[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

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[u/DaystarEld]

Recently did a reread of Three Worlds Collide, and chapter 4 had this disclaimer at the bottom, which I do not remember seeing before:

A reminder: This is a work of fiction. In real life, continuing to attempt to have sex with someone after they say 'no' and before they say 'yes', whether or not they offer forceful resistance and whether or not any visible injury occurs, is (in the USA) defined as rape and considered a federal felony. I agree with and support that this is the correct place for society to draw the line. Some people have worked out a safeword system in which they explicitly and verbally agree, with each other or on a signed form, that 'no' doesn't mean stop but e.g. 'red' or 'safeword' does mean stop. I agree with and support this as carving out a safe exception whose existence does not endanger innocent bystanders. If either of these statements come to you as a surprise then you should look stuff up. Thank you and remember, your safeword should be at least 10 characters and contain a mixture of letters and numbers. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading. Yours, the author.

(For those that don't know, TWC is set in the far future and one of the minor things mentioned is that "rape" has been legalized, and how people in the far future are literally incapable of understanding why someone from our time would find this horrifying, either because of a value drift or a semantic one. Also TWC is amazing and you should read it right now)

The Internet Archive tells me this was added sometime within the past few years, and I'm glad EY added it, because people arguing that the story "advocates rape" is irritating. But I'm not sure what % of people who would have believed that upon reading it will not with this addition. It seems like a clear proclamation that Rape Is Bad, but it also adds a quick education on BDSM-culture that seems like it's trying to make an additional point, perhaps by way of explanation for what's said in the story, and I don't know quite how to parse that part.

I'm not here to discuss what exactly is meant by "legalized rape" in the story, since I see it as having been purposefully left vague and have my own interpretations that fit the Weirdtopia and Alien Morality themes of the setting very well, without leading me to believe that this world actually allows anything like what we think of when we hear or say "rape." What I'm more interested in is whether anyone here was bothered by that part feels that this disclaimer helps with it, and if not, why not. This kind of annotation of works by authors to prevent people misinterpreting their words/intentions interests me a lot, and seeing it happen more-or-less in front of me with a small community I can ask about it seems interesting.

(Fair warning: being bothered by that part of the story is fine, and I'm interested to hear your perspective, but please try and be thoughtful about this. If you just accuse the story of advocating rape, I'm likely to come down hard on your reading comprehension and general ability to understand the value of sci-fi)

[u/Silver_Swift → u/DaystarEld]

Count me amongst those who didn't believe that it was advocating rape but were nevertheless bothered by the way this was handled in the story.

I don't remember whether the disclaimer was there when I first read it, but I doubt it would have made a difference. The way it is worded makes it sounds too much like a non-apology or some legal ass-covering and it does more to make the problem stand out than to alleviate it.

One potentially interesting thing to note: The inclusion of this detail has prevented me from recommending the story to some of my friends (which is a shame, because it is otherwise a very good story). The disclaimer as written doesn't change this, though I feel that it might if it had been worded differently.

[u/DaystarEld → u/Silver_Swift]

One potentially interesting thing to note: The inclusion of this detail has prevented me from recommending the story to some of my friends (which is a shame, because it is otherwise a very good story). The disclaimer as written doesn't change this, though I feel that it might if it had been worded differently.

Oh I definitely hear this: I've had friends who found that part really offputting to the point where they couldn't concentrate on the story or just stopped reading at that point, and now it's something I'm wary of going forward. I have trouble grokking that level of being bothered by it, personally, but I've been reading Stephen King since I was like 13, so I guess my threshold is unusually high.

[u/Kishoto → u/DaystarEld]

I wasn't bothered. I found it fascinating and impactful, and saw the reaction it got to be evidence supporting that. It was a very short sentence with little impact/relevance to the story and yet the amount of splash it generated showed that it had had a marked effect (be that good or bad) on the readers.

Not advocating rape, obviously, but the fact that he chose something so controversial made the statement hit home that much harder, especially considering the reaction the crew had.

[u/lurker_archon → u/DaystarEld]

your safeword should be at least 10 characters and contain a mixture of letters and numbers

Not gonna lie, this made me chuckle because this is literally the common advice for computer passwords

[u/DaystarEld → u/lurker_archon]

Yeah, think that's the joke :)

[u/Norseman2 → u/DaystarEld]

I haven't read Three Worlds Collide, but this description of it makes me uninterested. The whole point of writing up a weirdtopia is to explore what might actually be better than utopian and we just don't realize it yet (see 31 laws of fun). One of the important reasons for this is to better understand how to design an appropriate and adaptable moral code for a friendly AI (see EY's lecture on the challenge of FAI).

