Ratfic typically thinks of improving the world as a selection problem. Selecting a better world from the space of possible worlds is neat and elegant and lets you solve all problems at once. The only issue is that you need to gain absolute power first in order to be able to select the future you want.
Whereas you can also think about improving the world as a control problem, where you’re gradually nudging the world towards being better. This is less narratively satisfying when you’re a highly systematizing thinker, because you want to be able to identify the single root problem and take it out in one fell swoop (the same style of thinking that the communists were doing). But it’s much more robust when you’re in a world full of other people all of whom are also trying to exert influence.
IIRC none of Harry in HPMoR, Aaron in Unsong or Naruto in Waves Arisen actually meaningfully improved the world before taking it over—if anything, they mostly made it worse.
(Harder to evaluate this for the r!Animorphs or Keltham, because they were operating in such adversarial environments. And I don’t remember Worth the Candle well enough to say one way or the other.)
Another way of putting this is in terms of the distinction between two types of optimization: selection and control.
Ratfic typically thinks of improving the world as a selection problem. Selecting a better world from the space of possible worlds is neat and elegant and lets you solve all problems at once. The only issue is that you need to gain absolute power first in order to be able to select the future you want.
Whereas you can also think about improving the world as a control problem, where you’re gradually nudging the world towards being better. This is less narratively satisfying when you’re a highly systematizing thinker, because you want to be able to identify the single root problem and take it out in one fell swoop (the same style of thinking that the communists were doing). But it’s much more robust when you’re in a world full of other people all of whom are also trying to exert influence.
IIRC none of Harry in HPMoR, Aaron in Unsong or Naruto in Waves Arisen actually meaningfully improved the world before taking it over—if anything, they mostly made it worse.
(Harder to evaluate this for the r!Animorphs or Keltham, because they were operating in such adversarial environments. And I don’t remember Worth the Candle well enough to say one way or the other.)
I think it’s… more like a wash? A lot of this depends on what you think about Anglecynn / its internal politics.