Interlude with the Confessor (4/8)

(Part 4 of 8 in "Three Worlds Collide")

The two of them were alone now, in the Conference Chair's Privilege, the huge private room of luxury more suited to a planet than to space.  The Privilege was tiled wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with a most excellent holo of the space surrounding them: the distant stars, the system's sun, the fleeing nova ashes, and the glowing ember of the dwarf star that had siphoned off hydrogen from the main sun until its surface had briefly ignited in a nova flash.  It was like falling through the void.

Akon sat on the edge of the four-poster bed in the center of the room, resting his head in his hands.  Weariness dulled him at the moment when he most needed his wits; it was always like that in crisis, but this was unusually bad.  Under the circumstances, he didn't dare snort a hit of caffeine - it might reorder his priorities.  Humanity had yet to discover the drug that was pure energy, that would improve your thinking without the slightest touch on your emotions and values.

"I don't know what to think," Akon said.

The Ship's Confessor was standing stately nearby, in full robes and hood of silver.  From beneath the hood came the formal response:  "What seems to be confusing you, my friend?"

"Did we go wrong?" Akon said.  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't keep the despair out of his voice.  "Did humanity go down the wrong path?"

The Confessor was silent a long time.

Akon waited.  This was why he couldn't have talked about the question with anyone else.  Only a Confessor would actually think before answering, if asked a question like that.

"I've often wondered that myself," the Confessor finally said, surprising Akon.  "There were so many choices, so many branchings in human history - what are the odds we got them all right?"

The hood turned away, angling in the direction of the Superhappy ship - though it was too far away to be visible, everyone on board the Impossible Possible World knew where it was.  "There are parts of your question I can't help you with, my lord.  Of all people on this ship, I might be most poorly suited to answer...  But you do understand, my lord, don't you, that neither the Babyeaters nor the Superhappies are evidence that we went wrong?  If you weren't worried before, you shouldn't be any more worried now.  The Babyeaters strive to do the baby-eating thing to do, the Superhappies output the Super Happy thing to do.  None of that tells us anything about the right thing to do.  They are not asking the same question we are - no matter what word of their language the translator links to our 'should'.  If you're confused at all about that, my lord, I might be able to clear it up."

"I know the theory," Akon said.  Exhaustion in his voice.  "They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world.  Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own scruples."  Akon slumped a little further.  "And somehow - none of that really makes a difference when you're looking at the Lady 3rd, and wondering why, when there's a ten-year-old with a broken finger in front of you, screaming and crying, we humans only partially numb the area."

The Confessor's hood turned back to look at Akon.  "You do realize that your brain is literally hardwired to generate error signals when it sees other human-shaped objects stating a different opinion from yourself.  You do realize that, my lord?"

"I know," Akon said.  "That, too, we are taught.  Unfortunately, I am also just now realizing that I've only been going along with society all my life, and that I never thought the matter through for myself, until now."

A sigh came from that hood.  "Well... would you prefer a life entirely free of pain and sorrow, having sex all day long?"

"Not... really," Akon said.

The shoulders of the robe shrugged.  "You have judged.  What else is there?"

Akon stared straight at that anonymizing robe, the hood containing a holo of dark mist, a shadow that always obscured the face inside.  The voice was also anonymized - altered slightly, not in any obtrusive way, but you wouldn't know your own Confessor to hear him speak.  Akon had no idea who the Confessor might be, outside that robe.  There were rumors of Confessors who had somehow arranged to be seen in the company of their own secret identity...

Akon drew a breath.  "You said that you, of all people, could not say whether humanity had gone down the wrong path.  The simple fact of being a Confessor should have no bearing on that; rationalists are also human.  And you told the Lady 3rd that you were too old to make decisions for your species.  Just how old are you... honorable ancestor?"

There was a silence.

It didn't last long.

As though the decision had already been foreseen, premade and preplanned, the Confessor's hands moved easily upward and drew back the hood - revealing an unblended face, strangely colored skin and shockingly distinctive features.  A face out of forgotten history, which could only have come from a time before the genetic mixing of the 21st century, untouched by DNA insertion or diaspora.

