The Definiton of Evil

[Human Shield]

I didn't mean NO gain, just no substantial or necessary gain. In the example you had more food than you could eat so there is no reason not to give some away except pointless selfishness. It's a sliding scale dependent on a number of factors, value of item to you, value of item to them and scarcity of the item.

And if you could invest or trade the food charity is still the best use for it? Most people put money away for retirement instead of giving away anything they don't spend, consumption isn't just for the present it is for the future too.

The more important question is how the guy received the food. If he works for it is it evil to keep working after a certain point because he wants more then you think he should have? The work he did for it already pays for any he wastes, in these questions the person always assumes that one magically acquired all the food in the world. Most morally deals with non-extreme situations.

If he wants to waste his property why should anyone stop him? All the money people gamble away could go to charity.

The more units of the item you have the lower the value a single unit is to you and the less the other guy has the greater it's value to him. A millionaire isn't going to worry unduly over losing a couple of bucks, whereas someone who is penniless would find that amount of money of great value to him.

You can never ever apply marginal value between people. Value is subjective, a millionaire could value a penny more then a poor person, you can never measure between subjective values. It only means that each penny will be valued less by that millionaire but it has no measurement and isn't linear.

 

[Azarkon]

There's more to the story of good and evil than to say "just add logical consequences" and consider the issue done. In the purely theoretical case, a game with limitless choices and corresponding consequences need no definition of evil, because the implications of such a slant is embodied. But no game offers limitless choices.

Practically speaking, the choice of what choices to represent in a game is itself the delineation of a moral system and its applications. If, faced with a conquering barbarian lord, I am given the choice of either defeating him "for teh good of all" or defeating him "because I want teh rewards," already the designers have ascribed what they consider "probable" lines of morality: namely, you can do the right thing, or you can do the right thing and be selfish. Contrast this with a game that allowed me to align myself with the barbarian lord and pillage my way to absolution.

No matter which way you cut it, there will inevitably be a limited subset of choices and consequences that you can actually involve in any particular game. What to put in, what to focus on, and what to exclude are all decisions inextricably tied to your moral philosophy. When was the last time you were given the opportunity to be downright sadistic or genocidal? When was the last time you were able to act self-righteously while pursuing the "evil" path?

Saying that morality does not exist... Does not make its representation any less troublesome.

 

[psycojester]

To me, evil is the corruption of good. If a good action is healing someone, an evil action would be harming that person. If a good action is giving money to the poor, an evil action would be stealing. If a good action is loving an individual, an evil action would be hating an individual.

To say an action is inherently good/evil and stating that the opposite must automatically be evil/good is fucking retarded. No action can be judged in a vacuum everything effects everything else.

eg. By your scale if the hero is wandering along and finds a man being devoured by some kind of acid slime monster. To kill the slime monster would be inherently evil, yet attempting to heal the man and in doing so prolonging his suffering without making any attempt to free him would be a good act, instead of just sadistic. By the same token i encounter a violent killer who has been ravaging a nearby village. The peasants had banded together and manage to grievously wound him, driving him off in the process . Yet by your system it would still be a good and noble thing to heal him.

 

[Zomg]

I'll take this moment to bring up, as I do in all of these game morality discussions, Darklands. The game has a supernatural morality which is not supposed to align exactly with the player's values - for instance, you can be stopped on the road by an obviously venal inquisitor and extorted, and if you refuse to play, you lose virtue and favor (and thus you lose some access to saintly invocations and many peculiar divine benefits). That's because in the supernatural morality of the game, the Church is elementally Good, no Protestant heehawing admitted.

Morality should be just another element of the setting, if it has supernatural consequences like magic or appearance. Subdued, material conceptions should come up in subdued, material settings.

 

[MacBone]

To say an action is inherently good/evil and stating that the opposite must automatically be evil/good is fucking retarded. No action can be judged in a vacuum everything effects everything else.

eg. By your scale if the hero is wandering along and finds a man being devoured by some kind of acid slime monster. To kill the slime monster would be inherently evil, yet attempting to heal the man and in doing so prolonging his suffering without making any attempt to free him would be a good act, instead of just sadistic. By the same token i encounter a violent killer who has been ravaging a nearby village. The peasants had banded together and manage to grievously wound him, driving him off in the process . Yet by your system it would still be a good and noble thing to heal him.

