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I'm bothered by this phrase.| Best to remember that the road to hell is pathed with good intentions... |
Andromeda had an episode that opened with it, then extrapolated with "Why? Do people feel there's a shortage of bad intentions?"
I've voiced my opinions to this issue earlier. In regards to what happens to the world when the psychic powermonger keeping everything in order dies, I direct you to what happened to the M ongol Empire when Genghis died. Kublai held order for a short while, but it didn't last. Expect the same results.
So... We'd have a dull, peaceful time with this man in control, because excitement causes social friction so he would be suppressing that, then massive chaos when he was gone.
Ooh! Read A Wrinkle in Time! It's got a GREAT example of this sort of world at work.
It even includes what happens to "deviants from the norm."
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Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
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No, the question is, when does it become wrong? I mean, messing with Bin Laden might not have an effect, but what if you did it to all of Al Qaeda? And why stop there? That's Facade's dilemma. Why stop with the extremists? If it's not wrong to take the destructive impulses away from the extremists, why would it be wrong to take similar impulses from everyone else?|
Originally Posted by Omega_Chief
So, the question is, is it worth messing with what fundamentally makes someone who they are worth it when odds are it'll have no effect anyway?
In my book, no, not at all. Best to remember that the road to hell is pathed with good intentions, and no matter how good an action may feel or seem on paper it migh not be the right thing to do. |
Sure, there's a downside, as Xavier would point out, but does the good outweigh the bad?
I had a lovely reply lined up, regarding what the impact would be if all of a sudden everyone was peaceful, and about all that, and accidently hit the close button on my tab. ><
So, the cliff notes:
Good never outweighs bad, whatever your definition of those two points are. Bad in my eyes is oppresive and devouring, while good is enduring and perssting. Bad is killing someone who tries to rob you. Good is standing up, stopping them and getting them to repent and reform for their cries. Harder, riskier, more time and money intensive, but the 'right' thing.
This is a pretty high cliff, so:
Tax is something we all have to pay, and while it goes to good things, we generally don't feel good about paying it. Willingly donating to charity, spur of the moment, appriciation for the cause, every little helps on the other hand does. It puts a spring in the step, and makes you feel you've done something to help.
If we all had to be 'good' and donate to charity, no choice, it'd just feel like tax. A burden we have to do or bad things happen. There's no joy or feeling of good in it. It's an expense.
Also, changing the mind through chemicals, surgery, psychology, pain and brainwashing have all had their failures, their bad sides, their side effects, their casualties. The human mind can adapt and defend itself to an extent, but either it'll fail or break in some. And as someone else mentioned, what happens when the guy dies, or a new child is born?
And finally- *thud*
One other thing to consider: Do you want all the blood on your hands?
If the assumption is that Facade (or Xavier) could do this without anyone noticing or opposing them, then it's really a purely moral issue. It's a choice and it depends on the value you give to human free will.
If, on the other hand, you prefer being realistic, Facade's plan would result in the exact opposite of what he wants: people would resist, others would be forced to fight them. Equillibrium shows you the result: a lot of people end up dead. Of course, if you don't care enough about free will to try to implement the plan, you probably consider the deaths of a few thousand... tens of thousands... millions of people who disagree to be little more than a side issue.
Oh, regarding what happens when that controlling leader dies: I point you again to Equillibrium. The original founder of the society has died and been replaced by people hiding behind computer imagery. They have less moral fibre and far more ruthlessness than the original guy did, but hey... what's a few more incinerations between friends?
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You keep coming back to Equilibrium, a fine action movie, but its storytelling is top-tier "B-rated" at best. It's not a good example of implementation, and if anything, that whole concept was inspired more from 1984 (even though Kurt Wimmer hated the comparison). The point behind Equilibrium, if there was intended to be one, was that emotions will continue to triumph over cold, uncaring logic (though there are hints throughout the movie that the men in control were hardly medicating as they were supposed to be, so their sadistic orders could just as easily have been a result of emotional intervention, which corrupts the experiment). Using it as a model for what a tyrannical state will do is faulty.| The original founder of the society has died and been replaced by people hiding behind computer imagery |
It's best to look more at what historical nations have done. If not the M ongols, then look at Soviet Russia. Stalin was a brutal, sadistic lunatic, who probably would have killed his own shadow if he thought it could hurt him. He murdered millions under his rule, mostly his own people. Each successive ruler afterward slowly whittled down the nightmarish, excessively violent nature of the despotic government until the late eighties, where the nation was bankrupted because of sweeping reforms attempted simultaneously with global military involvement, all ordered from a mountain of lies. When the money stopped moving, the tanks stopped chugging and the people looked angrily to their leaders.
