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Lumifer comments on Open thread, Sep. 19 - Sep. 25, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Imagine a Faerie Queen popping into existence near you and saying: Yo, I have a favour to ask. See, a few centuries ago a guy wished to live in the far future, so I thought why not? it's gonna be fun! and I put him into stasis. It's time for him to wake up, but I'm busy so can you please reanimate him? Here is the scroll which will do it, it comes with instructions. Oh, and the guy wrote a lengthy letter before I froze him -- he seemed to have been very concerned about his soul being tricked by the Devil -- here it is. Cheers, love, I owe you one! ...and she pops out of existence again.
You look at the letter (which the Faerie Queen helpfully translated into more or less modern English) and it's full of details about consecrated ground, and wards against evil eyes, and witch barriers, and holy water, and what kind of magic is allowed anywhere near his body, and whatnot.
How seriously are going to take this letter?
Language is a many-splendored thing. Even a simple shopping list contains more information than a mere list of goods; a full letter is exponentially more valuable. As one fictional character once put it, it's worth looking for the "underneath the underneath"; as another one put it, it's possible to deduce much of modern civilization from a cigarette butt. If you need a specific reason to pay attention to such a letter spelled out for you, then it could be looked at for clues as to how likely the reanimated fellow would need to spend time in an asylum before being deemed competent to handle his own affairs and released into modern society, or if it's safe to plan on just letting him crash on my couch for a few days.
And that's without even touching the minor detail that, if a Faerie Queen is running around, then the Devil may not be far behind her, and the resurrectee's concerns may, in fact, be completely justified. :)
PS: I like this scenario on multiple levels. Is there any chance I could convince you to submit it to /r/WritingPrompts, or otherwise do more with it on a fictional level? ;)
Oh, I'm sure the letter is interesting, but the question is whether you will actually set up wards and have a supply of holy water on hand before activating the scroll. Though the observation that the existence of the Faerie Queen changes things is a fair point :-)
I don't know if the scenario is all that exciting, it's a pretty standard trope, a bit tarted-up. If you want to grab it and run with it, be my guest.
It looks like you've changed the subject a bit -- from whether the letter should be taken seriously in the sense of doing what it requests, to whether it should be taken seriously in the sense of reading it carefully.
Why can't we have both?