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2021-05-16, 08:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I do believe that we're all organic machines and that realistically speaking free will doesn't exist. However, if we approach life at this level any discussion about morality kind of falls apart at the very base, not to mention how for a lot of people going through life thinking they have no free will is bad for their mental health. Also, you know, the fact that it's a headache to write all this while knowing that I write this because of my machinery reacting to internal and external stimuli.
Either we acknowledge that free will isn't real in which case we might as well exclude ourselves from any discussion involving morality, or we maintain the illusion of free will at least in the context of morality-based discussions.
If we assume that we're maintaining the illusion of free will so morality remains a valid topic of discussion we're back at the level of 'What is Good and what is Evil', which is one of those topics people have been contending about for thousands of years. So I can't with confidence say which system it should be judged by, but I can say that most people here seem to be in agreement that massacring children is firmly Evil.
Yes, but we have no evidence that people are incapable of choosing whether to kill children or not, so if you declare that most people would only fail to kill children, under circumstances where they wouldn't suffer any consequences, because of laziness rather than moral objections... Then you are making a statement regarding people's morality, and one which most people would interpret as negative since to them it implies immorality.
Honestly that was just me thinking out loud, ignore that part.Last edited by Worldsong; 2021-05-16 at 08:04 AM.
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2021-05-16, 09:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
'Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered, crying:'Auta i lómë!" The night is passing!"
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2021-05-16, 09:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Personally I'd assume saying something and actually doing it are two completely different things.
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
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Extended sig here.
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2021-05-16, 09:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
'Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered, crying:'Auta i lómë!" The night is passing!"
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2021-05-16, 11:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2020
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Did you stop the consider the possibility of a moral theory that does not depend on free will?
Originally Posted by Worldsong
Argument from popularity ("most people here" etc.) is a bad pick because most people have not established how they reached their conclusion. Untill they do, their agreement can only be considered superficial.
Originally Posted by Worldsong
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2021-05-16, 11:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2020
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2021-05-16, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I did, but figured that creating a moral theory which doesn't require the possibility of choice (which is a function of free will) is going to take a bit longer than I'd want to spend on pointing out that 'killing children is removed from morality' is a rather dubious claim unless you're approaching it from a philosophical angle where you're basically asking "What is morality, exactly?".
Wrong way around, I think there's no consensus because there are no answers. Any system you use for judging and dealing with the actions of people is going to be artificial, arbitrary, and based on what that particular group of people thinks is the closest to making sense as you can get when you start out from a flawed perspective.
The reason why I'm entertaining the idea that free will, morality and the possibility of choice exist is because, as stated before, humans don't function so well without this illusion.
Also the reason people haven't elaborated on why they believe massacring children is immoral is because to them it's like explaining why you need to open a door before you can step through the doorframe (a solid, steel door that can't be broken down by any tools available to you and which leads to an indestructible chamber with the doorframe being the only access point).
As pointed out by Meta, you're seeing this the wrong way around. The laziness isn't what implies immorality, the fact that laziness would be the only thing stopping them is what implies immorality because it would mean they don't have the morality required to consider massacring children wrong and thus not something they'd want to do, regardless of how lazy they are.
That said I'm not really interested in having a prolonged discussion about this. dps made a statement that they believe only laziness would prevent people from massacring children if the people themselves suffered no consequences, and the majority of people who bothered to reply to that have made it clear that they disagree on the grounds that they would consider such an act highly immoral, too immoral for them to believe that the majority of people would be okay with it (with only laziness preventing them performing such an act). If you want to argue that dps's statement had nothing to do with morality that's up to you, but I think it's a flawed interpretation of how people work.Last edited by Worldsong; 2021-05-17 at 08:15 AM.
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2021-05-16, 03:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2020
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Why would I? Nobody was talking about desire to kill children just because.
You're equating "I didn't kill a child because there was nothing in it for me" with "I desire to kill children but not right now".
