I am both wary and morbidly curious about the “Dragon Army Barracks guy.” Partially due to the fact that the lady who doesn’t shower endorses them. Mostly because I consider really liking Ender’s Game to be a red flag.
among other things, the reader is meant to identify with a protagonist who commits escalating levels of homicidal/genocidal violence, for Reasons (post hoc justifications supplied by others), while remaining "innocent" (artificially ignorant of the consequences of his actions)
To be completely fair to Card here
The original story was meant to be Speaker for the Dead, the Enders Game sequel, which is the story of Ender’s redemption. By rehibitating the aliens and making peace with the Piggies, and sacrificing the thing he holds most dear (his relationship with his sister) in order to do it, he has atoned. Enders Game was explicitly written to be the setup/prequel to this redemption story and in my opinion can’t be read in isolation.
Card writes in the foreword to SftD that he originally conceived of SftD and wrote Enders Game only to provide the “original sin” that Ender had to redeem himself from
and? the question I was responding to was "What's wrong with *Ender's Game*", which in this context I took to mean "What's wrong with a supposedly grown adult who advertises 'liking *Ender's Game*' as a notable part of his self-conceived identity", not "is it possible to make a case that Orson Scott Card had noble intentions for his book series (taken as a whole)"
I was responding to
>the reader is meant to identify with a protagonist who commits escalating levels of homicidal/genocidal violence
While I agree, that when read in isolation, you are correct. But I was just expanding that when taken as part of the originally conceived narrative that spans 2 books, it is but the first half of a redemption story
But yes, broadly speaking I agree you’re right. I wasn’t directly responding to your point I suppose, just that idk it’s possible to identify with a fucked up character who later redeems themselves but if you only see the bad first half
if anything that makes it worse
rationalist touchstone: "yeah it's fine for you, a baby genius, to commit a little light genocide as long as you were deceived by your superiors and Repent later"
I can't speak for OP, but I bet a bunch of rationalists look at Battle School and say "this is a cool and unproblematic thing that was unfortunately used to facilitate a genocide" rather than "this is a tragedy that is traumatizing a bunch of children on a premise that is shaky if not outright false". Also there is a bunch of weirdo Mormon stuff leaking in at the edges, but it's not nearly as pronounced as Card's later work.
I do think it’s funny that Card’s deeply racist right-wing self seems to creep through in most of his writing, except for the Enders Game sequel Speaker for the Dead, which is about the struggle to relate to other cultures and learning to deeply respect their rituals and religious experiences even though we may not experience them ourselves. It’s a deeply humanistic book with some very emotional moments, and I’m absolutely shocked that it came from Card given his other writing
He went from “conservative raised Mormon trying hard to do better” to “asshole” after 9/11. Back in the day he delivered these passionate secular humanist speeches at SF cons. I wouldn’t say he succeeded totally — some of his early Mormon-directed columns were shitty — but he was trying.
Alas.
I'm old enough that it was the heel turn that shocked me, because Card has a tremendous back catalog of some of the most radically tolerant fiction I could imagine. It often (relatively) deftly examined the exact sort of thing that Card is most outspoken about. There were definitely some undertones in the way Battle School is portrayed, but at the time I read it, it still felt like an examination of other that ultimately ends with acceptance, shame and a sincere attempt to genuinely make up for a wrong. The later books of the original Ender books were of varying quality, but if anything they bridged even more alien gulfs than the buggers did.
Add to this a lot of his less famous work at shorter length or one offs like Hart's Hope and you can see why it was so rough realizing that at some point in the 2000s he snapped. I remember reading something about how it was connected to the death of his child and a change in his church, but in full disclosure I can't find anything about it and it may have been proto-copium.
Wasn't Xenocide humanistic as well? Or was that strictly Speaker for the Dead? I have fond memories of that entire trilogy, but it's been ages since I read them.
I haven’t read Xenocide in several years now, probably about a decade, whereas I only recently finished SftD a few months ago so I can’t say. It wouldn’t surprise me
Yeah she was super memorable. Gave me a lot of food for thought about religion at the time. It contributed to my skepticism in general. I almost wanna read it again just for her, but Orson has gone so far off the deep end I haven’t summoned up the courage to revisit any of his stuff.
Yeah, i remember reading Ender's Game and being absolutely baffled at what people got out of it. In my reading it seemed obvious that this was a case of society brutally abusing a child into becoming a monster and committing genocide *for a purpose that wasn't even neccessary*.
To be succinct and avoid typing out a short story: It’s badly written but is held up by its proponents as great. The idiotic Peter/Valentine subplot also reeks of a Yudkowsky/Rationalist power fantasy.
I’m not trying to be disrespectful to you or anyone else with my reply, I just want to avoid derailing this thread with what'll end up being a long, rambling answer.
