"It - probably takes some background, unless our culture has overlapped in ways that don't seem probable.  There's a practice among my people of inventing bizarre thought experiments, to probe the boundaries of our ethical systems.  And we're warned that teenagers and particularly teenage boys have a baseline tendency, before hearing the warning, of setting up thought experiments that maybe shouldn't be imagined.  Alternate societies where rape has been legalized.  Inhuman superbeings forcing you to pick between one person being tortured for fifty years or a... famous big number English has no words for... of people getting a dust speck in their eyes.  Or asking if you'd crush your mother's brain to save a thousand other people from having their brains crushed.  And the warning says, whatever point you were trying to make, there's a way to do it without the thought experiment being that upsetting, because the huge upset wasn't really intrinsic.  You can have it be about, is it better to eliminate all chocolate forever from one planet, or have a famous-big-number of people get dust specks in their eyes.  It's a kind of mental laziness and the sort of thing that teenagers, especially boys, do the first time they notice that deontology and utilitarianism can conflict ever.  We're warned that, if somebody presents you with a thought experiment like that, there's a lot to be said for telling them to go away, because it's never going to happen in real life and so you don't need to do violence to your emotions or your logic, or to the integrity of yourself where all of your parts are singing the song of Light in unison without so much infighting.  In real life, see, you're never going to run into any bizarre thought experiment where a woman is being tortured, but this is actually super fine for incommunicable reasons and she would oppose any attempt to make it stop.  So you don't need to do violence to your feelings by considering the possibility.  You tell the teenage boy to go away, and to raise the topic again when and if it comes up in real life."

"It would be - easier, much easier, to come to terms with this, if it was happening in dath ilan.  If it was happening someplace more realistic in the sense of it all being just simple math deep down.  If we encountered something equally shocking happening in dath ilan, it would just be, well, what do you know, human beings are strange and not all of them think the way you do, go study up on expected variation by naive subjects versus actual variation as found in experiments.  If something equally shocking happened in real life, I would know that it wasn't as unnatural as it looked and that it would just turn out to be more naturally consonant in people, because, in the real world, the things that actually happen are those that are consonant with human nature, even if they turn out to be surprising.  But in this world with your magical eclipses - if a teenage boy had no care at all for the feelings of others, if they were halfway to being an alien superbeing, you can very much imagine them creating that situation in reality just to throw somebody like me into it.  So they could say, ha ha, well here it is in real life, I made some sapient beings who strongly prefer being tortured and maintain this preference under reflection, what do you do now."

"It - probably takes some background, unless our culture has overlapped in ways that don't seem probable.  There's a practice among my people of inventing bizarre thought experiments, to probe the boundaries of our ethical systems.  And we're warned that teenagers and particularly teenage boys have a baseline tendency, before hearing the warning, of setting up thought experiments that maybe shouldn't be imagined.  Alternate societies where rape has been legalized.  Inhuman superbeings forcing you to pick between one person being tortured for fifty years or a... famous big number English has no words for... of people getting a dust speck in their eyes.  Or asking if you'd crush your mother's brain to save a thousand other people from having their brains crushed."

"And the warning says, whatever point you were trying to make, there's a way to do it without the thought experiment being that upsetting, because the huge upset wasn't really intrinsic.  You can have it be about, is it better to eliminate all chocolate forever from one planet, or have a famous-big-number of people get dust specks in their eyes.  It's a kind of mental laziness and the sort of thing that teenagers, especially boys, do the first time they notice that deontology and utilitarianism can conflict ever.  We're warned that, if somebody presents you with a thought experiment like that, there's a lot to be said for telling them to go away, because it's never going to happen in real life and so you don't need to do violence to your emotions or your logic, or to the integrity of yourself where all of your parts are singing the song of Light in unison without so much infighting."

"Because, in real life, you see, you're never going to run into any bizarre thought experiment where a woman is being tortured, but this is actually super fine for incommunicable reasons and she would oppose any attempt to make it stop.  So you don't need to do violence to your feelings by considering the possibility.  You tell the teenage boy to go away, and to raise the topic again when and if it comes up in real life."

"It would be - easier, much easier, to come to terms with this, if it was happening in dath ilan.  If it was happening someplace more realistic in the sense of it all being just simple math deep down.  If we encountered something equally shocking happening in dath ilan, it would just be, well, what do you know, human beings are strange and not all of them think the way you do, go study up on expected variation by naive subjects versus actual variation as found in experiments.  If something equally shocking happened in real life, I would know that it wasn't as unnatural as it looked and that it would just turn out to be more naturally consonant in people, because, in the real world, the things that actually happen are those that are consonant with human nature, even if they turn out to be surprising."

"But in this world with your magical eclipses - if a teenage boy had no care at all for the feelings of others, if they were halfway to being an alien superbeing, you can very much imagine them creating that situation in reality just to throw somebody like me into it.  So they could say, ha ha, well here it is in real life, I made some sapient beings who strongly prefer being tortured and maintain this preference under reflection, what do you do now."