Alignment and Absolutes

[eliakon]

In the CS Resources thread a discussion was started about the Alignment system
Ultimately at stake was the question of "how ridged is Never and Always"
This is a key issue, as the issue of scale starts to come up. Specifically if a good character will "Never harm an innocent" what does that mean?
What if you have to harm one innocent to save two others? What if its just hurt one to save two from death? Or ten? One hundred? One thousand? One trillion?
At what point, if ever does the "never" clause get balanced?

[Blue_Lion]

I think it is fairly absolute. A good person will never intentionally harm a innocent, accidents may happen such as missing target and hitting some thing else. They will always try to save or protect them when they could. That does not mean they will take no action if there is a risk of harming a innocent just that they will chose the action with the intent of saving them.

In wars that means never targeting civilian targets that have no impact on the war. A factory may be a civilian owned and operated target but is also a war resource making it a tactical target, while a civilian school or hospital are not.

This might get a little hard to do and result in a commander(and possibly ground troops) making a moral call and taking the moral hit in cases like forced labor or embedding civilians and children in tactical targets as a type of human shield. This could result in a case where actions where evil, and the people who ordered such an attack did something evil and people that where on the ground and saw the people may also committed evil, but an pilot may know nothing of the target beyond its location and tactical value. There can be good people in a evil empire/army and evil people in a good empire/army.

In the end some one is held accountable for the actions and any action taken by any of the force the nation did do. So it might make it impossible to make a claim that they never did it.
Example most cosmo knights would not commit genocide. But as a whole there organization may hunt an evil race based on the actions of its individuals resulting in nearly eliminating it. The individuals are hunting evil but the result can be quite significant on a race that is mostly evil and committing acts to get there attention.

Some cosmo knights may have committed actions for the intent of genocide and fallen but most even as part of army that did may have not supported such an action and merely been part of an army fighting evil.

The actions of the individual may affect the whole but the actions of a whole do not affect the individual.

(the actions talk about what the charter will intentionally do, if a charter has no knowledge it is breaking them or has no intent to do there is no reason to punish him. If he learns he did something unethical unknowingly then he would typically try to set it right in some way.)

Note on time line: there is no reason to expect a time line in a earlier book to cover something done in a latter book.

[eliakon]

I think it is fairly absolute. A good person will never intentionally harm a innocent, accidents may happen such as missing target and hitting some thing else. They will always try to save or protect them when they could. That does not mean they will take no action if there is a risk of harming a innocent just that they will chose the action with the intent of saving them.

Its the Trolley Dilemma. How can you be absolute when it is possible to make a situation in which you can pit the two "thou shalt nots" against each other.
The example that leaps out is war. War harms innocents, there is no way in the WORLD that a person can argue that a war does NOT harm innocent people. We know however that it is possible for soldiers to be good.
This presents a dilemma a soldier is deliberately engaging in behavior that they know harm civilians, but they are not instantly relegated to Anarchist.

In wars that means never targeting civilian targets that have no impact on the war. A factory may be a civilian owned and operated target but is also a war resource making it a tactical target, while a civilian school or hospital are not.

That's a sophistry though. Your still harming the civilians. You still are bringing pain and suffering to the civilian population.

This might get a little hard to do and result in a commander(and possibly ground troops) making a moral call and taking the moral hit in cases like forced labor or embedding civilians and children in tactical targets as a type of human shield.

We are not talking the Abberant/Miscreant line, we are talking the Unprincipled/Anarchist one.
Can not Harm/Can Harm, not just kill.

This could result in a case where actions where evil, and the people who ordered such an attack did something evil and people that where on the ground and saw the people may also committed evil, but an pilot may know nothing of the target beyond its location and tactical value. There can be good people in a evil empire/army and evil people in a good empire/army.

But that pilot, unless they are utterly idiotic is going to know that bombing people brings suffering. That damage to infrastructure kills people, and even if you only kill soldiers those soldiers have innocent families who will be traumatized (harmed). That there will be privations... and that is setting aside the idea that we are presuming that this hypothetical military can make such precision attacks as to ONLY hit purely military targets, every time, with ZERO misses and ZERO collateral damage. Which, to be frank is so utterly improbable that its not really possible outside of an abstract discussion (but for this discussion sure, we can postulate that this military has a way to make sure that they hit 100% of the time, that there is no collateral damage, they never miss identify targets, and they only hit purely military targets with only solders staffing it)

In the end some one is held accountable for the actions and any action taken by any of the force the nation did do. So it might make it impossible to make a claim that they never did it.