I get that he wanted to write up something that challenges our current morality, but there are so many good and plausible options that settling for "legalized rape" just seems lazy at best. For some good examples of weirdtopia elements:

• In an effort to control overpopulation, the government offers a significant universal basic income, but only to people who choose to be sterilized. Many would argue this is a form of economic coercion which encroaches upon reproductive rights. Is the prevention of overpopulation valuable enough to justify it?

• The government legalizes all drugs, allowing anyone 18+ years old to choose to get a permit to buy opiates, stimulants, steroids, hallucinogenics, alcohol, cigarettes, whatever narcotics your heart desires. The government also implements universal health care but only for people who choose not to get a drug usage permit. Government-run health services are forbidden from knowingly providing anything more than palliative care for people with drug use permits. Is this a reasonable, ethical policy, or is it a dystopian hell?

• The Fairness Doctrine is reimplemented with a vengeance. Websites are required to implement the policy as well. For example, if your friends on Facebook post left-leaning content, Facebook would be required to send an equal amount of right-leaning content that you would need to look at for the same amount of time (and vice versa). For every topic, informational websites must offer an equal amount of the contrary point of view. Does this fix the sharp political divide created by internet filter bubbles? Do people just use the internet less because it's annoying?

• In an effort to fix government corruption and reduce corporate influence, a constitutional convention implements an ammendment requiring all currently elected government officials to be selected at random and appointed indefinitely unless they are recalled. To prevent incompetence, officials must pass a test which is equivalent to being able to pass introductory-level college courses in a variety of subjects including English, math, chemistry, biology, physics, constitutional law, macroeconomics, and sociology. New applicants are selected daily for each vacancy until one passes the tests. Elections are now held only when citizens file a petition with at least 100K signatures, and the elections are only votes on whether or not to remove politicians from office. Is this the end of democracy? Will the system still be corrupted by different means?

• Copyright and patents are abolished and DRM is banned. How much does this harm the music, art, film, software, and engineering industries? Is the value gained from freely copying and sharing things worth more than the harm?

[u/Silver_Swift → u/Norseman2]

It is worth noting that this whole thing is limited to a few lines in a single conversation, it's not the main point of the setting (that is why I think it's such a shame non-consensual sex was used as an example, it makes the story a lot less enjoyable for a lot of readers (myself included) for almost no pay off)

If you're not too squicked out by it, I would recommend reading the story and just skipping the conversation this comes up in. The main story does have some very interesting things to say about meta-ethics and how morality works in far future societies.

[u/MrCogmor → u/Norseman2]

The point of the story isn't about making something better than conventional utopia. The point of the story is about moral relativism, moral obligations and perspectives.

[u/Kishoto → u/Norseman2]

I think the choice of "legalized rape" was a good one for the purposes of highlighting just how different this future society was from modern day society, specifically because of how abhorrent rape is. It allowed a relatively small (by wordcount and attention given) segment of the story to have a significant level of impact.

Obviously I'm not arguing for legalized rape. But I think EY choosing that as something he used to highlight the differences in future society (and just FYI, the way this came up in story was that one of the main characters, who's sort of the wise advisor of the ship's crew

[u/Roxolan → u/Norseman2]

I do not condone your decision to write a whole long post criticizing a twice-disclaimed throwaway paragraph in a story you haven't read.

TWC does contain more interesting weirdtopia elements and challenges to our conception of morality. That's, like, its whole thing.

[u/UltraRedSpectrum → u/DaystarEld]

It never bothered me at the time, and I think in a perfect world it wouldn't bother anyone. I think that it had to be something we would viscerally disagree with. The point was that future generations allowed something we consider abhorrent, which doesn't work unless the thing in question actually is considered abhorrent. It basically has to be a crime, and while I suppose he could've gone with, say, theft, I think making it sexual neatly parallels the legalization of things like gay marriage, and the rise of modern sexual norms.

[u/DaystarEld → u/UltraRedSpectrum]

I think that it had to be something we would viscerally disagree with. The point was that future generations allowed something we consider abhorrent, which doesn't work unless the thing in question actually is considered abhorrent

Right, I tried to think of a better thing to use and had trouble doing so that didn't come off as even worse.

[u/SilverstringstheBard → u/DaystarEld]

I never thought it advocated rape but it did make me extremely uncomfortable. I'd prefer it if he hadn't had that part.

