mad investor chaos Carissa lands on Elie
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"I think we were arguing about Hell and how much torture goes on there and – do you think Asmodeus knows whether it's easier to make nice obedient slaves without torturing them? If it's true, he must. So why doesn't he stop?"

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"You know, Aspexia Rugatonn asked me that same question once. I think Asmodeus doesn't know all that much about humans, actually, and is very restricted in how much of His will he can communicate even down to the lower levels of Hell, and also approves of some of the effects of torture and may even directly value torture itself. But it'd still be absurdly useful to him to figure out how to make nice obedient slaves without torturing them!"

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"I'm not saying it wouldn't be, I – I'm not even sure where we disagree. You want him defeated. I want him defeated. Even if there's no torture involved, I don't think people should be slaves." 

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"I mean, most of them probably shouldn't.

I - think I probably shouldn't, if I get to pick."

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"May I ask you a personal question?"

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"Were the previous ones not?"

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"Oh, no, they were philosophical. The personal question is – how did you come to believe what you believe? I don't understand it at all. I've never met anyone who says they're an enemy of Asmodeus and talks about becoming a devil as being perfected and values being tortured and thinks some people should be slaves. Maybe we're just very provincial, here in Galt. But to me you're a very unusual heretic." 

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"A teaching of the project I was fond of is that when you are supposed to believe something, it is hard to notice if it's actually, in addition to being something you are supposed to believe, true. I - decided that probably mortals can do better, can build a better Civilization, than Asmodean Cheliax can. But - not because it was all a lie. There were lies, but - less lies than I might've thought? Abrogail and Aspexia are smart, they're doing something real, it's not lies and games all the way through. The problem Asmodeus is trying to solve with humans is real and hard. 

 

Also I met some people who really sincerely want to be slaves. Well. One person. And it's probably not literally just her."

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"I thought the problem Asmodeus was trying to solve with humans is that we have free will."

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"It's that he can't tell us what to do and have us do it. Free will is a way of describing that problem, I guess, maybe, sort of, but I think it's actually better to think about it without trying to look inside yourself for will or freedom or whatever. He can't tell us what to do and have us do it, even though of us who are trying to serve him. That's his problem."

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"I don't see why that makes it our problem. I don't want to be told what to do, or for other people to be obligated to do what I tell them. In a properly ordered society, we'd all just know enough to do what we think is right." 

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"Have you met an average person?"

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"...I assume wizard students don't count? My parents might have been. It's hard to say, I haven't spoken to them in years." 

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"I doubt they are, it's in the blood. Normal people are very stupid. Left to their own devices they make terrible choices."

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"So do clever people, in my experience." 

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"Then that's an even stronger argument. You shouldn't let people make their own decisions because they make awful ones."

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"There are worse things. I think we'd do better on the whole if we made our own bad decisions instead of other people making them for us."

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"Depends who was making them for us, I expect. I just think we can do better than Asmodeus."

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"No argument there. But – if making people who can reliably obey orders is a hard problem, and so is making people who can make good choices for themselves, I know which one I'd rather solve." 

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"You know I'd kind of be tempted by that perspective except the Chaotic afterlives all kinda suck. - which both means I personally don't want to go there, and I don't want to build a society that sends everyone there, and also on some level it makes me question the whole concept."

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"Do they? Elysium and the Maelstrom both sound alright to me, I think I'd be at least as happy with either as I would with Axis. Anyway, I'm not philosophically wedded to being Chaotic. It's not a government's place to determine what afterlife its citizens go to, just to provide an environment where they can become the sort of people who'll end up where they like." 

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- she sort of blinks at him, tiredly. "I don't think it's going to work out like you want."

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"Maybe. I'll settle for 'not one of the evil ones' and we can work out the specifics later." 

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"Not just the afterlives, the whole project."

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"Well, we'll have to try it and see." 

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