Even though Akon had been half-expecting it, he still gasped out loud.  Less than one in a million:  That was the percentage of the current human population that had been born on Earth before the invention of antiagathics or star travel, five hundred years ago.

"Congratulations on your guess," the Confessor said.  The unaltered voice was only slightly different; but it was stronger, more masculine.

"Then you were there," Akon said.  He felt almost breathless, and tried not to show it.  "You were alive - all the way back in the days of the initial biotech revolution!  That would have been when humanity first debated whether to go down the Super Happy path."

The Confessor nodded.

"Which side did you argue?"

The Confessor's face froze for a moment, and then he emitted a brief chuckle, one short laugh.  "You have entirely the wrong idea about how things were done, back then.  I suppose it's natural."

"I don't understand," Akon said.

"And there are no words that I can speak to make you understand.  It is beyond your imagining.  But you should not imagine that a violent thief whose closest approach to industry was selling uncertified hard drugs - you should not imagine, my lord, my honorable descendant, that I was ever asked to take sides."

Akon's eyes slid away from the hot gaze of the unmixed man; there was something wrong about the thread of anger still there in the memory after five hundred years.

"But time passed," the Confessor said, "time moved forward, and things changed."  The eyes were no longer focused on Akon, looking now at something far away.  "There was an old saying, to the effect that while someone with a single bee sting will pay much for a remedy, to someone with five bee stings, removing just one sting seems less attractive.  That was humanity in the ancient days.  There was so much wrong with the world that the small resources of altruism were splintered among ten thousand urgent charities, and none of it ever seemed to go anywhere.  And yet... and yet..."

"There was a threshold crossed somewhere," said the Confessor, "without a single apocalypse to mark it.  Fewer wars.  Less starvation.  Better technology.  The economy kept growing.  People had more resource to spare for charity, and the altruists had fewer and fewer causes to choose from.  They came even to me, in my time, and rescued me.  Earth cleaned itself up, and whenever something threatened to go drastically wrong again, the whole attention of the planet turned in that direction and took care of it.  Humanity finally got its act together."

The Confessor worked his jaws as if there were something stuck in his throat.  "I doubt you can even imagine, my honorable descendant, just how much of an impossible dream that once was.  But I will not call this path mistaken."

"No, I can't imagine," Akon said quietly.  "I once tried to read some of the pre-Dawn Net.  I thought I wanted to know, I really did, but I - just couldn't handle it.  I doubt anyone on this ship can handle it except you.  Honorable ancestor, shouldn't we be asking you how to deal with the Babyeaters and the Superhappies?  You are the only one here who's ever dealt with that level of emergency."

"No," said the Confessor, like an absolute order handed down from outside the universe.  "You are the world that we wanted to create.  Though I can't say we.  That is just a distortion of memory, a romantic gloss on history fading into mist.  I wasn't one of the dreamers, back then.  I was just wrapped up in my private blanket of hurt.  But if my pain meant anything, Akon, it is as part of the long price of a better world than that one.  If you look back at ancient Earth, and are horrified - then that means it was all for something, don't you see?  You are the beautiful and shining children, and this is your world, and you are the ones who must decide what to do with it now."

Akon started to speak, to demur -

The Confessor held up a hand.  "I mean it, my lord Akon.  It is not polite idealism.  We ancients can't steer.  We remember too much disaster.  We're too cautious to dare the bold path forward.  Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"

Akon wasn't sure whether to smile or grimace.  "The Prohibition, right?  During the first century pre-Net?  I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books.  I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -"

"You need a history refresher, my Lord Administrator.  At some suitably abstract level.  What I'm trying to tell you - and this is not public knowledge - is that we nearly tried to overthrow your government."

"What?" said Akon.  "The Confessors?"

"No, us.  The ones who remembered the ancient world.  Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees.  When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong."

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."

"Well, out of curiosity - how much did you lose?"

The Confessor seemed to freeze, for a moment.  "What?"

"How much did you lose in the legislative prediction markets, betting on whatever dreadful outcome you thought would happen?"

