BoED Split - Defining [Good]

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, TGD, what things do you see as good that don't boil down to a triviality or a contradiction?

Me, personally, here's what I value as 'good':

[*] Increasing the health of as many people as possible.
[*] Increasing the efficiency and satisfaction organizational structures like governments and businesses provide. I personally believe that eusociality is generically superior in both a biological and sociological sense to other forms of creature interaction, though I am willing to be shown otherwise.
[*] Increasing the amount of empiricism into every aspect of life. If empiricism is replaced by a superior epistemological method, then let's do so.
[*] Intellectual uplift of as many sapient and near-sapient creatures (like apes) as possible.
[*] Interdependence between as many sapient and near-sapient creatures as possible.
[*] Maximizing the number of meaningful distinct choices everyone both in the present and future will have. Hell, if someone asks what freedom means to me that's the definition I give.
[*] Falling under the above caveat, maximizing the happiness and potential happiness of creatures both in the present time and future under the assumption (unless proven otherwise) that civilization is immortal. So no turning the landscape into a blasted hellscape to make everyone currently living insanely happy if it will make the next 10,000 generations who don't exist yet miserable.
[*] Increasing and preserving intellectual and physical diversity between sapient creatures subject so that it doesn't contradict the other axioms of good. So no deliberately inflicting Tay-Sachs onto those that don't have informed consent just because it's about to disappear.
[*] Preserving and promulgating the truth behind any event or thought made in the past as-is. As in, I find the Internet ruthlessly recording and preserving every event no matter its level of triteness one of the coolest things in human history.

This of course causes me to support policies like environmentalism, space exploration, transhumanism, a mixed economy that leans more on communism than capitalism but isn't completely centralized, empiricism, multiculturalism, secularism, and violence only in dire self-defense of yourself or others.

Some of those axioms contradict other axioms if taken too far -- I think that eusociality is superior, but taking it to the extent that ants do contradict the axioms of diversity and freedom and if I had more time I'd rank them and discuss how some of them can conflict with others. But for a 30-minute bus ride pitch I think that's pretty good.

But yeah, this:

Then we start on their subject of "Exalted Deeds", which are apparently the concrete things you can actually do to show that you are Good. They are: helping others, charity, healing, personal sacrifice, worshiping good deities, casting good spells, mercy, forgiveness, bringing hope, and redeeming evil. I'm not even sure the author understands how many of those things boil down to "wear a white hat instead of a black hat". We know we're good because we worship the gods of our side, who are good because they are on our side and our side is good because... aaargh! You could say exactly the same thing about Hextor and the evil societies that worship him. We aren't going to have time to go into all this horseshit, but I think it's important to note the following:

Is total bullshit. Except for mercy, forgiveness, and redeeming evil (and you'll note that redeeming evil is of itself a kissing cousin of forgiveness; and forgivess is a strict subset of mercy) nothing on that list contradicts the beliefs of, say, the friggin' Taliban.

[Orion]

It's hard to know how I'm meant to take this, since it seems be an ad hoc mix of things that look like first principles and things that really don't, but let's see.

Me, personally, here's what I value as 'good':

[*] Increasing the health of as many people as possible.
[*] Increasing the efficiency and satisfaction organizational structures like governments and businesses provide. I personally believe that eusociality is generically superior in both a biological and sociological sense to other forms of creature interaction, though I am willing to be shown otherwise.
[*] Increasing the amount of empiricism into every aspect of life. If empiricism is replaced by a superior epistemological method, then let's do so.

These strike me as weirdly specific for first principles, but obviously they're huge instrumentally. I specifically want to call out Health, since people *do* propose it as first principle from time to time, without thinking about how culturally specified it is. Other than that, we're agreed.
[*] Intellectual uplift of as many sapient and near-sapient creatures (like apes) as possible.

No deal. Creating more human-scale intelligences via genetic fuckery is no more an unqualified good than doing it by regular fucking. Either way adding new intelligences willy-nilly is likely to be an ethical crisis. I find it really hard to believe we would treat uplifted apes well, so let's just not do it.

