Blogging about F.A. · 12:55am Aug 11th, 2014
Unless I back out at the last second, I'm going to drink my very first cup of coffee today. I suppose this is some form of milestone. Is there some sort of proper procedure when it comes to drinking coffee, or should I just drink it like a normal drink?
I'm nervous. And also a bit irked that tab doesn't make a large space in blogs here - I like using that at the beginning of paragraphs! Huh, that got off-topic very quickly.
Anyway, in other news, I recently read Diamond Tiara versus the Changeling Invasion, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all. It's apparently a sequel to one of Alex Warlorn's works, another author who I sorta recommend but can't because his grammar is atrocious. It works perfectly well standalone, though.
I'm referencing this for reasons beyond mere recommendation, though. I'm talking about this because it got me thinking. See, the very first story (or, well, series) that came to mind upon finishing this was Chatoyance's Conversion Bureau - another series of stories wherein people are transformed psychologically and physiologically. In both cases, the transformed are happier than they used to be; in both cases, the transformed are clearly the same beings they used to be with subtle changes; and in both cases, the untransformed are often transformed by force. One of the major differences between the two, though, is that while The Changeling Invasion is a horror story, Chatoyance's stories are more slice-of-life.
There are other differences, of course; Ponies in TCB find violence horrific while Changelings are, while not predisposed towards it, at least not against it. Changelings don't bother with voluntary conversion - though I think that's more because nopony would voluntary transform, and they couldn't risk word getting out to Celestia that changelings existed - while TCB at least gave the illusion of choice. But despite these differences, we've still got the same general idea.
So, with this in mind, are the Changelings in the former story in the right? Reese told me in a discussion yesterday that he was fine with conversion (in TCB rather than for DTCI, mind - there might be factors in this story that make his statement not apply here) so long as the converting side was benevolent, competent, and those changed truly were converted rather than replaced, and it made some sense to me (my primary problem with TCB lies in the conversion vs replacement question). In this story, changelings are clearly competent, they're working to help ponies become better than they once were, they're undoubtedly happier, and it's clear that they've been converted rather than replaced by completely different beings (though this is dependent on your experiotemporal threshold (this isn't a real word, but it's an awesome word, and I might make a blog post about it some other time)). Are they right to be converting ponies into changelings?
This is a legitimate question - I asked myself this for hours after reading the story. I know it might seem a bit like a jab at the conversion bureau (by which I mean, this might seem like me saying 'this is like that, and this is bad, therefore that is bad'), but while I've made my decision as to my stance, it took me a LONG time to do so. (And before you ask, I won't elaborate on my stance. I want to see your conclusions rather than shove mine on you. I'll probably just put it in the comments later.)
What do you guys think?
... Right, how the hell am I supposed to know what constitutes good and bad coffee? How should I know which one to pick? Oh man, maybe I should have it tomorrow instead...
Y'know, I was thinking of just asking the question without any context on the story page as well, as a sort of control group. What do you think?
Huh. I didn't start taking caffeine (in the form of black tea) until graduate school. Coffee still seems to me like an unnecessary extreme.
And yes, other people have commented that this is rather odd. :)
"and I might make a blog post about it some other time"
…An entire blog post about a word I made up on the spur of the moment? :D
I'm afraid that I can't comment on the mentioned story yet, though I've added it to my reading list.
I'm reminded of an RPG I ran, though (my first foray into GMing, which had mixed results). The changelings in it met a very mixed reception with the players. One player took quite a liking to them and was pleased when their character managed to get converted into one. Another player viewed them as evil. A third disliked them so much that, when another GM took over the campaign, they tried to persuade the new GM to wipe the changelings out. It was clear that there were some very different, at least in this area, value systems in play there. Of course, in that universe, the bigger issue was the changeling infiltration of the government, use of mind magic, and general treatment of ponies as difficult-to-handle but vital livestock; conversion replaced a food source with a food sink and was thought by the changelings to be more than the vast majority of ponies deserved, so it was rare and always voluntary.
