![Mad :x](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)
So I would like to know, have you had any similar instances when you just wanted to scream at the presenter and tell them that they are totally stupid and go and do the presentation yourself?
"But that's what I came for," Ender said. "For them to make me into a tool. To save the world."
"I can't believe you still believe it."
"Believe what?"
"The bugger menace. Save the world. Listen. Ender, if the buggers were coming back to get us, they'd he here. They aren't invading again. We beat them and they're gone.
"But the videos--"
"All from the First and Second Invasions. Your grandparents weren't born yet when Mazer Rackham wiped them out. You watch. It's all a fake. There is no war, and they're just screwing around with us."
"But why?"
"Because as long as people are afraid ot the buggers, the IF can stay in power, and as long as the IF is in power, certain countries can keep their hegemony. But keep watching the vids, Ender. People will catch onto this game pretty soon, and there'll be a civil war to end all wars. That is the menace, Ender, not the buggers. And in that war, when it comes, you and I won't be friends. Because you're American, just like our dear teachers. And I am not."
You're making an assumption that there only is one way to interpret these books. If someone wants to read EG for the fun of laser tag in space that is just as valid as someone looking for the political ramifications or someone looking for the social implications.. but the point of enders game is to look deeper into the books and see the intellectual side of it. i think thats why these books can be misinterpretted. they just shouldnt be read by stupid people.
The only person that I personally know who has read it and didn't like it was my grandmother but she doesn't like anything "unrealistic" or scifi-ish.There are people who have read Ender's Game and don’t like it?
Never met one… sounds made up. I think that hating Ender's Game after reading it is as possible as defending earth from an alien attack.
I only just came to this realization while reading this thread, but if you want to think about it this way, Ender's Game is one giant Prisoner's Dilemma. You've got collective humanity against the Formics. As was pointed out at the beginning of the thread, among the humans there's some doubt as to whether the Formics are planning to attack Earth again. So, we've got a vague, poorly defined threat to humanity - do we fight back or not? When we get to the Bugger homeworld, do we kill them or not?
It's a bit on the nose, but Ender's Game was published, first as a short story, and even as a full novel during the Cold War when America was locked in the biggest Prisoner's Dilemma in history - the threat of nuclear war with Russia. Do we strike first? Do we wait until they strike to strike, or do we strick just before we THINK they're about to strike?
Conventional wisdom about the Prisoner's Dilemma says strike first, and strike hard - the exact philosophy that comes to dominate Starways Congress in the later books, however Ender spends the rest of the series doing what he can to force a new condition on the game - superrationality.
(Funny enough, it was the same year that Ender's Game was published as a book the Douglas Hofstadter published Metamagical Themas where he originally suggested the concept of supperrationality. )
This will get confusing fast, but imagine that you're playing yourself in the PD (or playing any other player who you not only know to be rational, but know that they know that you're rational and that you know that they're rational). This results in the superrationality condition - the exact condition Ender's trying to impose by making sure that humans understand the Buggers - understand that they are indeed rational, and just made a mistake killing the first few humans they encountered.
As a result of the superrationality condition - both players cooperate instead of mutually attack each other because they know implicitly that the other player will cooperate so long as they themselves are willing to cooperate. In the simple, playing against yourself case - you know that whatever you choose to do, the other you will choose to do, too, and so cooperation prevails.
The series really draws this out, but in broad strokes, inducing superrationality in conflicted relationships is the entire reason the Speakers for the Dead exist.
TL;DR: Ender's Game is a stealth manifesto for world peace.
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