You're assuming that in a situation where there are no negative personal consequences to killing a baby, what would stop most people is moral objection to killing babies, and not the non-moral reason of there being no positive personal consequences to it.
The actual implication of immorality is in the bombing, industry and prison experiment tangents, since it has been empirically shown that it's fairly easy to make people break supposedly obvious morals like "killing children is wrong". Suggesting that when most people say stuff like "killing children is wrong", it's a socially accepted platitude with little conviction behind it.
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2021-05-16, 03:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
To be fair, I believe there is a true conviction behind it.
I also believe human brains are wired to be shockingly unaware of just how little their convictions matter to their own behavior.
Like, there’s something in our brain that lies to us and says “I know my own identity and can reliably predict my own behavior”, and then simultaneously makes it literally impossible for us to be aware of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Which is why any conversation that starts “I would never do X because of my personal conviction Y” is always going to be a trainwreck.Last edited by Dion; 2021-05-16 at 03:54 PM.
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2021-05-16, 06:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2020
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I'd say it isn't predicting our own behavior that's often the problem: it's explaining it. I can easily predict that I'm probably going to end up stressfully procrastinating (to a degree) over every paper, report and survey I'll ever write, but hell if I can explain why I never manage to make myself not do that.
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2021-05-16, 09:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2017
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Contrary to the aphorism, human hindsight is actually 200/20 (with foresight being 20/200)... we're far better at figuring out why what we did was the right thing after the fact, and being sure we'll do the right thing in the future, than we are at actually doing the right thing when the future becomes the present.
We really are all storytellers who have to be the 1) Good Guy and 2) protagonist in control of the situation. Break down most of humans' deeply-embedded logical fallacies, and you'll find one or the other at the root.
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2021-05-17, 12:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
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2021-05-17, 05:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2017
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Being aware of something, and genuinely accepting it as true on a gut level, are two very different animals.
For one example, just-world fallacy: On a subconscious level, most of us revolt against the idea that when it comes down to it, we control practically nothing except our own actions. We make up stories in our heads about how because we wished it hard enough, this traffic light turned green a second earlier or that football player had a little more energy to score a touchdown. But it really gets ugly when we're confronted with someone who didn't deserve something awful happening to them, something beyond their control -- we start making up stories in our head about how they're responsible, they brought it on themselves, it wouldn't have happened if they dressed differently, and so on. Because if they truly didn't somehow cause it to happen... then maybe we have to admit it could happen to us, beyond our control.
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2021-05-17, 06:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
About morality/justice without free will:
Whether peoples have free will is not that relevant IMO, as long as they have at least as much "choice" as a machine learning algorithms.
AlphaZero has no free will, but if you add to the rules of chess some penalities for each capture, AlphaZero will eventually adjust toward "bloodless victories" rather "brutal wars" where pieces are sacrificed without second though.
I think the capacity to change behaviour to follow moral guideline (and laws) taught to you is the most important part of whether or not morality/justice should apply to you.
About killing children:
There is a lot of reason why killing children is so universally considered as bad:
+ From evolution, we are wired to avoid killing children. It's due to multiple factors, for example the fact that as a a predator, killing the children of your preys is a very bad long term plan.
+ From practicality, the main quality of children is that they can be raised, and in a lot of situations, you have a net gain of a productive member of your society if you raise them rather than killing them.
+ From our culture, killing defenceless peoples that cause no threats is considered evil. This is one of the multiple ways our culture tries to compensate for the natural order of "the law of the strongest".
I feel like the last point is the most important. We would probably not be raised to be so merciful about children if they included literal dragons threatening entire village (even when they're still children).
I'd also note that practical morality rarely deals in absolute. We do consider normal to routinely exterminate population of (relatively) intelligent mammals that are a major inconvenience to our way of life, children included: I am thinking here of rats. (And we will thank the rat exterminator to be so kind to have come to help us that quickly). Obviously, comparison between goblinoids and rats is flimsy, as D&D goblinoids are usually significantly more sentient than IRL rats, when they are not downright "green humans" for most intends and purposes.