Anyway, the view I and the changeling-liking player took was that, while the changelings were psychopaths by pony standards, they were quite powerful and competent and had a very strong motive, in the form of enlightened self interest, to keep Equestria's population happy, healthy, and safe. The other two players, as I understand it, saw the good they were doing and the high probability that they'd keep doing it as outweighed by their completely selfish motives, their lack of fundamental care for the wellbeing of other creatures, and their resultant willingness to use deception, mind-altering magic, and assassination whenever those methods were deemed most practical. They also viewed, I think, the alien nature of the changelings' minds as lacking free will and in general being a step down from the minds of humans or ponies, while I and the other player saw no detrimental infringement of free will or identity but a structure allowing a great deal of harmonious cooperation and efficiency.
Oh, yes, and one of the potential good ends involved the changelings starting to operate openly and even offering conversions more widely, and I recall the two players who disliked the changelings having great difficulty believing that anyone would actually take them up on that.
edit: Oh, and what does "F.A." stand for here?
2359853 Shit, I don't know if it's placebo or what, but after two sips I'm already feeling more active.
I'm afraid.
I probably shouldn't have done this.
That seems really interesting. Food for thought, at least; I'm largely against the changelings in this case because of their usage of non-consensual mind-magic (it's basically rape of the mind, as I view it - though sometimes terrible crimes CAN be justified, and this might be necessary for changelings, by default I can't sympathize with anyone using mind magic), but I approve of their conversion practices, at least. Kind of. Assuming ponies know what they're getting into, or at least have a general idea of it.
Also, F.A. stands for Fuck All. A bit vulgar, but vulgar is kind of my thing.
Mind if I put your explanation of experiotemporal density in the comments, by the way?
2360339
Good luck! I remember when I first started black tea; I stood in the store agonizing about it for a while, and I felt like I was a WWII pilot being issued stimulants. I don't know what it would take to make me consider coffee.
Aye, the mind magic had some moral issues. The disagreement on that score was about whether it did more good than harm, not about whether it did not harm at all. From the changelings' perspective, there was no problem with it, but that's because they had quite the double standard; how many ranchers worry about their cattle feeling violated in the process of castration, artificial insemination, or other such messing around back there? The changelings were highly against mind magic being used on them by others. The two anti-changeling players argued that this made them evil and that they ought to be opposed; I and the other pro-changeling player argued that the changelings weren't doing any of this with malice, were just trying to survive, and did a lot of good behind the scenes, questionable though their methods may have been. Hm. I suppose that are some similarities to debates about intelligence services. How much violation of individual rights is permissible for the public good?
Ah, okay.
"Mind if I put your explanation of experiotemporal density in the comments, by the way?"
Oh, no problem. I'm still surprised by how fond you seem to be of it…
The threshold is basically that level of change referenced in the last sentence.
2360769 Well, in what scenario would rape be justifiable? I mean, none under basically any real life circumstances, but let's assume for a moment that these are not real-life circumstances. Let's say that there's a guarantee - or a near guarantee - that if you don't violate this person - Fourteen million innocent (or at least, not deserving) people will die. Or Four million. Or hell, maybe just twenty or even ten, depending on how much you value human life. Quantity is actually a rather imprecise thing, actually, so let's go with 'a large number of people'. Or perhaps 'A significantly larger number of people would have suffered the fate you've inflicted upon this person'. And let's assume for a moment that there's either not enough time to find alternatives - if you don't find the right alternative within the time limit, these people will die or be violated, and you don't have enough information to make a reasonable guess - or there's an absolute guarantee that there are no alternatives. In scenarios like these, I would, hypothetically, find it justified.
Of course, just writing this gave me a sick feeling in my stomach, because I just stated that if it would save a huge amount of lives and there were no alternatives, I would approve of rape. And I do believe that, but those words by default freak me the fuck out because they're horrible words to say. By default, and without much time to think about it, rape (and mind-alteration, which lies in the same sphere) is automatically placed in my 'fucking evil' category, and it takes a lot of justification to pull it out of it.
I don't know exactly where my threshold for justified mind violation lies. I know that the above scenario lies above it, and I know that doing it for selfish gains or when one hasn't even bothered to try alternative scenarios is below it. I don't know whether the above scenario is far above my threshold or nearing it. That scares me, actually, because there's something I don't know about myself - something that I doubt I'd ever find useful, but still something. I do know that I chose (SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT TWO), based on my moral system, to kill the geth rather than convert them in Mass Effect Two. I believed that the death of one person was better than the conversion of that said person, based on my moral values. That ought to say something about my moral values and how they relate to non-consensual mind-alteration.
