Is dominate evil?

[Dausuul]

I agree that dominate is a massive violation, in the same way that rape is and in the same way that killing is. Like I said above, it's presumptively evil. If you go out and do it to somebody, absent any extenuating circumstance, it's a grotesque and vicious act.

However, there are many circumstances in which you can justify dominate as a necessary evil; you have to do it to prevent the victim from violating someone else. In that respect it resembles killing, but does not resemble rape. That's an important distinction.

 

[Celebrim]

I agree that dominate is a massive violation, in the same way that rape is and in the same way that killing is. Like I said above, it's presumptively evil. If you go out and do it to somebody, absent any extenuating circumstance, it's a grotesque and vicious act.

However, there are many circumstances in which you can justify dominate as a necessary evil; you have to do it to prevent the victim from violating someone else. In that respect it resembles killing, but does not resemble rape. That's an important distinction.

I basically agree with this, especially for the purposes of keeping the thread from being closed as now seems likely, the italicized part. There may be no difference in the transgression of the will, although given that we are comparing something that is real to something that is unreal how are we to know and judge whether the violation is the same? But, there is at least apparently a difference in the utility and for some judgments of what it means to be moral that's an important distinction.

There are a lot of things I could say about how different philosophies within the game might approach the topic raised by Steel_Wind and how they might object to his assertion. And, I do think Steel_Wind's opinion is a legitimate one. Unfortunately, I don't think that line of argument is going to be that profitable, because I think its well demonstrated that people can't keep emotionally distanced from it. It quickly transforms from a debate over 'people in an imaginary world might believe these things', to 'I believe these things about you real people in the forum'. That way lies trouble.

Rather than debating this from the perspective of such a hot button topic as rape (especially given past history at this site), it's better I think that if you want to continue to debate the point over whether its objectively and absolutely evil, that you approach the question not by way of what you can compare it negatively to, but what you can compare it positively to. In particular, the issue of whether dominate is absolutely evil is going to parallel quite strongly the issue of whether pacifism is absolutely good. Clearly violence against persons is a terrible thing and among the worst of crimes. So, does it follow that violence against persons is always wrong? Even if you accept the argument that the end results of violence (stopping a bigger crime) can justify the means, are there particular acts of violence, without focusing on any one in particular, that might be always wrong because they never have a utility which a lesser act of violence might also have. In other words, lets say you accept the death penalty as just in some cases - it doesn't necessarily follow that you accept that drawing and quartering someone is ever just.

 

[Janx]

Not really.

Charm and dominate person are magical effects. Like any other magical powers they can be used for good or evil.

I still agree.

another way to illustrate the difference, imagine the statement in court of the good guy who intervened to stop a crime (perhaps a LEO, perhaps an adventurer):

Good Guy: it was only then, that I feared for our safety so I used lethal force
Judge: How unfortunate that the other side is dead, but all the facts support your claim...
Good Guy: it was only then, that I feared for our safety so I used Dominate to restrain the attacker
Judge: sounds reasonable to me, and the accused is here to testify

Good Guy: it was only then, that I feared for our safety so I used Rape
Judge: uh what?!

 

[Celebrim]

If there is no free will, then the concept of "rights" has no meaning. Rights are areas in which you are allowed to exercise your will - if you don't have it, you cannot exercise it.

Sure it does, and fortunately the obvious counter-example is right at hand.

Suppose I program a simple software agent to perform some task. The agent has no powers of reasoning; it simply recieves some input and acts according to the instructions I've given it. It never chooses to do anything.

But it doesn't follow that the software agent is without rights. Indeed, it has to have certain rights to perform the task I've programmed it to fulfill. It may need access to certain ports, the rights to consume certain resources (CPU time included), and the right to output the results of its task - perhaps write to a file somewhere. If I withhold these rights and priviledges, then the software agent can't perform the task it was designed for, but in excercising its rights its never actually making a choice of its own in the sense meant by 'free will'.

 

[Celebrim]

Janx: I think it absolutely essential that we not assert as objective fact anything about something which is imaginary. Without a real world example of mental domination, or without a real world example of a society that has long endured the reality of mental domination, I don't think we can assert anything about mental domination as factual.