Then they have violated the "Never harm an innocent" and must, neceisarrally move down to anarchist alignment?
Or is it NOT absolute and they can harm innocents, if there are 'extenuating circumstances' I am confused, you argue both ways here.

Example most cosmo knights would not commit genocide. But as a whole there organization may hunt an evil race based on the actions of its individuals resulting in nearly eliminating it. The individuals are hunting evil but the result can be quite significant on a race that is mostly evil and committing acts to get there attention.

Some cosmo knights may have committed actions for the intent of genocide and fallen but most even as part of army that did may have not supported such an action and merely been part of an army fighting evil.

A few problems with this

First off Genocide is Genocide, whether you mean it or not.
Second off, we KNOW that they did it, and the terms used imply intent.
Third off the people that are doing the intended action are called out to be Cosmo-Knights. Not Fallen Knights. If hunting a race down made you fall, then you would have to fall as you hunted them, and thus it would not be Cosmo-Knights doing the hunting.

The actions of the individual may affect the whole but the actions of a whole do not affect the individual.

This doesn't work though. ANYONE committing genocide (i.e. hunting the race down) would have to either
-Fall and thus not be a Cosmo-Knight and not be doing it
-Not fall, and thus be some how doing it and staying good.

Again, if collective guilt is assigned, then in the absence of exculpatory evidence, presumed that the collective is indeed guilty.

(the actions talk about what the charter will intentionally do, if a charter has no knowledge it is breaking them or has no intent to do there is no reason to punish him. If he learns he did something unethical unknowingly then he would typically try to set it right in some way.)

The actions cited in all examples are ones of intent, thus this does not really matter. It is equally impossible to 'hunt down' by accident as it is to 'become a willing solider' by accident

Note on time line: there is no reason to expect a time line in a earlier book to cover something done in a latter book.

The Race appears in DB 12, the Time Line in DB 13

[taalismn]

I'd allow a character one or two minor incidents, like telling a white lie that could be perceived as 'harming an innocent' in the psychological sense, if found out, if it would help out several other innocent people, but that wiggle room ends when it comes to physical harm deliberately and knowlingly inflicted.
Extreme case, like a character of Good Alignment bombing a hospital or orphanage, and it's a good case for allowing an insanity roll for depression-based problems as the character struggles with what they've done and try to cope.

[Shark_Force]

as i noted elsewhere, genocide includes the intent to exterminate some group. for example, one quick definition i found on the net: "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group."

if you are hunting a few specific individuals in a race, even if many others happen to be also hunting other individuals, even to the extent that the race is nearly gone as a result, and your intent is to protect others that they are attacking, or really anything other than the intent to exterminate the group, it isn't genocide.

so a group like the cosmo-knights may have been involved in actions that led to the near-extermination (or even total extermination) of some group, and it would not (necessarily) be genocide. though it could be. as i said, it's all intent.

[Axelmania]

Absolute is absolute but... how does someone who must ALWAYS help others manage to get a night's sleep?

I think it means that so long as your long term goals involve an effort to abide by the alignment that it is okay to not abide by absolute statements.

So you could for example harm an innocent if that meant protecting more innocents in the long run. Just as you can temporarily not help others while you eat a meal to get strength to help others later.

[eliakon]

as i noted elsewhere, genocide includes the intent to exterminate some group. for example, one quick definition i found on the net: "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group."

if you are hunting a few specific individuals in a race, even if many others happen to be also hunting other individuals, even to the extent that the race is nearly gone as a result, and your intent is to protect others that they are attacking, or really anything other than the intent to exterminate the group, it isn't genocide.

so a group like the cosmo-knights may have been involved in actions that led to the near-extermination (or even total extermination) of some group, and it would not (necessarily) be genocide. though it could be. as i said, it's all intent.

When the Cosmo-Knights start, as a collective hunting down a race (up to and including seeking out what is believed to be their home world... and destroying it) that sort of implies deliberate intent.

