wobster109 comments on Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8) - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2009 08:45AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2009 08:50:30AM 10 points [-]

This is the original ending I had planned for Three Worlds Collide.

After writing it, it seemed even more awful than I had expected; and I began thinking that it would be better to detonate Sol and fragment the human starline network, guaranteeing that, whatever happened in the future, true humans would continue somewhere.

Then I realized I didn't have to destroy the Earth - that, like so many other stories I'd read, my very own plot had a loophole. (I might have realized earlier, if I'd written part 5 before part 6, but the pieces were not written in order.)

Tomorrow the True Ending will appear, since it was indeed guessed in the comments yesterday.

If anyone wonders why the Normal Ending didn't go the way of the True Ending - it could be because the Superhappy ambassador ship got there too quickly and would have been powerful enough to prevent it. Or it could be because the highest decision-makers of humankind, like Akon himself, decided that the Superhappy procedure was the categorically best way to resolve such conflicts between species. The story does not say.

Comment author: wobster109 20 August 2011 07:08:41AM 6 points [-]

I've just a couple days ago returned home from Rationality Camp, and to the best of my estimates, about half the participants prefer this ending, and also, among rationalists that I encounter elsewhere, a non-trivial portion of them prefer this ending as well. What am I saying? Other than the mass suicides, it is not immediately obvious that this original ending is "awful" in any way.

Comment author: AndrewH 29 January 2012 02:48:12AM 5 points [-]

Other than the mass suicides...

And including the mass suicides? remember that in this story, 6 billion people become 1 in a million, and over 25% of people died in this branch of the story. Destroying Huygens resulted in 15 billion deaths.

As they say, shut up and multiply.