"You really wouldn't ever understand," the Confessor said.  His smile was entirely real, now.  "But now you know, don't you?  You know, after speaking to me, that I can't ever be allowed to make decisions for humankind."

Akon hesitated.  It was odd... he did know, on some gut level.  And he couldn't have explained on any verbal level why.  Just - that hint of wrongness.

"So now you know," the Confessor repeated.  "And because we do remember so much disaster - and because it is a profession that benefits from being five hundred years old - many of us became Confessors.  Being the voice of pessimism comes easily to us, and few indeed are those among the human kind who must rationally be nudged upward...  We advise, but do not lead.  Debate, but do not decide.  We're going along for your ride, and trying not to be too shocked so that we can be almost as delighted as you.  You might find yourself in a similar situation in five hundred years... if humanity survives this week."

"Ah, yes," Akon said dryly.  "The aliens.  The current problem of discourse."

"Yes.  Have you had any thoughts on the subject?"

"Only that I really do wish that humanity had been alone in the universe."  Akon's hand suddenly formed a fist and smashed hard against the bed.  "Fuck it!  I know how the Superhappies felt when they discovered that we and the Babyeaters hadn't 'repaired ourselves'.  You understand what this implies about what the rest of the universe looks like, statistically speaking?  Even if it's just a sample of two?  I'm sure that somewhere out there are likable neighbors.  Just as somewhere out there, if we go far enough through the infinite universe, there's a person who's an exact duplicate of me down to the atomic level.  But every other species we ever actually meet is probably going to be -"  Akon drew a breath.  "It wasn't supposed to be like this, damn it!  All three of our species have empathy, we have sympathy, we have a sense of fairness - the Babyeaters even tell stories like we do, they have art.  Shouldn't that be enough?  Wasn't that supposed to be enough?  But all it does is put us into enough of the same reference frame that we can be horrible by each others' standards."

"Don't take this the wrong way," the Confessor said, "but I'm glad that we ran across the Babyeaters."

Words stuck in Akon's throat.  "What?"

A half-smile twisted up one corner of the Confessor's face.  "Because if we hadn't run across the Babyeaters, we couldn't possibly rescue the babies, now could we?  Not knowing about their existence wouldn't mean they weren't there.  The Babyeater children would still exist.  They would still die in horrible agony.  We just wouldn't be able to help them.  If we didn't know it wouldn't be our fault, our responsibility - but that's not something you're supposed to optimize for."  The Confessor paused.  "Of course I understand how you feel.  But on this vessel I am humanity's token attempt at sanity, and it is my duty to think certain strange yet logical thoughts."

"And the Superhappies?" Akon said.  "The race with superior technology that may decide to exterminate us, or keep us in prison, or take our children away?  Is there any silver lining to that?"

"The Superhappies aren't so far from us," the Confessor said.  "We could have gone down the Super Happy path.  We nearly did - you might have trouble imagining just how attractive the absence of pain can sound, under certain circumstances.  In a sense, you could say that I tried to go down that path - though I wasn't a very competent neuroengineer.  If human nature had been only slightly different, we could easily have been within that attractor.  And the Super Happy civilization is not hateful to us, whatever we are to them.  That's good news at least, for how the rest of the universe might look."  The Confessor paused.  "And..."

"And?"

The Confessor's voice became harder.  "And the Superhappies will rescue the Babyeater children no matter what, I think, even if humanity should fail in the task.  Considering how many Babyeater children are dying, and in what pain - that could outweigh even our own extermination.  Shut up and multiply, as the saying goes."

"Oh, come on!" Akon said, too surprised to be shocked.  "If the Superhappies hadn't shown up, we would have - well, we would have done something about the Babyeaters, once we decided what.  We wouldn't have just let the, the -"

"Holocaust," the Confessor offered.

"Good word for it.  We wouldn't have just let the Holocaust go on."

