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ciphergoth comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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I think there's a cost/benefit tradeoff, and that comment is all cost, no benefit.
While I admit that the benefit was not in the same class as the ones discussed in my point above, clearly I thought it had some benefit in making my point.
And yes, it had costs -- it needed to, in order to make the point. Of course, ceteris paribus, the better the job at illustrating the reductio-ad-absurdum, the smaller the cost. I tried to choose an example with the smallest cost I reasonably could.
If you have a popular and well-known, older work that has what is truly a spoiler, but that (a) most people already know, and (b) the work is short enough that a huge time-investment isn't likely to be ruined (why I chose a movie, rather than a book), I'd be willing to change the example to that.
I refer you in that case to the canonical example...
Roger Ebert responding to a reader about [edit: the "spoiler" in the title of] The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (Warning: contains a Sixth Sense spoiler.)
Upvoted for pun.
If there's a pun I'm afraid it's unintentional - are you referring to the literal meaning of "canon" in this context?
Indeed.
Did you pick that movie for that reason, or because that's what TV Tropes used? Because I've never seen it, but I do know that Macduff was not of woman born - and Macbeth is rather better known.
Edit: Better still is "Romeo and Juliet die at the end".
I did not know that TV Tropes used it, but I have seen other people use it for the same sort of point.
I'll change it.