Re: realistic aliens and the necessities of storytelling

David Friedman wrote:
I mean, what if we're in a world where gods or their equivalent exist,
but they're pretty twisted, and a god has offered to divert the
asteroid only if you sacrifice several million babies and virgins on
an altar of blood. You can't just kill them, you have to do something
unspeakably nasty and lingering in the process.

Now what? Isn't the ease of answering this question different than
answering the question of whether to steal a gizmo and push a button?

Yes.

That was the point of my comment (in what you snipped) about it's not being a binary category, and of my "the more important the end is, the more willing .. to relax our ethical standards."

I think the way to make the god diverting the asteroid story compelling would be to make his godhood questionable, and have competing schools trying to solve the problem. One by murdering the babies, the other by stealing the god's thunder.

Bill

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