"You would be astounded, my lord, at what human beings will just let go on.  Do you realize the expenditure of capital, labor, maybe even human lives required to invade every part of the Babyeater civilization?  To trace out every part of their starline network, push our technological advantage to its limit to build faster ships that can hunt down every Babyeater ship that tries to flee?  Do you realize -"

"I'm sorry.  You are simply mistaken as a question of fact."  Boy, thought Akon, you don't often get to say that to a Confessor.  "This is not your birth era, honorable ancestor.  We are the humanity that has its shit together.  If the Superhappies had never come along, humanity would have done whatever it took to rescue the Babyeater children.  You saw the Lord Pilot, the Lady Sensory; they were ready to secede from civilization if that's what it took to get the job done.  And that, honorable ancestor, is how most people would react."

"For a moment," said the Confessor.  "In the moment of first hearing the news.  When talk was cheap.  When they hadn't yet visualized the costs.  But once they did, there would be an uneasy pause, while everyone waited to see if someone else might act first.  And faster than you imagine possible, people would adjust to that state of affairs.  It would no longer sound quite so shocking as it did at first.  Babyeater children are dying horrible, agonizing deaths in their parents' stomachs?  Deplorable, of course, but things have always been that way.  It would no longer be news.  It would all be part of the plan."

"Are you high on something?" Akon said.  It wasn't the most polite way he could have phrased it, but he couldn't help himself.

The Confessor's voice was as cold and hard as an iron sun, after the universe had burned down to embers.  "Innocent youth, when you have watched your older brother beaten almost to death before your eyes, and seen how little the police investigate - when you have watched all four of your grandparents wither away like rotten fruit and cease to exist, while you spoke not one word of protest because you thought it was normal - then you may speak to me of what human beings will tolerate."

"I don't believe we would do that," Akon said as mildly as possible.

"Then you fail as a rationalist," the Confessor said.  His unhooded head turned toward the false walls, to look out at the accurately represented stars.  "But I - I will not fail again."

"Well, you're damn right about one thing," Akon said.  He was too exhausted to be tactful.  "You can't ever be allowed to make decisions for the human species."

"I know.  Believe me, I know.  Only youth can Administrate.  That is the pact of immortality."

Akon stood up from the bed.  "Thank you, Confessor.  You have helped me."

With an easy, practiced motion, the Confessor slid the hood of his robe over his head, and the stark features vanished into shadow.  "I have?" the Confessor said, and his recloaked voice sounded strangely mild, after that earlier masculine power.  "How?"

Akon shrugged.  He didn't think he could put it into words.  It had something to do with the terrible vast sweep of Time across the centuries, and so much true change that had already happened, deeper by far than anything he had witnessed in his own lifetime; the requirement of courage to face the future, and the sacrifices that had been made for it; and that not everyone had been saved, once upon a time.

"I guess you reminded me," Akon said, "that you can't always get everything you want."

To be continued...

Comments

[Oskar]

Righteousness is so ugly.

I say we exterminate all other lifeforms on earth cause the "eat or get eaten" thingy is so cruel.

[Kaj Sotala]

Legalized rape?

Weirdtopia, alright.

[Aleksei Riikonen]

One arrangement that would make legalizing rape just fine would be having very good security almost everywhere. Maybe everyone has the option to carry a little personal security-bot in their pocket, and that bot is very effective in repelling all attacks on the person.

So rape is legal, but so is defending against it, and everyone is able to defend themselves unless they've opted out of it. And certainly some people would find "risky dating" exciting and nice. Perhaps even a majority of the population, once they've lived long enough in a world quite different from ours in it's safety, luxuriousness and overflowing supply of nice guys. Rape might not feel like the current meaning of the word in such a society; they would have difficulty understanding our meaning of the word, and indeed would have no real use for such a concept. (And let us also separate non-consensual physical damage or severe pain from their concept of rape. One assumes these things would still be illegal.)

[Martin]

Just being able to read and understand this story made reading OB worthwhile.

I"m longing for the other half!

Martin

[steven]

Well... would you prefer a life entirely free of pain and sorrow, having sex all day long?

False dilemma.

[Martin]

> Well... would you prefer a life entirely free of pain and sorrow, having sex all day long?
I would prefer to life painfree and healthy, having sex as often as i want to.
Its not another job to fullfill, but a pleasant leisure activity.