Your literally making the "I was only following orders" defense with a side order of "But everyone was doing it"

[Axelmania]

The thing about the Cosmo-Knights, much as I love to use this as an opportunity to bash on the alignment system... the alignment restrictions of that OCC are present-day, do we know if the OCC worked that way however long ago it was that this happened? Maybe the Cosmic Forge allowed Aberrant Cosmo-Knights back then and then got disgusted with itself after causing a genocide and implemented the alignment restrictions after?

[flatline]

First off Genocide is Genocide, whether you mean it or not.

Strictly speaking, this is false. You *must* mean it in order for it to be genocide.

If you kill a bunch of people of a particular social group, it's only genocide if you killed them because they were of that particular social group.

One does not accidentally commit genocide. Intent is part of the definition.

But as I've said in other threads, genocide is not inherently evil. I quite intentionally commit genocide against any and all colonies of fire ants that invade my property. I do not consider this to be an "evil" course of action.

--flatline

[eliakon]

First off Genocide is Genocide, whether you mean it or not.

Strictly speaking, this is false. You *must* mean it in order for it to be genocide.

If you kill a bunch of people of a particular social group, it's only genocide if you killed them because they were of that particular social group.

One does not accidentally commit genocide. Intent is part of the definition.

But as I've said in other threads, genocide is not inherently evil. I quite intentionally commit genocide against any and all colonies of fire ants that invade my property. I do not consider this to be an "evil" course of action.

--flatline

Setting aside if genocide applies to non-sentient/sapient beings...
If you kill off the entire Oompa-Loompa race, you have committed genocide. Even if you didn't mean to. It just means it was an accident.

But, at least for Palladiums purposes it does appear that the deliberate extermination of a species of intelligent life forms is not in and of itself inherently evil. And if its not inherently evil to wipe out species, then presumably it would be no more evil to wipe out other groups.

[Axelmania]

One does not accidentally commit genocide. Intent is part of the definition.

Which definition? Raphael Lemkin in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79 "By "genocide" we mean the destruction of an ethnic group…." doesn't require intent. He mentions "with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves" only when discussing attacking foundation of life for the non-mass-killing type.

[Shark_Force]

Setting aside if genocide applies to non-sentient/sapient beings...
If you kill off the entire Oompa-Loompa race, you have committed genocide. Even if you didn't mean to. It just means it was an accident.

no. it really doesn't. look up the definition. if you didn't *mean* to exterminate the race, it isn't genocide. that's like saying that if you didn't mean to kill someone, but they died as a result of your actions, it's the same thing as murder. no, it isn't murder. it might be manslaughter or criminal negligence, but it isn't the same thing as committing murder.

in the same way, genocide includes INTENT. you must DELIBERATELY be taking actions intended to exterminate the group in question. if it wasn't deliberately done with the intent to exterminate the group, it isn't genocide, no matter how many people died. it might still be a crime, but it isn't that specific crime.

[Shark_Force]

When the Cosmo-Knights start, as a collective hunting down a race (up to and including seeking out what is believed to be their home world... and destroying it) that sort of implies deliberate intent.

Your literally making the "I was only following orders" defense with a side order of "But everyone was doing it"

as i said, i'm not familiar with the specific example. i don't know the details of what the cosmo-knights have supposedly done.

but all people said was that the cosmo-knights are a leading cause of two races being nearly dead. and once again, that, in and of itself, does not inherently mean that genocide was committed. if those races were aggressors, and the cosmo-knights were defending others from those races, and in the process killed off large numbers of people who were of said race, that isn't (necessarily) genocide. it *could* be, if one of the reasons the cosmo-knights were there to defend someone is that they wanted an opportunity to kill off the race.

simply put, if the cosmo-knights were not killing those creatures specifically because they were those creatures and with the intent to exterminate them, it isn't genocide. it doesn't matter if they killed many. the allies killed a crudload of germans in WW II. but they killed them mainly with the intent to force them into unconditional surrender and peace (i'm sure some were there for other reasons, not least of all revenge, but that still isn't the deliberate and systematic extermination of some group because of their race, culture, etc), and not with the intention of exterminating the race, therefore it wasn't genocide.

now, since you apparently missed it the first time i said it, and thus may have missed the second time, i'm going to repeat myself in a way that i can't imagine you can possibly miss.

