[Haruhi] Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon

[Arakawa]

So I promised to give a detailed analysis of "Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon", the one time Eliezer Yudkowsky decided to take a stab at Haruhi fanfiction. (Well, there's also his Meta Mega Crossover thing. I didn't read that. Even if that's only 15k words, I generally make it a policy to be familiar with at least half of the things being crossed over in any given crossover.)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5588986/1/Trust_in_God_or_The_Riddle_of_Kyon

Given the amount of back-and-forth we've already had in the hijacked discussion thread to Brian's "Shuffle!" fic, I figured that 'detailed analysis' at this point requires a detailed, almost line-by-line sweep, almost like the dreaded ECBs of old. Initially I attempted to do this in short, daily instalments, but it quickly became obvious that a doing a concise review that way is impossible and doing a lengthy review in instalments is incredibly unwise, since I can't control in advance what point is going to be made at the end and properly build up to it.

So, I deleted all of the stuff that was originally here and I'm posting

Trust in God,
or,
The Riddle of Kyon

or, the obsessively detailed ECB-style review thereof.

Though hopefully less fire breathing than an ECB, because for all his faults Yudkowsky is a competent writer. For a good Yudkowsky story, I would probably recommend his original fic 'Three Worlds Collide!', where he sets up an interesting philosophical dilemma, doesn't have the audacity to beat a Preferred Ultimate Solution over our heads, and even seems to try to give people who disagree with his worldview a character to sympathize with.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/

But I'm not reviewing 'Three Worlds Collide!', I'm reviewing his Haruhi fic. In order to read the fic, one must first find it and decide it worth reading. Here's the blurb as given on ff.net:

Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon

category: Drama / Spiritual

In their third and final year at North High, Kyon confronts the implications of the Riddle of Epicurus for his relationship with Haruhi.

Note carefully that one of the categories for this fic is 'Drama'. This is important to remember for later. Classifying your fic as Drama connotes the idea that it will have believable character interaction, maybe some development as the fic progresses. There should probably be some kind of conflict that gets resolved on a human level by multiple characters, as opposed to by throwing special effects around or by having one character solve the entire situation like a puzzle box...

The most likely place to stumble onto this fic from is probably (taking a wild guess) the tvtropes Haruhi fanfiction page. That's because the tropers do a great job of explaining what the Riddle of Epicurus is and why the fic is interesting, whereas for people stumbling on it from ff.net who aren't familiar with elementary Greek philosophy, the blurb might as well read

In their third and final year at North High, Kyon confronts the implications of Scottish Hoop Dancing for his relationship with Haruhi.

I guess it's about 50-50 whether you'd be tempted to click on a fic like that. So what does Scottish Hoop Dancing have to do with Haruhi? Let's jump in...

[Arakawa]

With a troubled sigh, I collapsed into my chair in the club room. Across from me, Koizumi did the same without the sigh. Koizumi looked frazzled, like a rag that had been used to mop up one spilled tea after another.

There was no mystery about the cause of this phenomenon: winter was near, the winter of our third year and final year in North High, and the feared university entrance exams - on which a student's whole future life hinges -

... here comes the first metaphor which lets us know that this is not going to be an entirely smooth ride ...

were approaching at speeds like a magnetically levitated train falling out of the sky.

Immediately we stop reading the fic and start wondering where the author is coming from. Is this a reference to the Chuo Shinkansen (which probably won't be built for another two or three decades)? Why is the train falling out of the sky? Is this Yudkowsky's sense of whimsy? Did Kyon use metaphors quite this crazy in the books? Maybe I should stop reading this fic and start re-reading the books to find out?

Having decided it's probably Yudkowsky being whimsical...

{the usual recap: Yudkowsky explains Sealed Realities and Haruhi's tendency to excel at whatever she does}

{it's third year and everyone's worried about university exams}

I will say it clearly: Haruhi is concerned about myself. She does not want to be separated from me.

If the world kept on turning at its normal pace, with 24 hours in every day, the chance for me to be accepted by the same university as Haruhi would take a quantum miracle like electron tunnelling.

I'm snipping most of the above because it's just the plain ordinary lead-in you get in 50% of all Haruhi fanfiction, which introduces stuff you're supposed to know already as a Haruhi fan. (Bonus: if you see them get important things wrong in their recap, you can stop reading the fic immediately and save yourself a lot of time.) I'd say Yudkowsky has a good justification to do this, since he's famous enough that he's going to also get a few readers who are completely unfamiliar with Haruhi, but want to see if there's an interesting philosophical concept buried in the fic...

But at the same time it lulls the Haruhi fan to sleep, so you start skimming things and start to miss some of the cues that tell you what you're getting into. There are minor moments thus far which jar a little, but can be chalked up to entirely reasonable differences in character interpretation, or swept past entirely.

The final two sentences are a fair warning of upcoming Kyon/Haruhi shipping (of a sort) and also that this is a very clingy variant of Haruhi, who isn't ready to handle everyone splitting up after graduation... this entirely is all right. The notion of Haruhi wanting Kyon to get into the same elite university with her has been done well before and it's a reasonable part of the premise here.

Of course such rules don't apply to a poor soul like me who has been ripped from the flow of ordinary time. Itsuki Koizumi's Organization could certainly arrange for a university to take me, though I'd rather not know how. The Data Integration Thought Entity that stands behind Nagato Yuki could rearrange the data of the exam results. As for Asahina Mikiru, I don't know what a time-traveling girl could do about university entrances. But Asahina-san, who was formerly a year ahead of us, last year became sick on test day and failed that year's entrance exams and became a ronin. Just so that she could keep coming to this clubhouse after school. It never pays to underestimate the power of a cute maiden.

It's going to be so ironic two paragraphs down that Yudkowsky has to go through this weird contortion to write Asahina into the end of third year, when he could have just kept her out of this entirely ("she's... off at a university in Nagoya"), and thereby avoided shooting himself in the foot. Having her around adds almost nothing either to the drama or to the Riddle of Epicurus thought experiment.

Then again, we're using the fanon that Haruhi can still make the universe start to explode when she's just slightly dissatisfied with some ridiculous triviality:

And if Haruhi truly desired me to be in the same university as her, there can be no possible doubt that it would happen. Even if she had to recreate the whole universe.

The problem being that Haruhi doesn't know about any of this.

And presumably Mikuru graduating in the year she was originally supposed to would *also* have driven Haruhi to destroy the universe.

The idea that Year-Three Haruhi would still be unstable enough for her anxiety to make closed spaces in sufficient quantity to destroy the universe is actually fanon by this point, Haruhi having calmed down a lot now that we're on book 11 -- heck, Koizumi is already pointing out a decrease in closed spaces by the end of 'Disappearance'.

However, this idea is sufficiently well-entrenched fanon that fanfiction using it as a plot point is somewhat forgivable. A poor decision maybe, but it might help illustrate some important idea?

Or it might end up being the next link in a chain of poor decisions that wind up with the author shooting himself in the foot spectacularly in the very next paragraph. Take a guess.

So there was a troubled look in Haruhi's eyes, even as she kept up her usual harassment of the rest of us. Today Haruhi had chosen to make the innocent Asahina-san a participant in her own execution - that is, Haruhi had been browsing online to find new costumes for the poor girl, and she had been forcing Asahina-san to watch and "give her opinions", which consisted mostly of small, cute screams.

And now is where, to steal Yudkowsky's awkward metaphor, we discover that the magnetically levitated train falling out of the sky isn't just randomly falling, it's actually about to flatten us.

I wished for Haruhi's sake that she were consciously sadistic rather than just oblivious; it seemed a shame for Asahina-san to be tormented so beautifully without Haruhi even enjoying it properly. Two years ago, I would have watched the whole scene without my eyes leaving for an instant, claiming to myself that what I felt inside was pity. But even the charms of Asahina-san's suffering had become somewhat routine after two years, and it was Haruhi's face that I found myself glancing at instead, when I looked up from the Go board on which I was crushing Koizumi.

