Vaniver mentioned that Michael Vassar was one of the partial inspirations for a supervillain in one of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s works of fiction. I’m saying that, firstly, I don’t think that’s germane in a discussion of moderation policies that aspires to impartiality, even as a playful “Appropriately enough [...]” parenthetical. But secondly, if such things are somehow considered to be relevant, then I want to note that Michael was also the explicit namesake of a morally-good fictional character (“Vhazhar”) in another one of Yudkowsky’s stories.
The fact that the latter story is also about the importance of judging things on their true merits rather than being misled by shallow pattern-matching (e.g., figuing that a “Lord of Dark” must be evil, or using someone’s association with a fictional character to support the idea that they might be worth banning) made it seem worth quoting at length.
Vaniver mentioned that Michael Vassar was one of the partial inspirations for a supervillain in one of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s works of fiction. I’m saying that, firstly, I don’t think that’s germane in a discussion of moderation policies that aspires to impartiality, even as a playful “Appropriately enough [...]” parenthetical. But secondly, if such things are somehow considered to be relevant, then I want to note that Michael was also the explicit namesake of a morally-good fictional character (“Vhazhar”) in another one of Yudkowsky’s stories.
The fact that the latter story is also about the importance of judging things on their true merits rather than being misled by shallow pattern-matching (e.g., figuing that a “Lord of Dark” must be evil, or using someone’s association with a fictional character to support the idea that they might be worth banning) made it seem worth quoting at length.