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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2159288" data-attributes="member: 27012">I never had this particular discussion with anyone but you.  About the closest I can think of is another recent thread where I essentially warned against the accuracy of doing psychonalysis of someone that you know over the Internet based on their posts to a message board.  If you want to know what's going on inside my head, just ask.  I can usually just tell you.Do you have any evidence of it beyond spotty anecdotal evidence?  You are also making plenty of other assumptions in that train of thought without supporting them. Did you read this article?<a href="http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/web_material/latimes050204.htm" target="_blank">http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/web_material/latimes050204.htm</a>I'm not simply assuming it.  There is quite a bit of hard evidence (see article above) that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with conscious intellect, produces ruthlessly utilitarian moral assessments of situations while the anterior insula produces a simultaneous emotional response and that many moral decisions are an evaluation of which resonse is the strongest.  The prefrontal cortext doesn't care if you have to kill your friend and eat them to stay alive if you are starving.  It's your anterior insula that makes you feel revulsion over the thought.  Yeah, you can tack on some semi-utilitarian reason why eating your friend for food is a bad idea but that's now why most people don't do it.  Most people don't do it, at least not until they are quite desperate, because of the feelings of revulsion.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. 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).  I've played characters who have thought and done all sorts of things I don't personally like.  I've also had a character die from his addiction, which certainly wasn't effective or efficient.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.  That you seem to have a difficult time looking at these elements seperately may be why you can't imagine anyone else doing it.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.  The original question wasn't talking about moral superiority.  It was talking about intellectual superiority.  Unless you can't seperate the two, they are clearly not the same thing.If you'd prefer, I could use the Japanese as an example.  I spent over a year living in Tokyo and have spent several years commuting into New York City on trains in the United States.  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. I don't think that everyone considers it a given.  But some people here do.  Unlike you, I don't think it necessarily indicates any sympathies for Evil any more than admiration for Aztec art idicates sympathies for human sacrifice or enjoying the books of William S. Burroughs indicates sympathies for men shooting their wives in the head.  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.And what debate is that?  Is this the part where you tell me that I'm being defensive because I don't like the implications of what you are saying?There are millions of people who have role-played or who currently role-play.  What percentage of those people have you had personal experiences with?Sure, in some cases people play characters very like myself.  But I've also played with plenty of people who are not one or two-trick ponies.  Of course the question wasn't about which alignments people play.  The question was about which alignments people thought were intellectually superior.  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.  And, of course, we have no idea what all of those people who are reading the thread but aren't responding think, because they'd create a huge margin of error for any sample or poll.Sure.  But it doesn't necessarily tell you any one thing.  Can you learn something about people from the way they respond?  Sure.  But you need to look at a lot more than simply which alignment they picked.But I suppose you did think of him as Chaotic Evil, right?  In D&D terms, that justification of his daughter's theft is not Evil.  It's obviously not Good, either.  It's Neutral, which is why Thieves in D&D were traditionally Neutral.  Futher, it fits in pretty well with the studies on how the brain makes moral decisions in the article mentioned above.  Plenty of people condone impersonal theft (be it tax evasion, stealing office supplies, or downloading scanned role-playing books from file sharing networks) while condemning personal theft because of it.  But should I presume that you also believe the superiority of Good alignments can be proven on utilitarian grounds, then?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 by their prefrontal cortex, (B) understand that these decisions are often quite logical and efficient, and (C) understand that they often reject those decisions for irrational emotional grounds.  That they understand and appreciate the cold efficiency of their prefrontal cortex to make decisions that often emotionally disgust them, thanks to their anterior insula, does not mean that they admire those coldly efficient decisions nor does it mean that they make such decisions in their day to day life.  In fact, part of the escapist appeal of role-playing is the ability to do things that you aren't allowed to do in the real world.  Do I have fun playing a vigilante?  Sure.  Does that mean that I harbor a deep rooted desire to put on a mask and deal harsh justice to criminals or want to legalise vigilanted justice?  No.  It's a matter of seperating a fantasy from reality, something that's very important for keeping the role-playing hobby healthy.Read the article and then we can talk about this.  I think that most (healthy and normal) people make decisions based on both intellectual and emotional grounds.  As such, they intuitively have a grasp of what entirely intellectual or entirely emotional decisions might be like.  It indicates familiarity but that familiarity has nothing to do with exposure or sympathy.  It's simply the way humans make moral decisions. My answer was None.  How would I appear to someone else?  I'll have to ask.  I'm actually curious what the new people I'm gaming with on Thursday think.  I'm sure that my friends would be much more successful assessing my alignment from my behavior outside of the game than inside.  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.  I role-play with several people who have little trouble playing characters very different from themselves and I can also do it.  Perhaps you haven't seen it or haven't seen it often, but it happens and there are plenty of other people who do it.  Thus my anecdotal evidence doesn't contain anywhere near as strong of a correlation between player and character as your anecdotal evidence seems to.</blockquote>

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