Your analogy seems a bit skewed because on the scale “how much of a world takeover is this?”, “gaining the ability to unilaterally destroy the world” scores much higher than merely “gaining nukes”. If becoming a nuclear power let you unilaterally destroy the world, the US would have tried much harder to limit their spread!
It seems more like “a small powerless country seizes the USSR’s entire nuclear weapons stockpile (or creates an equivalently large one of their own) and tells everyone that they’ll cause nuclear armageddon unless their demands are satisfied”. Which is pretty world-takeover-adjacent even if it’s not exactly “taking over the world” in the classic sense.
(I’d also describe it as a central example of “gaining the power to design a new world order”, but not a central example of “gaining the power to design a new world order from scratch”.)
I think the existence of Hell is incredibly morally relevant and also very game-theoretically relevant too. I probably don’t need to elaborate on the morality side, but for the game theory: IIUC, Keltham really would prefer the universe be destroyed (with him in it!) than that Hell continue to exist. This is different from the stereotypical doomsday threat, which is made by someone who doesn’t actually want doomsday to happen but is hoping that other people will fear it even more and cave.
Yes, I agree. However, as I mentioned in my OP, I think that the prominence of Hell in stories like Unsong and Project Lawful is partly due to them functioning as plot devices to make taking over the world not just ethical but in fact morally obligatory.
Analogously, if a bunch of 19th-century Marxist fiction featured working conditions far harsher than any that existed in the real world, which compelled the heroes to launch a proletarian revolution, you wouldn’t just think “this makes total sense given the fictional premise”, you’d also think “the fictional premise was chosen to help the authors make the thing they already supported (and wanted to write about) seem morally good”.
And “take over the world for good reasons” was IIRC MIRI’s actual plan (hidden under the terminology “decisive strategic advantage” or “pivotal act” or similar).
Ok, but factory farms really do exist? And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call them hellish, or hells-on-earth.
And most of the beings that live in our civilization, depending on how you count, live and die in those factory farms.
So it seems that our world is not very different from that of Unsong or Project Lawful, in this respect? Even if the authors chose that setting for literary convenience, and it is only accidentally reflective of reality.
Your analogy seems a bit skewed because on the scale “how much of a world takeover is this?”, “gaining the ability to unilaterally destroy the world” scores much higher than merely “gaining nukes”. If becoming a nuclear power let you unilaterally destroy the world, the US would have tried much harder to limit their spread!
It seems more like “a small powerless country seizes the USSR’s entire nuclear weapons stockpile (or creates an equivalently large one of their own) and tells everyone that they’ll cause nuclear armageddon unless their demands are satisfied”. Which is pretty world-takeover-adjacent even if it’s not exactly “taking over the world” in the classic sense.
(I’d also describe it as a central example of “gaining the power to design a new world order”, but not a central example of “gaining the power to design a new world order from scratch”.)
I think the existence of Hell is incredibly morally relevant and also very game-theoretically relevant too. I probably don’t need to elaborate on the morality side, but for the game theory: IIUC, Keltham really would prefer the universe be destroyed (with him in it!) than that Hell continue to exist. This is different from the stereotypical doomsday threat, which is made by someone who doesn’t actually want doomsday to happen but is hoping that other people will fear it even more and cave.
Yes, I agree. However, as I mentioned in my OP, I think that the prominence of Hell in stories like Unsong and Project Lawful is partly due to them functioning as plot devices to make taking over the world not just ethical but in fact morally obligatory.
Analogously, if a bunch of 19th-century Marxist fiction featured working conditions far harsher than any that existed in the real world, which compelled the heroes to launch a proletarian revolution, you wouldn’t just think “this makes total sense given the fictional premise”, you’d also think “the fictional premise was chosen to help the authors make the thing they already supported (and wanted to write about) seem morally good”.
And “take over the world for good reasons” was IIRC MIRI’s actual plan (hidden under the terminology “decisive strategic advantage” or “pivotal act” or similar).
Ok, but factory farms really do exist? And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call them hellish, or hells-on-earth.
And most of the beings that live in our civilization, depending on how you count, live and die in those factory farms.
So it seems that our world is not very different from that of Unsong or Project Lawful, in this respect? Even if the authors chose that setting for literary convenience, and it is only accidentally reflective of reality.
Makes sense yeah.
Still though, I agree with Raemon’s characterization of the Planecrash story.