I DON'T KNOW THE SPECIFICS OF THE COSMO-KNIGHT SITUATION. it is apparently either in a sourcebook i haven't read, or i have forgotten it. i don't know if the cosmo-knights killed large numbers of those particular groups deliberately with the intent to exterminate the race. i am not justifying a goddamn thing, because i am not commenting on a specific situation. i am simply stating that killing large numbers of people of a certain group is not inherently genocide. genocide has a specific meaning, and that specific meaning includes that something be deliberate, and that it be done with a specific intent of exterminating the species.

now, if the books come right out and say that the cosmo-knights were systematically hunting down those species with the intent to exterminate them, then yeah, the cosmo-knights committed genocide. if it just says that those species are rare because many of them were killed by the cosmo-knights it *might* be genocide. but it also might not be. i don't have the details to state which it is. but from the details shared so far (which had only stated that the reason they were uncommon was that many had been hunted down and killed by cosmo-knights - which, again, does not specify the specific details of the event) there was no clear indication.

now, if the cosmo-knights deliberately destroyed the homeworld with the intent to exterminate the species, then that's genocide (and grossly out of character, and frankly is an example of bad writing imo if that's the case, unless a heck of a lot of cosmo-knights fell as a result). if it was accidental, it wouldn't be. and again, i don't know, because i don't have the books to fact check. but there's been an awfully strong indication that people don't even know what genocide means.

[Shark_Force]

One does not accidentally commit genocide. Intent is part of the definition.

Which definition? Raphael Lemkin in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79 "By "genocide" we mean the destruction of an ethnic group…." doesn't require intent. He mentions "with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves" only when discussing attacking foundation of life for the non-mass-killing type.

if that definition doesn't include intent by implication, then any time something dies as a result of the actions of some other thing (and that's pretty near always going to be the case), genocide has been committed. i mean, i hate to break it to you, but the allies weren't shooting at stuff *behind* the german troops, and just happened to hit germans by accident. they were trying to shoot the germans, which (last i checked) are an ethnic group, as are essentially every other nation that got involved in any war ever.

[J_cobbers]

I would point out that attempting to wipe our an 'alien race' rather than an ethnic group of your own species would technically be xenocide (also the title of one of the books in Orson Scott Card's Ender series more on this at the end of my post), and would be a more appropriate term. If some aliens came to Earth and tried to wipe out all the people of say Greek ancestry (nothing against Greeks, just an example), that'd be genocide, but if they came to kill off all of us humans, then it would be Xenocide.

That being said here we have the Cosmo-Knights, a group of intergalactic good guys picked by the cosmic forge, going to battle (possibly with other interstellar forces) against a species which had a culture that was committing atrocities across the cosmos of the 3 galaxies (It's been a long time since I've looked at the relevant texts, so I'm paraphrasing and relying on other people's posts), to the point of wiping out what they thought was the home world. The question is then, can those cosmo-knights keep their good alignment and not become fallen knights within the Palladium Books alignment system paradigm?

Using WWII and other modern notions of the Laws of Armed Conflict (LoAC) (this is a subject I'm familiar with through my military service), you could use these rules as a basis of intent, but the absolutes imposed by the alignment system put an even higher bar. In the LoAC memebers of the Geneva Convention and other treaties can not intentionally target certain targets or use certain kinds of weapons without committing war crimes. But military infrastructure and production facilities were, at least during WWII considered fair targets because by destroying them it weakened the enemy's military forces and hastened the end of war (considered a good thing). Today places like residential neighborhoods, religious buildings, cultural sites, and hosptials are by default not to be targeted, but also not to be used to house military forces (except for wounded and non-combatants) and arms or to conduct attacks from. When they become militarized/occupied by a military force, then LoAC may allow them to be targeted for attack, and then usually only to eliminate the threat posed. However, in battle mistakes in communication, bad intelligence, and other factors often have the result that civilians end up being killed or mistakenly targeted. There are plenty of news stories about these incidents in the last 15 years. When they happen there are investigations and people may get relived of command or some other administrative action, but usually not the pilot dropping bomb, or artillery men firing cannons. Why? Because the intent wasn't to cause wanton destruction, and the people pulling the trigger/dropping bombs were relying on the information given to them from higher up. When info is bad, bad things can happen, whether we intended it to or not. These are examples where the PB alignment system gets problematic with good aligned characters and absolutes. How can you Never Harm an innocent, if you don't have the information about who is innocent and who isn't? If it were a matter of "knowingly harm an innocent" that's much easier.