The examples of "New and better worlds" are numerous throughout history, from Alexander the Great's Greek Empire to the Roman Empire, to the British and French Empires (the French and Indian War/Conquest War/Seven Years War could probably be considered the first true World War).
Currently, we have the United States (a nation with no real name...) acting as the "police officer to the world." This concept of moral high-ground enforced with heavy artillery is probably a really good example of this whole debate.
The U.S. is a cultural melting pot. We have influence from all over the world (though it remains a largely Protestant-dominated nation), and our moral compass has been hammered and honed across a timespan that's a little over two hundred years. We're not just running off our own experiences, we're running off the experiences of the empires and nations before us. We're running off the experiences of the many cultures within our nation. We're trying to help guide the nations of the world so they can avoid the mistakes we've made and help usher in global unity. We're not trying to make an empire, we're trying to force social evolution so we can get past the international conflict.
Do we have a right to do this? I don't think so. Like children, nations need to be able to make their own mistakes. I know most of the rest of the world has a longer history of "civilization," but their latest regimes are almost as young as the United States (some of them actually are younger), and most of them haven't had the chance to learn from the mistakes of others or have even taken the opportunity to. But we roll in our tanks, troops, and fighter planes, make a big show and force other nations to "think right." Of course, on the flip-side, we could continue to allow a despot we put in place to begin with to continue torturing his own people and plotting to war with all of his neighbors (a conflict that would certainly have exacerbated the global environment problems as well as the economic downturn; we're talking about a despot who was so ticked at being soundly beaten, he ordered his troops to set fire to oil wells, he'd certainly do similar if given half the chance).
The only thing I feel anybody has a right to do as far as influencing somebody is educate them. Tell people the basic truth, let them determine how they feel about it and act from there. Yes, conflict will arise, but it will be because people acted on their own conscience, not because they'd been manipulated.
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Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
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I feel that's a flawed argument since no nation or society has ever been able to fully control their populace, or even really attempt full control.| It's best to look more at what historical nations have done. |
Of course, some attempts have been made, generally in the form of eugenics programmes such as the forced sterilisation of the 'insane' (in the US) and the elimination of 'undesirables' (in Nazi Germany), but these are hardly effective examples.
PS. I'm not surprised the analogy between Equillibrium and 1984 doesn't go down well. Equillibrium has more to thank from the drug-induced societal stability of Brave New World than it does 1984. The imagery is 1984-ish, but equally owes a huge amount to Nazi and Soviet staged events.
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Amusingly enough, this is already dealt with in CoH canon, in Scirocco's second patron arc, where he tries to use the Malleus Mundi to accomplish the same thing.
One of my two mains has a similar attempt in his own backstory (since reformed, sort of), and the cross-faction SG that he heads (along with my other main and my wife's main) has, as one of its main focuses, stopping any such attempts at, basically, robbing people of free will and removing self determination from the human species. Or, as they like to call it, "keeping humans human".
In religion (and philosophy), this shows up a bunch, and a lot of theodicy comes down to this kind of problem, with the answer being something like "evil is necessary for Free Will".
The thing is, in all of the literature that I am familiar with, the "force everybody to do good things via x" is always seen as a Bad Idea (at best) and downright villainous at worst. It seems to me that the jury has long gone out and come back with a guilty verdict (guilty of being an extremist?) as far as nearly everybody is concerned.
(parenthesis)
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actualy, the story was supposedl lifted from fahrenheit 451|
Originally Posted by Mr_Grey
It's not a good example of implementation, and if anything, that whole concept was inspired more from 1984
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Another good one to add to your "to-read" list.
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Actually, that's not alltogether precise. Khruschev's was the Big Thaw. he opened up archives, let intellectuals do what they will, encouraged dialogue... The Brezhnev came to power, and the Big Refreeze began. Andropov, in 1984-196, was downright scary, accordign to my mother, and his rule included things like policemen pickign people off the streets as they were out for "idling" and severe restrictions on literature and non-communist theories.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Grey
It's best to look more at what historical nations have done. If not the M ongols, then look at Soviet Russia. Stalin was a brutal, sadistic lunatic, who probably would have killed his own shadow if he thought it could hurt him. He murdered millions under his rule, mostly his own people. Each successive ruler afterward slowly whittled down the nightmarish, excessively violent nature of the despotic government until the late eighties, where the nation was bankrupted because of sweeping reforms attempted simultaneously with global military involvement, all ordered from a mountain of lies. When the money stopped moving, the tanks stopped chugging and the people looked angrily to their leaders. |
Of course, then Andropov died of liver failure, but who knows what would've happened if he had lived further?