>the lady who doesn’t shower
I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I sometimes wonder how to "handicap" for the halo effect.
>I’d just prefer not to potentially derail this thread.
Personally, I don't mind.
I remember reading a MetaFilter thread from years and years ago (it may have been [this one](https://www.metafilter.com/73697/Speaker-for-Himself)) because it gave me an ugly sinking feeling. It was "here's all of the awful things about Orson Scott Card." It sticks out in my memory because it was like "woah, I'm not surprised, but didn't think it would be this bad." Not to ad hominem the author, but perhaps worth mentioning in context.
I agree with others here. There's a sense in which many rationalists would like to have a technocracy of all the smart people in charge, not unlike Ender's Game. Orwell wrote [a short essay](http://plaza.ufl.edu/trishak/George%20Orwell_%20What%20is%20Science_.pdf) about this titled "What Is Science?"
>This confusion of meaning, which is partly deliberate, has in it a great danger. Implied in the demand for more scientific education is the claim that if one has been scientifically trained one's approach to all subjects will be more intelligent than if one had had no such training. A scientist's political opinions, it is assumed, his opinions on sociological questions, on morals, on philosophy, perhaps even on the arts, will be more valuable than those of a layman. The world, in other words, would be a better place if the scientists were in control of it.
Or put slightly differently by Lanier.
> ..."campus imperialism", placing themselves in an imagined position of superior understanding vs. the whole of the humanities, but they also avoid having to pay much attention to the particulars of culture in a given time and place.
Generally speaking, I would like to see more scientists in politics (or less lawyers, at least), but I don't want to see *only* scientists in politics. Listening to the technocrats is valuable, and they do have a superior understanding on specific verticals. They tend to think of their optimizations as goals in themselves rather than a tool for humans. "I came up with this cool idea in my master's thesis and I want to thrust it on your civilization" vs "I cam up with this cool idea in my master's thesis, and its yours if you would like to use it."
I'll try to keep my reply vaguely relatable to the subreddit and succinct. I have... issues being verbose.
One interpretation of the bare bones plot summary of Ender's Game - a misunderstood, ostracized genius manipulated by those less intelligent than him - made me think of Yudkowsky. Namely how he sees himself: Prizing of genius without certification or proof, less intelligent people fucking up, and self-righteousness/assuredness that veers into arrogance/smugness.
I acknowledge my biases in this interpretation: I dislike Yudkowsky, loathe Card, and think Ender's Game is badly written in multiple ways. I might entirely be off, tilting at literary windmills. This really is just my ramble.
I remember reading an old, mildly hostile critique of Ender's Game a long time ago that mentioned the way Ender is excused from his terrible choices (kind of) and examined how it's his intelligence that makes it necessary for him to have made the choices he did. It also mentioned the "family of geniuses" element of the story.
I think a lot of it is self-identification, both by reader and author, with a healthy dose of chosen one (but by their own, apparently inherent, greatness) and power fantasy (if only *I* could control everything, it would be fine). It has an incredible effect on readers of a certain age, and I've mentioned elsewhere that Card seems to conclude that there's something that transcends such alien natures as buggers, pequenos and AI.
That's why it's so incredible that he's come down so sharply against the Other later in life; his earliest works were focused on finding and making things right with it.
Thank you for mentioning this, I wasn't aware of the Dragon Army experiment. I found [this old SneerClub thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/85xhsm/postmortem_on_dragon_army_barracks_suggestions/), and it was therapeutic to read.
I may spend sometime just reading old threads here, so much that you don't see behind a lot of the glossy cover.
Thank you for posting this. I wasn't aware of the Dragon Army experiment, but found [this old thread in the process and it was an excellent read.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/85xhsm/postmortem_on_dragon_army_barracks_suggestions/) I may carve out some time just to read old posts here. So much I wasn't aware of going on behind the scenes.
Setting aside questions of rationalist hypocrisy, etc. these are
actually pretty good. Not for “conversation” in general but when a
disagreement arises this is pretty standard conversational hygiene, if
rather laboriously spelled out.
People who only want to talk about Big Things, or even worse their
One Big Idea, are tiresome, but sometimes it can be nice to chew over a
difficult problem and people who broadly do this sort of thing—although
usually by temperament rather than following a checklist—are often the
most pleasant to do it with.
These are good guidelines, which a lot of people follow, and should follow, when there's a disagreement or uncertainty that calls for it.
That just underlines the fact that "rationalist culture" **isn't** about sticking to these rules.
Rationalist culture is basically repeatedly running into the problem that you *can't* have a culture that consists entirely of abstracted intellectual discussion.
