Comment by Cronocke on Failed Utopia #4-2 · 2011-02-15T06:20:39.843Z · LW · GW

I think Way 2 was what the author intended - it's not actually meant to be a true utopia. Thus "failed utopia".

But the story raises a couple interesting questions, that I don't notice an answer to.

How did the AI do all this, given the confines of human technology at the time it was set?

And if the AI could do it... what's stopping a human from doing the same?

I envision someone having those precise thoughts on either Mars or Venus, and (either swiftly or gradually) discovering the methods needed to alter reality the same way the AI did. Soon, everything is set, if not "right", at the very least back to "normal".

... although perhaps the "perfect" mates are given their own distant world to live on, and grow without worry of human intervention anytime soon.

... it probably says something about me that I'd also, if I were this person, want to restore the AI to "life" just to trap it in a distant prison from which it can observe humanity, but not interact with anything... as a form of poetic justice for the distant prisons it tried to place humanity within.