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  1. - Top - End - #241
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Vsauce on YouTube also put people through the trolley problem, calling in people expecting to be part of something entirely else, and then they were presented with video footage and a switch that put all of the responsibilities on their hands.

    Only 2 flipped the switch and rest let the train run down the 5 people working on the rail because they didn't mess with the controls. All of them tried to find someone that could intervene in their place.

  2. - Top - End - #242
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Mordaedil View Post
    Vsauce on YouTube also put people through the trolley problem, calling in people expecting to be part of something entirely else, and then they were presented with video footage and a switch that put all of the responsibilities on their hands.

    Only 2 flipped the switch and rest let the train run down the 5 people working on the rail because they didn't mess with the controls. All of them tried to find someone that could intervene in their place.
    It's a very interesting show, the mind field

    Here is the link to the show on the trolley problem

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  3. - Top - End - #243
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Regarding the orc babies thing, it should be noted that Orcs are not an "always evil" race or even "usually evil". Their alignment tendency is merely "often chaotic evil"
    That's not the current edition lore. They're Chaotic Evil, with their God whispering in their mind encouraging them to evil. Technically free willed, but limited and unlikely to be anything except Chaotic Evil due to divine influence. They also are describe are pillaging raiders, including the term 'Tribes like Plagues'.

    If we're going to bring in dead edition lore, all editions Classic through 4e are on the table. Including gygaxian naturalism, which is where we get Orc and other humanoid babies (whelps) in Lairs & Modules from in the first place. Including infamously in B2, which was the first D&D experience for a generation of players.

    I recently ran B2 adapted to 5e, and left the whelps in, with mixed results. It made things a pain for the players. It added and "interesting" element. But ultimately, they didn't want to have to deal with morality of accidentally fireballing a bunch of Gnoll whelps, which is what happened in the final run into the caves, in their Friday night fun of "eat pizza, throw dice, and murderhero orcs and other humanoids" game. I promised them no more whelps BS after that.

    There's a reason Orcs and other monsters are structured to be the bad guys, and Alignment exists to create a basic Us vs Them structure. It's exactly what many players and tables want.

  4. - Top - End - #244
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post
    Interesting, that's not how I learned it... If that is truly the official scenario, I am in agreement with Max_Killjoy, the dilemma is utterly pointless and contrived because the one who tied them up has all of the blood on their hands.
    As demonstrated by empirical research that uses the trolley problem, the underlined part is not actually agreed upon by all peoples, nor is the point of the exercise to determine whether the person who tied the people on the tracks is guilty. Answering whether that person is guilty does not actually answer what you are supposed to do in the situation.
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  5. - Top - End - #245
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    The trolley problem is bad, and you should feel bad for either bringing it up, or engaging in a debate about it, instead of just dismissing it as bunk and moving on.

    What it actually tells us about human morality is:
    - some people mistakenly believe stupid hypotheticals tell us something about humanity morality
    - some people mistakenly believe a contrived experiment will tell them something about their own, or another specific humans, morality
    - some people are more than willing to let themselves get sucked into the morass of a discussion on a pointless hypothetical, especially in an online forum debate.

    The latter is hardly surprising. And amusingly, also applies to Alignment threads and me. (edit: although I usually try to avoid the stupid extreme hypotheticals they often involve, as opposed to stuff that might actually happen at a table.)
    Last edited by Tanarii; 2018-01-18 at 05:26 AM.

  6. - Top - End - #246
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    The trolley problem is bad, and you should feel bad for either bringing it up, or engaging in a debate about it, instead of just dismissing it as bunk and moving on.

    What it actually tells us about human morality is:
    - some people mistakenly believe stupid hypotheticals tell us something about humanity morality
    - some people mistakenly believe a contrived experiment will tell them something about their own, or another specific humans, morality
    - some people are more than willing to let themselves get sucked into the morass of a discussion on a pointless hypothetical, especially in an online forum debate.
    Nah, debating the "Trolley Problem" in all of its forms (which really don't matter) actually has some merits. Either one has a grasp on what morality (and the interplay with law and punishment) is and can "solve" it, or they're stuck debating the individual actions and results and try to weight these against each other, without the greater context of actual morality. So what it does is separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to having a serious discussion.

    Even when used in its harshest form (Decide: You kill 1 or I kill 5, you have 3 seconds), itīs senseless to discuss the action before discussing the fundamental morality to weight the action. This, and the mix-up that follows, makes alignment discussions at once worthwhile (people reveal a lot about themselves) and totally fruitless.

  7. - Top - End - #247
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    The trolley problem is less about morality and more about humans panicking in high stress situations.