[*] Interdependence between as many sapient and near-sapient creatures as possible.

What does this even mean? Life just is pretty damn interdependent, and there's a strong argument to be made that *reducing* those dependencies when possible is good for freedom and happiness and shit.

[*] Maximizing the number of meaningful distinct choices everyone both in the present and future will have. Hell, if someone asks what freedom means to me that's the definition I give.

I'm relatively certain that choices are uncountably infinite, so I'm not sure number is a helpful metaphor here.

[*] Falling under the above caveat, maximizing the happiness and potential happiness of creatures both in the present time and future under the assumption (unless proven otherwise) that civilization is immortal. So no turning the landscape into a blasted hellscape to make everyone currently living insanely happy if it will make the next 10,000 generations who don't exist yet miserable.

So "choice" is a higher priority than "happiness"? I'd be curious to hear your rationale.

[*] Increasing and preserving intellectual and physical diversity between sapient creatures subject so that it doesn't contradict the other axioms of good. So no deliberately inflicting Tay-Sachs onto those that don't have informed consent just because it's about to disappear.
[*] Preserving and promulgating the truth behind any event or thought made in the past as-is. As in, I find the Internet ruthlessly recording and preserving every event no matter its level of triteness one of the coolest things in human history.

And we're back to me being basically in favor of these, but confused about how they made the short list.

Edit: I will, of course, post mine later.

[Red_Rob]

Regarding Good and Evil, I was thinking of starting a thread about that. There are a number of things about the default D&D setup that fall apart on close (and not so close) scrutiny and I was hoping to give it the Den treatment.

My personal definition of Good ultimately boils down to "Is willing to provide aid to others even at the expense of themselves". This matches up to Evil as boiling down to "Is willing to harm others if it will provide benefits to themselves", and finally Neutrality as "Is not willing to aid others at detriment to themselves, but will not harm others to get benefits for themselves" or simply "Live and let live".

[Lago PARANOIA]

No deal. Creating more human-scale intelligences via genetic fuckery is no more an unqualified good than doing it by regular fucking.

I disagree with that. Sexual reproduction w/natural or artificial is a very suboptimal way of creating sapient way. We only do it that way because it really is the only way to do it.

Either way adding new intelligences willy-nilly is likely to be an ethical crisis. I find it really hard to believe we would treat uplifted apes well, so let's just not do it.

That's a problem with current society, not the idea. A problem which is imminently solvable with education and memetics.

What does this even mean? Life just is pretty damn interdependent, and there's a strong argument to be made that *reducing* those dependencies when possible is good for freedom and happiness and shit.

Intellectually or sociologically insulating people retards the growth of civilization. Isolation also encourages destructive competition. I thought that was pretty obvious.

I'm relatively certain that choices are uncountably infinite, so I'm not sure number is a helpful metaphor here.

They're uncountably infinite, true, but they still have different amounts of cardinality. I think it's pretty obvious that a Federation citizen has more meaningful day-to-day choices than someone living in Oceania even if technically they both have 'infinite' choices.

So "choice" is a higher priority than "happiness"? I'd be curious to hear your rationale.

They're related. Most obviously, not all things will satisfy all people at all points in time. But more than that, increasing the number of options available for people to choose -- especially in my favorite structure of society, which is eusociality with individual discrete choices creating emergence -- makes society more robust and thus 'better'. A society in which people have four potential careers they'd be really good (cowtender, chemical engineer, secretary, foreman) at is, all things being equal, better than one in which people only have one (just foreman) even if it was their favorite one all along. As the expression goes, specialization is for insects.

Now, option paralysis and choice dismotivation are very real things and complicate the question of 'what does it mean to have a meaningful choice'. But from a strict game theory perspective more choices = better.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Regarding Good and Evil, I was thinking of starting a thread about that. There are a number of things about the default D&D setup that fall apart on close (and not so close) scrutiny and I was hoping to give it the Den treatment.

