If you're talking to someone with a strong belief in fairness, telling them about social contracts seems useful. It reminds me, actually, of the best prisoner's dilemma strategy: cooperation, retaliation, and forgiveness.

If, however, you're talking to someone who likes splitting the Earth, the punk rock energy of telling god to go fuck himself, and rotating 4D objects in their mind for a laugh, telling them they can just accept the paradox as-is and invoke it on purpose seems just as well.

leads to people like Ayn Rand

Oh, speaking of Ayn Rand, have you read this? I love this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Oh, yeah; that's a good one. I've read sci-fi books that are almost this, but less obvious about it; Libertarian wet dreams. I mean, fair enough, there's plenty of communist fiction. But sometimes it gets a bit absurd.

One of my favorite all-time sci-fi trilogies is The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. And it's a sort of libertarian fantasy: übermensch against the forces of evil (which aren't socialists; it's not that kind of libertarian fantasy) who triumphs mainly by force of sheer will. Great books, and I think the ending is about the best I could imagine, because it inverts the entire libertarian message. The libertarian ideal society exists because The Gods allow it to. It's kind of like Anarchy Park in whichever Larry Niven book that was: anything goes, except violation of other's freedom, all enforced by all-mighty AI cops. It's such a funny caveat.

Incidentally, I didn't know about that Prisoners Dilemma strategy; thanks! I learned something new today.