Good Isn't Nice? Get Out Of Here!

[mindstalk]

Cops are good but they are not necessarily nice.

Some cops are outright evil: planting evidence, taking pleasure in hurting the vulnerable, extorting sex from prostitutes.

Some cops are directly evil, but don't help turn in those who are.

The balance of good vs. evil cops in our society, and whether policing as an existing institution restrains evil or encourages it, is hotly debated at the moment.

--------------

As for the psych example, I'd say that forcible restraint is basically not nice. It can be minimally not-nice: doing just what is required to keep the patient safe for themselves and others. Or it can be excessively not-nice: excessive force, insults, humiliation beyond the simple fact of restraint. But there's no Nice version. And trying to make it Nice might make it even worse: "I'm doing this for your own good, you'll thank me later..."

[kyoryu]

Here's a good example of "good but not nice".

Not continuing enabling behavior.

While helping people is usually both Good and Nice, sometimes, that help allows people to continue with self-destructive behavior and not to correct it. So, sometimes the best thing for them, in the long run, is to stop enabling them, and let them deal with the current consequences of their actions.

It's usually not nice.

But, it can be Good, in that it can be what is needed to allow them to realize that their behavior needs to change, and will result in the best future for them.

[Clistenes]

And not one spec of nice. You can do all of those while being a total jerk.

Or at least while being curt, gruff, surly and sullen... A person can try to help others despite being awful at people skills...

[cutlery]

In a calculating moral system like that of The Good Place; being pleasant might be among the tiniest of good acts, if it had an influence on one's alignment at all. Murdering evil things or saving innocents, on the other hand, had a bigger one.


Good doesn't have to be nice, and not-good doesn't have to be not-nice.

If it makes you feel better, you could chalk up refusal to be polite to being chaotic good, as they're violating social norms.

[kyoryu]

In a calculating moral system like that of The Good Place; being pleasant might be among the tiniest of good acts, if it had an influence on one's alignment at all. Murdering evil things or saving innocents, on the other hand, had a bigger one.


Good doesn't have to be nice, and not-good doesn't have to be not-nice.

If it makes you feel better, you could chalk up refusal to be polite to being chaotic good, as they're violating social norms.

Effective evil is often exceptionally nice.

[Xervous]

Effective evil is often exceptionally nice.

Why thank you, could you take a moment to like and subscribe?

[Frogwarrior]

I see "nice" as more of a "lawful" thing than a "good" thing. A system of rules designed to make the cogs move smoothly.
It CAN be used for "good," and it CAN be used to put a rug over the bloodstains so nobody notices, metaphorically speaking.

Both "nice" and "rude" can serve the purposes of selfless good, or self-centered amorality. People just usually find the first more pleasant, so conflating the two comes easily.

[Kami2awa]

Actually, I think Good and Nice should necessarily go together. If you're doing bad stuff for a good reason, you slide ever-closer to doing it for a bad reason, at which point Good and Evil are simply labels for the same behaviour. This is what we see time and again in the real world, until we have nothing but "hard men making hard decisions" to the suffering of all.

[Pleh]

Actually, I think Good and Nice should necessarily go together. If you're doing bad stuff for a good reason, you slide ever-closer to doing it for a bad reason, at which point Good and Evil are simply labels for the same behaviour. This is what we see time and again in the real world, until we have nothing but "hard men making hard decisions" to the suffering of all.

I think we need to steer well clear of talking about the real world at all here, per forum rules.

But to counter your point in spirit, "being nice" is just a behavior, and morality is never determined by behavior alone. Morality is determined by examining behavior in its context (people, their attitudes, their incentives, and extenuating circumstances).

Con artists can be the nicest people in trying to earn your trust long enough to get you to buy the con.

The TV show House is a demonstration that you can be a total jerk and rarely do anything nice and still overall be doing good things by saving lives. Nothing to do with your alleged slippery slope of hard men doing hard things.

You don't have to care about people's feelings to be a good person doing good things.

[jayem]

Con artists can be the nicest people in trying to earn your trust long enough to get you to buy the con.
.

Personally, I think that's where "acting nice" and "seeming nice" come into play.

If the 'niceness' is a consciously chosen facade, (whether for good reasons or bad, but particularly bad) then I think there's an argument that it wasn't ever really 'nice', it just gave that appearance. It's a bit of a messy distinction though.

A malevolent con artist is just as likely to "act good" or "seem good" (or lawful) but they definitely aren't. With "niceness" the concepts are a bit more ambiguous, but I think the same holds.

