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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Epilogue: Atonement (8/8) - Less Wrong
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If this were a nonfiction essay, then the denotative meaning of the words would take precedence, as you seem to be reading, then I would agree with you.
But here, the "could" in "yes, actually, you could" is a parallel phrasing, a response to the set-up "You couldn't blame them, could you...?"
The tone of "You couldn't blame them, could you...?" is one of moral comfort, of reassuring oneself that the late ships weren't morally culpable. The "Yes, actually, you could", a direct contradiction of that statement, therefore winds up meaning that the late ships were morally culpable -- that they, objectively, did do the wrong thing.
Yes, it's a false dichotomy, but fiction operates by the rules of emotion, not logic. In literary interpretation and in writing, the laws of rationality don't directly apply in the naive sense. Trying to read a novel by the literal denotative meaning of the words is like trying to do economics or sociology on the assumption that all humans are perfect Bayesians.
Yes, I did indeed mean to assign some definite blame there. Just by way of inverting the usual story "logic" where the heroic idiots always get away with it. TV Tropes probably has a term for this but I'm not looking it up.
Probably "Just In Time", although the page seems to have suffered a bit of decay.
"Reality Ensues" is the trope Eliezer used. I'm not sure what the Defied Trope was, though.
I said Just In Time because that's the trope Eliezer was subverting by having the ships miss the deadline.
well, it's not in http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThreeWorldsCollide so you know what to do...
(I haven't ever edited this page myself for obvious reasons)
Done. (On reflection, it's less subversion than deconstruction in TV Tropes vocabulary.)
There's no rule against it on the TV Tropes Wiki. In fact, there's a whole category for Troper Works. However, if you just don't want to have TV Tropes Ruin Your Life, I won't blame you for staying out.
I thought it was considered tacky to mess with entries for your own things on wikis? (If it's not, time to go spam TV Tropes with links to my stuff... traffic, sweet traffic...)
wikis ≠ Wikipedia
TV Tropes is a buttload more informal than That Other Wiki. ;)
Go ahead and link away!
I'd say it's kind of an achievement to have something written about you in a wiki by someone who aren't you.
Strictly speaking, it's a signal of an achievement. It provides lots of warm fuzzies, but basically no utilons (beyond those intrinsic to the achievement it signals).
Is EY a troper? I haven't been looking.
Tropers are equal to awesomeness, and EY is equal to awesomeness. So yes.
Here I was assuming that tvtropes was about, well, TV.
Warning: TVTropes links in this post. Do not click.
WhatTheHellHero, maybe.
I still think the passage would be more effective presented less directly, particularly considering the relatively high intelligence level that the rest of the story seems to be writing for.
For the record, I don't agree - it wasn't subtle, but there's no dwelling on the point, either. It's just a small thing that happened, in the context of the story.