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2021-05-17, 11:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2009
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
With the latest comic, Durkon says (paraphrasing): "Dwarves, humans, elves and halflings didn't ask to be given more. But at a certain point, don't we need to take responsibility for our part in a bad set up? Now that we know, don't we have to help change it?"
What responsibility?
If you aren't responsible for setting the system up, and you aren't actively trying to maintain it, then what responsibility could you have? Benefiting from a corrupt system is not your fault if you didn't set it up and aren't corrupt yourself, especially if you act to eliminate corruption when you see it.
The only responsibility I see is what good people feel when they see unnecessary suffering or an injustice. You don't have to feel responsible for an injustice you had no part in creating and weren't even aware of, but if your thing is preventing injustice then yes, you should do what you can to correct one once you see one.
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2021-05-17, 11:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Every person in the whole world has only those responsibilities they choose to have.
You may choose different responsibilities from someone else.
But just because you decide you don’t agree with the responsibilities somebody else has chosen, that doesn’t mean they’ve chosen the wrong responsibilities.
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2021-05-17, 11:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I can't say I agree with that. Aren't prisons full of people who were forced by the state to accept responsibility for their actions? Against their personal preferences and choice?
Edit: Belkar has been forced to accept responsibility for his actions very much against his will on several occasions.Last edited by Jason; 2021-05-17 at 11:59 AM.
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2021-05-17, 01:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2017
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
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2021-05-17, 05:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2020
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Durkon subscribes to the moral philosophy that inaction when you are in an advantageous position, and thus can better help people is inherently imoral. So basically due to them having better access to stuff, it's their duty to help those that don't, in a sorta "With great powers come great responsability" way.
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2021-05-18, 02:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2013
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2021-05-18, 06:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2009
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
It isn't presented as a matter of being "at fault". If for example you personally see someone injured or in danger, and you're able to render aid, most people would consider you to have a responsibility to do so, even though you didn't create the situation. If you're lost in the wilderness and you packed extra water and the person lost with you didn't pack enough, it's responsible to share your water. People have varying ideas about how far interpersonal responsibility extends and what level of risk or cost you should be expected to assume in any given circumstance, but I'm sure we agree it falls somewhere above zero.
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2021-05-19, 05:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
I have read none of the topic except the first post and I can 100% see that evolution in the comic from goblins as EXP machine to characters same as game developments approach to goblins.
And I am thankful we didn't get the EXP machines that are Golarion Goblins which we are to take are 'cute' and 'funny' for some reason.
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2021-05-19, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2013
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Also worth noting that Roy & Durkon are explicitly Lawful Good, and their personal code won't be shared by everybody. There's a reason they're the two people having this conversation: because if Durkon tried to discuss it with Haley, she would have a different outlook on it. Maybe she'd still notice the problem, but not be interested in taking ownership of the solution.
I feel this discussion fits perfectly with Roy & Durkon's alignments & personalities specifically, but it seems like people are taking it prescriptively, as the only opinion you're allowed to have about the subject or else you're a Bad Person.
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2021-05-23, 10:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2021-05-23, 06:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2006
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2021-05-23, 06:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-05-23, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2017
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
If by 1E you mean the first edition of D&D, I'm puzzled. My lack of memory absolutely doesn't disprove it, but I don't remember anything along those lines from back then.
(I remember that characterization as being extremely evident in the Money: The Gathering cards and descriptive text, though. Well, at least the first waves -- I faded out of it not long after Fallen Empires.)
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2021-05-23, 08:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-05-23, 08:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2017
Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Which according to everyone's favorite (or most hated) gender-indeterminate elf, becomes oxymoronic in direct proportion to the size of the solution.
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2021-05-23, 09:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins and the evolution of Gaming Morality
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
We also have a TvTropes page!
Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
Extended sig here.