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I feel vaguely annoyed, I think it's because it took a lot of time to read through that, and it amounts to "bad to put child in solitary confinement to keep whole society happy."

What does a simplistic moral set piece about the abhorrence of sacrificing the good of one for the good of many have to do with (check notes) Facebook? Even as vague hand-wavey criticism, wouldn't Facebook would be the inverse?




You have every right to take what you like from it, but I'd suggest that perhaps you're not seeing what others are if all you get is a morality play. As one example, maybe spend some time thinking about why you apparently missed that it's intentionally left ambiguous as to whether the child is even real in the story's world.


A condescending lecture starting with "you just don't get it" ending with "I read your mind and know you missed the 'but was it even real?'" part isnt imparting anything useful.

Re: "actually you should just ponder why you are a simpleton who doesn't get it, given other people derived value from how it relates to Facebook": There arent people here running around praising it. The comment 4 up was, and still is downvoted well below 0, there's barely anyone reading all the way down here. Only one other person even bothered replying.

I don't think me mentioning this is useful or fair, but I don't know how to drive home how little contribution there is from a condescending "think harder, didn't you notice the crowd loves it and understands how it's just like Facebook"


You misread my comment, I wasn't trying to be condescending; a primary theme of the story (in my and many others' readings) is the limits of our ability to imagine different, better worlds than the one we exist in. We struggle to read the story as purely utopian, even when we are explicitly told to do so. It has more impact when you find this on your own, and I was trying to avoid spoilers.




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