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| Like children, nations need to be able to make their own mistakes |
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| One of my two mains has a similar attempt in his own backstory |
Cynics of the world, unite!
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This immediately brought to mind the "Matrix" and the admission by the agent that the first incarnation gave mankind peaceful utopia and it failed miserably... can't remember the exact lines.
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Originally Posted by Mr_Grey
X-Files dealt with this when Mulder was trying to wish for world peace. Scully said that maybe the point to living is to help each other achieve such a lofty goal, not have it thrust upon us by some mythical entity.
Throughout our history, we have been provided works of fiction that warn us of what happens when such quick-fixes are employed. The results never end well, and our world, as a whole, does not learn from failure. Besides, if everything's been taken care of for us, what, then, becomes the point of living? |
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It's more than a mass suppression of free will, its a total removal of people's core character. No one's going to be the same if they can no longer feel hate, everyone hates things. I hate long queues, McDonalds and Radio 2 but I don't really think any of that makes me a monster. But this goes deeper than that, it's essentially telling people what they should think on every level so they can never make a wrong choice. Talk about a dull and stagnant world.
You'd find precious few people who'd be either willing or open to having their minds purged of any 'Improper' thoughts. In fact wouldn't Facade also have to edit himself? I'd find it hard to believe he doesn't hate things, else he wouldn't even be affecting this change. At which point he'd no longer be the person who'd started all this and.. well it just sounds full of holes and messy from then on.
The world could already easily make enough Prozac to have a world where people on the whole aren't going to cause trouble and be happy, but that's not really a world I'd like to live in. This is even worse!
But let's say it's just extremism that gets removed. But how do we draw the line there and once you've pushed it back, doesn't whatever is at the boundary now become the new extremism? Eventually we'll end up again with the original problem, a world where no one gets to make any choices anymore as the ever present Overmind has already picked the 'right' one for you.
Of course it gets even worse when Facade doesn't stay beneficent. Power does corrupt even the strongest person, give them total control over someone and eventually they're going to start abusing it and then things will get really hellish. When the entire world is your plaything... well yeah, i'd think Professor X really would mind screw him right there and then. If he's even asking this question, he's already on the slippery slope best to do it before he goes all the way.
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The only similarity I can think of is that they burn works of art, books, almost anything that tends to promote the idea of 'feeling.'|
Originally Posted by Big_Lunk_NA
actualy, the story was supposedl lifted from fahrenheit 451
Another good one to add to your "to-read" list. |
It's actually a mash-up of a number of themes. Nothing new under the Sun and all that.
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Despite not believing in free will and dismissing all questions of theodicy as irrelevent, I'm still a utopia skeptic because perfection is an absolute and absolutes are just not achievable in reality. We can talk about them mathematically or in symbolic logic but the real world doesn't let us approach these things.
Facade seems to want perfect citizens and is willing to tamper with their brains to do this. Never mind the morality of this. I'd say such an enterprise is doomed from the start for mathematical and logical reasons. Optimization is always dependant on context. What is best for one situation is not best for others. Solve one problem and the new world that is created generates new problems to solve. So it goes.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
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Theodicy made for good philosophy. Whether or not you believe in what it attempts to justify is not pertinet to the fact that theodicy created a large part of what we now base our ethics and understanding of the world upon. My husband (he of the theodicy fame) and I tend to be an odd sort of scientific determinists; it was meant as an example of the morality behind the issue, rather than an issue in and of itself.
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Originally Posted by synthozoic
Despite not believing in free will and dismissing all questions of theodicy as irrelevent
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Cynics of the world, unite!
Taking Care of the Multiverse
Well, Facade wouldn't necessarily want "perfect" citizens, just ones that don't irrationally hate, fear and kill.
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The reason I dismissed the problem of theodicy as irrelevent is because, not believing in a god or a grand cosmic purpose to the universe, the problem of evil and pointless suffering doesn't come up for me. And as you may agree, it is possible to develop a system of ethics and morality (And I know those are two different things.) without any reference to the supernatural or spiritual. One of the reasons why I have that first aphorism in my sig is an attempt to point that out. Things are important, not sacred.|
Originally Posted by Genia
Theodicy made for good philosophy. Whether or not you believe in what it attempts to justify is not pertinet to the fact that theodicy created a large part of what we now base our ethics and understanding of the world upon.