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Hm… I'm not sure that the mind/physical rape one is an entirely fair comparison at this level of detail. Outside of artificial circumstances (ie, something like 'a terrorist will nuke a major city if you don't, for some reason'), what good could physical rape actually do? All I can think of is reproduction after a population crash, which is a specific scenario with a lot of complicating factors.
By contrast, mind rape can take many more forms and has much, much wider applicability. Would something as simple as altering someone's emotions to keep them cool in a crisis count? You are, in a way, changing who they are. For a more complex scenario, in the game I was speaking of, the GM who followed me, in an attempt to placate the vocal anti-changeling player, had a spell cast on the party that basically encrypted their souls. One of the characters I was playing (bit of a long story there), who was actually a changeling and thus demonstrating their double standard, was panicked by this, considering it quite an intense violation (though… hm, I didn't think of this at the time, but the fact that the rest of the characters were completely fine with it may not have helped with the whole "It's okay to do this to ponies" thing). Part of that was out of a concern that it would interfere with reconnection to the hivemind, but a lot of it was just the feeling of violation. The same character would not have hesitated to modify the memories of every other party member (with one exception) if she'd thought it necessary for the protection of her hive and/or Equestria.
…I think I may have gone off on a tangent there. Anyway, my point is that there are a lot of ways to use mind rape that could leave everyone involved, including the victim, happier and better off, with the price being the violation of the identity of the victim. It could also be horribly abused, of course, either deliberately or because the perpetrator has a very different idea of what's harmful (witness all the people trying to "cure" homosexuality), but the fact that it can do harm as well as good is obvious. The question is about when, if ever, it does more good than harm.
I think that we can divide the potential scenarios into two broad categories: those in which the victim is expected to end up worse off and those in which they are not. For scenarios in the first category, the exact nature of the harm done becomes less important; this folds in to the general "How much is it acceptable to harm one person to help others?" question. I'll therefore focus on the other category. The simplest scenario in this one is one in which the victim simply has no memory or evidence of anything happening; they, say, stumbled on a state secret that put them and everyone around them at risk from both domestic and foreign threats, and the mind rape was a memory modification to return things to the status quo. A more complex scenario would be, say, the curing of a mental illness that made them a danger to themselves and others but which they were adamant about not receiving this treatment for. Actually, it would be better for me to address this later, when I tackle your last point. Going back to the state-secret-erasure thing… This actually isn't very simple, and it's making me a bit uncomfortable about myself as well. There are a few cases where it's pretty clear ("This random and not-terribly-bright farmer now has the nuclear launch codes and is bragging about that fact"), but most are much murkier. There is a part of me that would look at an innocent civilian discovering public corruption, the government erasing that knowledge, and then the government turning internal security on the corrupt official and modifying their mind to stop it as the right, proper, and morally just way for a government with this capability to behave. This is the part of me that thinks that the Secret Speech was a bad move. There's another part of me that's highly critical (and a bit scared) of the first part, but the first part does exist. And if we admit that there are any cases where this sort of thing can be good, which it seems we must (see the example of the person above bragging about knowing the nuclear launch codes, or maybe even the low-intensity example of emotion modification in a crisis above that), the exact location of the line between it being right and wrong is up for debate. The more I've been thinking about this (I'm a bit worried about how long and rambly this post may have been getting), the more skeptical I am that it's really practical to consider this in the abstract. There are just so many possible variations. One scenario seems justified and right to me, one slightly different scenario seems like a horrible abuse. And so much of it is based on other aspects of my morality. What about mind modification to convert people to heterosexual fundamentalist christian republicans? Well, that's wrong, obviously, but I bet it wouldn't be obvious to a heterosexual fundamentalist christian republican. I obviously think that my own views are right (otherwise I wouldn't have them) and that therefore opposed views are wrong… but I'm also aware that everyone else thinks the same thing. Even saying that an ideology's worth is decided by its survival utility doesn't work, because, while that does winnow some out, there are still a variety of others left. Particularly if its in the government's power to change the human nature of its citizens. This is one of the things I like about the Optimalverse, but it also highlights why it needs to have something like the Optimalverse, in my mind, to be free of troublesome moral questions. To clarify, people of radically different and incompatible ideologies can all be in the Optimalverse correct and happy, at least as far as their shards are concerned. The neo nazis can have their aryan (albeit pony) "paradise" as much as they want, and the wonderful thing is that the only people who have to deal with it are those who really do see it as paradise. But when you can't separate people off into customized worlds? As long as people want different forms of government, someone's going to be unhappy. Modern democracy is at least ostensibly an attempt at a compromise that leaves no one too unhappy, but while it may be the worst from of government except for all the other ones, it still has quite a few problems.
