How would you classify "Good by any means neccessary"

[Nifft]

Check into CIA Methods used to extract vital information.

They don't have access to detect thoughts or zone of truth or even commune.

They don't have a black-and-white alignment system.

And finally, they don't necessarily have a great track record... but further discussion might tend to be politics, so let's not do that.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Kurotowa]

Check into CIA Methods used to extract vital information.

It isnt "Hey, pretty please tell me?!"

I have. You know what? The CIA says flat out that torture doesn't work. The person being tortured will say what they think the torturers what to hear to end the pain. But because other people try it, they studied torture methods enough to be able to train their agents how to resist it. Then some idiots come along and take that research and decide to turn it around and reverse engineer torture that "actually works" and put it to use. Which, when the results are studied and compared to actual inteligence data, it turns out it still doesn't.

Now torture might work in your game. Game worlds often have little resemblance to real life, what with the magic and dragons and heroes surviving impossible falls. But don't go calling to real life as support.

 

[the Jester]

According to the BoED, good intentions do not justify evil deeds.

 

[Simm]

Evil

 

[Tarek]

How would you classify a god, religion, and paladin-hood whose basic tenet was "Do good, by any means neccessary." They would resort to whatever dirty tactics were needed to ensure that the greater good prevailed.

I would classify them as Neutral Evil, actually.

 

[FireLance]

But how can you be certain that wacking the Evil Leader in his craddle will not cause something even worse from happening?

If you allow uncertainty of this sort to creep in, it fudges the issue. If you are not going to gain anything from killing the Evil Leader, then it would be kind of pointless to commit the evil act. There is no longer any ambiguity whether murdering the child or allowing him to grow up is the lesser evil.

And what right does the time traveller have to make that decision?

Again, this fudges the issue. Having the right to make the decision does not change which choice is less evil than the other.

 

[FireLance]

But, to tackle the question at the root of this: is it acceptable to murder one person to save the lives of one million? Well, possibly. But, if you consider that a good reason, what about murdering one to save half a million? One thousand? Ten? Two?

Sometimes, it's how you present the issue. There is a classic question involving a runaway train which places you at the railroad switch. If you do nothing, the train will kill five men who happen to be working on the track. If you do switch tracks, the train will kill one man who is working on the other track. Standard disclaimers apply: you do not have time to warn any of the men, you have no way to stop the train, etc.

In a variant of this problem, you are on a bridge above the railway track where five men are working, next to a very fat man. If you push the fat man off the bridge, his mass is enough to stop the train and save the other five men. You yourself are not heavy enough, there is no way for you to warn the other five men, etc.

In both these cases, there is a similar trade-off: one man dies, or five men die. Yet, pushing the fat man off the bridge seems less moral than switching the track.

Minor tangent, if you were a time traveller, and it was the Evil Leader working on the other track (this was before he went into politics), would you switch tracks to save the five men?

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Slaying a past evil leader is not so simple. You need to weigh up the good that also came in the aftermath, i.e. war being unthinkable for the rebuilt nations. A time traveller would need the wisdom of Solomon to weigh up the legacy in full.

A world history is an intricate beast and a D&D time traveller would need max int & wis boosted exclusively + huge ranks in philosophy. Probably Domains in knowledge and Good, and acting on behalf of a council of preeminent thinkers with access to huge and accurate volumes of world history.

Anything less and I am afraid a timetraveller would not be qualified to make a moral decision.

 

[Asmor]

Thank you so much for posting that train track dilemma!

I caught the tail end of a discussion about it on NPR, and never heard the actual problem. All I knew was that one option involved flipping a switch and one involved pushing some guy and killing him.

As an aside, the discussion mentioned a study where they found that the vast majority of people, regardless of any factors (race, sex, socioeconomic status, etc), always split the same way; they'd flip the switch but not push the man.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

People tend to have an easier time doing bad things when there are there are layers of detachment - a switch being just one.