Good points, psycojester. I'll stand by my original statement that evil is the corruption of good. Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't lie. Those laws are derived from the corruption of love and respect for life, property, and honor. I say you must be able to judge an action in a vacuum; otherwise, your basis for morality is flawed and at the whims of your circumstances.

In your first example, what would be the good action? Siding with the slime monster? Rescuing the man being devoured? We can't know the complete facts here without having some prior knowledge of this situation, whether the slime monster was provoked or whether it's a dangerous beast and should be slain, whether this guy is an infamous robber or a relatively innocent traveler. If the people encountering this situation believe that healing is good (and harming is evil), they will attempt to drive the slime monster away and alleviate the stranger's suffering as much as possible. Would a killing stroke be more merciful? Perhaps, but if killing is an essentially evil act, this group will refrain from doing so.

In the second example, yeah, I'd maintain that healing the killer would be a good and noble thing, unless you maintain some lives are more worthy of saving than others. Would you heal the man if he were instead a thief? What if he only occasionally lied to his wife? The individual does not have the right to say this person deserves to live while that person deserves to die. By the same token, if said mass murderer was brought into an ER with multiple stab wounds, the docs and nurses would still do their best to help him survive (unless they decided to enforce their own justice, which would be medically unethical).

Would I leave said murderer to continue his killing ways? Absolutely not! I'd restrain him and deliver him to the appointed hands of justice.

However, if this were a typical game, my only options would probably be to either kill the slime monster or its victim, either kill or join the murderer, or do nothing in either situation.

Your example illustrates the need of having a clearly defined system of ethics, something any game that plays with karma/the force/morality should delineate.

 

[Blacklung]

I'm just going back to address the original post and say that the asking for a reward isn't quite evil, but it's not quite good either. The idea is that your good deeds will earn you points for goodness, but asking for a reward should mediate this goodness somewhat since it isn't as purely saintlike as a person who simply does these deeds without expecting any sort of reward.

Unless you are going to start taking a personality psychologist apprach and starting tracking personality faucets like greediness, jealousness, warmth, neuroticism, etc. then I think the good/neutral/evil system is what we're stuck with.

On the other stuff, yeah I suppose you could make the whole argument that morality is what you make of it. Still, just like with certain emotions and facial expressions (anyone ever hear about Eckman?), I'm wondering if there are certain things which are universally (excepting sociopathic or psychotic people) considered to be good or evil.

 

[damaged_drone]

'evil'=exploitative
'good'=cooperative

easy. the latter terms are unfailingly more useful/accurate.

 

[franc kaos]

Good and Evil were created by inferior minds to subjugate other inferior minds. They are two sides of the same coin.

When God flooded the Earth saving only Noah's family and some animals was he being good or evil? when He sent a bear to tear some children apart for taking the piss out of some God fearing (being the operative word) old man, or cursed Job because of a deal with the devil, who's kidding whom?

'Out here, there are no stars. Out here we is stoned immaculate.' Jim Morrison.

If Damaged_drone is right 90% of the worlds population (inc the animal kingdom) is inherently evil.

 

[psycojester]

I don't think anybody around here is going to be holding God up as a shining paragon of virtue. He's a vicious self-serving fucker with no regard for the existence of others. If we're going to use the D&D system god is chaotic-neutral.

 

[KazikluBey]

'evil'=exploitative
'good'=cooperative

easy. the latter terms are unfailingly more useful/accurate.

Exploitative + cooperative = Lawful evil in D&D. You can be exploitative and cooperative at the same time (if stealing something makes me evil, doing it with an accomplice is "neutral"?), which makes your definition worthless.

To me, evil is the corruption of good. If a good action is healing someone, an evil action would be harming that person. If a good action is giving money to the poor, an evil action would be stealing. If a good action is loving an individual, an evil action would be hating an individual.

You still haven't defined evil, as you haven't defined good, which makes your definition not a definition at all.

I detest the whole concept of "morals", "good", "evil", "right", "wrong". It's impossible to universally define them which makes them meaningless.

 

[Helioth]

Real evil ? How about malign intent.

I think most of what we see in games is supposed to be the *how a character feels about himself* babble. . . The underlying problem is that this series of developers doesn't think.
Much. And so a lot of things in games are simply empty and not thought out.

For instance, the wanting money for doing a job, is evil ? because it's not nice ?
That's simply stupid, you save someones life, the least they can do is repay you.
Damn it, if they don't have any money left maybe they'll realise they need to get their shit together and start doing something ! Instead of waiting for - teh hero - to save them from xgenericx. It seems like a lot of supposed evil is just what i would call mean but then again, sometimes you have to be mean to be kind.


