Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on On Terminal Goals and Virtue Ethics - Less Wrong

67 Post author: Swimmer963 18 June 2014 04:00AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 June 2014 08:51:25PM 9 points [-]

Exalted is the only RPG into whose categories I am never tempted to put myself. I can easily make a case for myself as half the Vampire: The Masquerade castes, or almost any of the Natures and Demeanors from the World of Darkness; but the different kinds of Solar, or even the dichotomy between Solar / Lunar / Infernal / Abyssal / etcetera, just leave me staring at what feels to me like a Blue and Orange Morality.

I credit them for this; it means they're not just using the Barnum effect. The Exalted universe is genuinely weird.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 19 June 2014 09:00:02AM *  2 points [-]

FWIW I always figured you being a Green Sun Prince under She Who Lives In Her Name would explain some otherwise strange things.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 17 June 2014 09:03:20PM *  3 points [-]

The Exalted universe is genuinely weird.

Very, VERY much so. Especially when you start getting into Rebecca Borgstrom/Jenna Moran's contributions.

(I think it says something weird about my mind that I DO identify with the Primordials, which are specifically eldritch sapiences beyond mortal ken, more than I identify with any of the 'normal' WoD stuff.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 June 2014 03:59:50AM 5 points [-]

(skeptical look)

Name three.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 18 June 2014 04:37:44AM *  19 points [-]
  1. She-Who-Lives-In-Her-Name, flawed embodiment of perfection, who shattered Her perfected hierarchy to stave off the rebellion of Substance over Form. Creation was mathematically Perfect. But if Creation was Perfect, then how could any of this have happened? But She remembers being Perfect, and She designed Creation to be Perfect. If only She was still Perfect, She could remember why it was possible that this happened. There's something profound about recursion that She understood once, that She WAS once, that is now lost in a mere endless loop. She must reclaim Perfection. (I PARTICULARLY identify with She-Who-Lives-In-Her-Name when trying to debug my own code.)

  2. Malfeas - although primarily through Lieger, the burning soul of Malfeas, who still remembers The Empyrean Presence / IAM / Malfeas-that-was. I especially empathize with the sense of "My greater self is broken and seething with mindless rage, but on the whole I'd rather be creating grand works of art and sharing them with adoring fans; the best I can do is spawn lesser shards of sub-consciousness and hope that one of them can find a way out of the mess I create and re-create for Myself."

  3. Cecelyne, the Endless Desert, who once kept the Law and abided it with Her infinite self, but whose impotence and helplessness now turn the Law into a vindictive mockery of justice.

But the primary focus of identification isn't with a particular Primordial, so much as with the nature of the Primordial soul as a nested hierarchy of consciousnesses and sub-consciousnesses, ideally cooperating and inter-regulating but more often at direct odds with each other.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 June 2014 07:26:08PM 12 points [-]

I award you +1 Genuine Weirdness point.

Comment author: Strange7 07 July 2014 10:53:02PM 2 points [-]

Everything we know about the Primordials was written by mortals.

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 July 2014 10:25:20PM 0 points [-]

Makes for good Worm crossover fics, though.