John: I work in a biology lab in a major university so its not like the science is going over my head. But, for the life of me I can't see how the article and your pet theory on alignment have anything to do with anything. I'm glad you found the article stimulating, but if anything, all it proves is that one of the biggest problems with the law/chaos axis is that its not well defined and has been inconsistantly defined and so almost everyone has thier own theory about what it means. I don't buy your definition, I don't think that you really can support that definition of the law/chaos axis if that's what you are trying to push, but have fun with it.
"I think the problem is that you are equating "intellectually superior" with "morally superior". As the original question mentions, the one does not necessarily follow the other. I'm not assuming that they do."
It doesn't matter. The average person will I think still emotionally attach greater value to the one he chooses as intellectually superior, including 'none'. It won't always happen. You may be an outlying point, in the same way that your researchers only were able to predict the subjects action 70% of the time.
"I think you also may be assuming that people only play characters they are sympathetic with (not true), like (not true), who are like themselves (not true), or which are most efficient and effective (also not true)."
That isn't what I said is it? You continue this misunderstanding all through the response. What I said is that people played characters that were either very like themselves in some way, or else that they played characters that were very unlike themselves in some way. They didn't tend to play tangental characters, and usually didn't even occur to them that such existed. I've played characters I disliked, characters with a moral outlook radically different than my own, and just about every character I ever played has done things which are not in thier own best interests. But looking back over my own characters, even before I realized it, the characters I invested in emotionally essentially had two archetypes. And that's been true of every player I've ever met, even though their archetypes were often radically different than mine. Either they are playing a surrogate self, or they are playing a disposable self which they can safely do things that they would not do so that they can explore what it might be like, or they played both. The either primarily identified and created big exaggerated versions of themselves, or they primarily fantisied and did escapsist stuff which they'd never do in real life. A complex role player probably can and does mix and match a little in the same character, but I've yet to meet one that plays the not-self who is not informed by thier inner self.
"Remember, the decision was not a choice between trains that run on time and trains full of people rolling to concentration camps and late trains but simply an abstract question of who would do the best job of making trains on time."
And I answered the abstract question of who would do the better job making trains run on time. Ultimately, it would not be the Nazi's. In 1945, the trains did not run on time. In fact, they'd had problems running on time for a while. In just 10 years or so, the Nazi's completely flubbed up maybe the best rail system in the world. That took serious ineptitude. No, that took beyond ineptitude. That took evil. So ultimately, you can't separate the two. You take Nazi's for train schedulers and pretty soon your rolling stock is wasting time on shipping out tanks and human chattel.
Meanwhile, I imagine that if it was important to the poor for the trains to run on time, then Catholic organized leader of a great charity work Mother Teresa could probably managed to keep the trains running on time. And they probably wouldn't waste time shipping tanks and undesirables, because Mother Teresa doesn't believe in either of them.
I wasn't asking you the overall efficiency of the Nazi party. I was talking about one specific thing -- making the trains run on time.
And I gave a very specific answer. Twice.
It was talking about intellectual superiority. Unless you can't seperate the two, they are clearly not the same thing.
I think that it is self-evident that they are the same thing. If a theory is intellectually superior to another, it is intellectually superior because it is correct. If it is correct, then it is also moral, and hense morally superior. To imagine the opposite, that a position could be intellectually superior, but incorrect implies a contridiction. If the position was the incorrect one, the intellectually superior position would then be to recognize its incorrectness, and then to adopt the correct position. And if the position was immoral, it could not also be correct since that would imply that it is right to do what is wrong. And if no position was intellectually superior, then that would imply that there was no such thing as right or wrong - but then that wouldn't save you either because then the intellectually superior and correct position would be that there is no right and wrong (itself a moral position). Which ever way you go, the intellectually superior position is the morally superior position.
It's not my fault that the person asking the question didn't see this, but in not seeing the question you are more likely to give an honest answer IMO because you don't know the stakes. That's why I don't trust my own answer. I could be fudging.
That you seem to have a difficult time looking at these elements seperately may be why you can't imagine anyone else doing it.
