From: Richard Steven Hack (richardhack@pcmagic.net)
Date: Sat Mar 09 2002 - 18:29:46 MST
At 05:54 PM 3/9/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Personally, my own archetype for "comic-book depiction of fake genius" is
>Adrian Veidt, from "The Watchmen". As far as I can tell, the moral of your
>tale of Dr. Doom is the same as the moral of "The Watchmen": Comic-book
>characters are never any smarter than the authors, regardless of whether the
>other characters call them "geniuses", "supergeniuses", "the smartest man in
>the world", et cetera. If these characters had real intelligence on the
>remote order of that ascribed to them in the story, they would not need to
>resort to taking over the world in order to fix it. A competent world-fixer
>should be able to solve everything wrong with Earth using a medium-sized
>research project and no military force or political coercion.
>
>-- -- -- -- --
>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
>Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Well. he IS a villain - even if he was the hero in his own comic. And
there are obvious "morals" (or explanations) as to why and how he fails to
achieve his goals. My point was that his comments on nanotech were echoing
some of the posts here about what may happen should we fail to convince the
powers that be (or the population or whoever) that Transhumanism is a
positive thing. The writers of Doom 2099 were apparently wannabe
Situationists or leftists or liberals or whatever and they used Doom to
make a few political points. This is fairly rare in mainstream comics. I
also assume there was an artistic point to it - I wouldn't venture what.
But Doom is one of my role models in life - not entirely, of course (he IS
a villain and a tyrant) - but like a hell of a lot of Marvel comic readers,
he is very well liked for his positive qualities. In fact, in this series,
the writers gave him more positive qualities than he has ever exhibited
before in the near forty years of his literary existence.
It's like Hannibal Lector - does anyone doubt that Thomas Harris *likes*
Hannibal Lector? The man is the hero (contrary to Jodie's belief that
Clarice is the hero) of three of Harris' novels. Most people don't seem to
realize that Harris is writing *satire*, not thrillers. Look at his
nominal heros - an FBI agent who is so good at catching serial killers
because he thinks like they do, and a female FBI agent with an obsession to
save women because of a childhood trauma. If you read "Silence", Clarice
is a "Fed bitch" with virtually no redeeming qualities except her
ambition. By "Hannibal", she has mutated (due to Foster's vulnerable
performance) into someone who can ensnare Hannibal himself. If you read
"Hannibal" closely and know something about Foster's life, it seems evident
that Harris used a lot of that to flesh out Clarice in more appealing terms
than he did in the first book. But *Lector* is the hero in all three books.
Richard Steven Hack
richardhack@pcmagic.net
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