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aarongertler comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong
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Expressed in pictures rather than words, but a great example of how to respond to humanity-threatening calamities:
http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus37.html?Bonjour
Sidenote: Almost every Minus comic is wonderful, and there aren't that many of them (you can read the whole series in an hour).
I printed this up and hung it on my wall for a while. Before anyone gets worried about what that indicates, the girl in the comic is a reality warper and could get away with it.
Never found a good enough image of Akemi Homura changing her eyes, though.
I recently bought a print of the same comic from the author. They are still being sold:
http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/store.html#minus
This one seems reasonably nice. Would you rather the soul gem shimmered?
Why that image, if I may? (Have a hypothesis and would like to test it.)
Is your hypothesis, "Eliezer wants to save the world from doom, and this picture is inspirational."? If so, I think you nailed it.
It's probably because I'm not familiar with Minus, but I don't understand what the girl did that is admirable. If she's normal, Mestroyer's comment addresses why it isn't admirable. If she has superpowers, destroying the meteor is completely effortless for her, making her action simply a decision of saving humanity over letting it die, which mostly anyone would make.
Slightly ruined by the fact that, well, given minus, I'm really more worried about the meteor...
Are you saying that you should respond by being omnipotent?
Cool comic, though a repeat http://lesswrong.com/lw/2o3/rationality_quotes_september_2010/2juu
The girl with the bat is trying to try. It's symbolic defiance, not a proper response to a humanity-threatening calamity. Granted defiance is a better attitude than the attitudes of the people shivering in fear, praying, smiling and holding up "Welcome to Earth!" signs, looting and pillaging, sitting around mellow-ly and talking and doing nothing, and standing in lines and holding hands. But that girl is still going to die and so will the rest of humanity.
Maybe you can argue that she doesn't know it won't work, but there are kinds of virtue a rationalist should not aspire to, and that includes the kind that you can only have by being ignorant of things.
The girl with the bat, in the context of the comic, is actually basically omnipotent.
Not only is she entirely capable of destroying the asteroid and eliminating whatever threat it represents using a baseball bat, given the content of the other comics, I think there's actually a reasonable chance that she consciously or subconsciously created the asteroid in the first place to give herself something to do.
Actually now that you mention it, I remember hearing that in a previous discussion of the comic. And what you say makes her despicable, instead of courageous but irrational. Am I strategically forgetting things to make better stories? (shudder).
Minus is about as despicable as any ordinary child of seven or so would be if they were also omnipotent.
Which is to say she's kind of horrifying, but not with any sort of deliberation involved.
Not to mention the applicable Riddle of Kyon.
I'm thankful this TV tropes page helpfully provided a synopsis of your fanfic for context. I wouldn't have understood you without it.
(Is the conditional probability that a given person had read all your fanfics, given that she visits LessWrong, high enough to overcome the low prior probability that a given person has read all your fanfics?)
She's a reality warper - thus, taking action that appears pointless to the uninformed observer (such as yourself), but is in fact an extremely effective method of saving the world.
Not sure if that's the intention in linking to it, but...
When you've exhausted the options, obtained enough evidence to realize you'll get more utilons by enjoying your last few moments than by genuinely trying to stop it, what then? I think the best, most rational thing to do is to be as awesome as possible in your final moments, and she's doing that.