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ikrase comments on Epilogue: Atonement (8/8) - Less Wrong
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Neh. Eliezer, I'm kind of disappointed by how you write the tragic ending ("saving" humans) as if it's the happy one, and the happy ending (civilization melting pot) as if it's the tragic one. I'm not sure what to make of that.
Do you really, actually believe that, in this fictional scenario, the human race is better off sacrificing a part of itself in order to avoid blending with the super-happies?
It just blows my mind that you can write an intriguing story like this, and yet draw that kind of conclusion.
Death does not go on. The humans are immortal.
The flaw i see is why could the super happies not make separate decisions for humanity and the baby eaters. And why meld the cultures? Humans didn't seem to care about the existence of shockingly ugly super happies.
I don't follow. They waged a genocidal war against the babyeaters and signed an alliance with humanity. That looks like separate decisions to me.
For one, because they're symmetrists. They asked something of humanity, so it was only fair that they should give something of equal value in return. (They're annoyingly ethical in that regard.) And I do mean equal value - humans became partly superhappy, and superhappies became partly human. For two, because shared culture and psychology makes it possible to have meaningful dialogue between species: even with the Cultural Translator, everyone got headaches after five minutes. Remember that to the superhappies, meaningful communication is literally as good as sex.
More accurately:
Yeah... I guess I just didn't quite pick up on the whole symmetry thing. It seems like they could have, for example, immediately waged war on the baby eaters (I think it was not actually genocide but rather cultural imperialism, or forced modification so that the baby eaters would cause disutility) and THEN made the decision for the humans.