I’m not saying he should remove the anime references, although they do go straight over my head. I’m saying that getting rid of the legalised rape would involve cutting one or two sentences—a tiny amount of the story which probably generates a hugely disproportionate amount of criticism.
For what its worth, when I write fiction, I just write whatever inspire me, and then go back over it later and remove the bits which no-one else will get.
Well, it also seems to me that external editors exist for this reason, among others, and that he can write all the landmine stomping he wants, because publishing it is the PR mistake.
The bit on legalized rape is an important way of conveying that the future will seem weird and surprising and immoral to us, just like 2015 would seem weird and surprising and immoral to someone from a few centuries ago. I want my science-fiction to show how weird things are likely to be (even if the specific kind of weirdness is of course likely to be very wrong), I don’t want it to be a bowdlerized soap opera with robots and lasers in the background.
And if people can’t understand that and read any kind of far-off weirdness through the lens of this decade’s petty tribal politics, then basically, fuck ’em. I don’t want Eliezer or anybody else to bend backwards to avoid being misread by idiots.
And sure, it’s bad PR, but it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling policy, a bit like how “openly criticizing the Government” is a bad career move for a Chinese citizen.
Any number of examples could have been chosen however. So why pick one which is legitimately a hot button issue for anyone who has been personally affected by it, a depressingly large portion of the population?
Yeah, I get the whole weirdtopia thing. But like Mark says, its probably not the best weird thing to be chosen.
And if people can’t understand that and read any kind of far-off weirdness through the lens of this decade’s petty tribal politics, then basically, fuck ’em.
In one way, I think this attitude is commendable—interlectual and artistic integrity and not having to kowtow to people who are offended. But at the same time, ‘anyone who disagrees can just fuck off’ … its not the best PR. And I don’t think ‘not being scared of rape’ is an important criteria for rationalists.
I’ve read a similar idea to legalised rape before, in the context of a future where it was considered extremely bad manners to refuse sex. I can kinda imagine this could work. But legalised violent rape…
What I imagine would happen is that one person would try to rape another, they would fight back, their friends would intervene, a full-blown bar fight would ensue, someone would smash a bottle, and people would end up in the hospital, or the mental asylum, or the morgue.
Or are they not allowed to fight back? Is it maybe just date rape which is legal, or can you for instance, kidnap and rape someone who is on their way to an important business meeting? Do people say “First on the agenda, Mrs Brown and Mr Black give their apologies that they are unable to attend the emergency meeting on disaster relief for Proxima centuri—alpha, as Mrs Brown has contracted space measles and Mr Black is otherwise engaged in being anally gang raped”?
I mean, even if everyone in the future are the sort of ultra-kinky people who enjoy being raped, and everyone is bisexual to avoid the problem of being raped by the wrong gender, it still doesn’t make sense.
The Confessor held up a hand. “I mean it, my lord Akon. It is not polite idealism. We ancients can’t steer. We remember too much disaster. We’re too cautious to dare the bold path forward. Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?”
Akon wasn’t sure whether to smile or grimace. “The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books. I can’t imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then—flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn’t take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far—”
“You need a history refresher, my Lord Administrator. At some suitably abstract level. What I’m trying to tell you—and this is not public knowledge—is that we nearly tried to overthrow your government.”
“What?” said Akon. “The Confessors?”
“No, us. The ones who remembered the ancient world. Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees. When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong.”
Akon’s mouth hung open. “You were that prude?”
The Confessor shook his head. “There aren’t any words,” the Confessor said, “there aren’t any words at all, by which I ever could explain to you. No, it wasn’t prudery. It was a memory of disaster.”
“Um,” Akon said. He was trying not to smile. “I’m trying to visualize what sort of disaster could have been caused by too much nonconsensual sex—”
“Give it up, my lord,” the Confessor said. He was finally laughing, but there was an undertone of pain to it. “Without, shall we say, personal experience, you can’t possibly imagine, and there’s no point in trying.”
The passage is very clearly about value dissonance, about how very different cultures can fail to understand each other (which is a major theme of the story). They don’t go into details because the only reasons characters bring it up is to show how values have changed.
And sticking to a less-controversial example would have defeated the point. And for illustrating this point, I much prefer this approach (meta talk between characters about how much things have canged) than one that would go into details of how the new system worked.
Oh yes I understand the value dissonance and controversy.
But… babyeating is certainly controversial, and yet I think it does not alienate people in the same way that rape will, largely because far more people have traumatic memories of rape than of infant cannibalism.
At the end of the day, I personally prefer the controversial writing, but its a trade off against PR. I would certainly prefer the really controversial bits get edited out to EY stopping writing because of negative PR.
I think the problem is that it’s a scenario of being raped by someone you find attractive in some sense, which is necessarily how rape fantasies inside one’s own head go. Even if it’s a degradation fantasy, you’re still running it.
I don’t see how such rules can be made to be a generally good experience in the real world for all involved, unless there’s some extreme improvement in people’s ability to read each other for “this will be fun” and willingness to not override other people’s real consent.
I think there are some, ah, highly unusual people who want to be raped by unattractive people because its even more degrading.
But anyway, the way that rules could be made to work for everyone would be to institute a code like ‘everyone wearing a red hanky wants to be raped’. With smartphones this could be made more sophisticated, and you could set statuses such as only wanting to be raped by people who are rated at least 3⁄5 on looks.
But this is still a way of giving prior consent in general, rather than legalised rape.
See The Just City by Jo Walton for some descriptions of how unpleasant obligatory sex can be, even with consent. I think it’s reasonable to frame it as system 2 consents, but system 1 doesn’t.
There’s plenty else going on in the book—it’s about an effort to create Plato’s Republic.
