent sci-fi, not thinking it would've meant you did that much reading rather than surveying while never seeming to hit on the sought-after quality.
But I hope you get some answers. It would be interesting to find out. Greg Egan sets a pretty high bar, and I forgot about checking out Stephenson. Eric Steinhart, a philosopher, also sets the bar extremely high in terms of analyses into the nature of high-tech natural divinities, where maximal-stakes human-relatable conflict becomes less relevant and there seem to be fewer elements for gripping stories that aren't highly personalized.
I guess it is similar for me. Out of dozens modern sci-fi authors I read I like only Egan and maybe Stephenson. First chapter of Diaspora is a masterpiece. I was wondering whether people can suggest more good hard sci-fi.
I'm not terribly widely read in sci-fi but 90s Greg Egan still seems eternally relevant. His stories such as Permutation City and Diaspora seem to take personhood much toward its logical limits assuming the truth of functionalism and neural multi-realizability in philosophy of mind. The stories instantiate practically undeniable abstract features of transhumans to posthumans, such as: knowing how to live a practically immortal life, how one's physical location is less important than how one's sensorium and actuators are distributed and interface with the external world, and how something like pure mathematics is a major part of a summum bonum, or highest good. So with Greg Egan, I was led to feel like I would never miss out on much by not being terribly widely read in sci-fi, and also led to feel like non-fictional futurism a la Robin Hanson is sufficient.
The people who are good at ideas usually know that they aren’t so good at writing about them, are are generally interested in collaborating with those better at writing.Who other than you?
I have somewhat (un)related question to Robin and others: Who are good sci-fi writers over the recent 30 years?
I have grown up reading sci-fi of 1950s-1980s. Then I have spent a decade trying to explore recent sci-fi and have been dismayed by how hard it is to find modern sci-fi of similar quality.
Some people might not even realize there is a market for world builders.
You are so far the only commenter out of six who considers any other application besides sf worlds vs stories.
Here's an alternative explanation, one that passes the razor: there is extremely little value in working out the details of potential future worlds. Because that skill itself has essentially no value, you've observed it to not be valued. But it's not some complicated thing with the relative legibility of different skills. It's simply not important.
Harry Potter is the most popular speculative fiction story of all time. Its worldbuilding is frequently incoherent and contradictory. The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies. Cohesive worldbuilding, above a low baseline, is simply not a relevant skill.
But why would you care about consistent world building enough to split the money or even just limit the ability to tell your story as you want to?
I mean you yourself have pointed out most of what ppl both want to do when writing a story and what they want from a story is to hear little tales about what kind of ppl deserve status of what norms are good etc etc.
Sure, some ppl do want to signal how smart or rational they are by designing a coherent world or simply enjoy that for its own sake but the same effect that makes ppl who hate doing math tend to see it as less important means that the ppl who aren't good at making coherent worlds don't see that as particularly valuable.
---
Indeed, I don't even see the value in making sci-fi coherent except insofar as I find it aestheticly pleasing. If you want to make real predictions you can write non-fiction so why would the kind of ppl who don't find it aestheticly important to be coherent (no doubt correlated with lack of interest in doing so and hence lack of skill) find it worthwhile to exert effort to make it so?
Consistent world-building is good, but does it sell? "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Religion comes to mind - hugely successful as stories, terrible accuracy.
I suspect that SF authors generally place less importance than you do on their worlds’ details being consistent with their worlds’ gross characteristics, *and* perceive the costs of collaboration as being higher than you do.