Vaniver comments on Just another day in utopia - Less Wrong

78 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 25 December 2011 09:37AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 10 January 2012 05:54:03PM 5 points [-]

Notice that, as far as I can tell, she chose the instrument over Ted, and may have been helped in that decision by the encounter the Machines led her to. It may have been a false option to give both her breakup with Ted and the Stradivarius more meaning.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 10 January 2012 06:40:11PM *  7 points [-]

Yeah, though the minute you take seriously the notion that the Machines are simply lying to people about the degree of real risk involved, a lot of the emotional appeal of this story is subverted. (Why anyone in this universe believes otherwise, I have no idea; possibly it's thanks to relatively subtle mind control.)

Comment author: Vaniver 10 January 2012 07:10:36PM 2 points [-]

Even in the story, once she gives Nero the Strad, he has to decide to destroy it. She doesn't appear to have a very complete model of Nero besides "we're rivals."

It's also not clear to me that presenting someone with an option you strongly suspect they're not going to take in order to frame their choice counts as lying to them.