This is why starting your fic with a recap of well-known Haruhi concepts is so problematic. The jaded longtime Haruhi reader would probably read this fic as follows: they see the synopsis, they go into Skim Mode, they go "hmm... recap... recap... paragraph of Asahina fan service... when are we going to get to the Riddle of Epicurus part"?

So they end up missing the precise point at which we get to witness the birth of one of the least likeable Kyons in the history of Haruhi fanfiction. So let's see, now that on the second reading I finally notice it:
[ul]

• In this fic, Kyon 'wishes' for Haruhi to be sadistic rather than oblivious. This isn't a wish though, so much as an idle thought he's having. An idle thought that canon-Kyon would probably contemplate with revulsion as opposed to this sort of vague approval.
• Kyon wishes for Haruhi to be happy. Canon-Kyon would have no objection, in general, to Haruhi being happy. Just not at the expense of sadistically tormenting Asahina.
• Kyon thinks Asahina is being 'tormented beautifully' and is personally enjoying the sight. (Of Asahina staring in horror at a cosplay web site. Kind of odd, actually.)

[/ul]

It feels really embarrassing on some level to have to even explain that this is not how Kyon views Haruhi's abuse of Mikuru. Doesn't Tanigawa expend quite some time exploring the dynamics of it? Yudkowsky implies this theory that Kyon is thoroughly a pig (in the All Men Are Pigs sense) and was lying to himself about feeling pity for Asahina. Kyon being a pig and feeling pity... aren't even mutually exclusive. On the one hand, Kyon kept those photos of her maid cosplay...

... on the other, he is genuinely outraged about what Haruhi is doing to her. And what's important, is that his development over the course of the novels is into someone who actually protects Mikuru. We don't even need to read that far to see this trajectory. Initially he is a wet dishrag who announces he will protect Mikuru, then five minutes later stands idly by as Haruhi starts stripping her clothes off. But in 'The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya', Haruhi crosses a line, and Kyon is angered to such an extent that he frightens his Brigade leader into backing off.

Yudkowsky has no excuse to not have read at least as far as 'Sigh', yet he has Kyon develop in the opposite direction. Instead of trying to protect Mikuru, Kyon merely develops a sort of ugly cynicism about the situation, reasoning that since Mikuru is going to be tormented anyways, he may as well be a pig about it and watch with sadistic enjoyment.

The discerning reader can stop reading at this point, because they've just been squicked and can probably guess that there's more of this coming. The fic has basically disearned its 'Drama' tag, unless the reader is a fan of drama which turns the canon characters into cynical mockeries of themselves.

{misc pillow shots}

I don't understand how Haruhi executes this sort of behavior without creating an atmosphere of sexual dominance.

... right.

Then Haruhi turned her fearsome gaze on Koizumi and myself.

{misc pillow shots}

It wasn't until minutes later, after sipping some of the tea poured by the obedient Asahina-san, that Haruhi turned back to Koizumi and I. She set down her teacup on the table and asked:

"Do you believe in God?"

Oh good, now we're going to get to see what this fic does to deserve the 'Spiritual' tag.

Before this point, the fic can basically be *fixed*. Perhaps the unstable-Haruhi assumptions delineated a little further to make the demanding reader resign themselves to yet another fic with that idea; perhaps instead of having Asahina do a ronin, we might have her enrolled in some two-bit local college, so she can keep visiting the SOS Brigade -- but only three times a week -- to suffer her usual abuse at the hands of Haruhi. Hint at how, out loud to Haruhi, everyone is rationalizing this behaviour by Mikuru as perfectly natural, or maybe hint at the fact that there's at least been *some* character development over the three years and Haruhi has managed to give Mikuru a worthwhile reason to attend even given the forced cosplay.

All of these are just random suggestions, though; ways to tinker around the edges to make the setup a bit easier to swallow, and give extensive Haruhi readers something nontrivial to chew on.

The one thing that needs to be fixed is Kyon's reactions to Asahina's abuse. Even if one has zero sympathy for the way he simply allowed Haruhi to subject Asahina to endless abuse -- and the way he continues to do so in matters such as cosplay -- it should be obvious that this and his actual enjoyment of the cosplays is always accompanied by guilt, and attempts to bury the guilt by trying to get Haruhi to back off. To go from that to the detached and cynical Kyon we have here, would have entailed the death of some last, residual impulse towards human decency.

Perhaps Yudkowsky meant this as a demonstration of his Kyon's enlightenment, that he no longer wastes any mental energy on feeling guilty about his perversion. Ignoring how cynical that interpretation of the fic is... the only other alternative is to view it as Kyon-bashing, and indeed to some extent audience-bashing as it draws attention to Asahina's status as a frequently all-too-cardboard fanservice character.

Still, so far, it's a very good setup for a fic. Haruhi believing in a religion? Haruhi certainly has Godlike powers, what kinds of parallels could we draw, and what kind of situation might Kyon end up being forced into?

What the hell kind of question is that for God to ask you?

Strike one: Kyon consistently refers to Haruhi being God, and all of the other characters seem to agree with his assessment. I don't know, perhaps stuff happened in years two or three which led them inexorably to that conclusion. But the problem is that it doesn't make logical sense. Note that this fic explicitly claims to explore the Riddle of Epicurus, which is a creature of the intimidating intellectual pastime known as theodicy. If we are familiar with theodicy we know the following precisely, and even if we aren't familiar we know the idea through connotations.

The notion of 'God' as being considered in theodicy implies three attributes:

[ul]

• omnipotence - Perhaps Haruhi is omnipotent. Considering that what she does is not constrained by any known laws of physics, this is a plausible, but again, unprovable proposition. (It's possible to falsify it if we find that there's something Haruhi can't do even with her powers.)
• omniscience - Umm... how about no? The entire series revolves around keeping various things secret from her.
• omnibenevolent - Umm... also no? As we just saw with Mikuru, Haruhi is perfectly capable not only of permitting evil and chaos to occur, but actively producing more of it.

[/ul]

Even if Yudkowsky thinks that theodicy is a total pile of wack, he'd have to acknowledge that it's still a pile of wack that takes the trouble to define its own terms precisely. What we've just applied is Yudkowsky's own word taboo game.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/

We noticed immediately that Kyon calling Haruhi God is a bit off. And if we taboo the word 'God', replacing it with the only technical definition that I can think of, we see that he's completely on crack. Haruhi is only omnipotent, and none of those other things. That just leaves us with the connotations. Hearing Kyon blithely call Haruhi 'God' gives us the not-entirely-inaccurate idea that after his three years with the SOS Brigade, he's developed a weird religious mania centering on his Brigade Chief.

Again, this is the complete reverse of the arc we see developing in the actual novels, where if anything the vague theory that Haruhi is God is given less and less credence as time goes on.

Of course, applying word taboo to a fanfiction seems petty, but since this fic has almost zero appeal in terms of its characterizations, we're just left with the cute philosophical thought experiment. Given the premises, and the fact that we're no longer working in the envelope of writing good Haruhi fanfiction, we could of course retcon canon elements for it to make sense that Haruhi is God. The author doesn't, so the canon elements that are inconsistent with the cute thought experiment will end up jarring us. Badly.

If I had been drinking tea myself

Petty observation: doesn't Mikuru usually serve everyone a cup of tea when she makes it? And Kyon isn't exactly the fastest drinker in the brigade... again, there are many ways to address this point.

Maybe Haruhi is unusually thoughtful today, which causes her to sip tea at a glacial pace, so Kyon is already finished by the time Haruhi brings up her question?

I would have spit it all over the Go board. At this point in my disastrous high school education, I didn't need anyone to explain the terrifying possibilities if Haruhi got religion.

Okay, this one is also a bit hard to swallow...

{recap of all the crazy things Haruhi did in the early books, and how Koizumi always cited 'common sense' as the reason she still kept reality mostly stable}

But if there's one terrifying factor that could destroy Haruhi's common sense even with all the evidence carefully hidden away from her, that factor would have to be religion. When you put it that way, it's such an awful threat that... that it's surprising we never had to deal with it before now.