Don't assume I can't imagine people thinking differently. That's what role players do. What I can't do (and maybe you are exceptional and can) is invest an emotional stake in something like that. Or to put another way, I could DM the character, but I'd never choose to PC such a character because it would bore me in the long term.
The trains in Tokyo run on time. The trains into New York City frequently don't. It would be reasonable for me to say that the Japanese run trains better than Americans. Does that mean that I think the Japanese are morally superior to Americans, are smarter than Americans, or that their economy is more efficient? Of course not.
First, I think its reasonable to say that the Japanese are a very moral people. Like the Germans, the dreadful horror of the Japanese in WWII was not that they were a people without morals, but that they were a moral people. It was this morality and admirable character twisted into something immoral that made them so terrible enemies. There is nothing more depraved than good turned to evil. So, it should not be surprising to me that the trains ran on time in Japan.
But as for what this means, I think it probably means that they value trains in Japan more than Americans do. There was a time that the trains ran on time in America, but we dismantled our Streamliners to fight a war with the Japanese. After the war, we never put them back.
"The data could fit plenty of hypothesis, including the idea that alignment has nothing to do with intellect, which is roughly a third of the responses."
Which isn't unexpected either, since I would expect the single most popular alignment to be 'alignment doesn't really have any meaning', or what I've refered to elsewhere as 'neutral apathetic'. That such choice doesn't universially reflect that belief isn't suprising, but I'd think I'd discovered something if I was batting just 70%. Again, that's why I'd like the results cross referenced to self-identification, backgrounds, and perhaps a clever quiz designed to put people in moral quandries.
"In fact, I would find it impossible to enjoy a great deal of art and fiction if I thought, as you seem to, that abscribing positive qualities to someone or something automatically suggests sympathy with anything and everything they do."
I didn't say anything about automatic. I am speaking in tendencies and trends, and I still claim that analogies to moral ideologies are inadequate. Maybe an admiration for Aztec art doesn't mean anything because your average Aztec art peice wouldn't tread on anyone's sensibilities, but eventually I could find some peices that would tread on that revulsion center you place so much value in - and if you don't believe that you haven't seen enough Aztec art. What the responce was then would probably say something about peoples moral valuations, but I doubt that they would be particular authentic and interesting observations unless the person wasn't aware that they were being observed.
I think it's interesting but I don't think it proves what you seem to think it proves. I think it proves that most people are (A) intuitively aware of the ruthlessly assessments produced...
I think that's interesting, but I don't think it necessarily follows. I think you've got an interesting theory there, but I think you are failing to recognize the limitations of basing mythic first causes on derived things.
But I suppose you did think of him as Chaotic Evil, right?
Chaotic certainly, since his moral compass seems to me to bounce all over the place. I think I could probably come up with a good case for evil too, because I've got more ancedotes but would just as soon keep them to myself.
But should I presume that you also believe the superiority of Good alignments can be proven on utilitarian grounds, then?
Proved, no. That requires a more sophisticated understanding than is possible for someone that lives only in the present. That good is superior on utilitarian grounds is something that I take as a reasonable assumption from the available evidence, even if it doesn't pass the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' test required for proof.
About the only pattern to my characters is that none are Evil, though I've played characters that flirt with Evil and certainly run effective Evil NPCs as a GM.
Sure, I've run evil characters as a GM. But that's different. The pattern you give is pretty typical. You probably strongly self-identify as good, so you don't want to play evil. But you do want to play characters that can struggle with the challenge of being good, and who walk the line closer than you'd ever dare in real life. I had a friend who self-identified as good that felt so uncomfortable with that, that he never played non-nuetral (though he could DM bad guys just fine). I had another friend that played only lawful goods and chaotic neutrals. I've seen that axis ALOT, and I tend that way myself. (That's one of the reason's I don't trust my self-identification. I think I'm probably flattering myself when I self-identify as NG, and that I'm probably really LG.) On the other hand, have you ever played with groups in which the players self-identify as evil and who never play good characters? I've been in three. Their LN's aren't flirting with the idea of evil, but with the idea of good.
Einstein is probably a great example of Chaotic Good though (didn't he have to have a rope set up in his classroom, to keep him from walking off we he started working through a train of thought?).