Note of course you can 'seem nice' because you actually are 'nice'. And 'acting nice', is (in the absence of other details) itself a nice thing to do.
Also while I think true niceness is definitely correlated with goodness. I'm totally of the opinion you can have not-nice&good or nice&evil.

Perhaps for example you are willing to kill a friend because you inherit (evil), but goes to unnecessary, unrewarded, difficult and risky lengths to make it a pleasant death (nicer than the levels of evil involved would suggest, although still not very nice, but you arguably can have less evil and more niceness).

Spoiler: gamifying

Show

I think I'd begin by having it so you for every 2 levels of goodness you get a level of niceness and all the vice-versas.

At that point our murderous example then might be 3-Levels of 'not-good' (-3,-1.5) and 1-Level of 'niceness' (0,5, 1), to end up at (-2.5,-0.5)
Compared with say a mildly good person at (1,0.5).

Which isn't a perfect match, but to me feels a lot better than claiming our murderer comes out at (-3,+1) against our good person (+1,0) if they were independent. (I.E nicer)
And provides a bit more nuance than (-3.-3) if good=nice, if you want the system to distinguish.

[Pleh]

Personally, I think that's where "acting nice" and "seeming nice" come into play.

If the 'niceness' is a consciously chosen facade, (whether for good reasons or bad, but particularly bad) then I think there's an argument that it wasn't ever really 'nice', it just gave that appearance. It's a bit of a messy distinction though.

I'm reminded of Malcom Reynolds, who frequently conned people for profit, but also tried to just keep it professional. No hard feelings, just hand over what I want and there's no need for bloodshed. Genuinely nice guy, unless you made things personal, even as he does not nice things.

Simon asked why he could trust Mal wouldn't just kill him in his sleep and Mal told him he would never kill him unless he was armed, awake, and facing him (possibly a slight exaggeration, he did sometimes throw helpless prisoners into turbine engines).

When his whole crew warned Patience planned to double cross and kill him, he insisted on doing the job with he honestly first and simply have a backup for the double cross.

Yes, to some extent, "acting nice" is the same as being nice. But furthermore, I was meaning to point out that even someone with malicious intent could have the nicest manners and behavior outside of the one malicious thing they intend to do. They can even be a generally nice person who just happen to have a less hospitable occupation.

"But then they aren't really a nice person."

Well, everyone ends up being a jerk to someone else in life. Does that mean that no one is actually a nice person at all? I guess in the most cynical sense, but my point is this seems a bit of a reductive perspective to take. How much niceness vs not niceness do you need before you count as a nice person, as opposed to a not nice person? And why does it have any bearing on good/evil axis alignment?

[ImNotTrevor]

Nice only really solidly means "Pleasant and agreeable."
No mention of Genuine, Kind, or Benevolent in any of the definitions I've ever looked up.

Just pleasant and agreeable, really. You can be very nice while doing horribly malevolent things to people, and very mean while doing deeply benevolent things to people.

It's literally the Crotchety Doctor trope. The doctor who will patch up the hero because it's the right thing to do but is going to call them an idiot and a vacuum-brained know-nothing who collects wounds like they were stamps. Good, but not nice. Quite rude, actually. But is doing the right thing anyways.

If I save your life and then call you an idiot who would have deserved that death for being so collosally stupid, I'm again not being nice but am being Good.

In neither of these is the focused character being Pleasant or Agreeable, and by extension Nice.
But they're doing the right thing.

Nice and Good are two different things, that often correlate but there is no causal relationship in either direction.

[Lord Raziere]

Actually, I think Good and Nice should necessarily go together. If you're doing bad stuff for a good reason, you slide ever-closer to doing it for a bad reason, at which point Good and Evil are simply labels for the same behaviour. ...until we have nothing but "hard men making hard decisions" to the suffering of all.

Yeah but if you go too far in the other direction, you have pacifists and doormats who are just cowards by politer names, or "wise mentors" who have the classic flaw of being so cautious and thoughtful that they don't don't do anything until its too late. Soft men making no decisions, can be just as bad.

[jayem]

Yes, to some extent, "acting nice" is the same as being nice. But furthermore, I was meaning to point out that even someone with malicious intent could have the nicest manners and behavior outside of the one malicious thing they intend to do. They can even be a generally nice person who just happen to have a less hospitable occupation.