Strike two: in the light novels, Tanigawa generally handles threats from Haruhi's powers completely backwards from how it's handled in the fic. With good reason. Generally when Haruhi gets a weird idea, we see the effects first, then we see the Brigade try to repair the problem. And only during that process does someone (often Koizumi) give exposition on the precise nature of the threat and the unconscious reasoning behind Haruhi's use of her powers. Thus we start with concrete effects on reality and build up to whatever general idea is behind the effects in the first place. It's a good model. It adds a small bit of narrative tension, and it makes the action of the novels easier to understand.

Here by starting from the exposition, we've dodged an important question -- why is it so terrifying for Haruhi to start believing in religion? What are the concrete consequences? The issue is never really resolved. I can only assume that whatever religion Haruhi ends up believing in becomes real, which isn't necessarily a good thing. The closest we get is the entirely silly:

I couldn't even speak, I was so horrified by the thought of what might happen if God became a devout believer in Scientology.

For the people in the room who have managed to live their lives blissfully ignorant of the basic tenets of Scientology, can we have a more obvious example of what might go wrong?

Besides, is Scientology even that bad of an example? I mean, as far as I can remember it has aliens and stuff. Haruhi's already summoned aliens once and the world didn't end. I'd be far more concerned, say, if Haruhi wished some flanderized variant of Catholicism into existence based on a cursory reading of Wikipedia, complete with Dante's classification of how all the sinners and usurers and fornicators get sorted into neat boxes in the afterlife.

That's really one of the glaring problems serious Haruhi fans immediately raise with this fic -- it relies too much on 'God' being equated with the Western notion of an omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevolent deity. Which is fine relative to the fact that we're considering Epicurus' Riddle, theodicy, and all that, but since Haruhi is set in Japan you really start to wonder why they'd go to the absolute monotheistic Western idea of God in the first place. What if Yudkowsky had used Shinto as his example religion?

I couldn't even speak, I was so horrified by the thought of what might happen if God became a devout believer in Shinto.

So if Haruhi started believing in Shinto, um... we might get a Spirited Away crossover? Ooh... horrifying. Honestly I'd rather be reading such a fic right now, if only it existed.

"{Koizumi steps up and eventually gets to the point of asking Haruhi:} what do you mean by God?"

Haruhi made an annoyed gesture. "You know what the word God means!"

Sadly, we do.

No, we don't. Sadly, the author is assuming that they're adopting a different culture's concept of religion, when there's no particular reason for them to do so. It's more likely that the people in the novels lean vaguely towards Shinto. Haruhi made them hang wishes on Tanabata for crying out loud!

(Not only that, she appeared to seriously consider the idea that Orihime and Hikoboshi are actual wish-granting gods. Exactly what Haruhi's assertion that "I'm always serious" actually implies is unclear, but our thought experiment with Haruhi + religion being an unwise mixture is once again wearing a bit thin.)

{Koizumi engages in some sophistry which doesn't have much to do with the main thrust of the fic so we omit it here}

"That's a boring answer," pronounced God in her usual tones of discontent. I have never understood why God would create a universe that annoyed her so much, though it's the one aspect of theology that conventional religions guess correctly.

The gaze of the yellow-ribboned deity turned to rest upon my own quivering soul.

That line just made me realize I'd be willing to trade this author tract for a well-written limefic by now.

"What about you, Kyon?"

If I had been at all intelligent, I would have answered "I agree with Koizumi". Instead, I foolishly picked that time to try to show off my cleverness.

"For myself," I said, "I would have to ask about the riddle of Epicurus -"

{omitted: which wasn't actually Epicurus' riddle, but perhaps an invention of medieval philosophers}

"But what's the riddle?" Haruhi asked.

Koizumi made a careless gesture. "Oh, just something along the lines of, why does God allow evil? Of course there are many possible answers to that."

"I was asking Kyon, though," Haruhi said. She gave Koizumi a hard look, then turned to me.

Koizumi nudged my ankle under the table.

"Ah," I said through my bewilderment, "that was pretty much it, really. Just that -"

{the SOS Brigade expertly accomplishes nothing for another paragraph or two}

With a few more remarks, Haruhi left the room to go home for the day, freeing the rest of us.

My own thoughts were still scattered. I looked at Koizumi. What was that about?

The tired esper seemed to slump further in his chair. "The Riddle of Epicurus is an argument for disbelief in God, not just agnosticism."

So? It could be disastrous if Haruhi converted to any religion. Shouldn't we be trying to make her more skeptical?

Koizumi shook his head. "That is just going from one danger to another. Suppose Suzumiya-san became a fanatic atheist and went about denouncing the foolishness of the concept of God. What would happen given that she disbelieved in herself?"

Again, in concrete terms, **what would happen**? I wish Kyon would explain, but in the next paragraphs he just has a BSOD contemplating... **whatever** danger they're all in, so all I'm left to go on is that Douglas Adams joke everyone's heard about God vanishing in a puff of logic.

(And *that* joke starts and finishes on completely unrelated premises, so it's not even a good template for understanding this fic.)

My thoughts collided with themselves further, like a car wreck spreading into a nearby train system. I got up from my chair and went to stand by the window, staring out at the blue sky and the few buildings that could be seen from here. What would happen?

Koizumi shrugged wearily. "I don't know either, but I think we should be aiming to create a state of suspended judgment. We can't afford for her to believe any falsehoods, or the truth either."

And Strike Three: it's 'Let's All Pre-Emptively Mess With Haruhi's Head' day at the Brigade. Which sounds fine, until you read the next chapter and realize just what pre-emptively messing with Haruhi's head entails in this one.

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

"But that girl certainly has changed," said Asahina-san in her soft tones, as she put away Haruhi's teacup. "Two years ago, she wouldn't have thought to ask our opinions, only told us what they should be."

And Asahina makes a few slightly-but-not-extremely-OOC remarks like this throughout the rest of the chapter. I'd put it down to her growing up into Mikuru(big), but these feel vaguely OOC for her as well.

{blah blah blah} I was behind on studying and planned to read through lunch, and so Haruhi took a book out of her own backpack.

I glanced at the cover, interested in what Haruhi might be reading these days.

It was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

I choked and coughed on my sandwich as if I had been eating a giant bug. I couldn't even imagine how ironic it would be if an atheist professor persuaded God that she didn't exist and caused her to blink out of reality followed by our whole universe, but I knew that it wasn't what I had in mind for today's lunch.

It was at this point - I found myself explaining to Koizumi and Nagato and Asahina-san a few hours later, after Haruhi had left for the day - it was at this point that I had panicked.

Again, the author is trying to make Kyon feel forced to do something immediately, before Haruhi has a chance to destroy everything. In the novels, the characters generally don't anticipate any Haruhi-induced emergencies based on what she does on the mundane level. There's always advance warning in terms of minor supernatural changes, long before Haruhi has the chance to cause irrevocable damage to reality.

I mean, if Haruhi is God in the Western sense, and Kyon believes this, maybe we could bring in more Western religious notions, such as people having souls or whatever? And as Haruhi reads more and more Dawkins people around the Brigade gradually start to lose their souls and turn into weird Uncanny Valley automata, Kyon notices this, and then he'd *definitely* be pressured to act? I'm sure this idea isn't quite as philosophically rigorous and relevant to the point, but if we're trying to write an entertaining fic set in a universe where Haruhi is God?

I don't know, I just want to contribute something more than just heckling to this review.

{ridiculous mess of recap consisting of weird planning, more OOC-Asahina, and vaguely implausible camraderie between Kyon and Koizumi}

To summarize, Kyon's emergency plan is going to be inviting Haruhi on a date on top of a high-security skyscraper. The most messed-up date in the history of dating, sure, but this fic has earned the right to insert itself in the Kyon/Haruhi shipping category.

