Comment author: Caledonian2 12 January 2009 05:08:58PM 1 point [-]

Nancy Lebovitz, those are great. I may have to appropriate some of those.

In response to Serious Stories
Comment author: Caledonian2 09 January 2009 06:16:42PM 2 points [-]

I'd say the primary bad thing about pain is not that it hurts, but that it's pushy and won't tune out. You could learn to sleep in a ship's engine room, but a mere stubbed toe grabs and holds your attention.

That, I think we could delete with impunity.

If we could learn to simply get along with any level of pain... how would it constitute an obstacle?

Real accomplishment requires real obstacles to avoid, remove, or transcend. Real obstacles require real consequences. And real consequences require pain.

In response to Serious Stories
Comment author: Caledonian2 09 January 2009 06:07:46PM 0 points [-]

I would suggest that this book, and the two books immediately preceding it, are an examination of the difference between what people believe they want the world to be and what they actually want and need it to be. When people gain enough power to create their vision of the perfect world, they do - and then find they've constructed an elaborate prison at best and a slow and terrible death at worst.

An actual "perfect world" can't be safe, controlled, or certain -- and the inevitable consequence of that is pain. But so is delight.

Comment author: Caledonian2 08 January 2009 06:52:41PM 1 point [-]

The opposite of a Great Truth is unpretentiousness.

Comment author: Caledonian2 03 January 2009 08:19:38PM 0 points [-]

Mr. Tyler:

I admire your persistence; however, you should be reminded that preaching to the deaf is not a particularly worthwhile activity.

Comment author: Caledonian2 03 January 2009 08:18:37PM 3 points [-]

My own complaints regarding the Brave New World consist mainly of noting that Huxley's dystopia specialized in making people fit the needs of society. And if meant whittling down a square peg so it would fit into a round hole, so be it.

Embryos were intentionally damaged (primarily through exposure to alcohol) so that they would be unlikely to have capabilities beyond what society needed them to.

This is completely incompatible with my beliefs about the necessity of self-regulating feedback loops, and developing order from the bottom upwards.

In response to Free to Optimize
Comment author: Caledonian2 02 January 2009 07:37:59PM -4 points [-]

It's really quite simple: the people who designed and maintain the legal system faced a choice. Is it better for the system to be consistent but endlessly repeat its mistakes, or inconsistent but error-correcting?

They preferred it to be predictable.

And that is why it is absurd to call it a "justice system". It's not concerned with justice.

In response to High Challenge
Comment author: Caledonian2 19 December 2008 05:11:23PM 0 points [-]

Or, to put it another way:

"Fixing" the future, in a way that renders human beings completely redundant and unnecessary even to themselves, isn't fixing anything. It's creating a problem of unlimited scope.

If that's the ultimate outcome of, say, producing superhuman minds - whether they're somehow enslaved to human preferences or not - then we're trying very hard to create a world in which the only rational treatment of humanity is extinction. Whether imposed from without or from within, voluntarily, is irrelevant.

In response to High Challenge
Comment author: Caledonian2 19 December 2008 05:07:57PM 5 points [-]

Based on the comments here, it would seem that it's the people who reject ultimately-meaningless forms of play - that is, 'play' that doesn't develop skills useful to perpetuation - and concentrate on the "real world" who will end up existing.

And the Luddites will inherit the Earth...

Comment author: Caledonian2 22 November 2008 07:13:48PM 0 points [-]

The mere fact that he has put so much time and energy into working on this issue over many years is strong evidence that he sincerely believes that it is a real possibility

Only if there are no other consequences of his actions that he desires. People working to forward an ideology don't necessary believe the ideology they're selling - they only need to value some of the consequences of spreading it.

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