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Exactly. Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron." > What I have a problem with is people trying to live forever as part of a Ch

Exactly. Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron." > What I have a problem with is people trying to live forever as part of a Chosen One script which involves them trying to carve up all of the world into the dead empires of a dystopian Great Game world run according to a totalizing script. I'm confident Tolkien would agree. I also think any evaluation of LoTR should take into account Tolkien's background as a veteran of the trenches in WWI. In 2025 America, maybe that makes LoTR seem less relevant to our world. To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit.

t-3 2y ago
> To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit. You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with, especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano? The black-and-white starkness of LotR is what makes it unfit for use as an analogy to the real world! There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing, even if it may be a comforting and inspiring story to tell ourselves.
- DennisP 2y ago
  Aside from the lack of convenient ring I'd say that sometimes it's quite a useful framing. To avoid derailing into politics I'll use Nazi Germany as another example.
  - t-3 2y ago
    Funny you bring them up, I was going to use them as an example but didn't want to Godwin. The Nazis had a black-and-white ideological viewpoint and seemed to believe themselves to be heroes fighting to save their people from evil Jews and their brainwashed minions. Do you see why those narratives are so dangerous now?
    - nathan_compton 2y ago
      I guess it strikes me as weird that we can't just say "Well, yes, 'both sides' thought they were right but in fact one (the Nazis) was wrong." To be sure, there are situations where there is some genuinely complicated moral situation. But that doesn't mean we have to pretend to be moral morons and sagely nod our heads and say "Yes, but Nazis thought they were right too, hmm, hmm."
      - t-3 2y ago
        You're not even wrong. No sane person has said we can't judge Nazis for what they did and believed. What we shouldn't do is set ourselves up to fall into the same trap by using binary narrative framings.
        squigz 2y ago
        Falling into the other trap of treating both sides of every conflict as equally valid is probably just as dangerous, no?
        t-3 2y ago
        We can start by not separating everything into two sides, one of which we must take. Look at each conflict as a whole rather than a sports game with a winner and a loser or a Good and an Evil or a My Team and Their Team. Maybe one side really is actually very bad and needs to be stopped. Maybe there are other ways.
        squigz 2y ago
        There are times when this is true and admirable - "us vs them" rhetoric in political discourse is indeed harmful and only serves to help those in power - but there are times when it's more dangerous to treat both sides as equally valid that we should both listen to - like when a superpower invades another country and wages a war for years.
      - xandrius 2y ago
- variaga 2y ago
  >> To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit. > You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with "The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate? ... I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter. 'I will ride with you', said Aragorn" -The Two Towers Seems like it fits to me...
- lolinder 2y ago
  > There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing This may or may not be true, but Ukraine vs. Putin is absolutely one of those times where it's 100% accurate and useful. Putin invaded Ukraine unprovoked, motivated by visions of restoring an empire to its former glory. He cannot be reasoned with, he cannot be appeased. The only hope that any of the formerly-occupied countries have is to defeat him, and any and all efforts to make the issue appear to be more grayscale than that will necessarily lead to disappointment and to further wars and bloodshed.
  - GMoromisato 2y ago
    While I agree with you that Ukraine vs. Putin is clear-cut, morally speaking, I don't think we can apply pre-Atomic Age logic to the situation. I just watched this scene in Crimson Tide: XO Hunter: "...I just think that in the nuclear world, the true enemy can't be destroyed." Captain Ramsey: "Attention on deck. Von Clausewitz will now tell us exactly who the real enemy is. Von?" XO Hunter: "In my humble opinion... in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself." I think that's the difference. In WWII, appeasing Hitler was a mistake because it only emboldened him. Even back then, Tolkien had reservations about how far to take the war. While he abhorred Hitler, he initially supported Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy. But today, a nuclear Russia cannot be defeated the way Germany was. "In the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself." We cannot allow a nuclear war to happen, even if it means letting Putin have Ukraine. The question everyone is wrestling with is, how do we save Ukraine while preventing nuclear war? Unfortunately, we don't know the answer, and the risk of getting it wrong is catastrophic.