Swimmer963 comments on Replaceability as a virtue - Less Wrong

5 Post author: chaosmage 12 December 2012 07:53AM

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Comment author: TraderJoe 11 December 2012 04:07:31PM 5 points [-]

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men" - De Gaulle.

Comment author: Swimmer963 12 December 2012 03:15:57AM 1 point [-]

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men" - De Gaulle.

The graveyards are full of everyone who has ever lived up until ~1850 (and a lot of people born after that).

Comment author: gwern 12 December 2012 03:27:30AM 1 point [-]

I kind of assumed that was the anonymous author's point. (I've seen it attributed to many different French.)

Comment author: Swimmer963 12 December 2012 03:44:57AM 3 points [-]

It may have been the original author's point, but that makes it kind of a non sequitur comment to this post, at least to my first reading of it. Yes, indispensable people die. People who try to make themselves replaceable also die. The people left behind are better off if the deceased is "more replaceable" in at least a practical sense.

...On further thought, I think I automatically interpreted the comment as disagreeing with the article, because my brain seems to assume that most one-like comments are going to be disagreements. If I interpret it as agreeing with the article, then it makes perfect sense.