Martin

[Jon R]

I gotta say, Eliezar, you're doing a good job of making the alternatives look worse than religion. And I say this as a guy who drifted away from religion because he could find no rational reason to believe in the existence of the deity.

[Rudd-O]

Tho those who hinted at "legalized rape": READ AGAIN. You seem not to have understood that the abolition of the law carried with it free retaliation against rapists and prediction markets that surely ended up influencing the incidence of rape.

Jeez, I dunno how that zinged past you.

[Rudd-O]

BTW, Eliezer: man, come on, don't keep us waiting for the next part!

[Thom Blake]

Rudd-O,

That's not the idea I'm getting at all (free retaliation, etc). It seems more to me that these people can't imagine intentionally hurting or being distrustful of each other, and so when they say 'rape', think 'tickle fight'.

[Catperson of either sex]

"You seem not to have understood that the abolition of the law carried with it free retaliation against rapists"

This is nowhere to be found in the story.

[Catperson of either sex]

...though having said that, I do see how a casual reading might give that idea. The problem is clearly the clause "take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far". I think that line should be rewritten to rule out the wrong interpretation.

That is, assuming it's not me who has the wrong interpretation, but I'm fairly confident I got it right. As I understood it, it should read like this:

I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe [from non-consensual sex] because she couldn't take matters into her own hands [by forcing you to have sex] if you went a little too far [with your flirting]"

"You need a history refresher, my Lord Administrator [because that's nothing like what non-consensual was, back in those days].

...is that the reading that was intended?

[ad]

"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 -"

Akon obviously does not regard the idea of nonconsensual sex with much distaste. So why would he want it banned?

I think the important question is: Why does he not regard the idea of nonconsensual sex with much distaste?

(I can't help but think of The Forever War, where military custom and law require consent to any request for sex.)

[spriteless]

So it's only sex if both people climax, and since guys have less control over their reflex they are the ones to get raped? Maybe both genders can get raped, and naturally he was just thinking of his own problems wit it. In fact, the oddest thing isn't that rape is legal, but that he imagines noone broke laws.

[Chad]

Catperson: I agree with your reading.

Additionally, it seems Akon is unaware of the historic asymmetry of gender roles in non-consensual sex.

Either that, or in this impossible possible world there was a reversal from our present gender dynamics at some point in the past.

[Rolf Andreassen]

Akon seems to be assuming that a male cannot possibly initiate sex, in this sentence:

I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -

That suggests some sort of genetic editing. Perhaps they've left the male sex drive in place, so 'rape' is not actually going to be very unpleasant, but given the females a perfect defense, or a consciously-controlled pheromone that must be on for the male to get an erection, or something of this nature.

[Catperson of either sex]

Rolf: Perhaps they've [...] given the females a perfect defense

I think you're trying too hard to make it "acceptable". It's common currency in transhumanist circles that - even if all goes well - the future will almost certainly contain some things that we would find shocking. But your suggestion would mean it's not really shocking.

What I'm taking from it is that, in this imaginary future society, there is non-consensual sex that - for one reason or another - is not unpleasant.

[Rolf Andreassen]

Again, though, it does not seem to occur to Akon that he might be the one to initiate the sex. To me this indicates some heavy editing of the male psyche or sexual response.

A further point: The scenario Akon describes doesn't actually seem all that nonconsensual to me, and also very unrealistic for an un-edited male human. (This is by no means a criticism; rather I'm impressed at the ability to show someone who thinks almost like a contemporary human, but not quite.) Who flirts with a woman with absolutely no plan to sleep with her if the opportunity is offered? I don't think un-edited humans act this way. I take no position on whether the editing is cultural or biological, but I do think that the Babyeaters and Superhappies are not the only aliens in this story.

[James Andrix]

Trying to wrap my head around this, I'll propose that this society has 'freedom of intercourse'. Stopping someone by force from having sex with you would be as improper as stopping them by force from talking to you, even if you didn't like it. Walking away might be acceptable but considered generally impolite. People who have nonconsenual sex frequently would be stigmatized and avoided as annoying people are today, but

Today nonconsenual sex is bundled with violence, fear of violence, and expectations of personal space. If the impossible possible culture is such that everyone expects their genitals to be part of the social space instead of their personal space, then no great sense of emotional violation will be felt even if the social interaction is unwanted.