In context, I thought that it was only date rape. More specifically, you could only rape somebody who had been leading you on. And they regularly discuss paying for sex, so it’s not just free for the taking. ETA: Not to mention the rape in the epilogue, which is described as horrible.
Hmm. Well, if any date can end in rape, and this is somehow enforceable, then this is a lot more practical, although it still requires a 100% ultra-kinky population, otherwise the non-kinky people would not be able to interact with the opposite sex.
Did they embark on some sort of mass genetic or social engineering program to make everyone kinky?
I don’t know; that whole world is pretty kinky by our standards, but that might just be Eliezer’s attempt to show that the future will have values strange to us, rather than something with a specific reason.
I’m not saying he should remove the anime references, although they do go straight over my head. I’m saying that getting rid of the legalised rape would involve cutting one or two sentences—a tiny amount of the story which probably generates a hugely disproportionate amount of criticism.
For what its worth, when I write fiction, I just write whatever inspire me, and then go back over it later and remove the bits which no-one else will get.
Well, it also seems to me that external editors exist for this reason, among others, and that he can write all the landmine stomping he wants, because publishing it is the PR mistake.
Exactly.
The bit on legalized rape is an important way of conveying that the future will seem weird and surprising and immoral to us, just like 2015 would seem weird and surprising and immoral to someone from a few centuries ago. I want my science-fiction to show how weird things are likely to be (even if the specific kind of weirdness is of course likely to be very wrong), I don’t want it to be a bowdlerized soap opera with robots and lasers in the background.
And if people can’t understand that and read any kind of far-off weirdness through the lens of this decade’s petty tribal politics, then basically, fuck ’em. I don’t want Eliezer or anybody else to bend backwards to avoid being misread by idiots.
And sure, it’s bad PR, but it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling policy, a bit like how “openly criticizing the Government” is a bad career move for a Chinese citizen.
Any number of examples could have been chosen however. So why pick one which is legitimately a hot button issue for anyone who has been personally affected by it, a depressingly large portion of the population?
Yeah, I get the whole weirdtopia thing. But like Mark says, its probably not the best weird thing to be chosen.
In one way, I think this attitude is commendable—interlectual and artistic integrity and not having to kowtow to people who are offended. But at the same time, ‘anyone who disagrees can just fuck off’ … its not the best PR. And I don’t think ‘not being scared of rape’ is an important criteria for rationalists.
I’ve read a similar idea to legalised rape before, in the context of a future where it was considered extremely bad manners to refuse sex. I can kinda imagine this could work. But legalised violent rape…
What I imagine would happen is that one person would try to rape another, they would fight back, their friends would intervene, a full-blown bar fight would ensue, someone would smash a bottle, and people would end up in the hospital, or the mental asylum, or the morgue.
Or are they not allowed to fight back? Is it maybe just date rape which is legal, or can you for instance, kidnap and rape someone who is on their way to an important business meeting? Do people say “First on the agenda, Mrs Brown and Mr Black give their apologies that they are unable to attend the emergency meeting on disaster relief for Proxima centuri—alpha, as Mrs Brown has contracted space measles and Mr Black is otherwise engaged in being anally gang raped”?
I mean, even if everyone in the future are the sort of ultra-kinky people who enjoy being raped, and everyone is bisexual to avoid the problem of being raped by the wrong gender, it still doesn’t make sense.
It might be worth rereading the passage in question:
The passage is very clearly about value dissonance, about how very different cultures can fail to understand each other (which is a major theme of the story). They don’t go into details because the only reasons characters bring it up is to show how values have changed.
And sticking to a less-controversial example would have defeated the point. And for illustrating this point, I much prefer this approach (meta talk between characters about how much things have canged) than one that would go into details of how the new system worked.
Oh yes I understand the value dissonance and controversy.
But… babyeating is certainly controversial, and yet I think it does not alienate people in the same way that rape will, largely because far more people have traumatic memories of rape than of infant cannibalism.
At the end of the day, I personally prefer the controversial writing, but its a trade off against PR. I would certainly prefer the really controversial bits get edited out to EY stopping writing because of negative PR.
I think the problem is that it’s a scenario of being raped by someone you find attractive in some sense, which is necessarily how rape fantasies inside one’s own head go. Even if it’s a degradation fantasy, you’re still running it.
I don’t see how such rules can be made to be a generally good experience in the real world for all involved, unless there’s some extreme improvement in people’s ability to read each other for “this will be fun” and willingness to not override other people’s real consent.
I think there are some, ah, highly unusual people who want to be raped by unattractive people because its even more degrading.
But anyway, the way that rules could be made to work for everyone would be to institute a code like ‘everyone wearing a red hanky wants to be raped’. With smartphones this could be made more sophisticated, and you could set statuses such as only wanting to be raped by people who are rated at least 3⁄5 on looks.
But this is still a way of giving prior consent in general, rather than legalised rape.
See The Just City by Jo Walton for some descriptions of how unpleasant obligatory sex can be, even with consent. I think it’s reasonable to frame it as system 2 consents, but system 1 doesn’t.
There’s plenty else going on in the book—it’s about an effort to create Plato’s Republic.
In context, I thought that it was only date rape. More specifically, you could only rape somebody who had been leading you on. And they regularly discuss paying for sex, so it’s not just free for the taking. ETA: Not to mention the rape in the epilogue, which is described as horrible.
Hmm. Well, if any date can end in rape, and this is somehow enforceable, then this is a lot more practical, although it still requires a 100% ultra-kinky population, otherwise the non-kinky people would not be able to interact with the opposite sex.
Did they embark on some sort of mass genetic or social engineering program to make everyone kinky?
I don’t know; that whole world is pretty kinky by our standards, but that might just be Eliezer’s attempt to show that the future will have values strange to us, rather than something with a specific reason.