The Nonlinear Library LW - so you want to save the world? an account in paladinhood by Tamsin Leake
Nov 22, 2023
22:10
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: so you want to save the world? an account in paladinhood, published by Tamsin Leake on November 22, 2023 on LessWrong.
Aroden, who gave me the strength to be a holy warrior, give me also the wisdom to choose my fights wisely … and help me grow strong enough to save everyone, literally everyone, and do not let my strength come coupled with contempt for weakness, or my wisdom with contempt for foolishness … and look after everyone … in this strange country and in all the worlds You travelled to and any worlds You didn't.
And make Hell cease.
Iomedae, paladin of Aroden; from lintamande's glowfic "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die"
introduction.
a couple years ago, i was struggling to get myself to think abount alignment instead of making my video game and reading doujins. today, i find that my main remaining bottleneck to my dignity-point output is my physical stamina, and that i might make an actual significant difference to p(doom).
this post is about how i got there. it is told in the imperative tense, because i hope that this serves as advice; but be aware that the space of human minds is vastly diverse, even just within lesswrong rationalists, and what worked for me might not work for you. (that said, it doesn't look like there's very many people striving for paladinhood-or-similar out there.)
what's an iomedae?
(if you don't know what a glowfic is, maybe check out this review of yudkowsky and lintamande's glowfic, planecrash.)
in glowfics involving linta!golarion (lintamande's interpretation of golarion, the setting of the tabletop RPG pathfinder), iomedae is the lawful-good goddess of "defeating evil" - or, as lantalótë puts it:
Iomedae's a Good goddess but she's not the goddess of any of those. She's not a goddess of nice things. She's the goddess of prioritization, of looking at the world with all its horrors and saying 'There will be time enough for love and beauty and joy and family later. But first we must make the world safe for them.'
before ascending to godhood, iomedae was a paladin of Aroden, the god of civilization. various lintamande glowfics feature here in various setting, but "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die" in particular features her not long after she became a paladin, getting isekai'd in america and then adopted by child protective services, and trying to understand this strange world she's appeared in, and what it means for her to do good there.
(throughout this post, when i paste a quote without mentioning its source, its source will be that particular glowfic.)
what do i mean by "paladin"?
what linta!iomedae's paladinhood represents to me, is being willfully entirely devoted to doing what matters; to do whatever it takes to save the world. her paladinhood - that is, the thing of her being a paladin - is not a burden that she bears; it is what she wants to do, deep in her heart.
i would've cheerfully pressed a button that instantly transformed my mindset into that of iomedae; i reflectively endorsed becoming someone who does whatever it takes to save the world, even at very large costs to myself. but human brains are strange apparatus! we have no such button; if we want to change something in ourselves, we have to do a lot of hard work.
i find myself mostly on the other side of that hard work, now, satisfied with what i've become. it is immensely wasteful that i didn't go through this seven years earlier, when i first became familiar with the sequences and other rationalist work. but i don't dwell on it, because dwelling on it does not, in fact, help save the world.
(note that the notion of paladinhood is not one that i originally was aware of, when i decided to try hard to save the world. it is one that i learned after-the-fact, and thought it fit me well, as an aesthetic. my brain likes ae...
Aroden, who gave me the strength to be a holy warrior, give me also the wisdom to choose my fights wisely … and help me grow strong enough to save everyone, literally everyone, and do not let my strength come coupled with contempt for weakness, or my wisdom with contempt for foolishness … and look after everyone … in this strange country and in all the worlds You travelled to and any worlds You didn't.
And make Hell cease.
Iomedae, paladin of Aroden; from lintamande's glowfic "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die"
introduction.
a couple years ago, i was struggling to get myself to think abount alignment instead of making my video game and reading doujins. today, i find that my main remaining bottleneck to my dignity-point output is my physical stamina, and that i might make an actual significant difference to p(doom).
this post is about how i got there. it is told in the imperative tense, because i hope that this serves as advice; but be aware that the space of human minds is vastly diverse, even just within lesswrong rationalists, and what worked for me might not work for you. (that said, it doesn't look like there's very many people striving for paladinhood-or-similar out there.)
what's an iomedae?
(if you don't know what a glowfic is, maybe check out this review of yudkowsky and lintamande's glowfic, planecrash.)
in glowfics involving linta!golarion (lintamande's interpretation of golarion, the setting of the tabletop RPG pathfinder), iomedae is the lawful-good goddess of "defeating evil" - or, as lantalótë puts it:
Iomedae's a Good goddess but she's not the goddess of any of those. She's not a goddess of nice things. She's the goddess of prioritization, of looking at the world with all its horrors and saying 'There will be time enough for love and beauty and joy and family later. But first we must make the world safe for them.'
before ascending to godhood, iomedae was a paladin of Aroden, the god of civilization. various lintamande glowfics feature here in various setting, but "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die" in particular features her not long after she became a paladin, getting isekai'd in america and then adopted by child protective services, and trying to understand this strange world she's appeared in, and what it means for her to do good there.
(throughout this post, when i paste a quote without mentioning its source, its source will be that particular glowfic.)
what do i mean by "paladin"?
what linta!iomedae's paladinhood represents to me, is being willfully entirely devoted to doing what matters; to do whatever it takes to save the world. her paladinhood - that is, the thing of her being a paladin - is not a burden that she bears; it is what she wants to do, deep in her heart.
i would've cheerfully pressed a button that instantly transformed my mindset into that of iomedae; i reflectively endorsed becoming someone who does whatever it takes to save the world, even at very large costs to myself. but human brains are strange apparatus! we have no such button; if we want to change something in ourselves, we have to do a lot of hard work.
i find myself mostly on the other side of that hard work, now, satisfied with what i've become. it is immensely wasteful that i didn't go through this seven years earlier, when i first became familiar with the sequences and other rationalist work. but i don't dwell on it, because dwelling on it does not, in fact, help save the world.
(note that the notion of paladinhood is not one that i originally was aware of, when i decided to try hard to save the world. it is one that i learned after-the-fact, and thought it fit me well, as an aesthetic. my brain likes ae...