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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Regarding the orc babies thing, it should be noted that Orcs are not an "always evil" race or even "usually evil". Their alignment tendency is merely "often chaotic evil"
    Maybe, maybe not. It's not actually important whether "evil" is prefaced by this adjective or that, when it is the "baby" part that is misleading. That's why I keep mentioning xenomorphs. Xenomorph facehugger fits the technical definition of a "monster baby", and it grows up to be a fairly intelligent, non-supernatural creature, that's still "always evil" for all intents and purposes. Normal people will not mistake a facehugger for a human, or even animal baby, nor draw any conclusions from in-game treatment of facehuggers for how to treat real human or animal babies.

    If someone starts worrying about xenomorph rights because someone from PETA might mistake them for advocating actual animal abuse, they are being ridiculous. Replace xenomorphs with pokemon if the example sounds too hypothetical.

    ---

    @Florian: sounds like an interesting show. Would like to see it, just for the trivia about your local laws.

    ---

    @Tanarii: the trolley problem does tell us about human morality. The empirical research exists and is easy to find. What it doesn't do is tell us who is good or evil.
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  9. - Top - End - #249
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Even when used in its harshest form (Decide: You kill 1 or I kill 5, you have 3 seconds), itīs senseless to discuss the action before discussing the fundamental morality to weight the action. This, and the mix-up that follows, makes alignment discussions at once worthwhile (people reveal a lot about themselves) and totally fruitless.
    All this "harshest form" will tell you is people will blather on about what they think they will do, and what they think the moral thing is, and then when it comes to crunch time a real person will freeze up. What the trolley problem really a hypothetical that shows you that what we believe & thinking and has nothing to do with reality, and that 'hypotheticals' are frequently useless because they're so disconnected from reality.

  10. - Top - End - #250
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Mordaedil View Post
    The trolley problem is less about morality and more about humans panicking in high stress situations.
    But that is the point of why you use it to discuss morality, along with the different between objective morality and subjective morality (and why punishment is an important indicator here).

    To discuss it, you must set it aside and discuss morality first and establish how that should be expressed, then you analyze the scenario itself, from there on going to analyze the actions and decisions of the participants testing the scenario, weighting their decisions and actions.

    Example: Topic - Causing death. (aka crime)

    Capital Crime - no mitigating factors.
    A - Planned murder, ordered murder
    B - Willfull murder
    Non-Capital Crime - mitigating factors (up or down).
    C - Causing death due to willful neglect, accepting causing death as an outcome
    D - Causing death due to neglect, causing death due to unavoidable outside factors
    Non-Capital Crime - mitigating factors (down)
    E - Causing death due to avoidable outside factors, causing an accident that results in causing death
    .... and so on, going over to mitigating factors and discussion punishment as an expression of it.

    So, the prep work to handle the scenario is way more telling than the scenario itself.

  11. - Top - End - #251
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    If I stayed in a calm state of mind, I probably would try to go for the "multitrack drifting" option if only because trains aren't designed to run on that and it'll probably derail and come to a stop.

    Maybe more people get hurt and some might die, but at least I tried to influence fate. Of course if I can't switch tracks while there are tracks on it, then at least I can blame the engineer.

  12. - Top - End - #252
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Mordaedil View Post
    If I stayed in a calm state of mind, I probably would try to go for the "multitrack drifting" option if only because trains aren't designed to run on that and it'll probably derail and come to a stop.

    Maybe more people get hurt and some might die, but at least I tried to influence fate. Of course if I can't switch tracks while there are tracks on it, then at least I can blame the engineer.
    At least in past discussions elsewhere, when I've suggested somehow trying to use the switch creatively to stop the trolley without hitting either the 1 or the X people, the response has been "sorry impossible" or "stop cheating".
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

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  13. - Top - End - #253
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    This thread is not just you posting and everyone responding to what you post. Other people have said things, and other people are responding to them, not you. And my comments are based on what has actually been said, and how alignment is actually used by players and discussed by players across multiple decades and multiple editions.

    Not that it matters, since you are obviously incapable of having a conversation without resorting to insults and calling anyone who disagrees with you a liar.

    If you reply to any of my posts on this thread again, I will report you for personal attacks, and place you on ignore.

    "Conversation" over.
    First off, that's not how the Forum Rules work. You can't just claim that if I respond to you the "now it counts as a personal attack" on your say-so.

    I have attacked your argument, which was filled with blatant and intentional falsehoods and misdirections.

    The closest thing I have come to attacking you, personally is when I asked you "what kind of self-serving, narcissistic ass thinks he shouldn't be held accountable for his own actions?", which is a hypothetical question I was posing to you. I did not say YOU were that self-serving narcissistic ass, and I apologize if you felt that I did. YOUR statement -which I was responding to- was in regards to a hypothetical person being "held accountable for objectively evil acts", not yourself. I did not interpret you as meaning yourself, and I did not mean you, personally. Again, if you took it that way, I apologize, it was not my intent.

