certain acts cause all healthy persons to consider them evil. It's how our brains are wired, and that's my working definition of evil. It's not provably objective, true, but it might as well be. Do such things, and you are an evil person.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong...
milgram, Stanford prison experiment Derren brown has a good recreation of the milgram experiment you can find on youtube easily enough if you want to see it in a modern repeat of the experiment.But with that said and because someone brought up the atrocities from Japanese in the WW2 era... Lets talk about unit731... I assure you that it pales the baby in acid exanple already given. The most important part about it is the fact that much of what we know is due to ordinary people recollecting the activities of unit 731 rather than an Auchwitz>Josef Megele investigation where he at least tried to protect his experiments from some of the other problems going on there at the time & used things like anesthesia.
The prisoners that unit731 experimented on were referred to as logs as a result ofd the lumber mill coverstory of the loication.... They didn't even get the number that the stanford prison experiment prisoners got.
Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions. Flame throwers were tested on humans. Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and explosive bombs.
Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare
Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians. Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.
Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) were involved in research, development, and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.
Prisoners were subjected to other torturous experiments such as being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death, having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism, and having horse urine injected into their kidneys.
Other incidents include being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death, being placed into high-pressure chambers until death, having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival, being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead, having animal blood injected and the effects studied, being exposed to lethal doses of x-rays, having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers, being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline and being buried alive
Japanese scientists performed tests on prisoners with plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, and other diseases. This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague. Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii in 1938.
These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks, infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells, and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrier fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and other deadly pathogens. During biological bomb experiments, scientists dressed in protective suits would examine the dying victims. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. In addition, poisoned food and candies were given out to unsuspecting victims and children, and the results examined.
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.
is enough pressure from a figure of authority directed towards ~60% of ordinary people to kill another... you always have to think for yourself, the Alignment system discourages thinking.
No. You can have the most common option: That guy has something I want. If I take it, I will have to hurt him, probably badly. Well, what's hurting someone when you can gain from it? And what do I care if someone gets hurt?
As for Milgram: What this experiment does, which everyone seems to miss, is that it strips away the civility and recognition of universally evil actions that protects people in a functioning society. Societal pressure and censure is a very important part for making said 60% behave like decent people. I find it more interesting that 40% actually told the experiment leaders to f$%+ off, I am not going to kill that guy, whoever he is. They chose the risk of angering someone who could just as well turn against them, in a "society" where anyone can be killed for any reason or no reason, just to act decently toward someone they didn't even know.
As for war stories: Again, situations like this strip away people's civility. There is a reason rape is far more common in war situations - the rapist doesn't have to face the consequences of his crime.
No. You can have the most common option: That guy has something I want. If I take it, I will have to hurt him, probably badly. Well, what's hurting someone when you can gain from it? And what do I care if someone gets hurt?
So, the moronic thug is the paramount of clear cut, all black and no grey, evil! Who would have thought?! :-)
Seriously, it was a nice discussion, and helped me rethink about what I believe about morality, but, for now, lets just agree to disagree.
Yes, I find it somewhat intuitive that the moronic thug should be it.
And thank you too. It was fun.
To argue that good and evil are emotional constructs destroys the whole issue of good an devil. Autism is far closer to being an 'ass' than being 'evil'. Many autistic people can not even act in their own self interest.
To argue that good and evil are emotional constructs destroys the whole issue of good an devil. Autism is far closer to being an 'ass' than being 'evil'. Many autistic people can not even act in their own self interest.That begs the question then... What is the "issue" of Good and Evil? Good and Evil are emotional constructs, they have no existence in the world than what we bring to them. Animals certainly aren't evil, nor are they "good". It follow than that Good and Evil are things that we as Humans bring uniquely to the equation, and given the emotional charge we put into these constructs that you can not separate that dimension from them.
Assuming we are still involving the game's alignment system here, animals ARE Neutral.