Well, if I was going to create a pandering and ego-soothing essay or chapter on 'Good' to be consumed by the general audience I think that the most marketable way of doing things would be to take all of the major ethical theories ([Abrahamic] Divine Command theory, utilitarianism, Kantianism, Objectivism, etc.) got stripped from their original contexts and served up with an explanation. If I was feeling really cheeky I would even include a chart which had the major ethical theories with a proposed axiom and gave a score from -10 to 10 about how important or deleterious said axiom is in that framework.

[angelfromanotherpin]

We've kind of had this discussion before. In D&D, there are specifically several different kinds of Good, so you actually want a number of different moral positions which identify as 'good.' And then you probably want a brief write-up of how each one does and doesn't get along with the others.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I define the Good-Evil divide in D&D pretty simply.

GOOD means you go out of your way to help out others.
EVIL means you go out of your way to hurt others.

If someone who writes Evil on their character sheet doesn't do horrible stuff for a while, and also helps out others at mild inconvenience to themselves, they are probably going to slide into Neutral.

Someone who wrote Good on their sheet will slide into Neutral slowly if they repeatedly ignore people with problems that could be inconvenient to solve, and fast if they do any horrific stuff without strong justification for it. However, it is totally cool for a Good character to investigate a situation that looks like there might be trouble, determine they are out of their league, and then retreat or suggest someone else to handle it.

An evil quest-giver will waste some of a generic party's time being a dick for little gain. A good quest-giver will waste some of the generic party's time trying to get them to become better people.

[Lago PARANOIA]

My personal definition of Good ultimately boils down to "Is willing to provide aid to others even at the expense of themselves".

GOOD means you go out of your way to help out others.

I heavily disagree with this definition of Good. Or rather, I think that this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Good. Note that this definition of Good can apply without any modification to, oh, the Taliban.

[Chamomile]

I struggle to see how murdering adulterers is helping anyone. The Taliban's rhetoric is just rhetoric. They act exactly like gangsters and bullies shoving weaker people around on flimsy justifications, but you expect me to believe they genuinely buy their philosophy? Hell no. It's just an excuse. They don't blow themselves up because it's a sacrifice they're willing to make for the greater good. They blow themselves up because they're promised dozens of virgins in the afterlife. People who genuinely want to help other people will usually flinch away from giving their life to murder random civilians in the hope that the fear this provokes might advance their cause a little.

[RadiantPhoenix]

To quantify that condition, using the following axes, if you can define some metric of help/harm, actions become, "almost certainly not good," when they point south of θ=0°, "pretty evil," when they trend south of θ=-45°, and, "foaming at the mouth evil," when they wind up between θ=-90° and θ=-180°, and, "just plain foaming at the mouth," at around θ=+-180°

A person's alignment is some function of the magnitudes and directions of the vectors representing the actions they would take in various circumstances. This function may or may not be even approximately linear, and I do not have any function prepared that I would hold up as a good example.

Code: Select all

Helps others
   +
   A
   |
-<-+->+ Helps me
   |
   V
   -
Hurts Others

This chart is only for actions involving two homogeneous groups (i.e., each member of a given group is helped exactly as much as any other member of that group); actions involving larger numbers of groups would be measured in a higher dimensional space.

Most actions actually affect more such groups, but in this is much simpler to understand, and there are probably a large number of higher-dimensional situations that it is reasonable to approximate as 2d.

A higher-dimensional metric of help and harm would likewise require a higher dimensional space for evaluation.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I heavily disagree with this definition of Good. Or rather, I think that this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Good. Note that this definition of Good can apply without any modification to, oh, the Taliban.

During what phase of the Taliban's existence?

Doesn't it make the game more interesting if there are people in the team of the bad guys antagonists who don't register on Evildar? Some of them are unrepentant sadists who will compromise mission security to hurt more people and brutalize captives for fun, some just follow orders and try to accept the propaganda that makes what they are doing easier, and some will actually risk getting in trouble with the bosses working against their team's most nefarious actions, just because they feel wrong.

