[SEQ RERUN] Interlude with the Confessor
Today’s post, Interlude with the Confessor (4/8) was originally published on 02 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Akon talks things over with the Confessor, and receives a history lesson.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Super Happy People (3/8), and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Eliezer, I’d be interested to know whether your thinking about consent issues has changed since you wrote ‘Three Worlds Collide’. In the comments, you mentioned being a bit surprised that the discussion ended up focusing on consent issues in quite a concentrated way. Do you think the chapter would be better if the subject were discussed differently—maybe at more length? Or if it were not mentioned at all? Do you think that the chapter as written has a different emotional valence for male and female readers? Do you think this is a problem? Are there things you believed about consent/rape then that you do not believe now? You mentioned elsewhere that you only recently discovered the concept of ‘trigger warnings’. Has that changed how you think about writing that mentions rape or sexual consent? Sorry this wound up just being a string of questions. I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I think my interest in hearing what Eliezer would say is greater than the community’s interest in hearing what I have to say. I’d also rather interact with a present-day person than a three-year-old text, in this instance (not always).