Sissyl uhh... huh? it's been pointed out previously that you keep trying to move the goalposts... You've tried it so many times that you just came full circle and accidentally supported my original point that the alignment system is flawed because it tries to remove the subjective nature from good & evil with your latest pure black example by specifically defining the act, the thought process, the reason, and the extent the "evil" person is intending to go in the "evil" act. It's obviously not possible to define everything evil down to that level for a game just to keep the concept of an absolute good/evil lacking any subjective nature in tact... the alignment system would have more pages than all content ever published for any version of D&D+Pathfinder ever published to even begin to account for things on that level of detail. in order to avoid the problem of a several thousand page alignment system and the ones already pointed out in the existing system, the alignment system should be adjusted to account for the subjective nature of good & evil.
I haven't been moving goalposts. It's just that you haven't been understanding me. There is a difference.
My point was from the start that there is an objective standard for good and evil. Now, maybe this is a case of using the wrong words. Let's try this:
There are things that are universally evil, no matter which culture people come from. Act this way, and you would be an evil person.
The specifics of these acts INCLUDE whether the person committing the act is aware of the morality of the proposed action.
Certainly, you cannot from the outside prove that a person is aware or not - but! You can draw conclusions and make assumptions of it.
This is not the same as claiming morality is subjective, a term that typically means that it's up to each person to say whether they act evil or not.
It is not a situation that requires whole volumes written about the alignment system. I would be tempted to say that this is another pointless attempt to try to claim subjective morality.
I don't think Sissyl gets that you can do evil things without thinking "I AM BEING EVIL!!!"
X group committed horrible war atrocities. But I bet if you asked them "Are you doing something evil?" they would say "No, I'm fighting for <glorious cause>." Someone does something objectively wrong like rape. Do they think "I was evil?" Or do they think "She was asking for it."
The problem with alignment is that you can then say "Ok, cast Detect Alignment on yourself" and they more or less have to respond with "...Well, damn. I'm actually being objectively evil on a supernatural scale. I...I guess I have to stop."
The existence of pure alignments equates more or less to no wars or crimes ever not because the law enforcement could easily tell who was being evil, but because only literal sociopaths wouldn't care that their actions can be literally called out as being objectively evil. Someone would begin drumming up for war, and then wait, no, that's literally evil on an objective scale. Someone would begin overpricing their goods despite it causing others to starve to death, and then oh, wait, literally I am being evil (and then he'd do it anyways because he is a sociopath).
Prof: I have been saying it's eminently possible to do evil acts without realizing it all along. What you don't understand is:
First, doing evil acts is not a binary proposition. You can make mistakes, and you can repent, and you can change. Your alignment is a measure of how you can be expected to act, what your priorities are, not "has this person EVER committed an evil act?" As a consequence, it's not as easy as detecting evil.
Second, you don't have to be a complete sociopath to ignore the suffering of others. A sociopath is someone who can't understand the consequences for others. Someone who does understand and doesn't care is something else: EVIL.
Third, whether "she was asking for it" or not, there is no excuse. As I also stated earlier.
Fourth, you claim that the existence of pure alignments is impossible because everyone has access to detect evil. This is patently ridiculous, and makes a ton of assumptions that are not reasonable. Spellcasting isn't all that common in the typical setting, but more importantly: The magic provides the information ONLY to the caster of the spell. If you detect on yourself, fine, but what do you really know if someone tells you they cast detect evil and you showed up as evil?
Fifth, and this is a more serious problem in your reasoning: You assume that everyone WANTS to be good and avoid doing evil. This certainly does not follow.
In short, you can't argue against "pure alignments" without understanding that such a system has other consequences, ones that you simply choose to ignore in your post.
How isn't Dexter Lawful Evil? Lawful Neutral is possible. He is a serial killer working, discreetly and covertly, for the government.
As far as I understood, he never had any sort of deal with the government. He also does not respect the law at all, killing because he feels good when he does. Chaotic Evil.