…I think I've been tangenting again. Anyway, what I was getting at, I think: It's very easy for me to say that mind modification is right if it's modification I agree with. It's much harder if it's something I disagree with but that still leaves everyone involved happy. To reference "curing homosexuality" again, I say that it's part of the person and that removing it is too drastic a change. The people who want to do the modification say that its a disease that's dangerous to the person and those around them. The issue is that one side sees it as, at least a little, killing who the person was while the other sees it as just curing them, and doing nothing isn't an option because that's what one side is arguing for. And saying "Well, if everyone goes through it, homosexuality will cease to be an issue and everyone will be happy about it" is, to people who have this change above their experiotemporal thresholds for personality death, an attempt at justifying genocide. And making me more uncomfortable is that, when the change is, as I've heard it is in CTCB, the reverse, making everyone bi or pansexual (thus "if everyone goes through it, homosexuality will cease to be an issue and everyone will be happy about it"…), I support it. I am aware that I am using a double standard and do not like it… but at the same time, I have to have some sort of double standard in favor of my own beliefs to, say, be against abducting and eating children even though the person doing it believes that they are morally justified in doing so.
…Anyway, the last issue you raised. "I believed that the death of one person was better than the conversion of that said person, based on my moral values."
My values disagree with yours here. I look at it this way:
In this situation, either you kill them or convert them. Conversion either changes them so much that they're basically a new person with some copied memories or it doesn't.
If you kill them, they're dead and you have a corpse.
If you convert them and the old person dies, they're still dead but you have a new ally (I assume, anyway; I've not played the Mass Effect games).
If you convert them and it doesn't replace them, just changes them a lot, they live and you still have an ally.
Killing them has no chance of them surviving and is of little use to you. Converting them has a chance of them surviving and is of use to you even if they don't.
Therefore, if it's a binary choice, conversion is the better option for both parties.
Oh, assuming the absence of an afterlife which would punish the converted enough to make the extra life not worthwhile, but from what I've heard, that's not the case in the Mass Effect universe.
To be honest, I'm having difficulty understanding your morals on this issue. If it was "convert them or leave them alone", sure, but you're presenting it as "kill them or convert them". An objection to conversion on the grounds of being certain that it kills the person who was doesn't work here because you'd be killing them anyway; in that scenario, they're dead at your hands either way. Conversion leaves you with a new ally (again, I'm assuming, as I don't know why you'd convert someone into an enemy), though, which, even ignoring the fact that it may also better preserve their history and memory, is better for you than the alternative.
Sorry about how long this comment got. I think I strayed off topic a fair bit, too. And now we've both looked at ourselves and not been entirely pleased with the results…
2363510 Alright, I've finally got time to read this comment in depth. Might I recommend using the enter button a bit more often? I know I'm being hypocritical, since I sometimes fall into the 'wall of text' trap myself, but that's no reason not to keep others from doing the same.
Right, first I'll note that my comparisons to rape weren't very good - I was thinking of 'temporary' mind alteration, like mind control or memory wiping (and even memory wiping pushes at my threshold), and more permanent mind alteration goes under my usual 'worse than murder' belief. My comparison to rape was based on how I viewed mind violation (of the temporary or non-alteration type) - I put the two crimes on the same moral line, and they're only different in that the latter could be justified.
But my mind-alteration justification thing still stands - if it prevents a crime that's worse (thinking long term as well as short term - using mind control to prevent murders encourages mind control to prevent much more minor crimes, so I view mind control here as worse than murder, though this is dependent on who commits mind control), it's justified. My primary belief is that while I want people to be happy, I value individual autonomy over happiness. Basically the opposite of your 'happiness over autonomy' morality system.
