You don’t want to think like just any old supervillain. Most of them have systematic flaws in their behavior too. Besides the obvious, in a lot of stories the motive that best explains the villains’ behavior is not really to succeed but the one the author has for them, which is to put up a good fight and be awesome, but lose. If you try to be like them, you might end up just trying to try. Your mind will censor out the non-grandiose but effective plans. You do not want to be about demonstrating a good effort. You want to be a winner.
Edit: the next paragraph has spoilers in it for Watchmen. So does the single line after it.
If there’s one supervillain people should maybe try to emulate, it’s this guy). He defeats an invincible character, stronger than Superman in a world where no one else has significant super powers, with nothing but mind games, (and in the movie at least), nukes several cities and blames it on said godlike character (the comic book ending has him blaming it on aliens, I like the movie ending better), tricks the US and USSR into thinking they have a common enemy, and prevents a larger nuclear war. He exemplifies the utilitarian answer to the trolley problem you mentioned. He’s totally ruthless, but for a just cause. And most importantly, he wins.
But don’t try a plan that risky in real life. You’re not a comic book villain and it probably won’t work out.
Opportunities to kill a whole bunch of people, and actually accomplish more good than you could through alternative methods are rare. If you want to be awesome (virtue ethics), try to make yourself into the kind of badass consequentialist who could do that in the rare circumstance when it was a good idea. If you want good to win (genuine consequentialism) optimize your mind to correctly deal with the choices you encounter in real life, not the ones people deal with in cool stories.
EDITED to add: harrumph, it appears that LW undocumentedly implements an extension to Markdown where a bare URL is turned into a link, and I haven’t found any way to stop the linkifying without also changing what is displayed. So you might notice that the colon above is italicized, which is a really crappy workaround. Maybe there’s a better one.
But don’t try a plan that risky in real life. You’re not a comic book villain and it probably won’t work out.
There’s no “spoiler” tag available in LessWrong? Too bad.
Anyway, even for the comic book villain, it probably won’t work out; at the end of both comic book and movie his big secrets are clearly about to be leaked to the public, which will be grossly hazardous to both his goals and his health.
Anyway, even for the comic book villain, it probably won’t work out; at the end of both comic book and movie his big secrets are clearly about to be leaked to the public, which will be grossly hazardous to both his goals and his health.
Moore leaves it ambiguous; Rorshach’s journal is being pulled out of the slushpile but that’s at something Moore has modeled on the Birchers. I suspect that that name doesn’t mean much to most LWers, so I’ll elaborate.
To put it in perspective: suppose you read in the Bircher periodical The New American (which in the same issue alluded to how the US government is controlled by Russians and how fluoridation is a government plot, probably due to the Jews*) an expose based on an anonymously submitted handwritten journal supposedly written by the serial killer Gary Ridgway about how 9/11 was a plot by philanthropist Bill Gates to provoke military intervention against failed states.
I think the odds are very small anyone would take it seriously.
* This is pretty much what the Birchers have officially held at various times; it was the Birchers who Dr Strangelove was mocking.
You don’t want to think like just any old supervillain. Most of them have systematic flaws in their behavior too.
Sure, in the same way that if I wrote a post called “think like a scientist” about how you should test your hypotheses it would be reasonable to respond “you don’t want to think like just any old scientist...”
You don’t want to think like just any old supervillain. Most of them have systematic flaws in their behavior too. Besides the obvious, in a lot of stories the motive that best explains the villains’ behavior is not really to succeed but the one the author has for them, which is to put up a good fight and be awesome, but lose. If you try to be like them, you might end up just trying to try. Your mind will censor out the non-grandiose but effective plans. You do not want to be about demonstrating a good effort. You want to be a winner.
Edit: the next paragraph has spoilers in it for Watchmen. So does the single line after it.
If there’s one supervillain people should maybe try to emulate, it’s this guy). He defeats an invincible character, stronger than Superman in a world where no one else has significant super powers, with nothing but mind games, (and in the movie at least), nukes several cities and blames it on said godlike character (the comic book ending has him blaming it on aliens, I like the movie ending better), tricks the US and USSR into thinking they have a common enemy, and prevents a larger nuclear war. He exemplifies the utilitarian answer to the trolley problem you mentioned. He’s totally ruthless, but for a just cause. And most importantly, he wins.
But don’t try a plan that risky in real life. You’re not a comic book villain and it probably won’t work out.
Opportunities to kill a whole bunch of people, and actually accomplish more good than you could through alternative methods are rare. If you want to be awesome (virtue ethics), try to make yourself into the kind of badass consequentialist who could do that in the rare circumstance when it was a good idea. If you want good to win (genuine consequentialism) optimize your mind to correctly deal with the choices you encounter in real life, not the ones people deal with in cool stories.
The rparen in your Ozymandias link needs escaping: [this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias(comics\)) --> [this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias(comics)). (I estimate p=0.5 of my not having screwed up the markup myself, but I’ll fix it if I have.)
EDITED to add: harrumph, it appears that LW undocumentedly implements an extension to Markdown where a bare URL is turned into a link, and I haven’t found any way to stop the linkifying without also changing what is displayed. So you might notice that the colon above is italicized, which is a really crappy workaround. Maybe there’s a better one.
If you wrap text in a pair of back ticks (`) then it gets displayed as “code” so left unmodified by the markdown parser.
(E.g.
[this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias_(comics\))
)fixed, thanks.
I’d consider rot13-ing the spoilers, just in case.
I put in a text warning before the spoilers, this should work I think. Rot13 is annoying in my opinion.
I used to be annoyed by it, but then I added a rot13 selection bookmarklet to my toolbar.
There’s no “spoiler” tag available in LessWrong? Too bad.
Anyway, even for the comic book villain, it probably won’t work out; at the end of both comic book and movie his big secrets are clearly about to be leaked to the public, which will be grossly hazardous to both his goals and his health.
Moore leaves it ambiguous; Rorshach’s journal is being pulled out of the slushpile but that’s at something Moore has modeled on the Birchers. I suspect that that name doesn’t mean much to most LWers, so I’ll elaborate.
To put it in perspective: suppose you read in the Bircher periodical The New American (which in the same issue alluded to how the US government is controlled by Russians and how fluoridation is a government plot, probably due to the Jews*) an expose based on an anonymously submitted handwritten journal supposedly written by the serial killer Gary Ridgway about how 9/11 was a plot by philanthropist Bill Gates to provoke military intervention against failed states.
I think the odds are very small anyone would take it seriously.
* This is pretty much what the Birchers have officially held at various times; it was the Birchers who Dr Strangelove was mocking.
Sure, in the same way that if I wrote a post called “think like a scientist” about how you should test your hypotheses it would be reasonable to respond “you don’t want to think like just any old scientist...”