    I do not "call anyone who disagrees with me a liar". Red Fel and I disagree, and we were having an entirely civil back-and-forth.

    YOU claimed that "alignment only judges actions with no regard to intent or context" AFTER it was already pointed out to you that the BoED and BoVD both state that Intent and Context ARE taken into account. Ergo, intentional falsehood.

    You also misrepresented what I-personally-said in regards to claiming that I said that "the only non-evil choice is to do nothing", when what I said was that "the only action that a paladin-specifically- can take and be sure he will not fall is to do nothing. This is because you are CORRECT that the moral weight of murder falls on the villain who tied the 6 people to the track to begin with.

    At any rate, I noticed that your "conversation over" seems to be an attempt to avoid the challenge I put to you. That being: Please provide some evidence, from the RAW, to support your claims about alignment. Everything you say alignment is. If what you claim is actually true about alignment, then it must be in print in a rulebook somewhere. This is an edition-neutral forum. I will accept, as proof, a first-party source from ANY edition of D&D (First party being TSR for BECMI, 1e AD&D, and 2e or WotC for 3.xe, 4e, or 5e). I actually welcome coherent debate, but that means citation of source.

    I ask again. Please, what are your sources for your claims? Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post
    Interesting, that's not how I learned it... If that is truly the official scenario, I am in agreement with Max_Killjoy, the dilemma is utterly pointless and contrived because the one who tied them up has all of the blood on their hands.
    That's what I said in the first place. The blood is on the hands of the guy who tied all 6 people to the track. Which is why I have been advocating that the only "Trolley Problem" useful to this discussion is the Fat Man variant, or the Fat Villain variant. You can follow the link to that Wikipedia page to see all the variants.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Alignment exists to create a basic Us vs Them structure. It's exactly what many players and tables want.
    As long as you caveat that with the statement that such is your opinion.

    I'm not out to change people's opinions. I'm out to point out incorrect claims of "fact" about the rules.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    The trolley problem is bad, and you should feel bad for either bringing it up, or engaging in a debate about it, instead of just dismissing it as bunk and moving on.
    Yeah, I mentioned that a few pages ago, that only the Fat Man/Fat Villain variants apply to D&D morality. The way that Intent/Context and Action are weighed together is such that the default Trolley Problem has very little bearing on D&D alignment factors.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    What it actually tells us about human morality is:
    - some people mistakenly believe stupid hypotheticals tell us something about humanity morality
    - some people mistakenly believe a contrived experiment will tell them something about their own, or another specific humans, morality
    - some people are more than willing to let themselves get sucked into the morass of a discussion on a pointless hypothetical, especially in an online forum debate.

    The latter is hardly surprising. And amusingly, also applies to Alignment threads and me. (edit: although I usually try to avoid the stupid extreme hypotheticals they often involve, as opposed to stuff that might actually happen at a table.)
    I also enjoy getting sucked into alignment threads. It's my guilty pleasure.
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  14. - Top - End - #254
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by RedMage125 View Post
    First off, that's not how the Forum Rules work. You can't just claim that if I respond to you the "now it counts as a personal attack" on your say-so.

    I have attacked your argument, which was filled with blatant and intentional falsehoods and misdirections.

    The closest thing I have come to attacking you, personally is when I asked you "what kind of self-serving, narcissistic ass thinks he shouldn't be held accountable for his own actions?", which is a hypothetical question I was posing to you. I did not say YOU were that self-serving narcissistic ass, and I apologize if you felt that I did. YOUR statement -which I was responding to- was in regards to a hypothetical person being "held accountable for objectively evil acts", not yourself. I did not interpret you as meaning yourself, and I did not mean you, personally. Again, if you took it that way, I apologize, it was not my intent.

    I do not "call anyone who disagrees with me a liar". Red Fel and I disagree, and we were having an entirely civil back-and-forth.

    YOU claimed that "alignment only judges actions with no regard to intent or context" AFTER it was already pointed out to you that the BoED and BoVD both state that Intent and Context ARE taken into account. Ergo, intentional falsehood.

    You also misrepresented what I-personally-said in regards to claiming that I said that "the only non-evil choice is to do nothing", when what I said was that "the only action that a paladin-specifically- can take and be sure he will not fall is to do nothing. This is because you are CORRECT that the moral weight of murder falls on the villain who tied the 6 people to the track to begin with.
    You've called me a liar multiple times, engaging in an ad hominem fallacy and direct insults.

    You've made your choice.

    Goodbye. /plonk.
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Nah, debating the "Trolley Problem" in all of its forms (which really don't matter) actually has some merits. Either one has a grasp on what morality (and the interplay with law and punishment) is and can "solve" it, or they're stuck debating the individual actions and results and try to weight these against each other, without the greater context of actual morality. So what it does is separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to having a serious discussion.