Spoiler:Prof: I have been saying it's eminently possible to do evil acts without realizing it all along. What you don't understand is:First, doing evil acts is not a binary proposition. You can make mistakes, and you can repent, and you can change. Your alignment is a measure of how you can be expected to act, what your priorities are, not "has this person EVER committed an evil act?" As a consequence, it's not as easy as detecting evil.
Second, you don't have to be a complete sociopath to ignore the suffering of others. A sociopath is someone who can't understand the consequences for others. Someone who does understand and doesn't care is something else: EVIL.
Third, whether "she was asking for it" or not, there is no excuse. As I also stated earlier.
Fourth, you claim that the existence of pure alignments is impossible because everyone has access to detect evil. This is patently ridiculous, and makes a ton of assumptions that are not reasonable. Spellcasting isn't all that common in the typical setting, but more importantly: The magic provides the information ONLY to the caster of the spell. If you detect on yourself, fine, but what do you really know if someone tells you they cast detect evil and you showed up as evil?
Fifth, and this is a more serious problem in your reasoning: You assume that everyone WANTS to be good and avoid doing evil. This certainly does not follow.
In short, you can't argue against "pure alignments" without understanding that such a system has other consequences, ones that you simply choose to ignore in your post.
By (finally) confirming that you accept the fact that good & evil are not necessarily binary positions, you are once again going full circle and arguing with the point I made in the OP. Specifically the fact that the alignment system is flawed and should be updated to account for good & evil being more complex than pure black & pure white as it tries to paint them.
As to the idea of being able to change if you repent... It takes more to atone than simply repenting, especially when you are talking about unit731 type things
As to your claim that you need to be a complete sociopath or "evil" to ignore the suffering of others, I posted the stanford prison experiment earlier... the confessions of unit731's doctors over the years is another data point against the claim. Many of them were in a do or die situation and went through a rapid period of desensitization very similar to that of the guards in the person experiment that allowed them to continue on, but they have been haunted by the things they did since that time & have been trying to do what little they can to atone with themselves since.
You don't need to be a psychopath... jusat Milgram/Stanford prison experiment type influences and/or a healthy dash of Goebbels style propaganda & conditioning
As to your claim that fixing the system to account for the problems already pointed out and debated about over the last few pages... I notice you conveniently neglected to state those consequences in your post where anyone could do things like point out the benefits outweighing the drawbacks or explain any flaws in the claim... That's not the first time you've done that sort of thing in this thread either & it's getting old.
Prof: I have been saying it's eminently possible to do evil acts without realizing it all along. What you don't understand is:
First, doing evil acts is not a binary proposition. You can make mistakes, and you can repent, and you can change. Your alignment is a measure of how you can be expected to act, what your priorities are, not "has this person EVER committed an evil act?" As a consequence, it's not as easy as detecting evil.
No it's pretty easy if you note how easy it is to have items that cast detect evil regularly.
Second, you don't have to be a complete sociopath to ignore the suffering of others. A sociopath is someone who can't understand the consequences for others. Someone who does understand and doesn't care is something else: EVIL.
...Uh, not caring about how your actions effect someone even when they are objectively hurtful is pretty much the definition of antisocial disorder.
Third, whether "she was asking for it" or not, there is no excuse. As I also stated earlier.
No, it is pretty literally an excuse. Do you know what an excuse is? It's not the same as a reason
Fourth, you claim that the existence of pure alignments is impossible because everyone has access to detect evil. This is patently ridiculous, and makes a ton of assumptions that are not reasonable. Spellcasting isn't all that common in the typical setting, but more importantly: The magic provides the information ONLY to the caster of the spell. If you detect on yourself, fine, but what do you really know if someone tells you they cast detect evil and you showed up as evil?
Again, I'm assuming for third edition or 3e variants such as Pathfinder, which allows for some pretty common magic items. But even in cases beyond third edition, if you have regular people who can cast detect evil and are trusted members of society, the same problem crops up.