I'm aware that my choice was not very rational. I'm aware that the output in killing is lower than the output in converting. The fact remains that when I made that decision, I decided that these people did not deserve to become completely different from what they had been, and murder was more merciful. The most rational (and this isn't even very rational, admittedly, and was a post-action justification) justification for my choice was that if another person had a similar choice, I wouldn't want my memories and my innermost thoughts - my private thoughts - to be used for the benefit of what I currently perceive as being my enemy; I'd pick death. I did what I would hope to be done to me, in similar circumstances. I am still not sure if I made the right choice - I feel somewhat morally satisfied with my decision, but there's always doubt that I might have made the wrong choice (or at least, a choice that resulted in fewer benefits to me at no 'cost'). I have a feeling I'd feel the same way if I made the opposite choice.
Aaaand I can't read that big paragraph. It's just too long and too much a wall of text. I dun suppose you could give me a quick summary of what you're trying to say?
2366650
"Might I recommend using the enter button a bit more often?"
…Wow, yeah, sorry. Look at that thing. It's gigantic. I don't remember what I was thinking when I posted it without putting more spaces in, but, well, sorry again.
Autonomy over happiness is admittedly much simpler and less likely to go horribly wrong. With the reverse, there's almost always the thorny question of how far to go.
"I have a feeling I'd feel the same way if I made the opposite choice."
I've heard that referred to as a Trillian Choice, a binary choice where either option would be regretted.
I'm also reminded of the "pushing a bystander in front of a runaway trolley" thing. In this case, since you're certain to kill them in one branch and might in the other, we can set the baseline to you killing them and normalize around that. With that done, the killing branch becomes doing nothing; the converting branch becomes taking action (pushing the person in front of the trolley). If you do nothing, the trolley crashes and the people on it perish; if you push the bystander, there's a good chance that they'll die (here corresponding to your concerns about identity violation), but there's also a chance that the people on the trolley will live. Pushing the bystander can result in a large net gain in lives saved, but it feels like doing more harm then just watching the trolley crash.
"Aaaand I can't read that big paragraph. It's just too long and too much a wall of text. I dun suppose you could give me a quick summary of what you're trying to say?"
Well, I don't, um, actually remember either… I'll see what I can do, though.
Ramble, ramble, tangent, ramble, blah blah blah… Hm…
I seem to have wound up saying this:
I recognized that I have a double standard in favor of my own beliefs about what is right such that I support actions to promote my beliefs while opposing the same actions supporting opposing ideas. This bothers me, but, at the same, time, it seems to me that some sort of double standard is necessary. If actions were to be judged as acceptable or not based solely on what the actions were rather than on what view of right and wrong they were supporting, we would run into such problems as being morally unable to deny police and criminals right to equal equipment. Or, to pick a more extreme example, that religious fundamentalist terrorists have just as much a right to thermonuclear weapons as great powers do.
2366728 Ah. Yeah, I can sympathize with the double standard thing, but beyond extreme examples I haven't had much of a chance to truly examine my opinions of that sort of this - making a decision as to where I stand now means committing myself to something that I haven't thought through.
In terms of the whole "pushing a bystander" thing, I have considered that. And that's mostly the cause of my doubts - but what makes me feel at least somewhat satisfied with my decision is that I would have wanted the enemy to have made the same choice for me. It's more a compassion thing than an 'output' thing, but while one choice certainly leads to death, and the other choice can lead to choice but maybe not, the latter choice also felt like removing these peoples' autonomy. They have current preferences as to what they believe they should do, and conversion (in this case, anyway) means explicitly changing a part of the mind that decides their belief set such that they come to entirely different beliefs than they did before. And having these replacement selves work towards ends that diametrically oppose the beliefs they once held seems just horrible, even if they wouldn't - couldn't - view it as such.
If it was a question of the Chatoyance-verse style of conversion - well, this scenario is very similar to Chatoyance's conversion verse, albeit in a much shorter time frame and without the illusion of choice, and the people who you wish to convert/kill are actively trying to kill you. Actually, they're not very similar at all but ANYWAY.
