OOTS #1153 - The Discussion Thread

[Worldsong]

Sure. The problem is that, when one side has - often using that very method - already taken over and acted like Tarquin, and afterwards things cool down and go back to "normal", relativizing what the Tarquin-esque side did allows, for instance, the wretches that sided with the Tarquin of the day to become leaders.

And what if The Emperor merely wanted it established in history that his side was right and that the other side was monstrous and to blame? And what if the other side started it? And what if people of the other side still treat the Crusades as desirable, saying that they killed "too few"? And someone that glorifies the Crusades is now in power?

For the sake of clarity, I'm not saying that the past should be ignored or that when a bad thing has happened people should let themselves be convinced that it wasn't a bad thing (barring the reveal of new information which proves that the thing wasn't as bad as people thought or was the lesser of two evils in the long run). We should definitely learn from the past and strive to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

It's when you start saying that we should treat the other side as pure evil that things quickly roll downhill as that goes beyond just learning your lesson and (usually) results in people being as bad as those they decry as pure evil even if their vile actions are aimed at those 'pure evil' folk.

Also there's no such thing as pure evil people. And so help me giant cow in the heavenly pastures if your next reply includes something along the lines of 'slavers are pure evil'.

Sadly, after you made this point, the number of people sticking their fingers in their ears and going lalala was greater than zero. Thanks for how you made that point, in terms of offering an in-comic context.

Well, I tried. Of course Miko had some other things going wrong as well but her inability to accept that she could be wrong in her judgement or that the judged could be turned back to the right path definitely hurt everyone in the long run.

[Ruck]

Except that even the deva never described it as an evil act.

So? She never described any of his individual acts in pure alignment terms when reviewing them, only making some broad summaries at the end. I explained pretty well why I think it was a strongly Chaotic Evil act.

Since the rest of your post seems to hinge on this assumption, I didn't answer it. Ironsmith did a pretty good job anyway.

[The_Weirdo]

For the sake of clarity, I'm not saying that the past should be ignored or that when a bad thing has happened people should let themselves be convinced that it wasn't a bad thing (barring the reveal of new information which proves that the thing wasn't as bad as people thought or was the lesser of two evils in the long run). We should definitely learn from the past and strive to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

It's when you start saying that we should treat the other side as pure evil that things quickly roll downhill as that goes beyond just learning your lesson and (usually) results in people being as bad as those they decry as pure evil even if their vile actions are aimed at those 'pure evil' folk.

Also there's no such thing as pure evil people. And so help me giant cow in the heavenly pastures if your next reply includes something along the lines of 'slavers are pure evil'.

On the first bolded: the victims don't have to care. And neither does anyone that fights against it. I've seen lesser of two evils claims thrown around by some folks defending very, very, very depraved people that were very, very, very destructive indeed.

On the second bolded: doesn't make them any less acceptable targets by anyone who wants slaves to be free - including the slaves themselves.

[Worldsong]

On the first bolded: the victims don't have to care. And neither does anyone that fights against it.

On the second bolded: doesn't make them any less acceptable targets by anyone who wants slaves to be free - including the slaves themselves.

You can say that but burning down the city still makes you just as bad as the slavers.

The fact that you're so willing to declare them acceptable targets and that people don't have to care about the circumstances is a literal example of how treating people as pure evil goes wrong. You stop treating them as people and then you become just as bad as them because 'I don't need to bother with ethics or restraint against non/subhumans.' Also the collateral damage you generally get with that kind of approach.

[The_Weirdo]

You can say that but burning down the city still makes you just as bad as the slavers.

The fact that you're so willing to declare them acceptable targets and that people don't have to care about the circumstances is a literal example of how treating people as pure evil goes wrong. You stop treating them as people and then you become just as bad as them because 'I don't need to bother with ethics or restraint against non/subhumans.' Also the collateral damage you generally get with that kind of approach.

No. The victims do not, in fact, have to care.

If someone attempts to sacrifice someone's rights unduly and involuntarily, no matter the goal, the would-be sacrifice has a right to do whatever it takes not to be sacrificed. And to hope they fail in that goal as well, and to do everything in their power to see them fail.

There is no difference between unduly disrespecting a right "for the greater good" and throwing a virgin into the caldera to appease the Big Volcano god.

[Worldsong]

No. The victims do not, in fact, have to care.

If someone attempts to sacrifice someone's rights unduly and involuntarily, no matter the goal, the would-be sacrifice has a right to do whatever it takes not to be sacrificed. And to hope they fail in that goal as well, and to do everything in their power to see them fail.

