Despite recognizing the evil some would commit to achieve a utopia, she shows the ones who leave rather than fight to impose their own new utopia. We don’t know where they’re going or what it will be, only that they’re not contributing to the banality of evil.
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Replying to @GiffordJames @cheerlessdrudge and
okay I just read it and OMG must Russ have *hated* that story. The Two of Them seems specifically like an outraged response to it!
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Replying to @nberlat @GiffordJames and
you don't walk away! you rescue the kid, if you can!
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Replying to @nberlat @GiffordJames and
amusingly, Twilight actually agrees with Le Guin, which I like about it because it's so against the vampire tropes. (good vampires don't kill evil vampires because it would cause too much harm and also killing anyone is bad.)
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Replying to @nberlat @GiffordJames and
Everyone agrees with refusing to act because the cost is too great sometimes Otherwise we'd all be Leeroy Jenkins up in here
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
I mean there's an arguable sense in which "I would save the child and burn down Omelas" is the George W. Bush neocon philosophy That was very much their whole shtick, yelling at everyone else for just being okay with the suffering of people under Saddam's rule
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Replying to @arthur_affect @GiffordJames and
yes! but. that was kind of some other omelas' child...
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Replying to @nberlat @arthur_affect and
So you agree, we must kill Spock?pic.twitter.com/7mwn9CPO7g
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Replying to @GiffordJames @arthur_affect and
I think spock sacrificed himself, right? and the was resurrected...so probably not the best analogy...
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Replying to @nberlat @arthur_affect and
But it’s the literal ethical value at stake & Trek fetishizes utilitarianism all the time. Consequentialist ethics don’t care about the difference between self-sacrifice & murder (which is exactly why I think Spock is the right example—Spock is a monster if you save the child).
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I mean, they should, because the actual experience of sacrificing yourself is different from that of being murdered and therefore produces a different output of utilons
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
We’re into virtue ethics territory if we’re concerned about how the ethical act shapes subjectivity… But FWIW, I don’t see the ones walking away as abandoning the child, I see them abandoning Bentham.
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Replying to @GiffordJames @arthur_affect and
right, I get that. it's definitelhy one way to read it! but I think it's also kind of abandoning the child.
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