Yud could only be edgy to people who thought the utterly benign, centrist takes of the "intellectual dark web" were actually subversive. He is more clever than the average writer. But his values and mindset form a terrible mismatch with his cognitive ability.
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Replying to @moritheil @thespandrell and
The Buddhists have this term, "caught between Heaven and Earth," for people who have had the calamitous realization that their entire prior model for reality is wrong, but refuse to step into enlightenment by rejecting their old worldview to synthesize radically new values.
1 reply 4 retweets 39 likes -
Replying to @moritheil @thespandrell and
That's Yudkowsky. Hell, he even wrote about it in HPMOR! That's the core of the story of the Phoenix - he hears the call, but rejects it as being "not rational." Really he fears it, because he intuits that it will require him to relinquish modern beliefs like equality.
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Replying to @moritheil @thespandrell and
What does "rational" mean in this context? Seems like leftists just like to use "rational" (and "science") to denote "things I like."
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Replying to @BayCoalition @thespandrell and
Basically the character rejects a high-risk, high-return action that is totally in line with his motivations because he fears failure. Another character then tells him that he only had a 2/10 chance of succeeding, so his hesitation was perfectly reasonable.
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Replying to @moritheil @BayCoalition and
Yudkowsky uses this episode to imply that his way of thinking (rationality) is superior to the traditional fantasy staple of betting the farm on a defining action, because his ideals don't require you to take such risks. However, this severely undercuts his other positions:
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Replying to @moritheil @BayCoalition and
1. Since the expected outcome of an action is calculated by weighing both the consequences of failure AND success, this equally implies that for all the lip service he pays to "human rights," it is not infinitely valuable.
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Replying to @moritheil @BayCoalition and
2. It undercuts his position that all sentient beings are equal. If no one can be expected to take risks for the rights of others, not even a hero with a magical beast, then the ideal itself is hollow. "I want world peace and I'm willing to pay 25 cents for it."
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Replying to @moritheil @BayCoalition and
Incidentally, the biggest undercutting of equality in HPMOR is this: HP takes a geas not to do anything which might conceivably lead to global thermonuclear war. Under the principle that all lives are equal, he tries to order the wizards to open up healing to normies, and can't.
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Replying to @moritheil @BayCoalition and
To be clear: Yud set out to write a tract on how death is the greatest of evils and inequality between sentient beings is abhorrent, and is forced to conclude his own novel by admitting that secrecy, hierarchy, and inequality are all necessary to prevent far more deaths.
2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
The silliest part of it is that his author insert never considers that he might not have been the first to consider this strategy and that playing dumb might have been a consciously adopted strategy of players in the wizarding world.
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