{Kyon is extremely important to Haruhi, so he has a ridiculous amount of influence over her; so he carries a ridiculous responsibility}

I refused to think about that part, however. That was where I drew the line. It's one thing to take care of your own personal planet, but worrying about a billion other solar systems would indicate incipient megalomania. It would take a genuine weirdo to accept responsibility for a whole intergalactic civilization.

Spoiler: in chapter 2, Kyon demonstrates himself to be a genuine religious weirdo with incipient megalomania.

{more slightly-off SOS Brigade fiddling without Haruhi in the room}

If you're done speaking horrible words that shouldn't be considered even in the silence of one's private mind, I think I'll go now.

[Arakawa]

When Haruhi arrived I was already waiting on the street, humming a cheerful tune to keep my spirits up - the opening melody from that history show with the sun rising over the horizon.

"Well?" Haruhi snapped as she stalked over to me.

For once that girl was dressed to suit her natural beauty. Jeans and sneakers, and a pastel-patterned long-sleeved shirt with a piece cut out to expose a diamond of skin above her breasts. I was surprised that girl's brain contained such an ordinary concept of 'sexy', a middle ground between school uniforms and bunny suits.

This seems... vaguely implausible, considering what I know of dress sense in Japan, and even factoring in the anime where they end up dressing in every conceivable variety of fanservice outfit. Except that one.

{to save us a whole lot of time, Kyon breaks Haruhi into the skyscraper in an extended sequence, in a vaguely intriguing manner}

Haruhi followed. As for the expression on her face, it was indescribable in ordinary language. You would have to engage a poet specialized in praising the beauty of girls who are confused as hell. I think a day like this might be the best in my whole entire life, and I hope it isn't the last.

If you read the entire sequence note carefully: Kyon would probably be a trifle less smug (although in the fic he does note that he's being a bit more indulgent than usual). And Haruhi should be at least vaguely interested or intrigued, as opposed to just vaguely taken off guard.

Other than that, it's a vaguely neat, inconsequential sequence.

{The top of the skyscraper turns out to be beautiful and perfect for jumping off of. Am I spoiling anything?}

"Kyon," Haruhi said.

There was a note in her voice that I had heard before, but only very rarely.

It was the emotion that a casual acquaintance would think was unknown to Suzumiya Haruhi, that concept called "concern".

Haruhi looked serious.

"This doesn't seem like something Kyon would do. Isn't a place like this a little dangerous? What are we doing here?"

It's a bit off for Haruhi to be concerned so much about visiting a skyscraper, and surprisingly perceptive of her to be concerned at Kyon's sudden strange behaviour, considering what happens next.

{Kyon nearly loses it with how frustrated he's been at Haruhi's self-centredness}

I had to stop, then. I was aware that my hands were shaking. I felt a sense of distant surprise; I had no idea there was so much bottled up inside me.

This wasn't how I'd meant things to go. Not at all.

Haruhi opened her own lips again. She had a cautious look on her face.

"I'm sorry," Haruhi said.

My jaw dropped open. Completely literally, I would have expected the world to end before I heard Haruhi say those words.

"I had no idea Kyon felt that way. Why didn't you say something earlier?"

"Say something?" I said. There was still a lot of tightness in my voice. "What good would it have done to say something? Under ordinary circumstances, it's impossible to have a serious conversation with you."

Haruhi looked at me. Then, "Maybe I should just keep apologizing," she said, "but that would be giving up my own pride. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but the fact remains that Kyon never said anything."

I complained about your behavior many, many times! I couldn't count the number of times using exponentiation, tetration, or up-arrow notation! You never listened to a single thing I said!

I guess he only needs to bring up-arrow notation into the picture because of how long Endless Eight turned out to last.

{more back and forth, they move towards the edge}

As she looked, some of the concern eased from her face. Soon Haruhi was relaxed, smiling, delighted by the view.

Of course that idiot goddess wouldn't be afraid of heights.

Guess who used the term 'idiot god' a whole lot... Lovecraft riff?? I can hear the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes already.

Finally Haruhi turned her head away from the world, and looked at me. She said, "It really is much more beautiful like this than just looking out a window from high up."

My own lips opened. "I have a lot of things I want to talk with you about, Haruhi," my voice said. I was surprised by how gentle I sounded. "This conversation may not go like you expect. Even so, can you please take this seriously, listen to me seriously, and reply to me seriously, if it's just for one small hour?"

And finally we get to the author tract which this fic is supposed to enable.

{blah blah blah}

I raised a hand to gesture out at the panorama, and began.

"All those people," I said. "The ordinary world. According to all the stories, this ordinary world is what the extraordinary people try to protect. If you read a comic book about superheroes, it would be about superheroes defending all those everyday lives. The superheroes wouldn't be trying to cure AIDS or feed starving children in Africa or otherwise change the world. We have scientists for that sort of thing. No, a superhero is someone who defends that ordinary, everyday life from the forces that try to change it. Even if those stories come from our imagination, still, those are the people we praise above all others."

Haruhi was looking a little surprised, as though shocked that I was capable of philosophy deeper than ankle-deep. Still, she opened her mouth in reply and poured forth her own thoughts on the subject:

"I vehemently disagree with that attitude."

I nodded. Haruhi could hardly be expected to agree with any words in praise of normality. "But it's an ordinary human instinct to want to preserve the status quo, because if the status quo is broken, you could lose everything you already have. To gain anything beyond your current life, or even fix something terribly wrong in your current life, you have to risk losing what you already have. It's like how it's prohibited for us to be on this rooftop. With us kneeling down like this, we won't fall, and a gust of wind won't blow us off the edge. So why isn't this beautiful view available to everyone? Well, but what if we decided to throw a bowling ball off this building? Since this rooftop is 262 meters high, the bowling ball would fall for 7.3 seconds and strike the ground like a cannonball at 248 kilometers per hour. If someone did manage to fall off this rooftop, then the normal laws of physics, which don't care about human beings any differently from bowling balls, would dictate that they die. To obtain the joy of this beautiful view, people would have to risk something they already have. Losing something you already have is much more painful than giving up a possibility that hasn't been realized. That's why most people allow themselves to be trapped in normality, even when it's uncomfortable. And the S.O.S. Brigade doesn't have any right to look down on those people, Haruhi. Because even in the S.O.S. Brigade, you might find people who were afraid to move forward and reach for more, if that risked the status quo we call 'the ordinary world'."

Haruhi (to herself): *Kyon's going crazy, isn't he? He's gone crazy and he's babbling and I have to talk him down from here before he goes even more crazy and decides to jump off the edge of the roof or something.*

Haruhi nodded slowly, to show that she had seen through the hidden meaning of my words about our relationship.

Of course she didn't really see at all.

I looked back out on the world. "But you know... things always change, and therefore the status quo is always lost. If things can't possibly stay the same way forever, then when will I confront the risk? Is it better to wait until we're older, when our youthful idealism has been ground down by the many compromises an adult makes in order to be successful? Or is it better to just let things slide, not thinking about the distant future, until finally it all falls down? I think that's what the people who defend the status quo might not realize. And -" My voice stumbled. "And I'm afraid too. It's not even that I found my courage. I just realized that it wasn't possible, in the long run, for things to stay this way indefinitely. What happens when you're thirty years old? What happens when you're ninety years old? In the long run, the status quo can't possibly persist. Once I realized that, it wasn't even a question of courage any more. Just a question of timing. So I want to try talking with you a little more honestly, Haruhi."

"Kyon, I'm getting this idea that you're about to do something really drastic with me here. Why else would you bring me to the top of a skyscraper. Frankly, though I'd normally be excited there's something really wrong about this; but... I need to understand what it is you're planning, so..."

"All right," that girl said. "What did you want to talk with me about?"

I swallowed. "It might seem a little odd, but... by way of introducing an important topic... I would like to change the subject back to the one that you introduced the day before yesterday."

Haruhi blinked at this. "New costumes for Mikuru-chan? Oh! You mean the topic of God."

There was a moment of silence. Haruhi was looking puzzled, and as for me, the words seemed to be sticking in my throat again.