[Grek]

Disagree with point six:
There are a number of studies showing that giving people more choices to choose between makes them less happy with the final choice they do select compared to people who'd been given less choices but ultimately selected the same final choice. Further, giving people the option to do something that they have previously decided that they don't want but are still tempted by (example: fat person on a diet being offered cake) will be less happy for having the option and forcing themselves to refuse the temptation than if the temptation were never present in the first place. So, in short, while people like having choices, maximizing the number of choices is not the same as maximizing happiness or goodness or what have you.

[Grek]

How did this get here I don't even-

[Ice9]

EVIL means you go out of your way to hurt others.

I don't think you need to hurt people for the sake of evil to count as evil. Just stepping on them to help yourself could easily qualify. I mean sure, if you're an Antipaladin or a Cleric of Gruumsh, you're probably expected to go out and actively look for people to hurt, but the guy who only stabs people when they have something he wants is still plenty evil.

Re: The OP
Most of those could reasonably be called good, but some of them definitely contradict each-other. As mentioned, maximum choice vs optimal happiness is one. If Law/Chaos weren't so FUBAR in D&D, I would call this a LG vs CG type of issue.

I also don't think that uplifting animals is really a matter of good/not good. Treating things that are closer to sapient better, sure, but you don't need to boost their sapience to do that. Sure, it increases diversity of thought, but so would creating a bunch of variant types of humans, or enabling self-modification to the extent that each individual was practically a separate species. Both of which would be interesting, but not inherently "good".

[Lago PARANOIA]

I struggle to see how murdering adulterers is helping anyone. The Taliban's rhetoric is just rhetoric. They act exactly like gangsters and bullies shoving weaker people around on flimsy justifications, but you expect me to believe they genuinely buy their philosophy? Hell no. It's just an excuse. They don't blow themselves up because it's a sacrifice they're willing to make for the greater good. They blow themselves up because they're promised dozens of virgins in the afterlife. People who genuinely want to help other people will usually flinch away from giving their life to murder random civilians in the hope that the fear this provokes might advance their cause a little.

Unless you're prepared to argue that there's no such thing as a sincere religious fundamentalist, I find this objection of yours extremely bizarre. The vast majority of revealed religions, especially Abrahamic ones, promise some kind of ridiculous reward to people who are loyal to the faith. You may have heard of a popular one: it's called 'heaven'.

This function may or may not be even approximately linear, and I do not have any function prepared that I would hold up as a good example.

One day gamers will learn that if an analysis won't fit all boxes/nodes of a chart or graph in an aesthetically pleasing fashion the solution is not to do violence to the analysis until it does. Until that day comes, we'll keep getting unnecessary bullshit like the Warden and the Ardent.

During what phase of the Taliban's existence?

The Taliban is a branch of right-wing Abrahamic fundamentalism. This religion is extremely obsessed with hierarchy, groupthink, martyrdom and faith and states that these features are what makes them better than non-believers both in this and the next world.

If you're going to claim that the Taliban are in fact evil despite their claims of being good you need to either show them that they don't meet their own axioms (good fucking luck with that!) or challenge them with an alternate set of ethical axioms.

Doesn't it make the game more interesting if there are people in the team of the bad guys antagonists who don't register on Evildar?

Yes. But your definition of Good, whereupon it's totally possible that a follower and willing martyr of Tlaloc would register as more Good than the vast majority of people in the world is vile and makes a mockery of the concept.

[hyzmarca]

I struggle to see how murdering adulterers is helping anyone.

The death penalty for adultery at the very least qualifies as retributive justice, which may or may not be the same thing as helping people, but at least qualifies as helping society.

It may have a deterrent factor, and is certainly intended as such, though the actual effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent is dubious. But the goal is to help people be eliminating social ills.

However, the simple help<->hurt definition of evil fails miserably in that it defines evil as psychopathic and dysfunctional and that just isn't interesting.