There is no difference between disrespecting a right "for the greater good" and throwing a virgin into the caldera to appease the Big Volcano god.

Everyone should always care. The moment you think 'Bad stuff has happened to the extent that I no longer have to consider the morality of my own actions' you're becoming as bad as that which you're opposing.

That doesn't mean you can't take extreme measures, but you should always be looking for ways to achieve your objective with minimal breach of whatever code of ethics you'd stick to under normal circumstances. If you find that the only options left to you are really, really bad ones you can take them if you believe that it's still better than not taking them, but in that case we've reached the situation of lesser of two evils which you previously stated you don't consider a valid excuse.

Also if sacrificing one life saved a LOT of people (and if there is solid evidence that this is actually the case and it's not just random superstition) I wouldn't like doing it in the slightest but I might argue that it's still better than not doing it. Especially if not doing it results in that one life dying together with everyone else so it's not even like I'm saving their life by not doing it.

[Anitar]

That doesn't mean you can't take extreme measures, but you should always be looking for ways to achieve your objective with minimal breach of whatever code of ethics you'd stick to under normal circumstances.

That is the code of ethics he'd stick to under normal circumstances, though. He's quite consistent about it.

[Ruck]

That is the code of ethics he'd stick to under normal circumstances, though. He's quite consistent about it.

Indeed, one consistent thing about The_Weirdo these many months is that when he says "People can do whatever is necessary to protect themselves" he really means "People can indiscriminately murder anyone associated with anyone who has ever tried to take away any of their rights." Stringent ethical rules for thee, but not for me.

[Worldsong]

That is the code of ethics he'd stick to under normal circumstances, though. He's quite consistent about it.

Indeed, one consistent thing about The_Weirdo these many months is that when he says "People can do whatever is necessary to protect themselves" he really means "People can indiscriminately murder anyone associated with anyone who has ever tried to take away any of their rights." Stringent ethical rules for thee, but not for me.

While his ethics are indeed very worrying I believe he usually still makes a difference between allowable actions between victims and non-victims. To which I argue that there shouldn't be a difference there because being a victim doesn't give you carte blanche on morality.

[Ruck]

While his ethics are indeed very worrying I believe he usually still makes a difference between allowable actions between victims and non-victims. To which I argue that there shouldn't be a difference there because being a victim doesn't give you carte blanche on morality.

Some victims, namely the ones he identifies with. If The_Weirdo feels oppressed and victimizes an innocent party as a result, well, he shouldn't have to deal with the consequences; the innocent victim should take it further up the causal chain.

[Worldsong]

Some victims, namely the ones he identifies with. If The_Weirdo feels oppressed and victimizes an innocent party as a result, well, he shouldn't have to deal with the consequences; the innocent victim should take it further up the causal chain.

The hypocrisy inherent in his line of reasoning is one of the things I'm arguing against.

[Ruck]

Oh, yeah, it's terrible and I'm not trying to imply you agree in any way. Just that his ethics don't live up to any standard of universal applicability, and that even his professed concern for victims is selective.

[Sindeloke]

So? She never described any of his individual acts in pure alignment terms when reviewing them, only making some broad summaries at the end. I explained pretty well why I think it was a strongly Chaotic Evil act.

IMO the Deva actually does tell us specifically that it's an Evil act. Not quite in so many words, maybe, but by her word choice when she describes it as "leaving a friend to an unknown fate."

Good is essentially a math equation: the benefit of an action to other people, minus the benefit of that action to you. With the normal quality that subtracting a negative is a positive, so if something benefits others while costing you it becomes more Good. Conversely, Evil is how much an action harms others, minus the benefit to you. Thus, giving your last gold coin to charity is more Good than giving a thousand gold coins out of your hoard of millions; killing in self-defense or letting someone die in your place are Neutral; being unwilling to intervene in bullying when the risk to you for doing so is minimal is mildly Evil; and killing someone to satisfy your annoyance with them is tremendously Evil.

By this metric, we can actually expect Neutral or even Evil people to go out of their way to protect a friend; the word "friend" implies that a person improves your life through their presence, so it's a risk made for personal gain, a Neutral act. For Roy, a seasoned adventurer who risks his life daily anyway, not risking it to save Elan is a relatively minor benefit, while the cost to Elan if he does not is the greatest possible. He's valuing someone's life lower than a Neutral person would, trading a friend away in order to save a handful of HP and be free of occasional mildly irritating chatter. This is Evil.