I think the first part is debatable (as in the extent varies).
Tbh, your example (possibly the way you tell it) comes across very much as nice when convenient. More than a pure facade, he does mean it and follow through. (On any other axis that point we'd say is neutral).

"But then they aren't really a nice person."

Well, everyone ends up being a jerk to someone else in life. Does that mean that no one is actually a nice person at all? I guess in the most ...as t?

The same issue applies to lawful (I've misjudged the speed limit on occasion), and good. And we can deal with it in the same way. (Normally hypocritically in practice).
Consider the scarecrow from dr syn for someone who acts extremely lawful and good but I think we can say he isn't. (Even if bad boys make good stories)

[Pleh]

I think the first part is debatable (as in the extent varies).
Tbh, your example (possibly the way you tell it) comes across very much as nice when convenient.

My point being that people who are nice when it is inconvenient aren't "more good." They're just doormats.

You can have evil characters that fit this description. My mind goes back to Criminal Minds with antagonist murderers who feel emasculated and controlled by their spouse at home, and take out their repressed aggression on others as a serial killer, playing out fantasies of control they lack in their personal life.

Meet them on the street in their day job, they're meek and submissive and do every nice thing they are asked, no matter how inconvenient. They just push the anger down further to take that aggression out on their victims later.

"But that's not a nice person."

Well, again I insist to make that claim you have to actually define what a nice person is, but no one really wants that burden because it is a rather untenable position to defend.

That's because niceness is a subjective quality. "He was nice to me" is a common defense. Robin Hood was very nice to the poor, and not nice at all to the sheriff of nottigham or prince john. He's a staple example of a "good" character archetype for roleplaying games. His not niceness towards authority figured makes him chaotic aligned, not evil, or even neutral, despite even killing many of the sheriff's men.

Thus, I insist "niceness" is too subjective to inform good or evil alignment. It has some amount of correlation, but almost zero causation.

[Democratus]

My point being that people who are nice when it is inconvenient aren't "more good." They're just doormats.

There are some who feel that "turning the other cheek" is the very definition of 'more good'.

[kyoryu]

Thus, I insist "niceness" is too subjective to inform good or evil alignment. It has some amount of correlation, but almost zero causation.

Right.

It is 100% possible to be evil and be "nice".

I also maintain it is entirely possible to be Good and Not Nice.

(Presuming that 'nice' means some general definition of 'pleasant, charming, etc.')

[ImNotTrevor]

There are some who feel that "turning the other cheek" is the very definition of 'more good'.

I can't imagine any of them would think it ok to leave others to their demise when action could save them, either.

The concept of turning the other cheek is in forgiving slights and rudeness, not in allowing blatant abuse to continue unimpeded.

[Pleh]

There are some who feel that "turning the other cheek" is the very definition of 'more good'.

I would contend that "turning the other cheek" isn't meant to advocate being a doormat, though the confusion at that point is understandable. The difference here (in my mind) is a bit nuanced and subtle.

I believe "turn the other cheek" philosophically is meant to teach us to maintain our priorities, particularly that sometimes our social relationships should be more important than our pride, or even our self defense.

I see the MCU Steve Rogers as a great example of this philosophy when he fought Tony to defend Bucky. It doesn't mean he can't fight and defend his friend, but he is going to try everything else first, and he's never going to forget that Tony is his friend, too.

Turning the other cheek was dropping his shield when Tony reminded him that it was given to him by Tony's father. He could have kept the shield, but he respected Tony enough to surrender it, simultaneously reminding Tony that Bucky's life is worth giving up the shield.

[OldTrees1]

Thus, I insist "niceness" is too subjective to inform good or evil alignment. It has some amount of correlation, but almost zero causation.

5 pages ago I demonstrated you could generally say that about all virtues too. Even if "X" is good, "someone that does X" will not have 100% correlation with "someone that is good".

My post is repeated below because 5 pages is a long time. In it I presume Nice is virtue but then prove that does not mean Good is always Nice or that Nice is always Good. This is not precisely your claim, but I feel it treads similar ground and strikes at the same root fallacy.

Depending on the moral theory being used, there are multiple moral considerations. For simplicity's sake I will call those virtues.

1) Good does not require perfection. We use the term morally supererogatory to describe going above and beyond the call of moral duty. That means it is possible for something to be moral without being the ideal solution. This means it is possible for something to be moral while omitting or partially implementing a virtue.