[kzt]

The Taliban's rhetoric is just rhetoric. They act exactly like gangsters and bullies shoving weaker people around on flimsy justifications, but you expect me to believe they genuinely buy their philosophy? Hell no. It's just an excuse. They don't blow themselves up because it's a sacrifice they're willing to make for the greater good. They blow themselves up because they're promised dozens of virgins in the afterlife. People who genuinely want to help other people will usually flinch away from giving their life to murder random civilians in the hope that the fear this provokes might advance their cause a little.

People who live their live according to the the dictates of their culture and religion are the "normal people" in their culture and hence are in fact "good" per the standards used internally. If this includes slaughtering unbelievers then that's what they do.

The idea that it's good to be "genuinely" helping people who are living what your culture and religion considers to be an evil or objectionable lifestyle is not a common point of view.

It's only when you look at a culture from the outside that you even get these questions.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Yes. But your definition of Good, whereupon it's totally possible that a follower and willing martyr of Tlaloc would register as more Good than the vast majority of people in the world is vile and makes a mockery of the concept.

Okay.

Metzli is a dude who grows maize. He grows enough to feed his family, and he gives excess to other people who run short and also to the church of Tlaloc, who is the Aztec god most interested in looking after the peasants.

One year, his family is killed by disease when a plague (also one of Tlaloc's domains) ravages the countryside. He offers himself as a sacrifice to the temple, hoping that his blood will help move Tlaloc to spare the rest of the village.

Metzli's spirit lives on forever in Tlalocan, Blessed Land of the Drowned. From time to time his spirit is called back from the god's domain by sorcerers, and he glides around easing the suffering of the sick before losing his hold on the material plane.

Is this guy likely to detect as good if you visit the plane and activate Evildar? I'd probably say he radiates moderate good, even though Tlaloc is a huge jerk.

[Red_Rob]

Part of what makes D&D morality so fucked is that they want to have objective morality be a thing, but they never actually lay out what that is in any coherent way. It's like Law and Chaos, you need to have a concrete definition otherwise anything can be argued to be either if you try hard enough.

In the real world almost every major group seen as "Evil" by the majority of people self identifies as Good or Holy. That's just the way human psychology works, people don't want to feel that they are bad people. But in D&D land there is an actual spell called "Detect Evil" and it shows you who is on Santa's list without any ifs or buts. The only way that can work is if there is an objective morality code that people can adhere to or not, and people that don't are Evil even if they tell themselves they are working towards a greater good. Although a sect that accepts that they are sinning and see it as a necessary step to being redeemed in the end could be pretty interesting in a "I take your sin and leave you cleaner, aren't I a good Martyr" kind of way.

[wotmaniac]

What does this even mean? Life just is pretty damn interdependent, and there's a strong argument to be made that *reducing* those dependencies when possible is good for freedom and happiness and shit.

I think you might be talking past each other on this one .... Societal interdependence and personal self-reliance are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
"reducing dependencies" (i.e., increasing self-reliance) would be making sure your dead-beat couch-sleeping cousin gets a job instead of mooching off or you (or Uncle Sam).
societal interdependence would be more exemplified by the functions of a complex economy (division/specialization of labor, etc.)

both of these are "good" things

[Chamomile]

Unless you're prepared to argue that there's no such thing as a sincere religious fundamentalist, I find this objection of yours extremely bizarre.

As it so happens I am entirely prepared to argue that, with only a few qualifiers. Sincere religious fundamentalists do exist in that there are people who genuinely think Jews are inherently evil and the world will actually be better off without them, but these people are both wrong and dramatically outnumbered by the people who don't actually care whether or not Jews are evil and actually just want to kill people and take their stuff and are happy to have an excuse to do so. We could get into a big huge argument about how right and wrong are ultimately arbitrary concepts, but all that means is that basically everyone detects as Good and basically nobody detects as Evil and then half the Paladin's class features just go right out the window. The important thing is that the actual motivation behind most religious fundamentalism has nothing to do with knowing the truth or helping other people, which is why religious fundamentalists very rarely believe true things or help other people do anything, which means that the metric of "selflessness vs. selfishness" used to distinguish between Good and Evil still holds up because the vast majority of D&D's players are on board with it even if it isn't objectively verifiable as "good" because objective good is an incoherent concept in the real world.

