Two teens in Salt Lake City have abandoned their Mormon heritage, turning to punk-rock and nihilism after being orphaned.
They resolve to help others who may be trapped in religious upbringings by undermining current religious institutions. They decide on the Catholic church as their target. Being teenage punks, their null hypothesis is violence, and decide to assassinate the pope. However they have also seen the evil overlord list and are exposed along the way to TVTropes. They begin taking the idea of rationality further, and as the series progresses develop more nuanced positions and complex plans.
For example, they decide that military technology would be more effective than assassination by hand, but being unwilling to join the draft they enroll in the University of Utah to study mechanical engineering. They are introduced to a military scientist who is in the process of disarming missiles to comply with a new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia.
After several crackpot plans, they decide that becoming friends is the best way to discover whether he can help them.
As time goes on they get more conservative in their actions, though they continue to conspire about assassinating the pope. By the end of the series they have transitioned into high-paying technical jobs and give their money to an effective professionally run charity, feeling confident that the pope will “die of a heart attack before we get around to it anyway.”
Two teens in Salt Lake City have abandoned their Mormon heritage, turning to punk-rock and nihilism after being orphaned.
They resolve to help others who may be trapped in religious upbringings by undermining current religious institutions. They decide on the Catholic church as their target. Being teenage punks, their null hypothesis is violence, and decide to assassinate the pope. However they have also seen the evil overlord list and are exposed along the way to TVTropes. They begin taking the idea of rationality further, and as the series progresses develop more nuanced positions and complex plans.
For example, they decide that military technology would be more effective than assassination by hand, but being unwilling to join the draft they enroll in the University of Utah to study mechanical engineering. They are introduced to a military scientist who is in the process of disarming missiles to comply with a new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia. After several crackpot plans, they decide that becoming friends is the best way to discover whether he can help them.
As time goes on they get more conservative in their actions, though they continue to conspire about assassinating the pope. By the end of the series they have transitioned into high-paying technical jobs and give their money to an effective professionally run charity, feeling confident that the pope will “die of a heart attack before we get around to it anyway.”
Brilliant!