    Even when used in its harshest form (Decide: You kill 1 or I kill 5, you have 3 seconds), itīs senseless to discuss the action before discussing the fundamental morality to weight the action. This, and the mix-up that follows, makes alignment discussions at once worthwhile (people reveal a lot about themselves) and totally fruitless.
    Three seconds out of the blue is hardly time to realize what's going on there, let alone make a decision that will kill someone.
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

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    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

    The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.

  16. - Top - End - #256
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    Three seconds out of the blue is hardly time to realize what's going on there, let alone make a decision that will kill someone.
    Right. That's the point.

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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    @Max_Killjoy: the whole point of using a stripped-down hypotheticals is because for realistically complex scenarios, people will nitpick the details to avoid addressing the core dilemma. That is, you are supposed to accept the limited options in good faith. It's not a puzzlebox where you get points for a creatively dodging the problem. Third-wayism, shifting the blame, complaining about how unrealistic the situation is etc. are not smart, they're just failure to engage.

    A comic which isn't about the trolley problem, but is in spirit about what I'm trying to say.
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    You've called me a liar multiple times, engaging in an ad hominem fallacy and direct insults.

    You've made your choice.

    Goodbye. /plonk.
    Ah yes, the "Finger In Ears, 'nyah nyah, I can't hear you' Defense". A classic and mature response.

    For the record, saying "you have lied". Or "I have highlighted in this quote from you the parts which are intentional lies on your part, because you've already been directed to the RAW in question which explicitly says this is not the case" is much different than "you're a liar".
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by RedMage125 View Post
    You are incorrect, sir or madame.
    I wouldn't say that. The trolley problem is a moral hypothetical, so there isn't a "right" version of it. Any slight modification you can think of can help establishing something.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    The third one -- what do you think "an act that is evil no matter what, no matter the circumstances" is, other than a judgement based purely on the action and with no consideration for intent, motive, or circumstances?

    Or we could just go with this comment, focusing on the part bolded:
    it means only that each individual is ultimately judged by an ENTIRELY objective and dispassionate judge that does not waiver (the cosmic forces of Good/Evil/Law/Chaos). In the default D&D world, even the gods are beholden to these forces, and since the forces are completely objective and dispassionate, they are not swayed by any kind of excuses or moral vacillating. A given character may have justification for the horrible things he does. He may, in fact, be doing it for the greater good of a community or a population. His people may love him and think him a hero. But his actions will always be judged by an objective measure.
    Sure reads like "no matter why you did it, no matter what outcome you wanted, no matter what outcome arose from it, no matter what the circumstances were, you did an evil thing and you'll be judged for it".
    I choose to read it as "this objective and dispassionate judge will judge you objectively, taking into account intentions and circumstances". Because intentions and circumstances ARE necesary parts of forming an objective judgment.
    If the poster was intending otherwise, then I disagree with him. I have no problem admitting that there are people who get things wrong, and in fact I have done so already.
    And that was one post, over 9 pages of discussion. Subject to multiple interpretations. Maybe there are a few more, but can't be that many. Which is perfectly consistent with my interpretation that there are a few people who are getting alignment wrong out there, but the large majority is using them in a sane way.
    I'd argue that choice is evil too, because you refuse to help those in need.
    Which just makes the "moral trap" problem bigger.

    Someone has set up a situation where whoever happens to walk by as the train is approaching is forced to "Do Evil" under this moral "standard".

    Do nothing? Evil, because they refused to help.
    Touch the lever and choose whether one or ten people die? Evil, because their decision lead to one or ten deaths.
    The thing with morality is, if it's a moral trap, then it's no trap at all. You can't be blamed if you had no (good) choice over the matter. You can't be blamed for trying to make the best of a bad situation. How could an objective, impartial judge decide that you did evil when you had absolutely no choice over the matter?
    At least that's the way i see it. If there was a paladin in the trolley problem, I would expect him to take the best decision judging on his capacity to decide under limited time and stress, and I would never, ever make him fall, regardless of which decision he'd actually take. The only way a paladin would fall there would be if, instead of thinking of trying to help people within the limiits of his capacity, he started to instead think "what is the solution that is less likely to make me fall?", because that's egoistic. If he thinks he should switch the rail and does not because he worries about the loss of class features, then I'd make him fall because he put personal gain in front of the safety of people, not for his choice.
    And I'm sure I'm not the only one. I've never faced a dilemma like this with my players, but I know them enough to be sure they would not call eternal damnation on the guy who has to take the decision.
    And now the "cosmic forces" of "morality" judge that person to have "done evil" no matter what. It's utterly lacking in justice of any kind. A universe in which this is true is a sick universe. I find such a universe, fictional as it may be, morally repugnant, utterly loathsome, and completely objectionable.
    ultimately, you are taking the statement "there are cosmic forces of morality that judge people objectively" as "there are lawful stupid cosmic forces that are looking for any possible excuses for screwing you up". The two are not equivalent. I prefer to think that those cosmic forces are stern but fair and know to take everything into account to give the best judgment.
    Though the opposite could make for an interesting setting, in an "abusive gods" dystopian world. It's a bit what's happening in oots to the dwarves, actually, where they are not judged for being good or bad, but they are punished if they do not act lawfuul stupid and put honor before reason. And notice that the whole thing started from a gamble of thor to take as many souls as possible away from hel, so thor was also trying to do good, within his limits.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    All this "harshest form" will tell you is people will blather on about what they think they will do, and what they think the moral thing is, and then when it comes to crunch time a real person will freeze up. What the trolley problem really a hypothetical that shows you that what we believe & thinking and has nothing to do with reality, and that 'hypotheticals' are frequently useless because they're so disconnected from reality.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    The trolley problem is bad, and you should feel bad for either bringing it up, or engaging in a debate about it, instead of just dismissing it as bunk and moving on.