They likely view the prohibition as just as shortsighted as we would view restrictions on 'free expression'.

Very good of Eliezer to let us identify with the humans before delivering further culture shocks. I suspect that the next installment will have further human weirdness.

[J. Hill]

Rolf, I flirt with women with no plan to sleep with them even if offered. Flirting can be fun in and of itself, not just as a means to sex.

My understanding is closer to Thom's, "when they say 'rape', think 'tickle fight'." Their 'rape' doesn't involve violence, and isn't considered a violation (it's more likely to be flattering).

In certain older cultures the phrase "If at first you don't succeed..." would be finished with "kill yourself" whereas now we "try again".

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Rolf, aside from an authorial intention to mildly soften the shock, in the context of the story you need not assume that males in general don't initiate sex. You need only assume that Akon is getting more himself out of being the recipient of nonconsensual sex or imagining himself so, than initiating / imagining initiation.

This is actually a pretty complicated Weirdtopia premise with an awful lot of implications, none of which we get to see here.

I confess that a hidden motive behind this in-passing conversation is that I have an entirely different story in progress where this is a central plot point, and I wanted to see to what degree I could get away with it. The fact that it's taken over the comments is not as good as I hoped, but neither was the reaction as bad as I feared. Albeit that in this case I was able to go to some length to insert the disclaimer that "rape" in their world just doesn't mean the same thing to them as it does to us, and that rape in our world is a very bad thing of which I disapprove; I wouldn't be able to do that, to the same degree, in the other story I was working on.

I'll also note that the premise I was working from is "the boundaries of consent around your sexual self have been redrawn in different places" not "the boundaries have been eliminated".

[Rolf Andreassen]

This is actually a pretty complicated Weirdtopia premise with an awful lot of implications, none of which we get to see here.

Of course; that's what makes it fun to speculate. :D I would love to see your story where this is explored more fully, though.

Speculation: A sufficiently powerful, well-trained mind might have the ability, the superpower if you like, of being able to follow the old advice about enjoying the inevitable. Or to phrase it differently, might be able to genuinely flip its state of consent in some circumstances, very quickly. There are lots of hardwirings in the human body that enable us to enjoy sex; a powerful mind might be able to engage those circuits swiftly.

Another possibility: When I was a child, we played card games where the winner got to rap the loser over the knuckles with the deck; if you lost a lot, you developed quite large sores on the knuckles. The danger of pain was part of the fun of the game. Akon seems to be referring to a somewhat similar concept. Perhaps, if he is powerful enough to regard a rape as we regarded a rap over the knuckles, the game would be - the phrase has relevant origins - worth the candle, for him, even if the rape actually was quite unpleasant. Again, this relies on having a really stable, powerful mind that does not react to rape as contemporary humans do, with crippling feelings of invasion and shame.

Possible inconsistency: Akon is not troubled by the thought of nonconsensual sex, but in the previous installment he seemed rather bothered by being cyber-raped - nonconsensual sex by proxy, presumably. Maybe because he does not get the fun of being there himself?

[Michael E Sullivan]

Eliezer Y: The fact that it's taken over the comments is not as good as I hoped, but neither was the reaction as bad as I feared.

Heh, well, I will (perhaps?) make the reaction worse. It is interesting what people choose to use as an example of what would be "shocking" but possibly/arguably better. I will note that this choice (non-consensual sex) is guaranteed to make a lot of women uncomfortable to the point where they may, pretty justifiably, have difficulty responding in an unemotional, bayesian manner to it as a purely hypothetical premise. But I don't see your typical white male geek having quite the same problem, even if it is still shocking to us.

