Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (337)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 November 2014 11:04:27PM 5 points [-]

The trope is Villains Act Heroes React, and the Foundation stories don't actually defy this AFAIC recall.

Comment author: kilobug 06 November 2014 09:42:40AM 7 points [-]

It does in various points of the saga, some examples I can give easily, other are spoilers so I'll ROT13 them.

In the first tome and the prequels, it's Harry Seldon who tries to develop pyschohistory and setup the Foundation, and different "villains" react to that. It's true that afterwards the Foundation is mostly reacting to Seldon Crisis, but those crisis are part of Seldon's Plan (so, of the hero planning ahead awesome things).

In the last tome, Foundation and Earth, it's clearly the heroes who start their own quest of finding back the Earth.

Now the spoiling parts (rot13) :

Va gur cerdhryf vg'f pyrneyl Qnarry jub gevrf gb chfu Fryqba gb qrirybc cflpubuvfgbel, naq Qnarry vf gur erny "ureb" bs gur rkgraqrq Sbhaqngvba-Ebobg plpyr.

Va Sbhaqngvba'f Rqtr, juvyr gur znva ureb vf vaqrrq ernpgvba gb orvat chfurq ol inevbhf punenpgre, vg'f abg ivyynvaf jub ner cynaavat gur jubyr riragf, ohg Tnvn, jub vf n cebqhpg bs Qnarry, fb ntnva, bs gur erny "nepu ureb" bs gur fntn.

There are other similar examples in other parts of the cycle, but less obvious ones.