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Originally Posted by Ultimo_
Well, Facade wouldn't necessarily want "perfect" citizens, just ones that don't irrationally hate, fear and kill.
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Now our society is radically different from the hunting and gathering days and fear, hatred and the killing urge can extremely dangerous in a world of nuclear weapons or, in the decades and centuries to come, nanoweapons.
So maybe we need to whittle these ancient urges down? Or will it be sufficient to restrain them with laws and international diplomacy and defense policy? I don't know. Our neurological technology is rapidly developing to a point where we will be able to reshape our brains in very subtle and far reaching ways. The question Facade poses we will soon face.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
The obvious problem, and the one put forward in such amazing complex and well thought out a program as The Simpsons is that you eliminate everyone's desire to kill things, and then get yourself invaded by aliens.
Setting the aliens aside, all you need is one or two people who cannot be affected by whatever mind control technique you're employing, and the world is suddenly their oyster.
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Not to mention having the ability to choose other options (And in many cases over come the urge to use said options) is a very good thing to have and be capable of doing.
Were humans incapable of killing or violence or hate or performing ctions that could be viewed as 'extreme'. What would become of us? A santisied worlds where there are few choices, because our overlord Facade has decided that most of the options need to be removed to make us 'better'. A world where peopel don't think, because there is no need to think or Debate when there's only one choice they can take anyway.
Ultimatly the human race becomes little more then unthinking cattle, is that the world Facade wants?
Also synthozoic, you said you don't belive in free will? Could you elaborate on this point, as it confuses me and seems an odd and harsh position to take.
Edit: It migth be best that I'm talking free will here as in the regular 'We all have freedom to make our own choices and minds up and decisions and so on' and not any Philosphical school of thought that you might have brought up, as I know next to nothing about Philosophy in general.
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Which completely misses my point in bringing up theodicy. Whether or not there is a God or whatever has nothing to do with the philosophical nature of the problem, or the development of our moral framework. The reason is that the question is really thus: "if some entity has the power to stop all evil, should it?" From a philosophical and moral point of view, the issue was rarely ever really about God himself, but entirely about evil/violence/chaos/etc. When looking at things like Facade and Asimov's Foundation's Mule and a million other instances, we're looking at questions that people have been discussing for thousand of years and, furthermore, we've got a lot of these discussions in writing (and from some pretty smart blokes, too).|
Originally Posted by synthozoic
The reason I dismissed the problem of theodicy as irrelevent is because, not believing in a god or a grand cosmic purpose to the universe, the problem of evil and pointless suffering doesn't come up for me. And as you may agree, it is possible to develop a system of ethics and morality (And I know those are two different things.) without any reference to the supernatural or spiritual. One of the reasons why I have that first aphorism in my sig is an attempt to point that out. Things are important, not sacred.
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I brought it up because for the last few thousand years people have been asking the question "should a being with the power to end all evil do so" and I was pointing out that most of the literature on the subject has said "no" and the reasons have mostly been along the lines of the cure being worse than disease (mostly Free Will).
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The specific position I take within the position of hard incompatibilism is that free will is incompatible with both the determinism (Newton's mechanics and Laplace's Demon) and indeterminism (Quantum Theory.). The randomness of quantum theory is no refuge for the doctrine of free will. The sensitivity of nonlinear dynamical systems is also no refuge for free will. To me, free will is a illusion that, once we understand the physics, goes away.|
Originally Posted by Omega_Chief
Also synthozoic, you said you don't belive in free will? Could you elaborate on this point, as it confuses me and seems an odd and harsh position to take.
Edit: It migth be best that I'm talking free will here as in the regular 'We all have freedom to make our own choices and minds up and decisions and so on' and not any Philosphical school of thought that you might have brought up, as I know next to nothing about Philosophy in general. |
It is fine to imagine the many different histories a universe could follow when we jostle the initial conditions of the Big Bang a slight bit. I have no problem with that. But assuming we specify those initial conditions with infinite precision (Or at least with quantum granularity.), we, like Laplace's Demon, can know the future states of that universe at any stage. Of course this is not practical but it, is in principle, possible.
Those initial conditions can be jostled by quantum randomess. But this randomness, being completely acausal, and completely random is not a very satisfying thing to pin free will on. It's like saying your choices really depend on something even more random than a coin toss.
The free will idea never seems to explain where this mysterious power to transcend the behavior of other forms of matter, which somehow lack this power of agency, comes from.