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > We cannot allow a nuclear war to happen, even if it means letting Putin have Ukraine. As soon as you decide this, and let others know you have, you have lost everything. Because if that logic applies to Ukraine it applies equally to Poland, to Alaska, France, to Washington, D.C., to your hometown. You've committed to surrender everything to any power that has the potential to escalate to nuclear war. (It's even worse if you don't believe this -- or if you think you do but would think differently if the thing to surrender was closer to home -- and let people think you do, because that makes it almost inevitable that things will escalate beyond your trigger point, resulting in nuclear war.)
- Muromec 2y ago
  >especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano? We tossed the ring away in the 90ies, it turned out to be not the smartest idea
- m4rtink 2y ago
  For one the demographic curve for the Russia vs the Orcs is much more dire - it was bad already when they started the senseless war and it is much worse now. Their soldiers are not made in spawning pits & they will run out of the willing/forceable sooner or later. With all the consequences for their country which they gambled for the imperial fever dream.
  - heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
    [dead]
  - fifticon 2y ago
    well, they've got an orange unprincipled opportunist and his 'friends' on their team now, so it appears they will be able to pull through
    - Tade0 2y ago
      The jury is out on that. Little known fact: a while ago Russia doubled the sign-in bonus fot contractors to approximately $4.5k to keep the flow of people going. With Trump taking office this produced a wave of recruits who are betting on the chance that the war will be over before they finish training and actually arrive to the front. Some of them are already there and the results are not good (for them). I'm not saying the situation isn't difficult, but it doesn't serve the free world to see Russia as this unstoppable force, as it paints efforts at helping Ukraine as pointless.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  > There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing, even if it may be a comforting and inspiring story to tell ourselves. To use the example already given, how about Ukraine? I have a very hard time not placing that in a good vs evil framing. It’s true that Ukraine isn’t perfectly good, and Russia isn’t purely evil, but it’s pretty damn close. Here’s a nation that was just keeping to themselves and growing closer to the ones that didn’t want to annex them (surprise surprise) and the evil overlord thought that was too threatening and decided to pre-emptively annex them.
  - mnsc 2y ago
    Ok. Russia evil, Ukraine good. Now what? Do we sit around and wait for the chosen one? Is Zelensky the one? How much time should we give him? Maybe Trump is the one? Don't get me wrong, I'm swede and like most here I'm firmly on Ukraine's side and see the pure evil shit Russian military does _every _day without any illusions. But this framing of good vs evil does not seem to pan out. A common sentiment is just to wipe out Russia from the map. And tempting as it might be, that doesn't seem very noble/good and the alternative, "Russian people finds the good in them and throw out the oligarchy forcefully and install democracy", is very naive. I mean even the US, a fully armed populace of strong freeminded men can't seem to see that they are treading the same path as Russia and take action. How reasonable is it then to have that expectation of a people systematically disempowered for decades.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      "Throw the Russians out of Ukraine" would suffice. No need to wipe anything out. (Except what logistically is needed to achieve said goal.) Good vs evil is simplistic, but it serves as shorthand for "it's worth fighting for".
      - wolvesechoes 2y ago
        "Good vs evil is simplistic, but it serves as shorthand for "it's worth fighting for"." Are you in Donbas currently? If not, you are not fighting anything.
swiftcoder 2y ago
> Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron." Sadly, it seems like this particular point was missed by several prominent tech folks who took notes from LotR...
- wat10000 2y ago
  One could instead take the point to be, if you’re Sauron, keep a better hold on your ring.
- notahacker 2y ago
  A more accurate reading of LOTR would give us startups with names like Nazgul and Saruman... Quite apart from not wanting people to try to be Sauron, Tolkein just didn't like industry very much.
dang 2y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43300427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43300427. I'm sure you didn't intend to start an off-topic political argument but that's often what happens when references to stronger/more intense topics get casually dropped in.

