thomblake comments on The Trolley Problem: Dodging moral questions - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Desrtopa 05 December 2010 04:58AM

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Comment author: shokwave 07 December 2010 04:59:28PM 5 points [-]

The frustrating thing is that people produce a specific criticism ("In this story, they could have thrown tables out the airlock, or put up more signs!") and presume they have shattered the premise of the story (there are situations where physical laws will require hard, horrifying choices, in these situations the physical laws will not bend no matter how immoral a decision it requires).

Comment author: thomblake 07 December 2010 05:07:56PM 1 point [-]

Ah. I don't think most folks would consider that very abstract notion "the premise of the story", though the author clearly thought it was the relevant detail. The characters behaved unrealistically, and shouldn't have been there in the first place. The same point is made very believably in many less contrived contexts, like stories about people trying to get on the Titanic's too-few lifeboats.

Comment author: shokwave 07 December 2010 05:26:03PM 2 points [-]

Well, the premise of the story was more to go directly against the grain of the current science fiction trend, which was clever-but-contrived escapes from seemingly physical-law-bound situations. So the author was restricted to science-fiction stories.

Comment author: jkaufman 20 March 2012 09:28:24PM 2 points [-]

Actually, the author kept writing "clever-but-contrived escapes" and it was the editor, John Campbell, who wanted to go against the grain:

I learned how strong the hand of the editor can be in shaping a story. John told me he had three times! sent "Cold Equations" back to Godwin, before he got the version he wanted. In the first two re-writes, Godwin kept coming up with ingenious ways to save the girl! Since the strength of this deservedly classic story lies in the fact the life of one young woman must be sacrificed to save the lives of many, it simply wouldn't have the same impact if she had lived.

John wasn't trying to take credit for having shaped one of the masterpieces in the SF field. His attitude and words clearly indicated he simply felt it was the responsibility of an editor to improve on any given story, where possible -- and he had done that.

http://www.challzine.net/23/23fivedays.html

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