True evil ? Torturing a baby. Kicking a dog in the face, just to have it come running back to you. Unnecessarily inflicting pain upon those who you KNOW don't deserve it.
Eating waffles. Worrying people by mutilating yourself ? Not really but people shouldn't do this anyway. Would proboably go to the "evil" category in games if the developers of kotor were to risk losing 1/4 of their player base.

 

[Mayday]

Torturing a baby all by itself is not evil, in most cases it just means insanity.

Evil is pursuing a goal without considering the needs, feelings and opinions of other beings.

"But what if you just wanted to help these peasants by releasing them from their poverty through death?"

See, this is evil, because they'd probably rather live in poverty than die.

Good is when satisfying others' needs, feelings and needs of others is your goal, whereas I'd consider pursuing your goal and still considering others' feelings as neutral. Of course, evil inflicted upon evil is rarely considered evil (more like justice, M I RITE?).

 

[Lumpy]

But what if you strongly believe that those peasants are too stupid to realise that they don't have to live in this shitty life when they could go to paradise right away? Then killing them is a good act.
Then again, you probably don't really believe that.

 

[kingcomrade]

It's impossible to universally define them which makes them meaningless.

Yeah because that makes sense

Just this morning I was writing an email to someone and I was going to try and describe the cover of a book I have as blue but if you think about it the word blue brings up different shades in everyone's mind and as such it isn't universally defined and is therefore useless.

 

[JarlFrank]

But what if you strongly believe that those peasants are too stupid to realise that they don't have to live in this shitty life when they could go to paradise right away? Then killing them is a good act.
Then again, you probably don't really believe that.

Then it is only a good act in this persons mind and morality. If he thinks it is good it doesn't mean automatically that it is good.
If you believe that raping every woman you meet is good, because it might give her sexual pleasure, that must not necessarily be the case. The same is it with these peasants. Killing them without them wanting to be killed is definitely not a good thing.

 

[MacBone]

You still haven't defined evil, as you haven't defined good, which makes your definition not a definition at all.

I detest the whole concept of "morals", "good", "evil", "right", "wrong". It's impossible to universally define them which makes them meaningless.

True enough. If evil is the corruption of good, then we need to establish what good is. Without that, the definition of evil is meaningless.

When people say "Good job," what does that "good" mean? People are utilizing some standard by which one's actions can be judged good if the actions meet or exceed that standard and bad if the actions don't meet that standard. Good may similarly be derived from some sort of standard like this.

The same thing happens when we call someone's decision the right or the wrong one. This brings our own subjectivity into play, but we're still evoking some measurement against a standard. Sure, what I deem to be right may be completely different from what you call right, but unless there's some underlying standard there, the phrase "doing the right thing" is meaningless. There must be something there we're referring to.

Another example of this is when someone violates what we perceive as our rights. How often have you heard someone say, "That's not fair"? I say it myself. If my boss bumps me off my shift and gives someone else my slot because she thinks the new guy is hotter, I'll cry foul. Other people may shrug their shoulders, say "Tough luck; life's not fair," but we're both referring to this concept of fairness, of justice.

When we succeed, that's the "good" outcome. Good is never defined by avoiding failure, but bad seems to always be defined by missing success.

This idea of right and wrong comes up in nearly every civilization we know of, even if those standards are diverse in different societies. Good, therefore, must refer to some universal, trans-cultural constant, and seems to involve treating others fairly, protecting life, and alleviating suffering. That definition is neither exhaustive nor inclusive, but it's a starting place for further development.

 

[JarlFrank]

When people say "Good job," what does that "good" mean?

The same as "Well done!"

 

[KazikluBey]

It's impossible to universally define them which makes them meaningless.

Yeah because that makes sense

Just this morning I was writing an email to someone and I was going to try and describe the cover of a book I have as blue but if you think about it the word blue brings up different shades in everyone's mind and as such it isn't universally defined and is therefore useless.

The color "blue" is light with a wavelength of around 450-500 nm. See? Easy.

