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Comment by icarusfall on Have no heroes, and no villains · 2010-11-10T10:03:51.033Z · LW · GW

A fictional example of someone wanting to be a villain might be Shakespeare's Richard III. In the opening soliloquy in the play:

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/full.html

Of course, the real Richard III probably wasn't that bad a chap, just poorly treated by Tudor propaganda (arguably)...

Comment by icarusfall on Attention Lurkers: Please say hi · 2010-04-21T10:15:52.164Z · LW · GW

Hi. UK lurker. Found Overcoming Bias many years ago from a link from Scott Aaronson's blog. Have been reading ever since. In case you're interested in demographic stuff, I'm a stats geek working in a finance firm. I'm very interested in Bayesianism in its application to finance.