He is risen!

[ricketyclik]

I just go with being an earthling.

[I AM MOBIUS]

So glad I don't waste my time on this BS...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yes, you'd rather waste your time on worthwhile pursuits like posting on Apolyton

[I AM MOBIUS]

Busted!

[Kidlicious]

"I wonder if I have a purpose. ... Why am I wasting time when I could be on Apolyton?"
Moby

[I AM MOBIUS]

If I left poly, I could no longer laugh at you...

[Elok]

I haven't closely followed the TH community (it does exist) in a couple years. Yeah, there are people who talk about this kind of thing, but I can't really tell you much more than that. One of the things that gets talked about is the idea of yielding more and more of your will to autonomous agents that are only nominally under your control. The dystopian result there is eventually you won't have to make decisions about what you want because what you want will have already been provided for you by your agent before you even realized you wanted it. And this might not even be a sinister thing so much as a, like you say, paternalistic thing. Each step along the way toward this end is all about anticipating the wants of the end user, until the easiest way to do that is to simply create the wants of the end user by not even providing a choice.

That excerpt you read a couple of years back was me musing on this subject. The novel was aborted because it would have been too damn depressing even for me, and I wanted to break myself of the doom-and-gloom habit. By the by, are you still reworking LT&W, or parts thereof? And why not?

[Kidlicious]

If I left poly, I could no longer laugh at you...

Yes you could. Insane people laugh for no reason.

[Lorizael]

That excerpt you read a couple of years back was me musing on this subject. The novel was aborted because it would have been too damn depressing even for me, and I wanted to break myself of the doom-and-gloom habit. By the by, are you still reworking LT&W, or parts thereof? And why not?

I started a... something (novella, maybe?) about a year ago that was painfully self-referential and depressing. Didn't get very far with that. Haven't worked on LT&W in awhile. Busy with school and such. I'm in the thinking really hard phase of a couple new short stories, though.

[spambot]

Yes you could. Insane people laugh for no reason.

MOBIUS doesn't seem to think he's Napoleon, so we can rule out him being a stereotypical mentally ill person.