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Vaniver comments on Just another day in utopia - Less Wrong
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Nice story, but I feel very uncomfortable about the Stradivarius part. That (and to a lesser extent, the way Ted is treated) makes me feel more that it is an utopia for Ishtar, not for humanity as a whole. I don't see how, funtheorically speaking, the potential lost of one of the last Stradivarii and of the hope of duplicating them, allowing for increased musical enjoyment for all humans and all to-be-born humans, can be lower than the slightly higher thrill for a one-day aventure of Ishtar.
Something like "if you chose to sacrifice the Stradivarius, you won't ever be able to hear it, but the rest of humanity still will" would feel much more appropriate to me. But I really don't see an utopia in which, for a bit more of fun of a single person, the whole humanity will lose something like one of the last Stardivarii.
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.
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.)
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.