5 is bad unless you know the person you are debating with is doing so in good faith and not “hiding their power level”. Which is bad assumption is a community filled with cryptofacists, eugenics advocates, and human biodiversity theorists.
I have lurked on the edge of the rationalist community (and this one). I don't literally follow a checklist, nor have I read most of the posts that explain _how_ to be a rationalist (rather I've read things like Scott's posts about real-life topics; Yudkowsky's posts always seemed too narcissistic for me to detect anything of value and read further).
It's kind of nice to see it concisely laid out. Apparently they codified and (are supposed to) try really hard to do some things I tend to do naturally as a fairly textbook INTP who keeps his identity small and separate from his model of the world.
5 may seem like a good point in some contexts… but in the context of
interacting with cryptofacists and scientific racists it seems like a
good way to end up radicalized by far right wing ideas and drive away
minorities reacting in disgust. Which is kind of exactly what happens on
the Lesswrong and the EA forums (not that they were that good to start
with).
Really? Most of my good discourse feels effortless and in the
moment.
This turns every discussion in to some kind of debate club. Who came
up with these anyways? Is there a rule about trusting guidelines with no
author? How about guidelines without evidence of effectiveness?
Sometimes this stuff feels like a smarty pants hair shirt more than a
like… humans who want to enjoy life.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to live my life by these rules in *every*, *most* or even *many* conversations.
For engaging in "public discourse" conversations, though -- like, two academic departments writing papers to each other, or op-eds, or anytime you're in a tense conversation between groups with little mutual trust, they're not *the worst* rules you could come up with.
But, as with all rationalist-promulgated ideas, they are both unoriginal and underapplied.
1. Rationalists did not invent "assume good faith" and "speak clearly," which is what these all boil down to.
2. The overly-prescriptive rules specified here only achieve "speaking cleary" for an audience of rationalists. There are lots of components involved in communication, but a big one (not included here) is "consider your audience." (i.e. -- use five seconds of empathy to imagine how someone else might think or feel about a topic.) I think one mention of "think about your audience" would be a way more effective rule than "carefully include percentage probabilities blah blah blah."
3. Most importantly, most very critically, there is no group of people I trust less to follow any kind of social norms, including these ones, than rationalists. These are fundamentally "rules for other people" for speaking *to them*.
> These are fundamentally "rules for other people" for speaking to them.
Had that sense as well.
> "consider your audience."
Also conspicuously missing. [I've been impressed with some suggestions from this YouTuber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VdTDqAUkys) along the lines of recognizing that they're not about disagreements about facts (although those occur) but more about lack of trust.
This girl is not who should be making prescriptions like this. Ask
her why she doesn’t shower regularly. I don’t take advice from people
who think important things are boring lol
Oh, these guidelines were actually made up by the Dragon Army Barracks guy. Maybe he should have spent more time on guidelines about doing the dishes.
Is there even a single The Sequence that does this?
Setting aside questions of rationalist hypocrisy, etc. these are actually pretty good. Not for “conversation” in general but when a disagreement arises this is pretty standard conversational hygiene, if rather laboriously spelled out.
People who only want to talk about Big Things, or even worse their One Big Idea, are tiresome, but sometimes it can be nice to chew over a difficult problem and people who broadly do this sort of thing—although usually by temperament rather than following a checklist—are often the most pleasant to do it with.
This is like a list of things rationalists never do.
The irritating insistence on “0 based indexing” is the icing on the cake
I feel sorry for the girl in the replies who got pointed to a rationalist meetup
5 may seem like a good point in some contexts… but in the context of interacting with cryptofacists and scientific racists it seems like a good way to end up radicalized by far right wing ideas and drive away minorities reacting in disgust. Which is kind of exactly what happens on the Lesswrong and the EA forums (not that they were that good to start with).
Rule 5 is key here: it’s designed to protect their bad ideas against being called out as bollocks.
Really? Most of my good discourse feels effortless and in the moment.
This turns every discussion in to some kind of debate club. Who came up with these anyways? Is there a rule about trusting guidelines with no author? How about guidelines without evidence of effectiveness?
Sometimes this stuff feels like a smarty pants hair shirt more than a like… humans who want to enjoy life.
how to ruin fun conversations about cool ideas, a guide
What I get from this is that I am not allowed to use metaphor, express myself creatively, use irony or make a joke.
Also forbidden is the phatic layer of communication… which is, I’d say, one of the most major dimensions of most casual conversations.
tl;dr: “it’s very important that you be charitable to me”
Okay but this tweet low key explains so much about these assholes.
https://mobile.twitter.com/stacys_bomb/status/1619761470270742529
This girl is not who should be making prescriptions like this. Ask her why she doesn’t shower regularly. I don’t take advice from people who think important things are boring lol