    What it actually tells us about human morality is:
    - some people mistakenly believe stupid hypotheticals tell us something about humanity morality
    - some people mistakenly believe a contrived experiment will tell them something about their own, or another specific humans, morality
    - some people are more than willing to let themselves get sucked into the morass of a discussion on a pointless hypothetical, especially in an online forum debate.
    Hypoteticals are good starting point from which we extrapolate to reality. Take the basic laws of motion, they concern with what happens in a frictionless, forceless environment. There is no such thing, even in space there is always gravity, and weightlessness is barely a balancing of forces and motion. And yet those hypothetical laws are not useless. from there we add some more complex laws, and on to even more complex stuff, until we can predict the real thing. Hypoteticals are bad only if we think we can stop there.
    And debate about hypoteticals is not stupid. Even when we learn nothing, it forces us to challenge our beliefs, to dig within ourselves to find out why we actually believe something over something else, to strive and question. I've had a lot of grat introspection while participating into pointless debates.

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Last year, there was a great feature film on tv. Basic hostage situation, terrorists wanting to crash a plane into a fully filled stadium, a jet fighter pilot shooting them down and going for trial. After the speeches, the film stopped, two hotline numbers appeared and the audience had roughly 30 mins time to decide whether guilt or not and make the decision call.

    So far, so good, so overly simplistic.

    The real fun started when after that, Fischer, then high judge of the supreme court, came on and explained why the whole "Trolley / Terrorist" scenario is utter horse manure and should only be used to show freshmen law students that a "good / evil" question will never provide meaningful results, will often need "god or perfect knowledge". The he went on about outside force, direct force, intention, the usual stuff, but also went on that our german legal system includes some very heavy-handed elements based on objective morality on how they change the outcome(*).

    (*) Yes, we do have those elements and also ways to deal with the paradoxes that come up by using them.
    Well, I would say this just shows that our legal system is imperfect and cannot be perfect. the lack of perfect knowledge is the main factor here: we can't know everyone's motivations unless we figure out how to read brains. It also shows that in a case like that, the law would be much more concerned with procedures and paperwork, and frankly, all that is just crap. I have read of some disasters and subsequent investigations, and seriously, it seems there is always some judge or lawyer that will try to pin the blame on some guy who was there and made a snap decision in an attempt to contain damage, based on nonsensic foreknowledge.
    Heck, last year we had a big snowfall in central italy, and there were some people trapped in isolated towns and some people trapped into a hotel, and the people trapped into the hotel had food and heating for a few days so the rescuers decided to rescue people from the towns first, and then there was a big avalance that hit the hotel and crashed it, killing 20. And somebody tried (is still trying? I have no idea) to pin the blame on the rescuers for prioritizing other places over the hotel. Which is utter crap, because they'd have no way of knowing the hotel was at risk and all the information they had suggested the people there would be safe for a few days, but apparently this wasn't relevant for a trial.
    Which, in my opinion, only goes to show that our legal system could do with more focus on trying to find right and wrong and less focus on papers and quibbles. Our society is much like D&D in this regards: it works much better in RAI than in RAW.
    In fact, I'd argue there is a greater merit in discussing the moral scenario than the legal one, because with the moral scenario you can at least have some better arguments than "a law which was never intended for this situation says that".