Also possibly Chaotic, since he's responsible for Elan, but I'm not as on board with the Deva on that one; Chaotic can mean three completely different things and the only one of them that really applies there is the one that we usually only use for societies, not people.

[woweedd]

He still has yet to explain how murder doesn't count as a form of oppression, namely, by removing one' freedom t do..Anything.

[Worldsong]

He still has yet to explain how murder doesn't count as a form of oppression, namely, by removing one' freedom t do..Anything.

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say the reasoning would be that while murder takes away all freedom it also puts you in a state where you don't suffer from that lack of freedom, in contrast to slaves who have to trudge through life feeling the shackles every waking second.

It wouldn't be the first time I'd heard of someone considering murder less vile than slavery due to death being a painless existence.

[mjasghar]

What's worrysome is that it completely evades him that this is the exact same line of thought used by the "Tarquin-like"* dictators he hates so much. I'm reminded of that little exchange from one of Warhammer 40K's books:

Uriah: Didn't you just tell me about the bloodshed perpetrated by the Crusades? Doesn't that you make you no better than the holy men you were telling me about?
The Emperor: The difference is that I am right.
Uriah: Spoken like a true autocrat.

*Not sure what exactly that's supposed to mean.

Quoting the Last Church is a bit silly since the author really doesn’t understand his own arguments - the idea that only religions were responsible for the great evils when atheist political movements killed more people for ideology and race reasons. And the fact the author tweeted himself giving a signed copy to Dawkins shows he did mean it as an atheist rant

[Fyraltari]

Quoting the Last Church is a bit silly since the author really doesn’t understand his own arguments - the idea that only religions were responsible for the great evils when atheist political movements killed more people for ideology and race reasons. And the fact the author tweeted himself giving a signed copy to Dawkins shows he did mean it as an atheist rant

Well that wasn't meant as an argument. It's just that I like that zinger, devoid of context, and it fit there. It wasn't really clever of me I agree.

[Kish]

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say the reasoning would be that while murder takes away all freedom it also puts you in a state where you don't suffer from that lack of freedom, in contrast to slaves who have to trudge through life feeling the shackles every waking second.

It wouldn't be the first time I'd heard of someone considering murder less vile than slavery due to death being a painless existence.

Nah, he's been perfectly explicit about it: it's that only the person defined as "an oppressor," a special class of subhuman, can actually victimize, in his eyes. Someone who is defined as "a victim" cannot victimize, no matter what they do to however many people. Sometimes he tries to link "oppresser" status to who started it, but when pushed on the fact that some chains of behavior traceably start earlier than the point where he chooses to set down his flag and say "that person should be horribly punished, everyone who acted after they did is blameless," his response is to post an obnoxious joke and a smiley and not change his position at all.

[woweedd]

Quoting the Last Church is a bit silly since the author really doesn’t understand his own arguments - the idea that only religions were responsible for the great evils when atheist political movements killed more people for ideology and race reasons. And the fact the author tweeted himself giving a signed copy to Dawkins shows he did mean it as an atheist rant

Um...I'm not allowed to debate this, but...pardon?

[KorvinStarmast]

You can say that but burning down the city still makes you just as bad as the slavers.

Worse, given the number of innocents carelessly killed. (It just occurs to me that Belkar killing the buggy slavers, who in T_W's world must be pure evil, had to be a good act thus Belkar cannot be evil. (Or something like that)).

The fact that you're so willing to declare them acceptable targets and that people don't have to care about the circumstances is a literal example of how treating people as pure evil goes wrong. You stop treating them as people and then you become just as bad as them because 'I don't need to bother with ethics or restraint against non/subhumans.'

I'll toss in a semantic barb, in that evil can't be pure by definition ... but that's meant more as a play on words than anything else.

Um...I'm not allowed to debate this, but...pardon?

That which you replied to brought to mind Thor's comment here in the last panel: And you 'almost' didn't bring that up, but here we are. Bearing in mind the red text not quite one page up, great time to let that one go is my guess.

[Fyraltari]

I'll toss in a semantic barb, in that evil can't be pure by definition ... but that's meant more as a play on words than anything else.

That rather depends on how you define "pure" and "evil" as long as you consider evil as a positive property (that is that has an existence in and of itself unlike negative properties who are simply a lack of a positive properties like cold is an abscence of warmth) and you don't give "pure" any moral connotation, you can have "pure evil" in the same way that you can hav "pure gold" or "pure anger".