The doctrine of any given cult is almost universally selfish and focuses heavily on the rewards God will give you personally for doing what he says rather than on what you can do for other people, which is why crazy New Agers who have beliefs which are inane but nonetheless genuinely want to help other people basically never become violent terrorists, and likewise why Christian denominations that put an emphasis on charity and good works do not typically join the Lord's Resistance Army. Religious fundamentalists are selfish thugs fundamentally no different from secular gangsters and their leaders are just power-mongers who use the promise of great reward to motivate their minions to do terrible things and then foot the bill for the actual rewards to God. Whether or not they believe that God will actually pay that bill doesn't really matter, because the point is that at no stage do they actually want to improve the world, they just want to be wealthy and powerful and are either lying or deluding themselves into thinking that the best method of improving the world just so happens to be the one that involves giving them tons of wealth and power. Because you can't measure good there's no way to prove that someone is wrong when they define "good" as "whatever is most beneficial to me and screw the rest of you," but it is nevertheless not very hard to convince most D&D players that self-delusion does not rewrite selfish brutality as a Good action.

[kzt]

The easy way out of the the detect good and evil and the paladin stuff is that is they are defined relative to the person casting the spell or the deity that the paladin is representing.

It's not that they are intrinsically evil, it's that they are evil to YOU.

Of course is doesn't work with the absurd gygaxism of alignment as some sort of absolute metric, but so what? That has been absurd for 30+ years, why should we feel obliged to keep believing absurd things due to tradition, or "it is so written". It's not like it's some sort of religious obligation, is it?

[shau]

I actually like the "Because I Said So" definition of "Good", as it allow you to maintain moral ambiguity despite the fact that one team is literally defined as "Good" and the other "Evil."

If Good is defined as righteous glowing holy energy, then Good is basically insane and you can have things like Rape Paladins who 'redeem' succubi with the power of their mighty spears and Redeemed Mind Flayers who only eat the brains of 'Evil' people.

When Team Good is defined as a bunch of crazy Taliban-like fundamentalists, it greatly reduces the utility of the Detect Alignment spell in determining whom you should trust.

Unfortunately, I don't think that the BoED was being ironic in it's pushing of divine command theory.

For the purposes of a DnD game, I actually like the above. So Evil characters are wreathed in shadow and their weapons infused with a terrible, numbing cold and Good people glow with a holy light from within and their weapons are on fire for great justice. Paladins come from any god you can name and have a (Whatever) Stupid alignment because they have to keep picking the conversation option that gives them brownie points, like my Paragon in Mass Effect. And the whole thing is thinly veiled moral commentary.

[flare22]

look to put it bluntly good an evil are completely relative for pretty much every single set of ethics a human culture has and considers good another human culture will consider that evil and visa versa wether its rape murder or torture or cannibalism there have been cultures that considered them good and likewise there have been cultures that considered them evil.

my rule of thumb for good/evil is simple a measure of selfishness a good person goes out of there way to help people they never use or abuse people avoid conflict at great expense and so on while a

neutral person is like an average human they they help people out within reason but not to the point were it greatly inconveniences them they avoid conflict when its bad for them but not when it can be used to there advantage they might occasionally use people to get what they want but not if its someone they like.

an evil person only looks out for number one they use people have no problems with conflict if it means getting what they want and only help people if they can gain advantage by it somehow

basically the rule of thumb for good and evil is use words that cross cultures while killing people might be bad or good depending on the situation conflict is always by definition and helping people is good

[Avoraciopoctules]

flare22, does your alignment system have room for demons/evil adventurers who have friends and do nice things for them?

I generally like going with alignment systems that allow for Evil groups where some members actually will make sacrifices for each other even if they'd laugh at the idea in general. It makes it easier to put together diverse dungeons and enemy factions.