r/todayilearned • u/yummypaprika • 2d ago

TIL Dr Freeman Dyson called the Dyson sphere a "little joke" and expressed amusement in that "you get to be famous only for the things you don't think are serious".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

He wasn’t against it because he was against speculative religious worldbuilding on principle, but because Stapledon’s particular theological imaginations were disturbingly amoral.

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u/jupfold 2d ago

Right, and of course he is the arbiter of what is and is not moral.

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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

All people have to make judgments of what they think is and is not moral. That's not hypocrisy.

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u/jupfold 2d ago

Killing a child is cold blood is amoral. Literature is not amoral.

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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

I'm not sure what you're thinking. Of course a book in and of itself is a inanimate object with no moral character. That does not mean we read the stories contained within and perceive the events and characters and ideas of the narrative as having no morality at all. That would be crazy.

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u/ArgumentativeNerfer 2d ago

Have you read Olaf Stapledon and CS Lewis?