    Incidentally, the movie premise is not nonsensical, as a plane hijacking nowadays would be probably treated that way if there was a reasonable suspect that the terrorists were of the suicide bombers variety. And I'd say establishing a line of conduct in case it actually happens is important, and I'd be surprised if most government haven't prepared one already.
    Also, in most countries the head of state can grace a condemned, this power was introduced just for cases such as this one.
    Last edited by King of Nowhere; 2018-01-18 at 09:37 AM.
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Another reason I dislike the trolley problem, and other stupid extreme pointless hypothetical, is people will spend pages arguing over them instead of something relevant to either the alignment issue at hand, or morality in general. They're alignment thread derailers, and often part of the reason folks hate Alignment in the first place.

    Of course, sometimes the OP is just a troll and is either is the stupid hypothetical. Or some other obvious attempt to start some crap. *whistles and tries to look innocent*
    Last edited by Tanarii; 2018-01-18 at 10:56 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    If you want to actually explore moral uncertainty, quandaries, and disputes... then you can't present caricature of morality based on laundry lists of "good acts" and "evil acts" supposedly adjudicated by cosmic forces, where taking the least-bad option, or having a choice between two bad options imposed on you, or being outright tricked into doing something, can all result in YOU being held accountable for an "evil act" regardless of your intent or motivation.
    Regarding "being tricked into doing something bad" this was WOTC on the subject:

    http://archive.wizards.com/default.a...d/sg/20050325a


    Though a paladin must always strive to bring about a just and righteous outcome, she is not omnipotent. If someone tricks her into acting in a way that harms the innocent, or if an action of hers accidentally brings about a calamity, she may rightly feel that she is at fault. But although she should by all means attempt to redress the wrong, she should not lose her paladinhood for it. Intent is not always easy to judge, but as long as a paladin's heart was in the right place and she took reasonable precautions, she cannot be blamed for a poor result.
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    Regarding "being tricked into doing something bad" this was WOTC on the subject:

    http://archive.wizards.com/default.a...d/sg/20050325a


    Though a paladin must always strive to bring about a just and righteous outcome, she is not omnipotent. If someone tricks her into acting in a way that harms the innocent, or if an action of hers accidentally brings about a calamity, she may rightly feel that she is at fault. But although she should by all means attempt to redress the wrong, she should not lose her paladinhood for it. Intent is not always easy to judge, but as long as a paladin's heart was in the right place and she took reasonable precautions, she cannot be blamed for a poor result.
    Interesting.

    But just how many sources are players supposed to check, over how many editions?

    Is this approach actually and explicitly spelled out in any of the published core material, rather than in a 12-year-old website article that many/most players may have never seen?
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    BoVD does spell it out pretty well- spelling out that accidentally causing a landslide that flattens a village might not qualify as evil, but knowingly causing a landslide that flattens a village, in the process of saving your own life, is definitely evil.

    You've got BoVD saying intent and context matter, you've got BoED saying intent matters, you've got WOTC online articles saying intent matters... it's pretty clear that, in 3.5, intent matters.
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowere View Post
    The thing with morality is, if it's a moral trap, then it's no trap at all. You can't be blamed if you had no (good) choice over the matter. You can't be blamed for trying to make the best of a bad situation. How could an objective, impartial judge decide that you did evil when you had absolutely no choice over the matter?
    And yet I see the concept of a "moral trap" as a legitimate possibility with exactly that outcome put forward seriously both in Alignment discussions and more broadly.


    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowere View Post
    At least that's the way i see it. If there was a paladin in the trolley problem, I would expect him to take the best decision judging on his capacity to decide under limited time and stress, and I would never, ever make him fall, regardless of which decision he'd actually take. The only way a paladin would fall there would be if, instead of thinking of trying to help people within the limiits of his capacity, he started to instead think "what is the solution that is less likely to make me fall?", because that's egoistic. If he thinks he should switch the rail and does not because he worries about the loss of class features, then I'd make him fall because he put personal gain in front of the safety of people, not for his choice.

    And I'm sure I'm not the only one. I've never faced a dilemma like this with my players, but I know them enough to be sure they would not call eternal damnation on the guy who has to take the decision.
    That's how I'd approach it too.

    And yet we seem to have a semi-regular supply of "paladin fall" and "alignment switch" threads and discussions pop up with a "moral trap" situation at the core of the dispute, and a GM or other player insisting that the paladin "must fall" or that an Alignment has been violated because someone "did evil" in a situation with nothing but least-bad to most-bad choices.


    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowere View Post
    Heck, last year we had a big snowfall in central Italy, and there were some people trapped in isolated towns and some people trapped into a hotel, and the people trapped into the hotel had food and heating for a few days so the rescuers decided to rescue people from the towns first, and then there was a big avalanche that hit the hotel and crashed it, killing 20. And somebody tried (is still trying? I have no idea) to pin the blame on the rescuers for prioritizing other places over the hotel. Which is utter crap, because they'd have no way of knowing the hotel was at risk and all the information they had suggested the people there would be safe for a few days, but apparently this wasn't relevant for a trial.
    That's exactly the sort of crap that makes me sick both in-game and IRL. The rescuers were doing the best they could with the resources at hand and the information they possessed, trying to save as many people as they could. But because events spiraled out of their control, someone wants to hold them culpable for it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    BoVD does spell it out pretty well- spelling out that accidentally causing a landslide that flattens a village might not qualify as evil, but knowingly causing a landslide that flattens a village, in the process of saving your own life, is definitely evil.