There are many ways to distinguish an action as morally right and wrong, and most of those are mutually exclusive as they can produce results that are incompatible with each other. One way is to define a "good" action by the intent (if the intent was to do something positive to the 2nd and/or 3rd persons, the action was a good one). Another way is to define a value (freedom, safety, happiness, whatever), and then judge an action by its consequences - if an action achieved the desired value for those affected by the action, then it is good (consequentialism/utilitarianism). There's also Kant's categorical imperative, in the deontological school, as well as many others

Most people don't even have a unified stance on morality and judge things on a case by case basis, applying a whatever method they feel gives the "correct" outcome (I like this, it must be "Right"!).

I don't use any of those ethical codes to justify my actions. I do whatever I want to (be it by free will or determinism), but most of the time, I just feel like being a nice guy - it simplifies things.

 

[kingcomrade]

The color "blue" is light with a wavelength of around 450-500 nm. See? Easy.

Says who? Are you saying everyone perceives light with the wavelength of 450-500nm as blue? Source plz

What about red? Would it help me to describe a book cover as red to someone with red-green colorblindness?

Anyways your own argument is pretty obviously wrong. If morals were useless nobody would use them (because they would have no use). Whether something is universal or not has no bearing on whether it exists or not. You also seem to have forgotten that a morality set can enhance or retard the individual (and nations) who adopt it. As fine sounding as pacifistic atheism, for example, sounds, it creates a society which is unable to defend or assert itself. Morals are simply ideologies and ideologies have never been useless (except, perhaps, for nihilism and the other emo philosophies).

I do whatever I want to (be it by free will or determinism), but most of the time, I just feel like being a nice guy - it simplifies things.

What is a "nice" guy? Niceness is not a universally accepted quality and there is no UN charter defining it, zomg.

 

[KazikluBey]

The color "blue" is light with a wavelength of around 450-500 nm. See? Easy.

Says who? Are you saying everyone perceives light with the wavelength of 450-500nm as blue? Source plz

No matter how anyone actually perceives the colors, when you say red, blue, green anyone with any proficiency in the English language will understand what you mean, as those words simply refer to different parts of the light spectrum, not the subjective experience of the color.

Anyways your own argument is pretty obviously wrong. If morals were useless nobody would use them (because they would have no use). Whether something is universal or not has no bearing on whether it exists or not. You also seem to have forgotten that a morality set can enhance or retard the individual (and nations) who adopt it. As fine sounding as pacifistic atheism, for example, sounds, it creates a society which is unable to defend or assert itself. Morals are simply ideologies and ideologies have never been useless (except, perhaps, for nihilism and the other emo philosophies).

Straw man, straw man! Lightning bolt, lightning bolt! Please quote me saying they were useless. I said they were meaningless. The words themselves certainly have definitions, but for them to hold actual meaning they need application, and the definitions for why or if an action is good, right, evil or wrong will differ wildly - which makes them devoid of any true meaning as the whole concept of morals relies on the fact that there supposedly is a universal definition for what is right and wrong in every situation. Hence the prevalence of religious moralists. As concepts they can of course still be used and abused (George W. Bush makes me cringe every time he makes use of the word "evil", as it is the same kind of rhetoric his enemy uses).

I think most philosophical (or not so) discussions on morality fail to get anywhere because hardly any two people can agree on the semantics of the subject. Like now.

I do whatever I want to (be it by free will or determinism), but most of the time, I just feel like being a nice guy - it simplifies things.

What is a "nice" guy? Niceness is not a universally accepted quality and there is no UN charter defining it, zomg.

Poor choice of words on my part. What I meant was that I generally act according to the norms of my society in my interactions with others. Being "nice" in most societies tend to consist of staying within the limits of what is deemed socially acceptable and socially expected behavior in that particular society. Certainly does in mine.

 

[Xi]

Evil is Perception. I've always wanted to play a game where you can choose sides in the beginning and try to play through the story with a win/lose kind of scenario. Each side has both sides of the Good/Evil paradigm, but while you play through that perception of the story, you perceive the opposing side as Evil.

Each side would need some kind of "Good" element that the player can connect with and some kind of "Evil" element that the opposing side is introducing to there cause. The game would have to be very detailed in creating these different perceptions with explanations that make some kind of sense to the player. Then you can build in player choices that allow the player some kind of ulterior motives beneath that of the story.

Side quests would be an excuse for your character to build upon his ulterior motives to the story. For instance, you could be a spy gathering information for a third party, assassin for the opposing faction, War Leader who wants to dominate on the battle fields, a Thief who is in it to steal at every turn to amass great wealth, a business man who wants to fuel the conflict at his own gain, a powerful magician who wants to learn ultimate magic through war, etc.