2) Lacking a virtue is not necessarily Good. There are multiple virtues. Lacking one of them does not mean something is moral. It is fallacious to claim:
A) X is a virtue.
B) Good is not necessarily X.
C) ___ is not X.
D) Therefore ___ is Good.

3) Having a virtue is not necessarily Good. There are multiple virtues. Having one of them does not mean something is moral. It could be deficient is many other areas.

As a result for any virtue (using Nice as an example):
Something Good is not necessarily Nice
Something Not Nice is not necessarily Good
Something Nice is not necessarily Good

Now you may conclude from those 3 statements that the virtue is orthogonal to morality. This would be a mistake. While a specific virtue is not equivalent to the entirety of morality, each virtue is intrinsically linked to morality. Width is not orthogonal to Volume.

[jayem]

Nice only really solidly means "Pleasant and agreeable."
No mention of Genuine, Kind, or Benevolent in any of the definitions I've ever looked up.

Kind seems to appear fairly often.
Cambridge (1. (Pleasant) pleasant enjoyable satisfactory 2. (Kind) kind, friendly, polite 3. (Small differences)
M-Webster (1. Polite, Kind 2. Pleasing, Agreeable, Appropriate, Fitting, Well-Done 3. Socially acceptable, virtuous, respectable
(also naive came up somewhere)
Dic...com (1. pleasing, agreeable, delightful 2. amiably pleasant, kind

(In the examples the pleasant variant is for trips, cake, experience)

The genuine aspect I think is inherited. "He was very pleasant, he agreed to put my money into a safe place, and ran to Bermudu". Is one that seems just as dubious as "It was very nice when I had all my money stolen". You could use it but only when you'd established that you were pissed off about the con (or if you had still fallen for it).
The benevolence is similarly

It's literally the Crotchety Doctor trope. The doctor who will patch up the hero because it's the right thing to do but is going to call them an idiot and a vacuum-brained know-nothing who collects wounds like they were stamps. Good, but not nice. Quite rude, actually. But is doing the right thing anyways.

Agreed, that's a good example of good but not nice
(personally I'd say patching them up as well as being the good thing, is often also the nice thing. But that niceness wise this is outweighed by the rudeness. While goodness wise the insult is trivial compared to the medical help).

"But that's not a nice person."

Well, again I insist to make that claim you have to actually define what a nice person is, but no one really wants that burden because it is a rather untenable position to defend. That's because niceness is a subjective quality.

I'd agree and disagree. I definitely don't want that burden. And niceness is subjective in that it's not very clear and tied into experiences and weighting that will depend on individual tastes.
But if you say someone is nice, they try to be nice to everyone and have a non-trivial success rate. Similarly if someone is a polite/friendly/charitable/good person.
If you know Mr Deatheater tortures and kills gingers, and the Weasley twins ask you if he's nice, you are lying if you say yes because he pets your little black curls (if you didn't know, you are mistaken)

Robin Hood was very nice to the poor, and not nice at all to the sheriff of nottingham or prince john. He's a staple example of a "good" character archetype for roleplaying games. His not niceness towards authority figured makes him chaotic aligned, not evil, or even neutral, despite even killing many of the sheriff's men.

While there are characters who can be good and nasty. This is also the Robin, who treats the Sheriff to luxurious banquets and releases him (after he promises to change) time after time. Whereas you don't see the Sheriff doing the reverse. Granted the banquet was poached, compulsory, politely mocking, and overpriced, but that also puts him at his nastiest at a level with the con-man at his best.
So while Robin is indeed much more good (and chaotic) than he is nice, he is also much nicer than the Sheriff or Guy (even when they are unfailingly polite).
And you totally can have people who are much nicer than they are good (even to the point of them being evil).

I think though that there would be very few examples, if any, of a extremely (genuinely) nice, extremely evil or extremely nasty, extreme good. As there is more than just correlation. Being good is a nice thing to do, but not the nicest (and in a particular instance may be outweighed by nasty side effects). Being nice is a good thing to do but not the most good (and in a particular instance may be outweighed by evil side effects). Neither parallel nor perpendicular.

[ImNotTrevor]

Kind seems to appear fairly often.
Cambridge (1. (Pleasant) pleasant enjoyable satisfactory 2. (Kind) kind, friendly, polite 3. (Small differences)
M-Webster (1. Polite, Kind 2. Pleasing, Agreeable, Appropriate, Fitting, Well-Done 3. Socially acceptable, virtuous, respectable
(also naive came up somewhere)
Dic...com (1. pleasing, agreeable, delightful 2. amiably pleasant, kind

(In the examples the pleasant variant is for trips, cake, experience)

The genuine aspect I think is inherited. "He was very pleasant, he agreed to put my money into a safe place, and ran to Bermudu". Is one that seems just as dubious as "It was very nice when I had all my money stolen". You could use it but only when you'd established that you were pissed off about the con (or if you had still fallen for it).