There are also plenty of examples of individual service members who have intentionally violated these rules and killed innocent civilians, or disarmed/surrendering enemy forces. At least for the U.S. military, those incidents get investigated when we learn about them, and Courts Martial follow resulting in people being sent to places like Fort Leavenworth. That's the crime and punishment end of war, and shows that there are people in the Armed Forces who act with ill intent, which may or may not be fueled by any number of factors like; just wanting to get out and kill some "rag heads" (please excuse the slur, I mean this only as an illustration and not to actually disparage anyone) without regard to whether or not those people are actually against us, or as revenge for the loss of people in their unit, some misguided idea of what war or patriotism is about, or they just saw too much and lost their sh*&. These are examples where in the alignment rules are much easier to rule on, and clearly not the actions of good alignments.

Going back to the issue at hand. The time line doesn't go into enough details, it just doesn't. Yes the Cosmo Knights did lead the force, which implies that many many CK's were involved. But were they the members of the force that actually destroyed the world, was that the CK's intent, or was it another factions plan that was kept from them? We don't know. My thought is that the example is given to show just how bad this race is, that it took this level of involvement by CKs to put an end to their own xenocidial actions. In the context of a justified war (preventing the destruction of many other species) perhaps, as a society none of them could have been considered innocent even if they were of 'good' alignment. I don't know if I can rectify the cognitive dissonance that this scenario creates, and it's a really good debate and I hope it goes on.

Personally it then genocide or xenocide has to have an element of intent. If you happen to kill off an entire group or species due to a war with a legitimate basis, and because the possibility of them surrendering is non-existent, and if you don't win, they will kill you off, you're not intentionally killing them off, you're killing them off as a side effect of their inability to compromise or purse a peaceful resolution. When faced with your own or another group's annihilation I don't think it is evil to act to eliminate the threat. I think the book "Ender's Game" does a good job dealing with this when it talks about the first Formic War. The buggers didn't think of killing individual human as murder, they looked at it like trimming toe nails, from their perspective they weren't committing xenocide/genocide, but once they realized that humans were different from them, they lost the intent to re-invade Earth. However, humans didn't know that, and as far as they knew, the Buggers were only going to come back later unless we totally eliminated them. Ender has to go through the rest of the book series with the guilt of (nearly) killing off an entire sentient species, but at the time he did it, he thought it was a simulation to prepare for a real war. Was he evil? Were the buggers innocent? I see a lot of ethical parallels to the debate at hand, and likely the answers are in the grey areas rather than as black and white as the PB alignment system wants it's good aligned heros to be.

[Library Ogre]

I'd be relatively squishy about those absolutes.

To use "never hurt an innocent" and "never tell a lie" as examples... there's plenty of times where not telling a lie can mean hurting an innocent. "Are there slaves hiding here?" "No." The person knows there's slaves hiding under the floorboards, and only extremely gymnastic sophistry will let them get around that they lied... but also protected an innocent.

It works better to see what their first choice is. The principled character whose plans always seem to involve taking hostages or planting explosives at the orphanage? Probably not actually principled. The Principled character who will lie to protect the innocent, but won't lie to protect themselves? Probably principled, despite the fact that principled people "Never lie".

[Axelmania]

Technically it's not you hurting the slaves by giving away their position though. I don't think it's sophistry to acknowledge the difference between co-operating with an aggressor who would hurt you for lying and actually capturing the slaves yourself.

If a good person's obligated to hide slaves it MIGHT be under 'always help others' doctrine' ... except the 'others' you help could be the slavecatchers, it doesn't say WHO you have to help, just that you always need to be helping at least 2 people.

[glitterboy2098]

it's not lying if you answer the question without them realizing it.
*hiding escaped slaves in the basement until they can be sent onwards*
slave hunter: "have you seen any escaped slaves here?"
Person hiding them: "oh they're always underfoot, but i send them away when they come around."
Slave hunter: "very well. In the future report all escaped slaves to your nearest police office. thank you for your time"

[Axelmania]

Definitely helps with newbie questioners. Experienced ones will probably notice the evasion. Interrogqtion Techniques would probably be needed.