TheOtherDave comments on Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) Part 2 Discussion Thread - Less Wrong

6 Post author: JenniferRM 25 October 2010 11:07PM

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Comment author: alethiophile 03 December 2010 06:14:05AM *  2 points [-]

Darn you, cliffhangers!

I want to know what effect Elspeth's other self will have on being Chelsea'd. If her other self can somehow propagate her love for her mother back to her, then that would take out a major chunk of the damage Chelsea can do to her. (Who else does Elspeth have a relationship with that Chelsea can nuke? Several people, Edward and the Denalis mostly; however, they aren't nearly as close to Elspeth. It would put even more of a crimp in her possible future relationship with Edward, though.)

On a side note, Chelsea's power is scary. Not just for its obvious nightmare-fuel, but for the cognitive implications. If it doesn't affect memory but still affects a person's evaluation of another's importance to them, then it must be either fundamentally changing their moral values such that even after reevaluating their memories, they do not feel that the other is important, or forcing the relationship-evaluating bit of their mind to evaluate to 'false' (or "Chelsea's chosen value", whatever) regardless of memory. But if it was the simple latter case, then a victim once they had left her immediate presence could undo most of the effect simply by reevaluating their memories and noting the things that make the other person important, which is evidently not the case. Thus, Chelsea is either fundamentally changing your sense of morality, or introducing irremovable inconsistencies into your relationship evaluation. Either way is awful.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 03 December 2010 05:09:32PM 2 points [-]

Perhaps more awful, and perhaps not, depending on how you evaluate these things, is the fact that this sort of cognitive modification happens to people in the real world every day as a result of brain damage of various sorts.

Sacks writes fairly poignantly about this.