    You've got BoVD saying intent and context matter, you've got BoED saying intent matters, you've got WOTC online articles saying intent matters... it's pretty clear that, in 3.5, intent matters.
    I wouldn't consider any of those three to be core published works, but this is getting more into my long-standing peeves with publishers spamming books and having information that should be core to the game spread out across a dozen or more volumes.

    Right around 3.0 is when and where I jumped ship and washed my hands of all things D&D/d20, as well, so from that point forward, all of my exposure to Alignment is based on prior works, watching others play, and reading/hearing discussions others have had about Alignment. All I can say is that I've never had an experience where Alignment made a game better, only experiences where it made it far far worse, and the online and IRL discussions of Alignment I've been exposed to very much reinforce that impression (as detailed in my posts here).
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Another reason I dislike the trolley problem, and other stupid extreme pointless hypothetical, is people will spend pages arguing over them instead of something relevant to either the alignment issue at hand, or morality in general. They're alignment thread derailers, and often part of the reason folks hate Alignment in the first place.
    Still, it can be helpful by showing some fundamental flaws in how people think about alignments.

    We have the case "Choice leads to causing death, causing death is evil, the difference between choice A and choice B is between lesser and greater evil".

    This, coupled with the notion that anyone should have perfect knowledge and foresight brings up the recurring discussions on whether some individual actions or sets of actions are "good" or "evil" or whatever.

    That's why I tried to show the difference between "murder" and "causing death" a bit earlier. The scenario rules out "murder" by way of not saying that it is you personally that put the people on the tracks to be killed. So that leaves "causing death" and that again can be broken down into a major or minor form, based on intention.

    That now is the heart of objective morality. Did you cause death with your choice? Yes. Did you murder anyone? No.... at that point, we have rules out (evil) and could go on towards (neutral) and (good) .... (but see below)

    @King of Nowhere:

    Absolutely no one in my country his the right or authority to order the killing of innocent - no even for a "higher cause", like preventing the death of more innocents.
    There's also no "chancellors pardon" or authority that can make such decisions outside of the juridicial system.

    The solution to the scenario is, that "against the law" doesn't mean "unjust" (or vice versa) based on knowledge and intention. The pilots decision to shoot down the plain was "unlawful" but "just", leading up to sentencing him for "casing death - D" with a penalty of zero.
    Last edited by Florian; 2018-01-18 at 12:50 PM.

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    The Trolley Problem basically shows whether someone is a Utilitarian/Consequentialist or a Kantian/Deontologist.

    If you are a Utilitarian, then pulling the lever is a good thing, because 1 death is better than 5. The *CONSEQUENCES* of the action are what matter, not the act itself, and so you act based on that.

    If you're a Kantian, then taking action to kill, especially outside of a self-defense situation, is wrong, and you will not pull the lever. While the situation is horrible, it's not one of your making. The *ACT* of killing an innocent is wrong, and so you judge based on that.

    (There's a third option, I believe, which is "pull the lever, knowing it's wrong, but choosing to do an Evil in the service of a greater Good, while still accepting that it's Evil").

    It's not an answerable question. It's a situation which highlights the difference between two schools of ethics.

    If you're going to have a system like alignment, then your table needs to be clear on what side of this the game is going to be run. You don't need to agree that it's correct for the real world, but you do need to understand how it's going to be ruled. Most of the issues result from people not being on the same side of the divide, and presuming by default that their views are held by the others at the table.
    Last edited by kyoryu; 2018-01-18 at 12:39 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by RedMage125 View Post
    And I'm the one that you are misquoting about the Trolley Problem. I said the only clear option for a PALADIN to do would be to not pull the lever. Because whether or not the paladin would fall for pulling the lever is in question, it could be argued either way that he "killed" the single person. But it is-by the RAW-very clear that he would not fall for refusing to pull the lever. Failing to do Good or Evil is a morally Neutral act. And paladins do not fall for committing a morally Neutral act.

    I also explicitly said -multiple times- that the person who tied all those people to the tracks in the first place committed the greatest evil act, and the weight of any of those deaths falls on that person.
    The issue with "failing to save the people is evil" or "failing to save the drowning person is evil" is that, by that argument, knowing that anyone is starving, anywhere in the world, and failing to do something about it if it is within your power is Evil. The only difference is immediacy and proximity. All of us could find some more money to donate.