I also want to make plain that the only chance I believe in is blind chance; the only fate I believe in is blind fate. There is no goal, there is no grand cosmic meaning.
Having said all that, I still believe that having a sense of personal responsibility is a survival trait that is necessary for social mammals to thrive. In some grand sense it's really no one's fault you pulled the trigger to kill that guy but, we wouldn't survive very long if we didn't make you hang for it. Free will is an illusion we had to evolve to have so that we could function as a species. But this doesn't mean the illusion is real.
I don't know if that really clarifies things or not.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
I still say that those theories assume too much to be considered valid until proven. The time-dependent, closed-system approach just doesn't encompass enough of what exists to adequately desribe the state of the system as a whole.
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Ah! Yes, I see. I did miss the point. |
Originally Posted by Diellan_
Which completely misses my point in bringing up theodicy. Whether or not there is a God or whatever has nothing to do with the philosophical nature of the problem, or the development of our moral framework. The reason is that the question is really thus: "if some entity has the power to stop all evil, should it?"
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And in which case, I think I agree. I'd even say that the creature could only stop all suffering by enormously simplifying things into a boring loop. If there are no chances for error, things get really boring very quick because nothing changes.
This seems to suggest to me that underlying the highly complicated idea of evil is the, perhaps, simpler ideas of error and surprise. That's a weird realization to come to. I don't know where to take that.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
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Well maybe it is a philosophical leap to take but if the multiverse or the universe isn't a time-dependent, closed system, we still know nothing of what exists outside it. I guess my bias arises from the fact that the free will position has done nothing to explain the physical agency the will to choice emerges from. |
Originally Posted by DeviousMe
I still say that those theories assume too much to be considered valid until proven. The time-dependent, closed-system approach just doesn't encompass enough of what exists to adequately desribe the state of the system as a whole.
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So perhaps we're at an impasse. If I understand you correctly, you'd say I'm jumping to a conclusion only based on lack of evidence. My theory assumes too much. I'd say in return, until the free will position can put forward some empirically testable model (I hesistate to say "mechanism" because I think free will is not a mechanistic concept.) that generates free will, science must pass it by in silence.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
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Synth, you baffle me. You state that you believe in determinism, then insist that people provide a testable hypothesis to model free will on.|
Originally Posted by synthozoic
Well maybe it is a philosophical leap to take but if the multiverse or the universe isn't a time-dependent, closed system, we still know nothing of what exists outside it. I guess my bias arises from the fact that the free will position has done nothing to explain the physical agency the will to choice emerges from.
So perhaps we're at an impasse. If I understand you correctly, you'd say I'm jumping to a conclusion only based on lack of evidence. My theory assumes too much. I'd say in return, until the free will position can put forward some empirically testable model (I hesistate to say "mechanism" because I think free will is not a mechanistic concept.) that generates free will, science must pass it by in silence. |
Sorry that this discussion got derailed, but I feel the need to point out that since the Universe has been scientifically and mathematically proven to be non-deterministic, your insistence on the use of scientific method to disprove your beliefs is pretty much laughable, since science has already proven that determinism is a fallacy. Job done.
Screw free will, I couldn't care less about taking part in that side of the discussion, but the Universe is not deterministic. Nothing within the universe is deterministic. Any claim that it is, is spurious at best, and an outright lie at worst.
[Edit: I will point out now that I will never lambast someone for their beliefs. But when they attempt to force others to utilise one belief system (in this case, scientific method) that is fundamentally at odds with the belief system they are propounding, then I see no reason not to pick apart such a flabbergasting logical fallacy. A determinist cannot use science to prove determinism (or disprove alternatives to determinism), because science has already shown that determinism is at odds with the fundamental nature of the universe.
Believe what you will, but at least be honest in your beliefs, and accept their downsides, too.]
The wisdom of Shadowe: Ghostraptor: The Shadowe is wise ...; FFM: Shadowe is no longer wise.
; Techbot_Alpha: Also, what Shadowe said. It seems he is still somewhat wise 
; Bull Throttle: Shadowe was unwise in this instance...; Rock_Powerfist: in this instance Shadowe is wise.; Techbot_Alpha: Shadowe is very wise *nods*; Zortel: *Quotable line about Shadowe being wise goes here.*
So, the question is, is it worth messing with what fundamentally makes someone who they are worth it when odds are it'll have no effect anyway?
In my book, no, not at all.
Best to remember that the road to hell is pathed with good intentions, and no matter how good an action may feel or seem on paper it migh not be the right thing to do.