Anyway... Anyway... What was my point again? I appear to have lost it, or left it on a pin or something, because it's completely gone.
EDIT: OH, right, I'll actually note that in my second-last paragraph (I noted the question of whether the blanket immediate conversion of hostiles was more or less moral than genocide), I actually find myself conflicted. And don't know how I'd answer that.
2366749
"Anyway... Anyway... What was my point again? I appear to have lost it, or left it on a pin or something, because it's completely gone."
I think that that's kind of what happened to me in the long paragraph; I did eventually find a point, but I don't think that it was the one I started with.
Hm… Here's a question: if the conversion not only changed their minds to make them your allies but also changed their bodies into something completely different and made them disinclined to talk about their memories of before, would you preferred action change?
2366752 My answer to that is... Is...
I honestly don't know. Like, at all. In both cases, the original being dies; in both cases, that being's mind isn't being abused for your gain. The body thing doesn't bother me in the least (at least, not on paper. It's entirely possible that my opinion would change upon actually seeing the change, but I'm currently aware that such a change is largely unimportant to the morality of the question), but I don't know whether it would be better to be killed than to be 'converted' to be on another's side but disinclined to provide information.
Maybe I should frame this another way...
I've nothing against body animation, if it's possible. Bodies are just bodies, after all, and I can see the efficiency in using dead bodies in your ranks. And conversion in this sense is similar to reanimation, though in this case the 'body' is sapient and not under your control - you've altered its belief set such that it works for you (of course, there's the question of how much you've altered it), but it's not absolutely loyal to you, it just has a similar belief set to you.
However, when you create a new being you're responsible for it - well, you should feel responsible for it anyway. Sometimes you're not ready for that responsibility, and -well, my reasoning for why I wouldn't create a tulpa (assuming tulpas exist) doesn't really apply here, because this being isn't dependent on me.... I guess I'd go ahead and convert it? I might decide to kill it if placed on the spot, but as of now I imagine I'd pick to convert. Of course, this is dependent on these being the only two options.
EDIT: Of course, there's the question of preference. The being, prior to conversion, probably didn't want to change. Post conversion, it's happy with its change. This change in beliefs is because of the alteration in belief set, rather than a deliberate decision on its part. The ally thing is superfluous. For largely sentimental reasons, I'd rather die with a belief set I formulated myself (I'm thinking the 1984 reasoning that you're free if you die free, I guess, though it's not a completely thought out belief). So I guess it's dependent on how important the potentially-transformed being is for the purposes of my goals? But it seems wrong, and I (and with the existence of one person with this sentiment, there could be others including, potentially, this guy) might prefer death in his shoes...
GAAAH, MY MIND!
2366768
Ah, my question seems to have been successful at provoking thought. It was generated when I noticed that you appeared, at least on (or just below) the surface, to be engaging in some unconscious doublethink. You wouldn't convert them because you believe that the conversion kills the person who was and creates a new one who's just similar in some ways. You'd instead kill them because you consider the alterations of conversion to be a fate worse than death. But how can something be both death and worse than death at the same time?
My hypothesis was that perhaps the concern was really defamation of the person's legacy; even if the post-conversion being doesn't act like the pre-conversion being, they have the same body and the same memories up to the point of conversion. They probably also believe that they are the same person who went into the process. They are, therefore, from your point of view pretending to be the person who went in, and since they're not acting like them, that means that they could be harming the reputation of the person who went in.
(I hope you don't mind that I injected this into your head in the form of a question rather than just explaining myself; it seemed to me that more productive thoughts might more quickly be reached if you were thinking to answer the question instead of just reading a hypothesis from me.)
However, that hypothesis, at least in your case, does not seem to be correct. A mental example I used was zombification; part of the horror of that can come from seeing the bodies of people who knew as undead operating under very different control. You don't seem to have that problem with reanimation, though, and if it's okay to give a dead body new life, it ought to be fine to do the same to a still-living body that would die anyway otherwise (of course, if it's not a binary choice between "kill" and "convert", the issue becomes more complex).