    By that definition, the vast majority of the world would qualify as Evil... which means that it kind of fails as a workable litmus test.
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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    You don't even have to change the "unrealistic" part, only the "sudden". For example, people have different reactions to horror movies on second and further viewings. The first view has much greater shock factor which distract from other traits of the movies, where as once the shock factor is gone, analysis and humour become possible. That is, the person who is morally shocked by the slaughter of seniors, and the person who laughs at their destruction, can be the same person, just at different points of time.
    I'm still talking about perception rather than reality. Lets say the person that is laughing at the dying frail seniors has seen this happen multiple times, and is laughing because he is desensitized and because he finds it amusing to see the other members of the audience being so utterly shocked... You can argue that there isn't anything morally unhealthy about his laughing. But the other members of the audience will still look at him like he is a sociopath.

    The body of players who gleefully run over human civilians in GTA is probably larger than the entire player base of tabletop RPGs.
    And I don't know anybody who plays the game like that who claims that they are playing a "good guy". They know they are playing a criminal. They might think they are playing a "bad ass" character or something like that, but they are in no way thinking that they are playing a "virtuous" character.

    The thing that gets people upset about these debates isn't that someone shouldn't do ____ while playing D&D. It is that doing _____ shouldn't qualify as "good" on the alignment spectrum.

    That is, I vehemently disagree with your assessment of "most people". Feeling moral discomfort over infanticide of orcs is niche concern for people in a niche hobby. The only times when such discomfort has reached mainstream has been during moral panics over how new media is bad to children, such as the Satanic panic over D&D
    I wasn't taking about mainstream... I was basing that comment on threads like this that I have read. Personally I can see that in game when there are creatures that are innately born evil that monster infanticide would be acceptable behaviour for a character to still qualify as "good". BUT when I read these thread, I see numerous people arguing against that point, which leads me to believe that if not "most people", then "many people" have a big problem with this.


    Normal people comprehend just fine why violence against fictional beings is morally a non-problem and why violence in games is fun.

    True, but also irrelevant, because people have no problem understanding that game objects are unreal and hence arguments about them have different weight than arguments about real humans.
    I think it is relevant. If we posted a thread asking "can someone with good alignment casually slaughter human babies?", the answers would be very different than "can someone with a good alignment casually slaughter demon babies."

    And I don't disagree about the existence of such people. I disagree about using them as a standard for what's normal, or what' good gaming. Because while your argument is not exactly the same as moral alarmists (moral alarmists would claim I genuinely mean human babies are evil, or would come to believe that as result of playing games), it on effect asks me to bow to their whims.

    I'll have none of that, thank you very much.
    I don't think I have ever met a "moral alarmist"... maybe if I had to deal with them, I would be more annoyed about this line of discussion than I currently am. I have never in my 30 years of gaming come across anyone who thinks playing D&D is "evil" or "dangerous" or anything like that... just "nerdy" or "pathetic", so my bitterness is more directed towards people looking down on me, rather than fearing me or trying to "save" me.

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    Default Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    And yet I see the concept of a "moral trap" as a legitimate possibility with exactly that outcome put forward seriously both in Alignment discussions and more broadly.
    [...]
    That's how I'd approach it too.

    And yet we seem to have a semi-regular supply of "paladin fall" and "alignment switch" threads and discussions pop up with a "moral trap" situation at the core of the dispute, and a GM or other player insisting that the paladin "must fall" or that an Alignment has been violated because someone "did evil" in a situation with nothing but least-bad to most-bad choices.

    That's exactly the sort of crap that makes me sick both in-game and IRL. The rescuers were doing the best they could with the resources at hand and the information they possessed, trying to save as many people as they could. But because events spiraled out of their control, someone wants to hold them culpable for it.
    As often is the case in arguments, we actually agree on mostly everything. Our only difference is that I see alignment as a tool that can be used for good or ill, and you consider only the bad uses, or think the bad uses are so widespread that they outweight whatever little good is gained from the good uses.
    So, can we just agree that alignment is but a tool, and that some people can use it for good and others use it disfunctionally?
    We can then agree to disagree on the number of those who use it well and of those who use it wrong.

    As for the fact that it is not needed, well of course one can make a roleplaying game without alignments, as one can make a roleplaying games without grappling rules or without a distinction between divine and arcane magic. It's just one of many elements, take it or leave it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    Interesting.

    But just how many sources are players supposed to check, over how many editions?

    Is this approach actually and explicitly spelled out in any of the published core material, rather than in a 12-year-old website article that many/most players may have never seen?
    One should not need a gaming manual to tell him what is good and what is evil.
    Although, truth to tell, judging by those debates gamers actually have a lot of experience with it and would be pretty well qualified.
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