Morality of mind control…

[tetrasodium]

This seems highly dramatic.

But not untrue, that's one of the longstanding criticisms of starwars as a whole and I'd add that your choice to omit the first half of that sentence mentioning the earlier post along omitting with the very next sentence about its cartoonish morality lends weight to the claim of how star wars is not a useful comparison. Id say more but you didn't mention anything in support of why you feel that way.

 

[Laurefindel]

Right, so from a semantics POV, I think what’s being said relative to the thread is that poison or poisoning someone is about intent - did you intend to use that substance as a means of harm? Whether something is a poison or not is kinda besides the point. It also goes back to how much real world chemistry and physics does one really want to bring into a TTRPG.

Deliberately ‘poisoning’ someone is always ‘evil’.

[edit] I take it back. I should have said “poisoning someone deliberately is evil when the toxicity of the substance is greater than what it aims to cure”, which is the whole raison-d’être of medicine.

But, there are no such things as ‘poisons’. Every substance can be toxic to the human body when ingested. When the toxicity of this substance becomes harmful to a person, it becomes a poison. Salt or vitamin C for example, can be poisons resulting in death when ingested in large quantities, but we don’t consider them poisonous substance. Same with arsenic, except that the dosage of lethal toxicity of arsenic is much lower.

In that sense, ‘Poison’ is like ‘Evil’: it’s unredeemable and not very useful in conversations. Toxicity, like wrongness, is more scalable and therefore more useful IMO.

IMO, it’s not very useful to talk about Mind Control in terms of evil or not. Taking control of someone’s mind and make them do things that go against their very believes and do harm to themselves or their loved ones is all the way up in terms of wrong. Using hypnosis to help a consentant patient to help them stop smoking is not even on the scale of wrongness, even if both can be considered mind control.

 

[TiQuinn]

But not untrue, that's one of the longstanding criticisms of starwars as a whole and I'd add that your choice to omit the first half of that sentence mentioning the earlier post along omitting with the very next sentence about its cartoonish morality lends weight to the claim of how star wars is not a useful comparison. Id say more but you didn't mention anything in support of why you feel that way.

I feel that way because certain word choices indicate to me whether this is a person I really want to have a discussion with. Framing someone's opinion as "corrupting" tells me this might not be a very useful conversation.

 

[TiQuinn]

Deliberately ‘poisoning’ someone is always ‘evil’.

But, there are no such things as ‘poisons’. Every substance can be toxic to the human body when ingested. When the toxicity of this substance becomes harmful to a person, it becomes a poison. Salt or vitamin C for example, can be poisons resulting in death when ingested in large quantities, but we don’t consider them poisonous substance. Same with arsenic, except that the dosage of lethal toxicity of arsenic is much lower.

In that sense, poison is like Evil: it’s unredeemable and not very useful in conversations. Toxicity, like wrongness, is more scalable and therefore more useful IMO.

IMO, it’s not very useful to talk about Mind Control in terms of evil or not. Taking control of someone’s mind and make them do things that go against their very believes and do harm to themselves or their loved ones is all the way up in terms of wrong. Using hypnosis to help a consentant patient to help them stop smoking is not even on the scale of wrongness, even if both can be considered mind control.

From a game perspective, I've never seen a case where toxicity came into play when a game-defined poison wasn't involved. Yes, in the real world, salt, vitamins, just plain water...all of these can be toxic in right circumstances, but I've never seen a case where that had any bearing on the game. Even if someone wanted to try to induce water toxicity in an NPC, I'd probably push back as a DM because it's trying to bring real world physics, chemistry and specialized knowledge into a game world.

 

[Reynard]

Horrifyingly evil.

You could say its not even the same person anymore.

That seems pretty extreme and completely lacking nuance. If a slight, innocuous change is "horrifying evil" where do you go from there?

I get that people think of mental autonomy as an absolute red line, but "You now like Bob" is not on the same level of "You now serve Lord Baddy with fervor."

 

[SkidAce]

That seems pretty extreme and completely lacking nuance. If a slight, innocuous change is "horrifying evil" where do you go from there?

I get that people think of mental autonomy as an absolute red line, but "You now like Bob" is not on the same level of "You now serve Lord Baddy with fervor."

Maybe lacking some nuance. Could even be done for the greater good, theoretically.

But you mentioned it being permanent and unknown. So...in a way, you killed one person and replaced them with one more to your liking.

Where does that stop?

 

[Cadence]

Deliberately ‘poisoning’ someone is always ‘evil’.

But, there are no such things as ‘poisons’. Every substance can be toxic to the human body when ingested. When the toxicity of this substance becomes harmful to a person, it becomes a poison. Salt or vitamin C for example, can be poisons resulting in death when ingested in large quantities, but we don’t consider them poisonous substance. Same with arsenic, except that the dosage of lethal toxicity of arsenic is much lower.

I get that, but I'm kind of wondering what percentage of people who were asked to classify arsenic, cyanide, hemlock, strychnine, insulin, Benadryl, acetaminophen, and aspirin into two groups of four wouldn't come up with the first four and the last four based on how often they were commonly thought of as poisons and medicines.

Is there absolutely no use at all to that division? Was it thrust on us by murder mystery writers, the little skull and cross-bone stickers that say poison instead of something else that couldn't literally go on every product, and calling them poison control hotlines instead of poisoning control hotlines?

 

[Cadence]

Does mind control being evil or not depend on whether the target has free will? <Insert not worked out thoughts on fate/destiny actually being incarnate in a game and whether fighting against those is evil, or if one even could if there is no free will?>

 

[Reynard]

Maybe lacking some nuance. Could even be done for the greater good, theoretically.

But you mentioned it being permanent and unknown. So...in a way, you killed one person and replaced them with one more to your liking.

Where does that stop?

I am not sure why you are imagining an end of mental continuity. It is essentially the same as misremembering soemthing: a fact that you knew yesterday is different than a fact that you knew today.

Even if you go with a more extensive personality change, it doesn't make sense to me. If a person suffers a traumatic brain injury and that alters their personality, does that mean the old person is dead and the new person just blinked into existence wholly formed? I don't think so. I don't know any theories of self that would support that reading.

 

[jian]

In medicine, doctors, nurses and emergency workers do not tend to talk in terms of what is or is not a poison. Nearly any substance can be a poison in the wrong dose over a course of time, I.E. water intoxication.

That’s because we assume everything we are allowed to use has a therapeutic function. We don’t get to use potassium cyanide or arsenic since they don’t have much in the way of therapeutic use.

I would repeat my assertion that this debate is only useful if we assume the definition of mind control requires a coercive or non-consenting situation. You’re forcing your will on someone else, you are controlling them - if you’re giving them telepathic therapy with their knowledge and consent that is in no way mind control.

Also, as such, the question is probably best framed as “is mind control, defined as supernaturally imposing your will on another person, ever morally defensible?” And my answer would be “yes, but under fairly limited circumstances such as self-defence or prevention of a much greater harm, such as the deaths of others.” This would also be my answer about physical violence or killing. Being morally defensible is of course not the same thing as being a good or moral action.