"He was really nice, up until he stole our money."
And apparently you're unfamiliar with neighbors finding out the guy next door was a murderer and saying things like "but he was always so nice."

Nice/Mean and Good/Evil are two different spectrums.

That kind came up indicates how long its been since I looked, but benevolence and genuineness aren't necessarily inherited. You can be nice and ingenuine. Anyone who has smiled and waved and made small talk at a dinner party full of people they dislike (as I have) knows it's entirely possible to be perfectly pleasant all evening and mean none of it. And without knowing your thoughts, people would think you were being nice.

That's kind of the thing about Nice. Nice is a set of behaviors, not a set of motivations. If I had to list what things are part of Being Nice, virtually everything I'm thinking of is a behavior rather than a motivation.

Opening a door for someone is Nice.
Complimenting your boss's tie is Nice.
Helping someone lift a heavy thing is Nice.

None of those actions require you to be a good person. A good person is more likely to do them, but it's not required.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Here's an example of conflict between goods that happened in a game of mine.

Setting notes: in this setting, there is no such thing as cosmological good and evil. Alignment is purely a descriptive tool. There is also no permanent afterlife--all spirits, after they die, eventually "fade away". What happens to them then is an open question even for the powers that be.

The party, who I had pegged as CHAOTIC good (strong on the chaotic, decent on the good, with an extreme dislike of arbitrary authority), and an Adult Silver Dragon (except with plot-driven powers beyond those of most ASDs) found themselves finalists for the privilege of enacting a Wish. This wasn't an ordinary wish spell--
* It could only be cast by the intentional, knowing, willing, unaltered-mind sacrifice of the enactor. Not just their life, but their entire existence past and present and future. They would be forgotten utterly. Everything they did would have been done by someone else. Only the Wish would remain.
* It could only be cast once in an era.
* It required someone of significant strength to accomplish; anyone else who tried would be consumed in vain.
* It could rewrite the fundamental laws of reality--past Wishes had brought various forms of magic into existence, including the gods themselves.
* If they refused, the device involved would summon more people until someone did it. Most of whom would be erased in the attempt.

The party wasn't sure who among them (including some follower NPCs of significance) would pay the price, nor what they would Wish for. The ASD knew exactly what he would do--he had spent his entire life building towards this moment. His plan was to create an afterlife for the worthy, a utopian place of rest and reward. The unworthy would not be punished in any way--for them the status quo ante would prevail. But his idea of "worthiness" came with a strong notion of law and order (being best described as LAWFUL good). There were standards to be met. And him meeting his goal would involve imposing his notion of the meaning of "good" and "not good" on the universe.

Mechanically, if he'd have won (or if the party let him), mechanical alignment would have become a thing. Slightly different than the book values, but within epsilon. And the party (players and characters alike) couldn't stomach this. They refused to let him be the judge of good and evil. They accepted that his way was also righteous, but found it unsupportable because they valued freedom and choice over pure goodness.

They didn't actually fight, because they managed to talk the ASD into a metaphysical pickle, convincing it that by its own standards it was unworthy. Due to aforementioned plot-powered things, this made him effectively divide by zero and self destruct. They'd have preferred to change his mind, but that wasn't going to happen either way. They'd have fought (in a dimensional pocket to avoid collateral damage) if this had failed.

--------------
Neither the party nor the ASD were nice people, however. Ok, the druid was a nice guy. Nice enough that he almost got munched on by a green dragon earlier in the campaign by trying to go talk to it and help it, despite strong evidence it was insane and hostile. The rest were...rough around the edges. The ASD wasn't nice either--strict and uncompromising, with very little mercy for those that acted wrongly and couldn't be easily reformed. But everything (including his desired total self-sacrifice) for the good of the people. No ego, no self-interest. Very good, not very nice.

[Duff]

Here's a good example of "good but not nice".

Not continuing enabling behavior.

Really good example. Even when you do it with all the kindness, politeness and compassion, you're still saying "No" to someone who really wants a yes and they will* be upset about it.

* for values of "will" where if they aren't upset, it isn't counting as "enabling" as such