"Well?" Haruhi said. "What does theology have to do with our - I mean, what does theology have to do with anything?"

Breathe, I told myself. "I remember I once saw an online debate between an atheist on the one hand, and a theologian on the other hand. The debate was about faith. What does Haruhi think about the concept of faith?"

Haruhi looked puzzled. "Well, obviously it's a crutch for weak-minded people who don't understand science."

I coughed and tried to suppress a grin. Certainly a statement like that was very characteristic of Haruhi, but - "Don't you think that some people might criticize you for holding that stance, and simultaneously wanting to meet psychics, aliens, and time-travelers?"

"I want to meet them," Haruhi stated firmly, "not believe in them. Rather than resting on faith, I am trying to test my beliefs and obtain evidence. Therefore, my attitude is scientifically correct."

"I am not bound by useless and crippling assumptions, such as a pre-emptive denial that there's nothing interesting out there for us to find. It is far more likely that there is *something* extremely unusual about the universe, than that it would conform 100% to our tidy suburban expectations."

I wasn't sure Richard Feynman would have agreed with that. "The atheist in the video asserted that the concept of 'faith' had been invented by religion to protect beliefs that could not be defended by any other means. In other words, it's like someone telling a lie about being sick, who, when challenged, has to forge a note from the doctor, and then later, give a phone number for the doctor which connects to a friend's cellphone. If you had to keep on defending a lie for long enough, you would eventually invent the doctrine of 'it is virtuous to believe no matter what'."

Not surprisingly, Haruhi approved of the atheist's stance.

"Of course! Are you trying to criticize the basic idea of the SOS Brigade here? The point isn't that we believe in aliens, it's that we *don't* believe in not-aliens, we keep looking for them and all sorts of other things, but the reason we keep looking isn't because of a blind insistence that the whole world is wrong and I'm right, it's just because high school would be just *boring* otherwise without something silly to chase together... the atheist is just criticizing people who let their beliefs get in the way of living properly, isn't he? Kyon, what are you..."

(Also, aren't you going to tell me you're John Smith? At any point in this conversation? Hello?)

"But," I continued, "the theologian shook his head sadly, and said that the atheist was naive about the emotional depth of the experience of 'faith', that it wasn't a concept invented by culture, but a feeling built into all human beings. In proof of this, the theologian offered the analogy of someone who's told that their lover has been unfaithful to them. If the evidence wasn't conclusive - and if you really loved that person - then you might think of everything they meant to you, and everything that you had done together, and go on putting trust in them. To trust someone because you love them more than anything - we would even call this believing in your lover. This, the theologian said, was the emotional experience at the root of faith, not just a trick of argument to win a debate. That's what an atheist wouldn't understand, because they were treating the whole thing as a logical question, and missing out on the emotional side of everything, like Spock. Someone who has faith is trusting God just like you would trust the one you loved most."

Haruhi's gaze was abstracted, probably looking for hidden meanings in my words. "And what did the atheist say to that?" she asked.

"Oh," I said, "I think he shook his head sadly, and commented on how wretched it was to invent an imaginary friend to have that relationship with, instead of a real human lover."

Haruhi laughed aloud. "I think the atheist won the debate."

"Like I said, proper beliefs are whatever helps you to live properly."

I wonder what the theologian would think if he knew God had said that - or the atheist, for that matter.

In my mind I visualized the Earth as seen from above in the photos taken from spacecraft, a great glowing blue-white orb. In my mind I visualized the stars. Slowly turning, the Earth, forever shining, the stars. I tried to draw strength from that image, since I couldn't exactly pray to God.

It was time to risk something I already had.

I muttered something about needing to stand up, and walked away from the ledge a little. I couldn't look out at the panoramic view of the city without imagining a grey curtain sweeping across.

I turned back to Haruhi, and said:

"But trusting a friend who turns out to be imaginary isn't the most awful thing that could happen to you. Not by any means."

Haruhi furrowed her brow. The awful tension was coming out into my voice, now.

"I mean," I said, the words shaky, "what if you believed in God, and trusted God, and it turned out that God wasn't worthy of that trust?"

"Well... if that was really the reality of the situation. It would still be reality. I'd... still have to live with it somehow, wouldn't I? Find ways to make the situation more bearable for everyone? How... tired are you of being in the Brigade that you're settling for these weird metaphors anyhow?"

Haruhi was starting to look anxious. Anxious and confused.

Suddenly the cellphone in my pocket gave two silent buzzes, the signal for a Sealed Reality forming - a large one, but not a huge one, not yet.

"Kyon," Haruhi said - her own voice was tense now - "what are you talking about?"

Besides her being anxious, I also saw that Haruhi was squinting as she tried to look at me, since the morning sun was behind me. So I stepped a little to my left, so that my shadow would fall on Haruhi. From her perspective it must have looked like I was a darkness blocking out the Sun.

"I'm talking about the Riddle of Epicurus."

And I spoke the words which I had burned into my memory.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then she is not omnipotent.
Is God able, but not willing? Then she is malevolent.
Is she both able and willing? Then whence evil?
Is she neither able nor willing? Then why call her God."

Good question, Kyon. Why did you decide to call Haruhi God in the first place?

Haruhi stared at me.

"I mean," I said, my voice trembling, "this world - this world where children go hungry and die, where children get sick and die, where children are abused and even sold into slavery, where a hundred and fifty thousand people die every day - this world can't be forgiven, Haruhi. If someone deliberately made this world like that, then she couldn't be forgiven either. For the longest time I didn't think about that. I just went to school on weekdays. Maybe I can't be forgiven for that, either. Conventional religions try to talk about free will, which doesn't make any sense for letting children be born with uncurable diseases. Conventional religions talk about God's inscrutable wisdom. Can you think of a good reason for God to do that, Haruhi? If," I swallowed, "if you do have an answer, I'm willing to hear it out."

Haruhi, who was beginning to look frightened by the way I was acting, shook her head.

"I didn't think so," I whispered, "I didn't think there could be an answer to that." Then, raising my voice again, "So where does that leave us? If you eliminate the atheistic answer to the Riddle of Epicurus - that there is no being of omnipotent power - then that leaves the possibility that God is, is malevolent." Something seemed to be blocking my throat. "There are stories like that in H. P. Lovecraft. That God created the whole universe as a dream to entertain itself, just because it was bored; and it doesn't mind when the people in the dream suffer. Maybe God is entertained by the suffering, or maybe God just doesn't care one way or the other. Wouldn't that be the most terrible betrayal of all? If you trusted God like trusting the one you loved most, and it turned out that God was a monster that created the world out of boredom to divert itself, absolute power and absolute callousness? If God's true heart is like that, some alien uncaring thing, then we're all doomed anyway, and the world might as well end sooner rather than later. I don't want to live if God is like that!"

"Isn't that really no different from the hypothesis of atheism? There the universe is shaped by blind forces, none of which particularly care about humanity, and are very good at hurting it -- how does throwing an omnipotent being into the mix change things? We have to do our best to live life anyhow...

You seem to be making the same argument religious people make, Kyon, that if there's no benevolent God to look to then life isn't worth living, that humanity can't survive and retain its sanity without religion. I didn't really want you to think like that, how did that ever happen, why did..."

"Kyon." Haruhi's own voice was breaking now. I looked at her, and she looked just like an ordinary school girl, dressed prettily in jeans and sneakers and a shirt with a diamond cut out above her breasts. Not alien, or cold, at all. "What - what is this -"

"But," I whispered. My voice strengthened. "But, the Riddle of Epicurus doesn't exhaust all the possibilities. Like Koizumi said, the truth might be outside the conventional categories. I mean - what if God were omnipotent, but not omniscient? What if she could do anything, and didn't know it? What if she honestly didn't know that she had the power to do something about the world? What if she wasn't even thinking about all the horrors of the world, just like I wasn't thinking about them for so long? Then God might, might, she might even be a good person after all. Someone who would save people and take care not to shatter the Earth, if she knew that she was God." I was crying freely now, the tears running down from my eyes. "She might really truly be, a good person."

