Results 241 to 270 of 331
-
2018-01-18, 04:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Norway
- Gender
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.
-
2018-01-18, 04:53 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2016
- Location
- The Frozen North
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
Optimizing vs Roleplay
If the worlds greatest optimizer makes a character and hands it to the worlds greatest roleplayer who roleplays the character. What will happen? Will the Universe implode?
Roleplaying vs Fun
If roleplaying is no fun then stop doing it. Unless of course you are roleplaying at gunpoint then you should roleplay like your life depended on it.
-
2018-01-18, 04:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
-
2018-01-18, 05:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
"It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
-
2018-01-18, 05:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
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.
-
2018-01-18, 05:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2015
- Location
- Berlin
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
-
2018-01-18, 05:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Norway
- Gender
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.
-
2018-01-18, 05:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
-
2018-01-18, 05:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
-
2018-01-18, 06:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2015
- Location
- Berlin
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
-
2018-01-18, 06:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Norway
- Gender
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.
-
2018-01-18, 07:15 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 08:16 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2008
- Location
- I'm on a boat!
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
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.
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.
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.
I also enjoy getting sucked into alignment threads. It's my guilty pleasure.Red Mage avatar by Aedilred.
Where do you fit in? (link fixed)
RedMage Prestige Class!
Best advice I've ever heard one DM give another:
"Remember that it is both a game and a story. If the two conflict, err on the side of cool, your players will thank you for it."
Second Eternal Foe of the Draconic Lord, battling him across the multiverse in whatever shapes and forms he may take.
-
2018-01-18, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
You've called me a liar multiple times, engaging in an ad hominem fallacy and direct insults.
You've made your choice.
Goodbye. /plonk.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 08:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2015
- Location
- Berlin
- Gender
-
2018-01-18, 08:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Gender
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."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
-
2018-01-18, 09:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2008
- Location
- I'm on a boat!
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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".Red Mage avatar by Aedilred.
Where do you fit in? (link fixed)
RedMage Prestige Class!
Best advice I've ever heard one DM give another:
"Remember that it is both a game and a story. If the two conflict, err on the side of cool, your players will thank you for it."
Second Eternal Foe of the Draconic Lord, battling him across the multiverse in whatever shapes and forms he may take.
-
2018-01-18, 09:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- Italy
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In memory of Evisceratus: he dreamed of a better world, but he lacked the class levels to make the dream come true.
Ridiculous monsters you won't take seriously even as they disembowel you
my take on the highly skilled professional: the specialized expert
-
2018-01-18, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
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.
-
2018-01-18, 11:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.Marut-2 Avatar by Serpentine
New Marut Avatar by Linkele
-
2018-01-18, 11:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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?It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 12:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.Last edited by hamishspence; 2018-01-18 at 12:03 PM.
Marut-2 Avatar by Serpentine
New Marut Avatar by Linkele
-
2018-01-18, 12:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 12:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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).It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 12:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2015
- Location
- Berlin
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
-
2018-01-18, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2010
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
"Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
-
2018-01-18, 12:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2010
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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."Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
-
2018-01-18, 12:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2006
- Location
- Marlinspike
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
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
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.
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.
-
2018-01-18, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- Italy
- Gender
Re: alignment is bad and you should feel bad
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.
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.In memory of Evisceratus: he dreamed of a better world, but he lacked the class levels to make the dream come true.
Ridiculous monsters you won't take seriously even as they disembowel you
my take on the highly skilled professional: the specialized expert