Fifth, and this is a more serious problem in your reasoning: You assume that everyone WANTS to be good and avoid doing evil. This certainly does not follow.
Well, aside from people with things such as antisocial disorder, yes. That's because it is true. That's why people make excuses such as "she was asking for it;" because they do not want to see themselves as being evil.
In short, you can't argue against "pure alignments" without understanding that such a system has other consequences, ones that you simply choose to ignore in your post.
No, I'm pretty sure you just proved my initial statement correct - you still do not understand that people mostly do horrible things without thinking of themselves as horrible people.
Ah alignment threads, what would this game be without you?
Some things of note that I picked up from this thread that I would like to comment on.
1. Doing evil things makes you irrevocably evil. I forget who said this but if this was true then there is no need for the Atonement spell. This could cause some complications for PC's everywhere.
2. Killing evil people is a good thing. Killing is killing is killing. That being said, intent has everything to do with it. The Punisher killing mob cronies because he's trying to get to the mob boss who killed his family, grey area but could be viewed as a good thing if you stretch it a bit. Dexter killing other serial killers...still evil as he gets something out of it (as stated by the OP) and/or does not do so to actively improve society. I will note that I am not arguing Dexter's alignment at all as I don't believe he fits in ANY of the categories as designed and is thus a moot point. See later point.
3. Redemption making up for all the evil a person does. One person comes to mind, Charlemagne (sp?). This guy conquered most of the known world in his time in the most bloody way possible only to "repent" on his deathbed. Good guy? Not likely, but at least he was "trying".
4. Killing is always an evil act. Like the guy who talked about killing a fly, killing is a subjective thing. In the game, killing orcs is not usually considered an evil act as they are likely to cause more evil if they were to be left alive*. Years ago, it was perfectly acceptable in the United States to kill a black person because they were not considered to be "human" (although it was often thought to be of "poor taste" to do so). By todays standards it is an evil act, but back then it was not considered an evil act because that particular race of humans was considered to be "less than". To sum this thought up, killing is neutral until history dictates otherwise. Nazis are another good example of this, i.e. they thought they were doing "good". When it comes to "killing" or "murder" history has shown that it is not evil if it is done by the winning side and that winning side had a "good reason for doing so" (think about WWII and the atomic bombs).
5. All PC's over level 2 should be considered to have an Evil alignment. On one hand I agree with this, but as I alluded to above it depends on intent, the setting, the laws of the society, etc. To be perfectly honest the OP makes a great point, all PCs ACTIVELY go out and murder various creatures and NPCs all in the name of adventuring or because some society said that other society was evil, and so on and so on. Basically what I'm getting at is that this game tends to allow for certain "bending" of the morality scale due to the game being unfun otherwise. Could you imagine what the game would be like if you had to play all "good" alignments by not allowing any harm whatsoever to come to any living thing (plants included) everywhere? On second thought that actually sounds kind of interesting. My point being that humans are flawed and therefore no one is 100% altruistic nor is anyone 100% sadistic. Also, no one could ever play a paladin because in order to play a "true" lawful good person they would be unable to cause any harm to anyone because killing anything is evil.
*A side note to the above: I really, really, really hate the "Always CE" or variations of this phrase in the bestiaries. Mostly because it further sparks these kinds of debates and secondly it allows for PCs to cause mass genocide and say things like "it's ok that we wiped them all out, they were evil" or as I like to call it the "Anakin Skywalker murders Tuskan Raiders" defense.
One last note about the whole "aligment" debates. All of these alignment debates are from 1 perspective and that is from a human one or to be more precise a modern human one. I imagine if some of these fantasy races existed in reality we would have a different take on the whole concept of what was "good", "evil", "lawful", or "chaotic" (neutral is just a cop out ;)). See my above example in number 4. Many of us have a hard time seeing beyond this perspective and often go out our ways to force our version of this perspective on others. I have often found that this is a futile venture and the best way forward is to agree to disagree.