MakoYass comments on The Importance of Sidekicks - LessWrong
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Another thought about the sidekick status. I recall this comment by Eliezer, where he says, in part:
I could be misreading it, but if you replace "money" with "effort", he basically describes the sideckick role as "NPC". Which rubbed me the wrong way even then. I certainly would not describe you or Brienne as NPCs, no way. I wonder if it's just an unfortunate choice of words.
It is a wholly inadequate analogy. Player Characters are supposed to be the ones with the agency, right? But most Player Characters are confined to a low-level domain of expertise(not metaethics, communication, social organization or economics, but scavenging and combat), and thus to do any good in the world must defer to someone with more high-level worldview(someone they should rightly trust well enough to tell them where humanity needs them), either that, or they tend to undergo their campaigns in some twisted amusement ride under the thumb of a perverse god(moloch, most likely), where straying from their specialization is simply not on offer.
In short; those who live life like a game, fulfilled and decisive, either must or at least should follow(or advise for) some higher authority who knows how to fit their domain into the broader needs of the species.
The rest of us, those of us more inclined to insatiable curiosity and pensivity, we are not player characters. We are the DMs who designed the game to keep its Player Characters happy in doing good.