"So I've decided to trust in God," I said, and now I was smiling even through the tears. "I will believe in God with all my power. Because I have faith in you, Suzumiya Haruhi."

Haruhi stood up. She walked closer to me. Her arms twitched for a moment, like she wanted to reach out to me. "Kyon," she said, her voice wavering, "please stop. Please explain. I don't understand what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about you. You're God."

"... *what*? How can you say that? Is that even a meaningful statement? What do you mean, 'God'? I know I said you're supposed to get the idea immediately, but the idea I had in mind *does not* square with suddenly announcing that some schoolgirl in the Keihanshin region is actually secretly God or whatever!!"

The endless wind blew across the deserted rooftop of that skyscraper, as though we were the only two people in the universe. In my imagination, if not in reality, the whole universe held its breath, waiting for God to respond.

"I still don't understand," said Haruhi. "Is it a metaphor for -"

"It's not a metaphor for anything. You're God, Haruhi. It's not a figure of speech or a koan, it's a plain fact. The answer to the great question of theology is 'God is Suzumiya Haruhi'."

Haruhi's face twisted. She looked as if she was trying not to burst into tears.

In my pocket, my cellphone vibrated three times. Well, you would expect a girl to be upset if the boy she liked had gone insane.

"You're thinking I'm crazy," I said. "You might find the idea a little odd, but it's not something I just made up. I was also surprised when I first heard, but I've seen unmistakeable things over the last two years, and there's no doubt that it's the truth. Will you hear me out? I can offer you evidence -" And I took a step closer to her, so that I was almost touching her, and leaned forward slightly -

"Don't!" Haruhi said fiercely, and she took a step back from me. She was starting to cry, now. "Don't you dare kiss me, Kyon! A kiss isn't evidence! A kiss isn't something that couldn't possibly happen if I'm not God! I won't let our first kiss be so sad! I won't let our first kiss be wasted like that!"

I took a deep breath. This was it.

"Our first kiss was two years ago, beneath a grey sky, within the school grounds as they were destroyed by blue giants, on the night you almost erased and remade the world."

Haruhi paled. I'd thought that was a figure of speech before, but her cheeks literally went white as the blood drained from them.

And I stepped closer to her again, and I said those same words again, which I'd never forgotten:

"Though you may not know it, there are all sorts of people who are very concerned about you. It's not ridiculous to say that the world literally revolves around you. Everyone believes you are a very special person, and they've tried to back up those beliefs with actions. You may not know it, but the world is headed in a very interesting direction."

Kyon: "I'm going to re-enact book One now if you don't mind."

Haruhi was utterly frozen, now. Then her lips fluttered a little and she whispered, "What now..."

This was the thing she had said last time, two years ago, at this point.

"You know, I really like you in a ponytail," I recited.

"What?" Haruhi whispered the appropriate reply.

"I don't know when, but since then, I can't stop thinking of you in a ponytail. I think that suits you best..."

"What's gotten into you?"

For the second time in my life, I leaned over and kissed Haruhi. I kept my eyes open, this time. Both of us were crying, but I don't think it was a sad kiss.

This was when I had woken up, last time, but today this world was still here. The script from before had run out. Now it was time to continue and move forward.

Kyon: "Re-enactment finished. Now I'm going to go completely crazy again if you don't mind."

"...and I like you, Haruhi, and I want to date you. But before that there's one last thing I have to do first. I have to awaken you. I want you to wake up, God, because of the good you could do in the world, and all the prayers that no one is answering right now.

Good God, he's starting to sound like Mikami.

I want you to wake up, God, for the sake of the ones who are screaming and who would give anything for it to stop, and for the sake of all the countless people in the world who are quietly unhappy. And maybe I'm even doing this, because faith can only last for so long before you need evidence, and I want to be sure of you, Haruhi."

My throat closed. I would have prayed, then, if there had been anyone to pray to except the slight girl standing next to me.

But my prayers weren't answered. Haruhi's face didn't suddenly light up, she didn't suddenly say, 'Oh, I am God!' Beneath the tears, her face still looked confused.

"What happens if I believe all this?" Haruhi said, her voice trembling. "Am I supposed to try and create... a banana or something?"

I had been afraid it would come to this.

"No," I said. "I don't want you to try that. Up until now the world has been sustained by your common sense, that you don't believe things like that are possible. I suspect that if you just tried to make a banana or something, your common sense would prevent you from doing it, and then you would become even less confident and the whole task would become harder. You might even acquire the belief that you can't do anything, and I don't know what would happen then."

I slowly circled around Haruhi. She turned herself to track me. Soon it was me who was facing Haruhi and the Sun, and Haruhi who was looking toward me on a line toward the edge of the skyscraper's roof.

"So you're not going to try to create a banana," I said. "There's no reason for you to slowly level up and unlock your powers. A hundred and fifty thousand people die every day, which works out to one hundred people dying every minute, so I don't think we should take time for that. I think that trying to do it slowly would just worsen the chances of success, anyway. Instead you're going to wake up and realize your capacity as God in one shot. I believe in you, I trust you, I have faith in you, and that's how it's going to be." This was why I had brought us here in the first place.

"Kyon, do you distrust me that much? What happened to the idea of having some faith. People aren't used to thinking about right and wrong on the scale of a hundred and fifty thousand people dying every day -- why do you suggest I'd instantly know what to do? It's not enough just to have some vague good intention! Wouldn't you let me think things through and spend some time until I was sure about things, especially if you knew I could retroactively go back and give myself a second chance to fix things? And if you assume that I'm wrong about that, then why are you jumping to these weird assumptions about what you expect me to accomplish, Kyon..."

I leaned forward again and kissed that girl. I hugged her desperately, and inhaled the scent of her hair.

Then I stepped back, and stepped back again.

"You have 7.3 seconds."

I whirled and dashed for the edge of the roof. I think I was half-expecting Haruhi to move faster and grab me back, but it seems that I succeeded in taking her by surprise.

Her scream came just as my foot was launching me off the ledge.

"KYOOOOONNNnnnnn-"

But the sound of her voice dwindled rapidly.

I'd imagined myself looking back up toward her as I fell, but in retrospect that couldn't happen; the world whirled crazily about me and I had to close my eyes almost at once. If there was a grey wave sweeping across the world, I didn't want to see it, anyway.

Trust in God -

- or perhaps try to figure out the situation you're in before making random assumptions that lead you into silly religious mania. Honestly, when I phrase it like that it makes the fic sound like a weird roundabout critique of religious mania.

That's, really the only point I can take away from this, as you can tell from the cursory quality of the commentary I've been providing. The real point of this author tract, if Yudkowsky wanted to succintly deliver his worldview, should have been to sell us on his 'the only problem worth working on is making it so that no one has to die ever again' opinion.

Something that we're just supposed to accept as an unspoken given, which as this fic thoroughly and successfully argues, can produce atrocities if we add even a slight amount of religion. Kyon's idea of staking everything on one leap of faith is certainly not Bayesianly rigorous. He just grabs a random cool-looking idea (which happens to be an idea Yudkowsky also appreciates), proclaims he has 'faith' in it, and proceeds to dump all of his responsibility on Haruhi.

This is sad, because even if I'm willing to accept the idea that maybe Yudkowsky is careful not to even allow a slight amount of religious thought into his worldview, I'm definitely not so optimistic about the aggregate of his followers.

And the guy's pretty popular. If he wasn't, I wouldn't have reviewed this fic.

As for whether what Kyon is doing is morally right (emotional manipulation of a schoolgirl versus vague Utopian aspirations), like I said, there's a solid dose of religious mania in what he does. His treatment of Haruhi as a person, as we discussed already, is suspiciously similar to Koizumi's treatment of Haruhi in Downfall:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7260807/1/Downfall

I don't even know. I've exhausted any interest I've had in this particular fic, so I guess mission accomplished. Previously I felt vaguely cheated and angry, which I guess was possibly playing into Yudkowsky's hands ('what I say angers you, so you must be wrong somewhere!').

