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DanielLC comments on Rationality Quotes January 2015 - Less Wrong
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Being good isn't enough, but being wise and good is. Tolkien may not be able to answer all those questions, because he's probably not wise enough to make those hard decisions well, but Aragorn was.
It's emphatically not enough. Jonathan Swift may have been wise enough to figure out certain evolutionary principles; he may have been good; he was also wrong on the facts, because science is fscking hard.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. I'm saying that being able to make the hard decisions is part of being a "wise ruler". I admit I never finished the Lord of the Rings, so I don't know what Tolkien actually said, but from what Martin quoted, Tolkien never said it would be easy. If anything, specifying that Aragorn was wise was suggesting that it was hard.