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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4281 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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The whole conceit of the "seldon crises" is that there's only one way out of them. Do you need a great man for that?

"No! Hari Seldon said in the Time Vault, that at each crisis our freedom of action would become circumscribed to the point where only one course of action was possible."

"So as to keep us on the straight and narrow?"

"So as to keep us from deviating, yes. But, conversely, as long as more than one course of action is possible, the crisis has not been reached. We must let things drift so long as we possibly can, and by space, that's what I intend doing."

Well there's always another way out: failure.

Sure, but you don't need a great man to see or execute the path to success. Seldon did not foresee Hardin and Hardin's untimely demise would not have mattered.

Sure, Asimov says that you don't, but from my memory of the events of the book, the level of wisdom/guts/foresight required to execute the specific plans that Hardin/Mallow pull off is pretty exceptional. Probably because it has to be to make the book interesting. You can say that someone else would have stepped up to the plate, but it's not believable based on what has to happen in the text.

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