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sboo comments on Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8) - Less Wrong
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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.
"... must relinquish bodily pain, embarrassment, and romantic troubles."
that's worse than letting billions of children be tortured to death every year. that's worse than dying from a supernova. that's worse than dying from mass suicide. that's worse than dying because you can't have sex with geniuses to gain their minds and thus avert the cause of death that you die from.
you really think existence without pain is that bad? you really they are not "true humans".
what about the 3WC humans? are they not "true humans" either. only us?
what about those with CIP? what about cold people? are they not "true humans"?
do you think there should be less but non-zero pain in our minds? how much?
ignore the loophole. explain why this superhappy ending is worse than the supernova ending.
literally unbelievable.
No? The story explicitly rejects this. It is only because the Superhappies can deal with the Babyeaters on their own, and that solutions to the human problem do not prevent this that the story is resolved other ways.
I don't see the story as advocating this - Akon does not suicide, for example. It is not that the value difference between human life before and after the change is so large (large than the negative value of death) that is the problem. It is that difference in value, multiplied by the entire human race and it's future potential/member is so large as to outweigh a comparatively tiny number of deaths. I'm not sure that is true, but it is the position of those in the story.
I don't think he thinks that. I think he (Eliezer_2009) thinks they have lost something important, some aspect of their humanity - but that doesn't mean they are completely inhuman.