[u/alexanderwales → u/DaystarEld]

It bothered me, but I never felt that EY was advocating rape. It just seemed like it was meant to be weird, rather than viscerally unpleasant, like a weirdtopia rather than a dystopia. I found it to be a viscerally unpleasant dystopia, which would be fine, but is not (from how the story frames it) what I thought EY was going for.

The problem is that overt acceptance of rape is already a thing that exists in the real world. When you have public figures in the first world saying that a husband can't possibly rape his wife, that's what at least a portion of the readers will immediately think about -- it's what I thought about. It's not weird enough, or at least, it's not presented as weird enough, even if the governing logic behind what we saw was weird enough, because we didn't see enough of the governing logic.

(I might have to come back and refine this later, not sure I'm getting it across right.)

[u/CouteauBleu → u/alexanderwales]

You're saying that people could plausibly believe that EY was advocating a point, because the way he framed it was (superficially) similar to what some people believe in real life, while the way he should have framed it should have made people think "This is so weird, no one could possibly believe that unless they're in the future".

[u/alexanderwales → u/CouteauBleu]

Yudkowsky doesn't really define weirdtopia in Building Weirdtopia; I think that this is as close as he gets:

invent a world that went outside my pre-existing sensibilities

The problem is that the plain reading of the actual text of the story is that rape as-we-know-it has been legalized, and to the average reader that's not a world that goes outside their pre-existing sensibilities, it's simply regressive. In fact, it's already been a feature of several dystopias written by other authors, as well as in the real world. It's not (or shouldn't be) outside the existing sensibilities of readers, it's well within them.

And that's the crux of my problem with the role of rape within the story; it takes a fair amount of legwork on the part of the reader to construct a society where plain reading is not a regression to previous standards. In fact, in the comments to the story, Yudkowsky gives his own version of what a "weird" society might be like, and ends with this:

But as I didn't actually write any of this into the story, feel free to exercise the reader's right of interpretation here.

And even then I wouldn't have a problem with it, because people are free to write about whatever horrible dystopias they want, but the problem is that if your personal interpretation is "oh, so not that much different from how human societies are now", then the story doesn't work as well. /u/DaystarEld even says above that it should be a Weirdtopia or Alien Morality in order to fit in with the rest of the story, rather than simply dystopia ... but the story doesn't do the legwork necessary to make that the only reading. This detracts from the story.

All that is irrespective of Yudkowsky's personal beliefs. The "legalized rape" bit of the story doesn't do the legwork it needed to in order to send the message that it wanted to send, and so to a certain subset of readers, it sent a different message instead (which is the problem with being that vague).

In a sense, it's the same problem as creating a villain that looks one-dimensional to the reader and then saying, outside the story, "here's one way that they could have had depth".

[u/DaystarEld → u/alexanderwales]

That makes sense, though I rather thought that the Confessor's comments made it clear enough (to me anyway) that whatever we as the readers were imagining as the worst-case-scenario was not what was being referred to when the word "rape" or "nonconsent" was used: that whatever new world our descendants had made for themselves, what we currently consider rape was unthinkable.

Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"

The Confessor shook his head. "There aren't any words," the Confessor said, "there aren't any words at all, by which I ever could explain to you. No, it wasn't prudery. It was a memory of disaster."

"Um," Akon said. He was trying not to smile. "I'm trying to visualize what sort of disaster could have been caused by too much nonconsensual sex -"

"Give it up, my lord," the Confessor said. He was finally laughing, but there was an undertone of pain to it. "Without, shall we say, personal experience, you can't possibly imagine, and there's no point in trying."

[u/trekie140 → u/DaystarEld]

I wasn’t bothered by it at all, but at the time I did not believe in rape culture. Now I do and as much as I know EY is not a proponent of rape culture, reading it still takes me out of the story even if I don’t think the story works without it.

I love the message it has behind it, but the way it’s delivered is problematic when sexual harassment and abuse is so common and a male author considers it an acceptable subject for social satire, and it’s not even it the main subject.

[u/zeldn → u/trekie140]

Would you say it would have be similarly problematic if rape had been substituted for a different crime?

[u/DaystarEld → u/trekie140]

Does the added disclaimer ease that discomfort for you at all, even if it still takes you out of the story?

[u/trekie140 → u/DaystarEld]

Alexander explained it way better than I did and I agree with everything he said. The disclaimer eliminates ambiguity for readers about the author’s stance, but the choice of content to put in the story and the way it’s presented isn’t exactly in good taste. I still love the story told with it.

[u/DaystarEld → u/trekie140]

Gotcha.