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"How does your - native morality-like system - handle tradeoffs?"

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"What do you mean?"

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"You could imagine a situation where conventional morality would pull in multiple directions - stealing to feed the hungry, or something - does yours do that?"

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"...not exactly. I can't think of a situation where everything I could possibly do would be wrong the way mercy is wrong."

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"I'm not sure I currently understand it well enough to make up my own examples, I assume something trivial like multiple possible targets it would be inconvenient to go after in parallel isn't a good one."

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"Yeah. I don't know, I've never tried to explain it to anyone before. And I think it might be different because... I'm not trying very hard to be the person I feel like I should be, I'm mostly trying to live my life without letting that person get in my way too badly. So as long as whatever I'm doing doesn't feel actively awful, I don't bother too much about whether it's better or worse by that measure than something else I could be doing instead."

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"So you're not optimizing on this metric, that's good."

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"If I was doing that, my empire would be a giant flaming mess, possibly literally."

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"And that would be undesirable on so many levels."

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"Yes!"

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"Are there - components of mercy, here?"

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"What do you mean?"

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"I mean, hm, you like torturing people but you don't require that they be unhappy about it even though that's the typical result, are there things that come apart like that here?"

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"Mm... maybe, but it's hard to say, I'm not used to thinking about it in - out-loud terms."

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"I'm really curious to hear about it if you ever come up with anything."

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"I'll let you know if I do."

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"Is mercy the only - unusual item, or was it just an example?"

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"Most of the problem is mercy. When I took all the elements and then killed my father to become Emperor, that was about - needing to seek power - but I've sought enough power by now, even if I found something else as big as self-dedicating all the elements I wouldn't feel like I had to take it. —that's also what I was talking about when I said that being Emperor is what things being important is for."

Thoughtful pause.

"I think if I couldn't be Emperor without having to do the work, I'd want to get out of it, but as it is I've got a solution that works and I don't see a reason to stop. And I would be so annoyed if I let someone else have a turn and they somehow managed to do a worse job than me, or even just do some particular thing wrong that I've learned not to..."

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Nod.

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Shrug.

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"Do you think you feel like you have enough power on a permanent basis or might it come up again someday?"

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"If it comes up it'll be something like 'something threatened the empire and I needed more power to deal with it', there'll be an actual practical reason, it won't just be that I wake up one day feeling like I should have two world-spanning empires or something like that."

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"Oh good."

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"Yeah."

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"Any other things?"

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