From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Sep 14 1997 - 01:32:45 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> So just %%%% %%% %%%% %% about Nazis, okay?
I'm sorry, Pearson. I probably shouldn't have said that.
But please, PLEASE stop the lighthearted references to the Holocaust. I
visited the Holocaust Museum less than a month ago and I can't take this.
Your casual comparisions are a thousand times more obscene than any swear
words that ever existed. Swear words are nothing, violated taboos that make
people uncomfortable and can be used for shock value. That is *nothing*. The
Holocaust is obscene.
I'm sorry if I took out my anger on you, but it feels like you're mocking the
memory of something horrible beyond description. You were being more obscene
than any oath in history, and you didn't even know it.
That still doesn't excuse me trespassing whatever uncodified bounds of
civility everybody thinks we're obeying. So I apologize.
But STOP it! At least don't put it into the subject lines so I have to read
it over and over! However angry I got, I would never have sworn in the
subject line!
> "They motioned my mother to one line, and me to another. I was sent to
> another part of the camp, and when I asked where my mother was, they pointed
> to the smoke from the crematoriums, and that was when I found out my mother
> was dead."
>
> - Recorded voice of a survivor.
> From the Holocaust Museum's Permanent Exhibition.
I still can't write that or read it without tears coming to my eyes.
Please stop the Holocaust references. PLEASE.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
I'm telling you everything I know.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:53 MST