I'm pretty sure it would be possible to find a premise where it would work the opposite way (women would be shocked, but mostly capable of discussing the ramifications as rationally as humans tend to, while men would have a lot of difficulty holding even to that weak standard), but oddly, I've seen a few of these ventures on blogs (I don't mean to imply that this is the whole point of your story, which is very interesting, and I look forward to the next installments), yet I've never seen a guy come up with such a suggestion when the time comes to hypothetically discuss things that might shock people horribly. Just a thought.

I'm not saying that I think you should make it your business to be avowedly feminist, but it might be useful to observe the difference in reactions, and it's worth considering the ways in which your (and other reader's) gender influences their response to that part of this story. I see that no identified women have commented in this part of the discussion yet. Of course, there are few enough regular female identified commenters here that it could be random.

[Nanani]

@Micheal>
You expect women to be shocked?
You may want to google some common female fantasies...

- a female

[mcow]

I didn't realize that the mention of Akon worrying about his lipstick was going to be so important. I really like how subtly the (at least partial) reversal of sexual roles is implied here.

[Julian Morrison]

Eliezer, I'd be wary of drawing too many conclusions from people's reaction. We're primed to hear you say weird stuff. And of course it took over the comments! It's a poke in a taboo with a thermonuclear level of affective charge, much easier to respond to than hard moral questions, and in stark contrast to an otherwise downbeat but worthy dialogue on compassion fatigue. (Which worked by the way - it snapped me at least into noticing how much I make excuses.)

[Zubon]

Any chance to turn the topic to sex and relationships will consume the comments. A surprising number of OB threads have turned into discussions of pick-up artists.

[Brian 2]

A surprising number of OB threads have turned into discussions of pick-up artists.

Well, they do epitomize "rational agents should win".

would you prefer a life entirely free of pain and sorrow, having sex all day long?

Depends on the specifics, but quite possibly. The Superhappies aren't wireheads, they're out exploring the universe and learning while being super happy. I could go for that.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Sullivan, making your male audience uncomfortable is as easy as inserting a male-male kiss.

Sexual fantasies of being raped tend to be readily distinguishable from real rape as we know it. Receiving oral sex is a lot more common in rape fantasy than in rape (though (obvious disclaimer) it could certainly be part of a real rape).

But building a Weirdtopia around "nonconsensual lovemaking" or "risky dating" isn't as simple as substituting rape fantasy for rape, because the concept of "rape" isn't just about the danger of death or damage. It's about violation of a boundary of consent that you draw around your sexual persona. (To see the potential independence, consider having a naked photo of yourself posted to the Internet against your will.)

Even the most extreme sort of rape fantasy - the sort I once read a woman describe as "carrying through to where he finally spits on me and walks away" - is still, in some sense, under the control of the fantasizer; you're choosing to imagine it.

And this will, to some degree or other, be different for women than for men; maintaining/losing control of your sexuality on this deeper level is going to tap into female drives more strongly than male drives, for all the obvious reasons of evolutionary psychology.

The main scenario I was worried about was that women would read the story and assume I didn't know about that part; I did think I managed to signal that I'm aware of the basics of rape fantasy (as opposed to just supposing that men had free sexual access to everything).

At the same time, 21st-century Western males are shocked by the idea of rape because it violates cultural assumptions about gentlemanly conduct and the rules of how men compete among themselves for women; so another possibility I was wondering about is if, indeed, men would simply be more shocked by the whole idea than women. It just wasn't clear from the comments whether this was actually the case, or if my female readers were so offended as to not even bother commenting.

In terms of Weirdtopia, I was assuming "the boundaries of sexual consent have been withdrawn in different places" not "this part of human nature has been eliminated". Maybe you never kiss anyone without their consent - that's something that a lover freely withholds or gives, not necessarily only to a one true love, but still only to people chosen. So the psychological boundary is still there, the concept of consent is still there - it just doesn't apply to sexual intercourse, per se.

In this case, they really wouldn't have any concept analogous to our "rape" - beating someone up while kissing them? Attacking them, taking naked photos, and posting them to the Internet? And "beating someone up while having sex with them" would sound as strange to them, as "beating someone up while kissing them" does to us.