The player would focus on progressing the story while achieving specific goals based on the specific needs of his characters role. Side quests would be a way to flesh out the ulterior motives of your character. You wouldn't be trying to complete every quest possible, but rather choosing the ones that fulfill your character's goals along the way. So even if you win the story you may still lose because your character was unable to fulfill specific things in between.

Then you can mix in some more non-linearity through ways to complete specific goals. Such as how you approach each scenario such stealth/combat/persuasion with lots of variation built into each approach so that all characters have some specific way to overcome each obstacle.

All of this playing from the perception of your character and there goals. You are always good and they are always evil perceived from whatever side you choose. Then mix in moral choice to give the character some sense of good/evil in his decisions along the way.

Lol, anyway I'm sure that would be impossible to make but would totally kick ass if done correctly.

 

[damaged_drone]

'evil'=exploitative
'good'=cooperative

easy. the latter terms are unfailingly more useful/accurate.

Exploitative + cooperative = Lawful evil in D&D. You can be exploitative and cooperative at the same time (if stealing something makes me evil, doing it with an accomplice is "neutral"?), which makes your definition worthless.

no, youve just outlined some of the depth and nuance of this way of thinking about things. 'good' and 'evil' are emotional reactions to the different relationships. enemies and friends. they are subjective relationships between individuals.

in game terms, make a character with wants and desires and then give the player ways to cooperate with them and ways to exploit them that make sense for the situation and let them do what they want. instant virtual reality.

 

[kingcomrade]

No matter how anyone actually perceives the colors, when you say red, blue, green anyone with any proficiency in the English language will understand what you mean, as those words simply refer to different parts of the light spectrum, not the subjective experience of the color.

Color is subjective (see two quotes down). In any case, thank you for working to disprove your own point.

Please quote me saying they were useless. I said they were meaningless.

If something is not useless how can it be meaningless? The fact that something is not useless implies that it has repercussions in the real world. You must be using a different definition of meaningless than I am because if it can affect the world it most certainly has "meaning."

I said they were meaningless. The words themselves certainly have definitions, but for them to hold actual meaning they need application,

Kinda like color. There's no use for the concept of blue if everyone is colorblind. We would simply refer to it as 450-500nm frequency em radiation.

which makes them devoid of any true meaning as the whole concept of morals relies on the fact that there supposedly is a universal definition for what is right and wrong in every situation.

"True meaning"? I'm not sure what you mean by "true meaning" but if you ask me about a specific ideology chances are I could find and describe to you their morals.

As concepts they can of course still be used and abused

How can they be concepts if they have no meaning?

George W. Bush makes me cringe every time he makes use of the word "evil", as it is the same kind of rhetoric his enemy uses

During WW2 it always makes me cringe to hear the US government telling soldiers that if captured by the Japs they would be treated poorly, starved, be forced to take death marches, and would be arbitrarily beheaded with sword. It's so ridiculous because the Japanese were saying the same thing to their soldiers about us!

 

[Section8]

During WW2 it always makes me cringe to hear the US government telling soldiers that if captured by the Japs they would be treated poorly, starved, be forced to take death marches, and would be arbitrarily beheaded with sword. It's so ridiculous because the Japanese were saying the same thing to their soldiers about us!

Don't pretend everything about World War 2 was honourable and in the interests of good.

 

[kingcomrade]

Don't pretend everything about World War 2 was honourable and in the interests of good.

Unless you're saying Japanese prisoners were mistreated on anywhere even close to approaching the scale of how the Japanese treated American prisoners, I'm not sure I see your point. My point was that when if two sides are saying the same thing it doesn't give both statements equal truth value which is silly relativism. In the example I gave, the Japanese were lying to their people so much so that Japanese people would throw themselves off cliffs or suicide with grenades rather than be captured, and without reason. On the other hand, Americans had very much to fear from being captured by the Japanese. I'm not even sure why I need to explain this.

Where did that come from, anyways? My statement didn't have much to do with everything being honorable and in the interests of good in WW2. It had to do with two opposing sides of an issue: how the other side treated prisoners. Both sides said the same thing, one side was right. If you allowed for whatever his name is's logic both statements would have the same moral value.

Just to forestall a Sarvis attack, I haven't passed judgement in either post about whether Bush is good or evil. I've simply pointed out that what the other side is saying is about an issue is irrelevant to what someone else is allowed to say about it.