The story is also badly misinterpreted; like, "I read 'A Modest Proposal' and I just can't understand how he thinks eating babies would solve anything, besides it's monstrous!" levels of misinterpreted. EDITED: And the analysis he draws from his reading of it is roughly similar to concluding, on the basis of A Modest Proposal, that not just English but European people in general are all innately sociopathic and cannibalistic to some degree whether by culture or by genetics, and that this explains why they were so driven to conquer foreign countries. (I mean, look at this map of all the countries Britain has invaded... )
So how would you interpret it?
Today's post, An African Folktale was originally published on 16 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was An Especially Elegant Evpsych Experiment, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.