Non-consensual conversation is legal and socially approved.
The story is speaking of “non-consensual sex”, the illegal kind (rape), that was legalized.
Great many actions are deemed illegal without consent as to protect autonomy of humans from other humans; when you start legalizing those actions, you drop off the autonomy. Especially major things.
Conversation is not illegal and thus can’t be “legalized”.
Also, try having conversation with someone against their will, or when they are obviously busy. It is deemed impolite, and is not illegal simply because it doesn’t hurt too much—if you distract someone causing an injury you might very well get in trouble.
Meh. There are some differences, but not nearly as big as between two random minds.
In context of the story—clearly some people would embrace superhappy and some would commit suicide at the thought. Sounds significant enough to me. Hell, the humans are in reality more diverse in their views than the babyeaters and superhappy are in the story.
“Yes, but it’s not that huge. It’s a rather isolated preference change.”
well, in the story humans consider this preference change as sufficient to fear it nearly as much as death. It’s the self preservation instinct that kicks in.
“Can’t see why. They understand treating language as a vending machine—vibrations go in, behaviors come out.”
The story itself—the aliens act far too naive and in ways that are too exploitable and imply lack of understanding of untruth. The humans as well, though. That’s because this whole rationalism thing gets really messy and complicated when you start being rational about what you tell.
In particular, superhappy gone into nearly shock state (lost part of crew!) over something that the babyeaters told them, without slightest thought as to the possibility that the babyeaters could perhaps have engineered an input to the superhappy which would damage the superhappy. (which is precisely what happened, except the creator of the story had engineered what the babyeaters tell as to be shocking)
Even more than this, the superhappy, despite being in position of power, are going for some supposedly fair 1⁄31⁄31⁄3 thing where everyone adjusts. Frankly it makes absolutely no sense and is not in the slightest rational, plus is clearly based on some failed logic and as such prone to manipulation (like every single human treated separately and they all dissolve).
The story is speaking of “non-consensual sex”, the illegal kind (rape), that was legalized. Great many actions are deemed illegal without consent as to protect autonomy of humans from other humans; when you start legalizing those actions, you drop off the autonomy. Especially major things.
Conversation is not illegal and thus can’t be “legalized”. Also, try having conversation with someone against their will, or when they are obviously busy. It is deemed impolite, and is not illegal simply because it doesn’t hurt too much—if you distract someone causing an injury you might very well get in trouble.
What the hell is a random mind, a Boltzmann brain? See http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/
In context of the story—clearly some people would embrace superhappy and some would commit suicide at the thought. Sounds significant enough to me. Hell, the humans are in reality more diverse in their views than the babyeaters and superhappy are in the story.
The story itself—the aliens act far too naive and in ways that are too exploitable and imply lack of understanding of untruth. The humans as well, though. That’s because this whole rationalism thing gets really messy and complicated when you start being rational about what you tell. In particular, superhappy gone into nearly shock state (lost part of crew!) over something that the babyeaters told them, without slightest thought as to the possibility that the babyeaters could perhaps have engineered an input to the superhappy which would damage the superhappy. (which is precisely what happened, except the creator of the story had engineered what the babyeaters tell as to be shocking)
Even more than this, the superhappy, despite being in position of power, are going for some supposedly fair 1⁄3 1⁄3 1⁄3 thing where everyone adjusts. Frankly it makes absolutely no sense and is not in the slightest rational, plus is clearly based on some failed logic and as such prone to manipulation (like every single human treated separately and they all dissolve).