Next review that I'll do at some later point (much more succinctly) is going to be the 'Alternate World of Yuki Nagato'. Wherein we see Yuki get some awesome character development, and then the author completely nullifies it by chasing cool plot twists *facepalm*

[Brian]

That summed it up quite well.

Excellent review, Arakawa.  I wish I had more to contribute; reading that fic usually just evoked vague anger and other unpleasantness.  After reading through your thorough dismantling, now I just feel apathetic and indifferent to it, because I can't even respect it as being particularly good at what it aims for.

[Arakawa]

That was sort of my feeling as I attempted (key word: attempted) to give it a detailed deconstruction, I just got more and more apathetic about it. So I just went through the tract adding riffs by Haruhi - entire possible avenues of exploration and argument which are being conveniently ignored here - and left it at that.

Again, Yudkowsky would have better used his time selling us on his "nobody should ever have to die again" thesis... an idea which most ordinary people usually feel a vague and instinctive unease towards.

Particularly if it's accomplished through these weird and objectionable means.

(Although if he tries to write a fic arguing that, he'll be stepping into the ring directly across from greats like Ursula K. Le Guin and Hayao Miyazaki who've spent quite some time arguing the opposite position, and who might not know rationalism but they sure know how to tell a story. The reason Goro Miyazaki's Earthsea felt so derivative -- besides ripping off every single famous shot from his dad's filmography -- is that the "death is a necessary part of things" theme the elder Miyazaki touched on more subtly is delivered by the younger so ham-handedly.

Why does Hayao Miyazaki keep getting dragged into this? I don't know, he somehow just seems to be the antithesis to everything Yudkowsky stands for.)

Anyhow, to repeat myself: mission accomplished. Instead of mouth-frothing anger, I just don't particularly care about that fic. I'm glad you ended up doing the same.

And I don't have the time to perform the full analysis of Yudkowsky's rationalism that I wish I could perform. Sadly there's reams and reams of the stuff online, and I have better things to do. I guess, no matter how elaborate a philosophy is, unless you can't see a way to start applying it to your own life it's a waste of time. (The first few sequences I tried to read on how to apply Bayesian thinking kept assuming I could assign numerical probabilities to my beliefs, like I was L or something. Personally I don't even think L did it seriously, just as a joke to wind people up :-)

If you sever the connection between a Philosophy and its immediate practical applications to your own life, then you gain the ability to waste your time generating and consuming pointlessly infinite amounts of... well, not nonsense. The point is that you don't even have a way to tell if it's nonsense or not! The Ancient Greeks seem to have understood this principle; and Sasaki would agree with me on this, right? :-)

If reading Yudkowsky can't get that point across to you, just you try and read some Jacques Derrida.

The thing that drove the nail in the coffin for me with regards to rationalism actually wasn't anything Yudkowsky said or wrote, wasn't seeing my friend attempt to apply it in real life, wasn't any of those things, it was this other guy's post on 'Optimal Employment' where he demonstrated a supposed application of the principles of Rationality to something less rarefied than pondering the question of Friendly AI:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/43m/optimal_employment/

When the supposed rationalist has used his much-vaunted techniques to arrive at the same fad (the 'hospitality industry' is where it's at, man!) that presently animates with great fervour the friends of a friend of a relative from the podunk depths of Chelyabinsk* I start to wonder whether the rationalists are smoking the correct substance to get their brains working properly.

* Chelyabinsk: http://g.co/maps/fbc59

No seriously, so these guys sent their kid over here to learn English. Nice kid. They've got a bit of money saved up for him, with this plan that he'll go to a boarding school here in Canada and earn citizenship, then they might send him probably somewhere like "Oxford" -- not the Oxford, just some two-bit college in Oxford which panders to gullible Russians who want to say they "went to Oxford" (no, I am not making this up) -- then he'll come back to Canada or whatever and open up a bed and breakfast and be set.

Meanwhile the kid's primary concern seemed to be whether or not his apartment in Canada (while he's at this boarding school) will have a swimming pool and no curfew, and he kept asking questions like "so, how illegal is weed here, anyways, I saw all these shops selling bongs and stuff", and if he tries to think about his future independently of his parents' fixation on "hospitality industry" he doesn't go into much detail beyond "I wanna be a film actor".

"Wait, here? In the Western film industry?"

"Yah, cause Russian movies are lame."

How do I say this? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....

Now, the Optimal Employment guy isn't quite this stupid, but he has this problem that he assumes people are willing to just sever all their ties and move to the outermost depths of Alice Springs to search for Optimal Employment. Heck, I'm almost ready to move to Alice Springs. I'd just have to sever all my ties to family, ambitions for the future, and also the minor matter of irrational attachment to the place I'm currently living in...

Summary: Bayesian rationalists seem to have no clue what they want in life, but they're all too willing to explain to you in great detail how to get it...

[Jon]

In fairness to Louie, I think he's quite honest about his criteria: a job with few responsibilities that pays a lot more than he spends on his lifestyle. He doesn't say anything about severing ties, perhaps because he doesn't have any to sever.

(Louie's article also wasn't upvoted that much; it has a score of 40. One post on the front page, titled "Generalizing from One Example" (I am not making this up!) has a score of 189.)

As regards death, I have significant sympathy towards the idea that nobody should ever have to die unless they desire to die. We're a race that within recorded history has moved from a life expectancy of 28 years to one of 67 years. So far, I don't think we've lost anything essential to the human condition.

As for the fic, I liked it okay, but I'm not as immersed in Haruhi fandom as the two of you are, so I didn't find the characterization to be as jarring.

[sarsaparilla]

Beyond the apparent (and amusingly alliterative) author appeal angle, the ending can be alternatively interpreted as a giant atheist/naytheist Take That directed at theism. In essence, one can argue that Kyon was written into a religious fanatic (of the Haruhiism variety) on purpose, in an attempt to demonstrate that religion leads to madness, and trusting in God leads to death (the final words can be taken as a (literally!) very anvilicious way of hammering the point in). This interpretation doesn't make the piece of work any less of an author tract, just a bit more petulant and non-constructive expression of self-centered dissatisfaction.

I enjoyed this deconstruction more than the actual piece, but can certainly agree with the general sense of apathy, as that was my initial reaction to the original work, as well.

Concerning permanent removal of death, it is one of the most horrible ideas I have ever heard, and I'm not arguing that from any spiritual or religious angle. Quite simply, death is the great equalizer.

(Sasaki mode on)

Understanding the processes behind the Pareto principle makes one realize that without death all wealth will eventually converge into the same hands, creating a permanent tiny group of have-alls and endless masses of have-nones. Abolishing death also means that new persons cannot be born because without death any amount of procreation is inherently exponential and will soon run into the Malthusian limit. That way, we wouldn't be cursing just ourselves into eternal slavery and adversity, but we would also pre-emptively prevent all future generations from ever getting their chance of making a difference.

Also, it is a fallacy to argue that if raising the average life expectancy from 30 to 70 years is an improvement, then raising it further to infinity is also an improvement. Beyond the obvious error in assuming a linear trend, infinity just doesn't work well with real world. Say, if you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and each room is already occupied (so, the hotel is full), then just by asking every guest to move from the room where they currently are to another with a number that is twice the former one (so, from room 1 to room 2, from room 2 to room 4, from room 3 to room 6 and so on) suddenly the hotel isn't full any more because there are infinitely many free rooms for new guests, and all that without adding more rooms or any of the old guests leaving.

(Sasaki mode off)

[Jon]

Concerning permanent removal of death, it is one of the most horrible ideas I have ever heard, and I'm not arguing that from any spiritual or religious angle. Quite simply, death is the great equalizer. Understanding the processes behind the Pareto principle makes one realize that without death all wealth will eventually converge into the same hands, creating a permanent tiny group of have-alls and endless masses of have-nones. Abolishing death also means that new persons cannot be born because without death any amount of procreation is inherently exponential and will soon run into the Malthusian limit. That way, we wouldn't be cursing just ourselves into eternal slavery and adversity, but we would also pre-emptively prevent all future generations from ever getting their chance of making a difference.