For example, in a society with a long history of mental domination, there is no reason at all to suppose that having suffered a mental humiliation is going to be seen as less taboo than having suffered a physically humiliation. It's quite possible that society could stigmatize such victims as harshly or more harshly than victims of other sorts of crimes.

For example, on my imaginary world of Sartha players are often surprised to discover that mental domination is no legal defence in event that a player was unwillingly forced to commit a crime. To the people of Sartha, this makes perfect sense. After all, if mental domination could be used as a defense, then anyone having commited a crime could claim mental domination and it would be almost impossible to prove or disprove such accusations. Indeed, it's worse than that. From the perspective of the people of Sartha, the world is divided into people with the will to resist being mentally dominated, and those weakwilled people who are easily compulsed to commit evil. If a person has been mentally dominated once, then its a good indication that the person can be mentally dominated again. In the eyes of most of society, it's the person's own fault for allowing themselves to be dominated and that person can never be fully trusted again - even if they committed no crime. That they themselves might fail in this test doesn't occur to a lot of them, and sympathy for the mentally controlled tends to be very low.

Likewise, we can have no understanding of what it feels like to have experienced being mentally dominated.

Therefore, we are IMO on sound ground if we answer the question of "mental domination = rape?" only with 'undetermined'. Asserting that we absolutely know something that is imagined is exactly like something that is real can only lead to trouble. At the very least, how could anyone win that argument?

 

[Dausuul]

But it doesn't follow that the software agent is without rights. Indeed, it has to have certain rights to perform the task I've programmed it to fulfill. It may need access to certain ports, the rights to consume certain resources (CPU time included), and the right to output the results of its task - perhaps write to a file somewhere. If I withhold these rights and priviledges, then the software agent can't perform the task it was designed for, but in excercising its rights its never actually making a choice of its own in the sense meant by 'free will'.

Oh, come now. You're conflating two definitions of the word "rights." The concept of "rights" in computer security has only a superficial relation to "rights" in moral philosophy. The former is a purely physical question of whether a given user is granted access to do something; the latter is a philosophical question of what a moral agent should be permitted to do.

 

[Umbran]

Sure it does, and fortunately the obvious counter-example is right at hand.

Suppose I program a simple software agent to perform some task.

And right there your analogy fails - you speak of a software agent. An agent is something or someone to which you delegate your actions. It is an extension of yourself, not a separate entity for our purposes. Asking whether an agent has rights or will is rather like asking if your arm has rights or will, separate from your own.

So, the question ultimately isn't whether the agent has rights and will, but whether *you* have them.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Dominate is lawful, it deprives free will. It can be used for good or evil, it depends. But in the context of the game's alignment system, forcing a criminal to turn on his "associates" as they are trying to mug someone would be totally Lawful Good, for example.

 

[Dausuul]

Dominate is lawful, it deprives free will.

Pfeh. The Law/Chaos axis is nonsense. To say "such-and-such is Lawful" is meaningless. No matter what action is under discussion, you can find a bunch of quotes from the books that clearly prove it's a Lawful deed, and a bunch of other quotes that prove it's Chaotic.

For instance, the use of domination magic is highly dishonorable, inherently untrustworthy, and usually illegal, and it makes it trivially easy for the dominator to escape responsibility. It also circumvents traditional channels of authority; a common-born wizard can dominate a king. Therefore it's Chaotic.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh, come now. You're conflating two definitions of the word "rights." The concept of "rights" in computer security has only a superficial relation to "rights" in moral philosophy. The former is a purely physical question of whether a given user is granted access to do something; the latter is a philosophical question of what a moral agent should be permitted to do.

Leaving aside small quibbles with your descriptions of both events, I don't think these topics are as far apart as you seem to think. And in any event, someone who believed in destiny, predestination, causal determinism and so forth would not see the example as being fundamentally different at all. Can you prove you aren't a deterministic software agent? I think all you are able to demonstrate is that you are unpredictable, but this is not the same thing.