[KorvinStarmast]

~semantic nit picking~

Evil has an inherent element of corruption, or perhaps more correctly a corrupting influence, in some definitions (the archetypicial instance (literary if you like) of a certain serpent in a certain garden comes to mind, hence the play on words). The play on words is on the word "pure" which has the connotation of goodness/virtue. The play on words was not on the word "evil". It posits the term "pure evil" as an oxymoron along the lines of "jumbo shrimp" and "internet etiquette."

[Malphegor]

Can I just say that it's amazing that on a strip about a grandmother dwarf vowing vengeance on anyone who strikes her son, whilst giving advice on taking care of the grandchild, you're all discussing burning down cities and the ethics of good and evil.

I can follow how you got to this point, but wow has this thread diverged from the comic page, I feel.

[CriticalFailure]

Can I just say that it's amazing that on a strip about a grandmother dwarf vowing vengeance on anyone who strikes her son, whilst giving advice on taking care of the grandchild, you're all discussing burning down cities and the ethics of good and evil.

I can follow how you got to this point, but wow has this thread diverged from the comic page, I feel.

Clearly, you need to learn how to see every conversation as an opportunity to prostheletize your specific ethical viewpoint.

[KorvinStarmast]

I can follow how you got to this point, but wow has this thread diverged from the comic page, I feel.

And this is the first time that this has ever happened. Nice catch.

[Resileaf]

I prefered when the thread was about Civilization.

[Worldsong]

Worse, given the number of innocents carelessly killed. (It just occurs to me that Belkar killing the buggy slavers, who in T_W's world must be pure evil, had to be a good act thus Belkar cannot be evil. (Or something like that)).
I'll toss in a semantic barb, in that evil can't be pure by definition ... but that's meant more as a play on words than anything else.
That which you replied to brought to mind Thor's comment here in the last panel: And you 'almost' didn't bring that up, but here we are. Bearing in mind the red text not quite one page up, great time to let that one go is my guess.

That rather depends on how you define "pure" and "evil" as long as you consider evil as a positive property (that is that has an existence in and of itself unlike negative properties who are simply a lack of a positive properties like cold is an abscence of warmth) and you don't give "pure" any moral connotation, you can have "pure evil" in the same way that you can hav "pure gold" or "pure anger".

Evil has an inherent element of corruption, or perhaps more correctly a corrupting influence, in some definitions (the archetypicial instance (literary if you like) of a certain serpent in a certain garden comes to mind, hence the play on words). The play on words is on the word "pure" which has the connotation of goodness/virtue. The play on words was not on the word "evil". It posits the term "pure evil" as an oxymoron along the lines of "jumbo shrimp" and "internet etiquette."

Throwing in my two cents (this discussion seems more lighthearted):

I usually try to work around the more religious definition of purity (I know that it can also be used outside of religious context but it just feels like something out of some holy book) because I have strong issue with the idea that embracing your sexuality and acting on it would have some innate wrongness to it, which almost always is implied when that definition is used.

I'd define someone who is pure evil as someone who in both thought and action is always detrimental and harmful to others, or if an interaction is not harmful it is nothing but preparation for greater harm in the future or completely accidental/unintended.

I prefered when the thread was about Civilization.

I was asleep when that happened

Celts are best for those early religious bonuses and ability to flood your empire with happiness.

[Ruck]

IMO the Deva actually does tell us specifically that it's an Evil act. Not quite in so many words, maybe, but by her word choice when she describes it as "leaving a friend to an unknown fate."

I think it's Evil, for sure. I do think your subsequent explanation makes sense, even if my own is a bit simpler.

Also possibly Chaotic, since he's responsible for Elan, but I'm not as on board with the Deva on that one; Chaotic can mean three completely different things and the only one of them that really applies there is the one that we usually only use for societies, not people.

If Belkar's behavior can be Roy's responsibility because he's his commanding officer, then Elan's well-being can be Roy's responsibility, too. If Elan was just a friend, I don't think it would be a Law/Chaos thing, but Roy is the party leader who signed Elan up and is responsible for him being there in the first place.

[The_Weirdo]

I was asleep when that happened

Celts are best for those early religious bonuses and ability to flood your empire with happiness.

No Celts in Civ VI, at least not yet. But I unsurprisingly like Boudicca as a (Civ) leader.

[Worldsong]

No Celts in Civ VI, at least not yet. But I unsurprisingly like Boudicca as a (Civ) leader.

In Civ VI I immediately homed in on Arabia with Saladin. I feel most comfortable with playstyles where I raise both faith/culture and science so Saladin combining the two fields fell into my nieche perfectly.