My view is that any technological society that managed to abolish death (instead of, say, merely extend our current lifespans by an order or two of magnitude) would necessarily have such a command of technology as to be a post-scarcity society. (This is basically one form of the singularity argument; beyond a certain point of technological development, our current notions of wealth and poverty become meaningless.)

Also, it is a fallacy to argue that if raising the average life expectancy from 30 to 70 years is an improvement, then raising it further to infinity is also an improvement. Beyond the obvious error in assuming a linear trend, infinity just doesn't work well with real world. Say, if you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and each room is already occupied (so, the hotel is full), then just by asking every guest to move from the room where they currently are to another with a number that is twice the former one (so, from room 1 to room 2, from room 2 to room 4, from room 3 to room 6 and so on) suddenly the hotel isn't full any more because there are infinitely many free rooms for new guests, and all that without adding more rooms or any of the old guests leaving.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the Grand Hotel paradox. I don't see how that makes it a fallacy to argue that "in general, increasing life expectancy is an improvement". And certainly it may be impossible to live a truly infinite amount of time in this universe, but I'd settle for "until the heat death". (There are also some (obviously outlandish) theories that it may be possible to survive a Big Crunch end of the universe by hiding inside a black hole. And that it would be possible to then exit the black hole into the new universe. But I digress.)

[sarsaparilla]

My view is that any technological society that managed to abolish death (instead of, say, merely extend our current lifespans by an order or two of magnitude) would necessarily have such a command of technology as to be a post-scarcity society.

Abolishing death (at least through aging and illness) is in principle entirely doable.
Abolishing scarcity in such a situation requires either breaking the second law of thermodynamics, or a convenient access to the resources of an infinite multiverse. Neither option appears plausible based on our current knowledge. There is only a limited amount of free energy and it's being consumed up all the time, making it the hard currency of a post-singularity society. And there won't be enough for everybody.

I don't see how that makes it a fallacy to argue that "in general, increasing life expectancy is an improvement".

Because one cannot simply extend a finite example into infinity and expect the result to make sense. But as I said, it is ultimately inconsequential because the argument breaks down much before that point. Please observe:

I have a company that sells light bulbs. I first sold them at 10 cents apiece but because they were being sold faster than I could produce them, I raised the price to 20 cents apiece. They are still selling as fast as before but now I'm getting twice the profit.

With those measurements and the linear assumption, I predict that if I raise the price to ten dollars apiece, my profits will increase by a hundredfold, and if I raise the price to infinity, I must get ... well, not sure what but certainly even more than in any of the other cases, right? (Mr. Nash says 'no'.)

Mmmm ... I'm getting into an argument here and it depresses me. This issue is certainly not important enough for me to sound this rude and forceful. I'm sorry -_-

[thepanda]

I'd just like to point out the jump in life expectancy is more a case of 'damn lies and statistics'. Infant mortality rates heavily skew older generations' life expectancy lower. We 'live longer' in that we have more people survive childhood. For people who have already made it to adulthood, the difference isn't nearly as pronounced.


As for abolishing death, I can't see where it would be a good thing. Death is so fundamental to how humans throughout all time have viewed life, the universe, and everything that I don't think anyone could predict what  a post-death world would be like. So no one could know before it happened if it would be a good thing or not. Also, saying 'problem x wouldn't be a concern because a post-death society would have already solved it' is disingenuous when you haven't defined how post-death was achieved. There is a significant difference between becoming some kind of data entity and becoming immortals a la the Highlander. I'd imagine those societies (and the needs of those societies) would be different as well.

I don't know jack about singularity, by the by, so my apologies if I come off a bit ignorant.

[Arakawa]

Even before the logistics of infinite abundance, I run into the entirely elitist point that most people don't know what to do with a century of life and would be completely lost if granted immortality. To counterbalance the elitism, I would add that most people who do know what to do with immortality probably can't be trusted with it....

So my view is, in terms of infinite life extension, we know that human nature is operating way outside its "design" parameters if the issue of death is taken away. We'd either have to find a way to completely redesign human nature or resign ourselves to dealing with sudden and nasty problems.

And given that Yudkowsky can't even make the characters in a Haruhi fanfiction sound believable, I have very limited trust in his understanding of what sorts of problems human nature might dish out.

[thepanda]

And given that Yudkowsky can't even make the characters in a Haruhi fanfiction sound believable, I have very limited trust in his understanding of what sorts of problems human nature might dish out.

Ha! I know my own nature enough to know two things; the first is that I'd forever be in debt, the second is that I'd finally have a reasonable excuse for being unreasonably lazy! Why do today what I can put off for a century?

[Brian]

I didn't really expect this to go as far as 'when we have complete mastery of energy and matter and face the heat-death of the universe...' but....

Hmm.  While I appreciate Jon's idealistic optimism, I also find Sarsaparilla's realism grounding on this one.

At the same time....

Erm.

Kimidori mode:

I can't help but think that this isn't something to get that worked up over yet.  While the implications are staggering, it's also (at this point) fairly removed from genuine concerns.  I mean, heat death, big crush, while everything is leaning towards the heat death of the universe ... we really don't know all of the rules that govern our reality yet.

Erm.

Even before the logistics of infinite abundance, I run into the entirely elitist point that most people don't know what to do with a century of life and would be completely lost if granted immortality. To counterbalance the elitism, I would add that most people who do know what to do with immortality probably can't be trusted with it....

Most people, I expect, would just continue doing the exact same things they were doing before.

Anyway.  Putting on my Kimidori hat (even though the green wig itches):

I think that both of you are better off trying to come up with more applicable real-world examples.  The heat-death of the universe is a daunting issue, but we don't (genuinely) know it's actually going to happen.  We believe it, but there's just so much of the universe we don't understand....

I personally am a big fan of M-theory -- but that's no better than anything else.

On the one hand, under those guidelines, as Sarsaparilla says, even if we give up organic/physical forms and exist only as data in simulated worlds, the universe is (as we understand it) inherently finite.  Introducing something that is not....

Man.  I never thought about this before.  I know I just mentioned this in #elysium this morning, but you guys make me feel like Kyon -- surrounded by far more intelligent and capable people who know a lot more about what's going on than I do. @_@

So, I'm probably lost and not really bright enough to follow all of what you're talking about, which means I have (or am about to) say something really stupid again.  Ce'est la vie.

Anyway.  I can already envision from here the flaws with such a system.

On the other hand, I would like to believe that some day there will be a Laplacian computer that bypasses the Bekenstein bound, where we can all live on in perpetuity once we finish our normal lifespans (huh, a manufactured afterlife ... (original sci-fic concept is go; aces)).

On the gripping hand, I feel that while Sarsaparilla's probably got the more realistic outlook, and I can't buy into Jon's ... I'd rather say that we just don't know enough about the universe to really argue definitively either way; there could be alternate realities that let us ignore the problem (assuming they're infinite).  There could be a way to generate matter or energy by manipulating the strings of other dimensions -- maybe the energy we believe is dispersing is actually just scattering across membranes of the Calabi Yau manifold?

Too unknowable to worry about that much!

* Brian hands the Kimidori-hat/wig combo to a waiting Tomoe Mami, wanders off to the sound of Credens Justitiam.

[Muphrid]

Interesting that you talk about computers and simulated afterlife; something I ran across years ago (writing an original story) is the idea of the "Omega Point"--that, if the universe ends up collapsing in on itself, a hypothetical computer would increase in capability as stuff comes within our observable universe and distances shrink, to the point that this computer could, as the universe shrinks small enough, be capable of basically anything.  It would have infinite computing power and thus could simulate all the beings that ever lived and give them an afterlife.

Apparently "Omega Point" now can mean several related concepts, but I thought it was interesting a few years ago.  And, of course, we don't think the universe will collapse, either.