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polymathwannabe comments on Ethics in a Feedback Loop: A Parable - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: PeerGynt 25 July 2014 04:25PM

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Comment author: B_For_Bandana 25 July 2014 07:05:43PM *  5 points [-]

Recruit the subset of rare humans who enjoy green tickling and employ them as tickling punchbags for green Martians to practice on.

The laws of Earth prohibit tickling for pay. Interestingly, the laws of Earth do not prohibit paying a Martian and a human actor to act as if the Martian is zapping the human's brain with a ray gun (which in real life is way worse than tickling, even by a green Martian, and which no humans or Martians actually enjoy doing) and then selling the video. It's weird. [ETA: I misunderstood the analogy. Doing experiments on the mothership for pay is illegal. Tickling for pay is legal in theory, but it would seem weird to most people, so it usually isn't done.]

Your other solutions are worth trying. However, I notice that most of them are blunt physical solutions that depend crucially on tickling being a very simple physical action that we have the technology to modify, and not, say, a stand-in for an interlocking set of horrifyingly complicated social problems involving desire, fear, pain, status, envy, humiliation, hope, joy, resentment, contempt, shame, and, oh yeah, politics. Lucky we're just talking about tickling.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 25 July 2014 07:15:20PM 1 point [-]

I think I get what tickling is supposed to be a metaphor for, but I'm clueless as to what the human and two Martian factions represent.

Comment author: PeerGynt 25 July 2014 07:22:11PM *  4 points [-]

OK, I really would prefer that this discussion stays on the abstract level, but in order to avoid confusion, I will provide a translation of the intended metaphors:

Green Martian = Low Status Male

Blue Martian = High Status Male

Earthling = Female

Tickling = Flirting (Including obnoxious strategies such as "negs" and "kino escalation")

The moderately painful sting of the tentacles of the Green Martian = Creepiness, Social Awkwardness, etc

Experimentation on Earthlings (defined in comments) = Sex

Comment author: Lumifer 25 July 2014 08:30:07PM 4 points [-]

You should have set this up between Martians and Venusians :-)

Otherwise, I don't think that practicing tickling is the main way for changing the color from Green to Blue.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 July 2014 08:42:24PM 4 points [-]

Otherwise, I don't think that practicing tickling is the main way for changing the color from Green to Blue.

Silver can make you blue!

Comment author: Lumifer 25 July 2014 08:45:52PM 1 point [-]

A valid point :-D

Comment author: [deleted] 25 July 2014 08:26:53PM 0 points [-]

OK, I had slightly misunderstood it. I'm retracting the comments based on the misunderstanding.