I was going to say that I disagreed with you on dying with one's own beliefs, but I became uncertain part of the way through typing and thinking over the first version of this paragraph. From a purely selfish perspective, I still disagree. One choice will definitely kill me, and the other gives me a chance to survive. Easy. With a bit more thought, though, I realized that it really depends on how important to me the beliefs I'd be giving up are to me, and to an extent on the larger context. Interestingly, though, while you seem to be saying that the importance of the beliefs to you would matter because of the importance of you, I think that more important is the direct importance of the beliefs. If it's truly your identity that's paramount (and we're not bringing potential afterlives into this), it's still more logical to convert even if it seems to completely change who you are. If you die, you die with your identity intact, but you can't do anything more with it. If you live, you may not do anything more with it, but you still keep what you've done in the past; you also have a nonzero, even if it's small, chance to regain your old identity later.
If it's the beliefs that are important in and of themselves, though, rather than as part of a personal identity… though I supposed that valuing the importance of the beliefs could itself be part of identity and argh now my head's doing it.
…Anyway, ignoring that complication, at least for the moment, abandoning…
Except that's complicated too. If everyone with a belief would rather die than give it up and is put in a position where those are the options, the belief may be unsullied, but it's also going to be the province mainly of archaeologists. If they acted with less pride, they might weaken the belief in the short term but be able to restore it later.
…Argh again. Now I'm lost. But that question definitely seems to have been good at provoking thought. :D
2366818
No harm done. Questions and arguments are, as far as I can tell, the best way for one to evaluate and alter one's belief set, after all.
My God, I love talking philosophy like this. Such a good way to evaluate my beliefs, and find my pitfalls.
...
*cough*
So, it seems we're left without a topic.
*cough*
*cough*
I'm not actually coughing, or sick. Just feel like emphasizing the awkwardness...
*cough*
It's interesting that these 'blogs' have become what basically amounts to a private chatbox between you and myself.
Hey, I don't suppose you have a recommended reading order, (well, for the first book to read) for the conversion bureau, do you? I always find it difficult to read Chatoyance's stories, mostly because I constantly have to catch myself ignoring the good parts and looking for flaws so that I feel (unnecessarily) justified for not agreeing with Chatoyance. I often come to the conclusion that it'd be better to leave her stories unread and unsullied by my biases than have a memory of her stories stained by my own biases.
The only ones I managed to read to completion were 27 ounces and The Big Respawn (I've read others, but rarely past the halfway point. I'm aware that this doesn't paint me in the best light, but I like to believe that it's always best to be truthful to yourself about who you are, so that you can fix what you judge to be flaws). At the same time, though, I want to get to reading and completing her stories because they ARE very good, and it feels a shame to let my biases get in the way of compelling characters and thought provoking philosophical quandaries/questions.
Do you know a good CB story to start off with so that I can get into a 'better' mindset for reading Chatoyance's stories? I'm hoping that these philosophical conversations have already done this, but I don't want to jump into 'difficult' (for lack of a better word that I can think of) stories until I'm sure I can wade in the kiddy pool.
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"My God, I love talking philosophy like this. Such a good way to evaluate my beliefs, and find my pitfalls."
:)
"It's interesting that these 'blogs' have become what basically amounts to a private chatbox between you and myself."
Well, it's not as if we're trying to keep people out; there just doesn't seem to be anyone else here.
"Hey, I don't suppose you have a recommended reading order, (well, for the first book to read) for the conversion bureau, do you?"
Well, I'm still going through them myself, but I can try to give you the order I've been reading them ("try" because I'm not sure if I'll remember it correctly). Let's see…
I began with 27 Ounces and followed that with The Taste of Grass, its direct sequel. Then was Going Pony, I think, followed by the Lost in the Herd series. After that, Recombinant 63, which I'm partway through now.
"At the same time, though, I want to get to reading and completing her stories because they ARE very good, and it feels a shame to let my biases get in the way of compelling characters and thought provoking philosophical quandaries/questions."
Perhaps it would be beneficial to try some of her non-TCB stories? I've also read I.D. - That Indestructible Something and found it good.
"Do you know a good CB story to start off with so that I can get into a 'better' mindset for reading Chatoyance's stories?"
Hm. That I don't know, I'm afraid. The Taste of Grass might be good for that? It's a direct sequel to one of the ones you have read, at least.
Good luck!