t-3 2y ago

> To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit. You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with, especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano? The black-and-white starkness of LotR is what makes it unfit for use as an analogy to the real world! There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing, even if it may be a comforting and inspiring story to tell ourselves.

DennisP 2y ago
Aside from the lack of convenient ring I'd say that sometimes it's quite a useful framing. To avoid derailing into politics I'll use Nazi Germany as another example.
- t-3 2y ago
  Funny you bring them up, I was going to use them as an example but didn't want to Godwin. The Nazis had a black-and-white ideological viewpoint and seemed to believe themselves to be heroes fighting to save their people from evil Jews and their brainwashed minions. Do you see why those narratives are so dangerous now?
  - nathan_compton 2y ago
    I guess it strikes me as weird that we can't just say "Well, yes, 'both sides' thought they were right but in fact one (the Nazis) was wrong." To be sure, there are situations where there is some genuinely complicated moral situation. But that doesn't mean we have to pretend to be moral morons and sagely nod our heads and say "Yes, but Nazis thought they were right too, hmm, hmm."
    - t-3 2y ago
      You're not even wrong. No sane person has said we can't judge Nazis for what they did and believed. What we shouldn't do is set ourselves up to fall into the same trap by using binary narrative framings.
      - squigz 2y ago
        Falling into the other trap of treating both sides of every conflict as equally valid is probably just as dangerous, no?
        t-3 2y ago
        We can start by not separating everything into two sides, one of which we must take. Look at each conflict as a whole rather than a sports game with a winner and a loser or a Good and an Evil or a My Team and Their Team. Maybe one side really is actually very bad and needs to be stopped. Maybe there are other ways.
        squigz 2y ago
        There are times when this is true and admirable - "us vs them" rhetoric in political discourse is indeed harmful and only serves to help those in power - but there are times when it's more dangerous to treat both sides as equally valid that we should both listen to - like when a superpower invades another country and wages a war for years.
    - xandrius 2y ago
variaga 2y ago
>> To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit. > You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with "The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate? ... I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter. 'I will ride with you', said Aragorn" -The Two Towers Seems like it fits to me...
lolinder 2y ago
> There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing This may or may not be true, but Ukraine vs. Putin is absolutely one of those times where it's 100% accurate and useful. Putin invaded Ukraine unprovoked, motivated by visions of restoring an empire to its former glory. He cannot be reasoned with, he cannot be appeased. The only hope that any of the formerly-occupied countries have is to defeat him, and any and all efforts to make the issue appear to be more grayscale than that will necessarily lead to disappointment and to further wars and bloodshed.
- GMoromisato 2y ago
  While I agree with you that Ukraine vs. Putin is clear-cut, morally speaking, I don't think we can apply pre-Atomic Age logic to the situation. I just watched this scene in Crimson Tide: XO Hunter: "...I just think that in the nuclear world, the true enemy can't be destroyed." Captain Ramsey: "Attention on deck. Von Clausewitz will now tell us exactly who the real enemy is. Von?" XO Hunter: "In my humble opinion... in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself." I think that's the difference. In WWII, appeasing Hitler was a mistake because it only emboldened him. Even back then, Tolkien had reservations about how far to take the war. While he abhorred Hitler, he initially supported Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy. But today, a nuclear Russia cannot be defeated the way Germany was. "In the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself." We cannot allow a nuclear war to happen, even if it means letting Putin have Ukraine. The question everyone is wrestling with is, how do we save Ukraine while preventing nuclear war? Unfortunately, we don't know the answer, and the risk of getting it wrong is catastrophic.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > We cannot allow a nuclear war to happen, even if it means letting Putin have Ukraine. As soon as you decide this, and let others know you have, you have lost everything. Because if that logic applies to Ukraine it applies equally to Poland, to Alaska, France, to Washington, D.C., to your hometown. You've committed to surrender everything to any power that has the potential to escalate to nuclear war. (It's even worse if you don't believe this -- or if you think you do but would think differently if the thing to surrender was closer to home -- and let people think you do, because that makes it almost inevitable that things will escalate beyond your trigger point, resulting in nuclear war.)
Muromec 2y ago
>especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano? We tossed the ring away in the 90ies, it turned out to be not the smartest idea
m4rtink 2y ago
For one the demographic curve for the Russia vs the Orcs is much more dire - it was bad already when they started the senseless war and it is much worse now. Their soldiers are not made in spawning pits & they will run out of the willing/forceable sooner or later. With all the consequences for their country which they gambled for the imperial fever dream.
- heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
  [dead]
- fifticon 2y ago
  well, they've got an orange unprincipled opportunist and his 'friends' on their team now, so it appears they will be able to pull through
  - Tade0 2y ago
    The jury is out on that. Little known fact: a while ago Russia doubled the sign-in bonus fot contractors to approximately $4.5k to keep the flow of people going. With Trump taking office this produced a wave of recruits who are betting on the chance that the war will be over before they finish training and actually arrive to the front. Some of them are already there and the results are not good (for them). I'm not saying the situation isn't difficult, but it doesn't serve the free world to see Russia as this unstoppable force, as it paints efforts at helping Ukraine as pointless.
Aeolun 2y ago
> There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing, even if it may be a comforting and inspiring story to tell ourselves. To use the example already given, how about Ukraine? I have a very hard time not placing that in a good vs evil framing. It’s true that Ukraine isn’t perfectly good, and Russia isn’t purely evil, but it’s pretty damn close. Here’s a nation that was just keeping to themselves and growing closer to the ones that didn’t want to annex them (surprise surprise) and the evil overlord thought that was too threatening and decided to pre-emptively annex them.
- mnsc 2y ago
  Ok. Russia evil, Ukraine good. Now what? Do we sit around and wait for the chosen one? Is Zelensky the one? How much time should we give him? Maybe Trump is the one? Don't get me wrong, I'm swede and like most here I'm firmly on Ukraine's side and see the pure evil shit Russian military does _every _day without any illusions. But this framing of good vs evil does not seem to pan out. A common sentiment is just to wipe out Russia from the map. And tempting as it might be, that doesn't seem very noble/good and the alternative, "Russian people finds the good in them and throw out the oligarchy forcefully and install democracy", is very naive. I mean even the US, a fully armed populace of strong freeminded men can't seem to see that they are treading the same path as Russia and take action. How reasonable is it then to have that expectation of a people systematically disempowered for decades.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    "Throw the Russians out of Ukraine" would suffice. No need to wipe anything out. (Except what logistically is needed to achieve said goal.) Good vs evil is simplistic, but it serves as shorthand for "it's worth fighting for".
    - wolvesechoes 2y ago
      "Good vs evil is simplistic, but it serves as shorthand for "it's worth fighting for"." Are you in Donbas currently? If not, you are not fighting anything.

swiftcoder 2y ago

> Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron." Sadly, it seems like this particular point was missed by several prominent tech folks who took notes from LotR...

wat10000 2y ago
One could instead take the point to be, if you’re Sauron, keep a better hold on your ring.
notahacker 2y ago
A more accurate reading of LOTR would give us startups with names like Nazgul and Saruman... Quite apart from not wanting people to try to be Sauron, Tolkein just didn't like industry very much.

dang 2y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43300427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43300427. I'm sure you didn't intend to start an off-topic political argument but that's often what happens when references to stronger/more intense topics get casually dropped in.