One similarly assumes that brothels are as common as restaurants and that nearly all citizens are rich enough to afford them, so that nonconsensual sex doesn't become about sexual access for those who don't have it. In fantasy-rape the rapist has to do most of the work, so if you just wanted sex, it would be easier to buy it.

In our own society, you can probably get away with slapping someone on the butt if they've been flirting with you. But doing it to a complete stranger with whom no current sexual tension exists, would be a wholly different matter. In the same sense, you could of course walk around wearing body armor to defend yourself from getting your butt slapped, but most people wouldn't. In our society, following a complete stranger for an hour through public spaces, would be very unusual and annoying, even though it wouldn't be at all surprising to do the same with someone whom you'd met only recently. We assume that having nonconsensual sex with a genuine random stranger would be at least that socially disreputable. Likewise, you should not be using lubricant or drugging the man to give him an erection, etcetera ad obvious.

The main remaining question is why Akon seems to think that women are at least somewhat likely to initiate nonconsensual sex. Physical disparities can be overcome by presuming that there's a standard 'risky dating' drug that can easily be slipped into someone's drink and which reduces muscular strength by 70%, or some such. But the last time I checked the statistics, it went something like "nearly all women and most men fantasize about being raped, but only half of men and nearly no women fantasize about initiating rape". This is another case where the distributions don't overlap well; a woman who wants a rape fantasy can with some work find a man with a fantasy of rape initiation, but the reverse case is a lot more difficult. Certainly women may often want to have sex with men who would refuse them if asked, but from there to fantasizing rape and finding the fantasy enjoyable is a different step. In Akon's world, I've been waving my magical wand and assuming this is something that can be overcome with the right cultural upbringing - giving girls the right role models - which may or may not be the case.

[Tangurena]

> the future will almost certainly contain some things that we would find shocking

I'm going to state this more forcefully: "the future will certainly contain things that we would find shocking."

One need only look to the past to see what moral fashions have changed. If you need a refresher on what offices were like less than 50 years ago, watch some episodes of Mad Men. During the dotBoom of the late 90s, I found drinking on the job (most software companies at that time - or at least the trendy ones - had soda machines or refrigerators stocked with not just free soda and juice, but free beer as well) to be shockingly unprofessional. I flunked several job interviews for stating it out loud.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

[Thomas]

How great is this story?

The encounter with aliens was enlightening for those humans. Just reading this fiction, is still very enlightening for humans!

That's the greatness of it.

[D. Alex]

The real problem with non-consentual sex is that the cute guys/girls would not be able to cope with all the attention...

"In America, a woman gets raped every five minutes. And she is not enjoing it!"

[Douglas Knight]

Tangurena,
Are you an old person from the era of Mad Men, shocked at the future of today, in which people drink on the job?
or vice versa?

[Tangurena]

Douglas, I first worked in the 70s, where the last of the unrepentant [jerks] from the era depicted by Mad Men were still controlling the workforce. And I'm a lot older than the youngsters who got all the bucks in the dotBoom. I saw was rampant alcohol consumption did in the workplace. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that each generation has to learn a number of painful lessons all over again.

[Doug S.]

Beer on the job at software companies?

I'm shocked, too, and I'm almost old enough to have worked at one of those places...

[Random Passerby]

James Andrix says: Trying to wrap my head around this, I'll propose that this society has 'freedom of intercourse'. Stopping someone by force from having sex with you would be as improper as stopping them by force from talking to you, even if you didn't like it. Walking away might be acceptable but considered generally impolite. People who have nonconsenual sex frequently would be stigmatized and avoided as annoying people are today, but

Today nonconsenual sex is bundled with violence, fear of violence, and expectations of personal space. If the impossible possible culture is such that everyone expects their genitals to be part of the social space instead of their personal space, then no great sense of emotional violation will be felt even if the social interaction is unwanted.

Like in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"?

[Random Passerby]

And this will, to some degree or other, be different for women than for men; maintaining/losing control of your sexuality on this deeper level is going to tap into female drives more strongly than male drives, for all the obvious reasons of evolutionary psychology.

BUAHAHAhahahahahaha! Did you wanna restate that, or are you going to let that stand as worded?