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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The 1 and the Prime" data-source="post: 5214284" data-attributes="member: 91434">TN- Doesn't exist. There simply isn't room; either you can reliably enough predict the results of an action (as relates to your utility or "survival") or you can't. For those situations when you can't tell, trusting in "golden rule" type reasoning is good, being conservatively selfish is evil.The astute reader may notice that the above suggests a modification of order-chaos is necessary as well. The mortal vessel I am using as a communication medium from Regulus did not fully grasp the importance of precedence to order. Chaos can be construed as believing in the prevalence of unprecedence. This encompasses earlier remarks and leads to the same implications.With regards to the specific case of Prez, I would mostly confine the designation of CN to his actions earlier in the series. In season 1 he unnecessarily and brutally assaults a kid. His outburst in Season 2 against Valchek nearly sinks his career and jeopardizes the whole investigation. Admittedly, in season 4 there is less lashing out ala the situation at the Towers in season 1 and more attempting good (which is strictly a good action in my rubric), though he does allow a stabbing to occur in his class and destroys the life of Randy after misjudging the effects of bringing him in to help the case; on top of this Duquan ends up as a junkie, further emphasizing the chaos inherent in Prez. He either doesn't or can't think things through. Only possibly in the series finally do we see inklings that Prez is possibly sliding more towards actual good, though in truth he could be becoming one of the burnouts that is just covering his own ass and punching the clock. (Maybe he would be a better example if the series portrayed his darker side at school when the character could overreact to the discipline problems or the betrayal on the part of Duquan and start the slide towards burnout; I feel this was avoid to prevent making Prez too unlikable)A true CN character is kinda all mixed up like that. He doesn't reliably trust nor reliably mis-trust. It isn't that he is deciding on the situation; by my definition if the situation is informative on the utility maximizing choice of action, that action is taken without regard to alignment. CN is true fluctuation between trust and mistrust. Unpredictability is the most common motivator for this fluctuation (although insanity or incapacity could be another). (I could add parenthetically that the negation of good-evil alignment color in LN is derived from the inverse situation of near total information and predictability over the results of actions.)More to the point: his searching uncertainty is the defining characteristics of chaotic neutrality. Chaos is the rejection of precedence, or at least a de-prioritization of the processing of precedence (i.e. not thinking things through); searching and uncertainty are the result.Now addressing Celebrim:The benefit of this formulation is that good and evil are entirely internal. The classification is based purely on what the character believes will be the result of his actions. In the case of killing-suicides of all types there is possibility for good and evil. If the killing is motivated by greater good, say in the case of a kamikaze protecting his country, that is good. If on the other hand the murder was for spite, this is evil. We can revert to the tautological revealed preference argument that the murderer preferred a world where the target and the murderer die to one in which the murderer lives and the target does not suffer. Here the murderer probably is acting without regard to the target's preferences (assuming the target wants to live); and refusing to gamble for the possibility the targets will listen to his position and amend his complaint.</blockquote>

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