Book 2 – Page 68

[BLANDCorporatio]

Lawful does not mean conservative. It means working within the existing legal structures. Both republicans and democrats would be lawful: The R or D after the name indicates whether they're good or evil.

Heh-heh.

*Tip of the hat, Wag of my finger to you*

Actualy, some characters do change quite a lot as a series go on.

Bawww, you revealed my hand. 'Coz yeah, when a series goes through several incarnations (and writers), things will change. Heck, I don't need to do much work to "prove" that Picard is Chaotic Evil. Movie Picard that is, not the one in TNG series. RedLetterMedia already built that case for me.

I play Lawful as meaning that you act in such a way as to promote some societal system, and it usually implies that you believe strongly in the validity of that system. I play Chaos as acting against all societal systems, with the implied belief that there is a fundamental flaw in the validity of societal systems in general. {snip}

That system may not always be perfect, but there are very, very few cogent people actually advocating anarchy.

What is Anarchy? Ayn Rand, Alan Moore, and Norman Spinrad all share a distaste for centralized political power. However if you were to somehow stick all three in a room (we'll assume all are alive for this exercise), at most one would come out still breathing. (My bet's on Moore.)

More to the point, Anarchy (in its various interpretations, and I'll admit lumping Libertarians and Anarchists is a bit of slight of rhetoric) is a societal system. And said various incarnations have enough proponents.

Speaking of Anarchy-

I therefore use a slightly different axis - the axis of personal freedom/lack thereof or personal rights/lack thereof. A true LG character, to me, is one who empowers everyone they meet, works to improve the law, but adheres strictly to it until then.

By that definition, an Anarchist or Libertarian are Lawful, or whatever you call the LG end of your alignment. Socialists would be the other end, right? Because that's the political battle (supposedly): individual freedoms/rights vs. responsibility to the collective.

Personal opinion: I disagree with equating law/chaos with good/evil. {examples}

Somewhere, maybe that site of ill repute, alignments were explained with such archetypes. And it certainly made sense as I read that to distinguish Law/Chaos and Good/Evil. Heck, it's not any worse than INTP or INTJ or EFDS or whatever the hell those other types were.

My qualm with the Law/Chaos split is that it seems (to me the not-really-informed outsider) to fall back to Conservative/Progressive when a game is actually played, as opposed to those archetypes of alignment which allowed Progressive Lawful. And Chaotic Conservative. Now isn't that one a beauty.

Kriestor, you went interlinear on me to the point that the overarching point was lost.

"You went interlinear": I gotta remember this

Let me break it down into points that stand alone well enough that they don't rely on context. And I'll provide scope markers so you can't get confused as to the structure.

I actually managed to get a peek at your message before you apparently edited it and made it longer. While I felt the point was well made then ("Lawful" means consciously following a code of conduct [despite opportunities to choose otherwise]) I get why you'd want to separate the ideas a lil' bit (so as to add the qualifier "usually, the one aspiring to follow a code of conduct falls short, even in their own estimation, of consistently achieving this").

Of course, this makes the longer, more nuanced post vulnerable to point-by-point quote-and-reject, without looking whether the whole is coherent. Ohwell, such are the risks.

[Kreistor]

Kriestor, you went interlinear on me to the point that the overarching point was lost.

Because I felt that the examples you were using were inappropriate and prejudicial. To use mentally unbalanced individuals as examples, without indicating extensive study of the subject is an emotional argument, not a logical one. The topic of insanity is far too complex to attribute an archtype to all individuals that have a mental issue. Many mental issues result in habitual behaviors, specifically obsessive compulsive/disorders.

You attributed to me ideas that were directly in contradiction of other things I said, possibly because you simply hadn't gotten to them yet. Whether due to only reading as you were replying or simple carelessness, I find this very disrespectful.

I don't think so. You only wrote six or seven sentences. What I indicated was that your knowledge of mental disorders was sub-par, if it allowed you to group them in such a way.

Let me break it down into points that stand alone well enough that they don't rely on context. And I'll provide scope markers so you can't get confused as to the structure.

I'm not at all confused. You seem to have missed that I don't consider your conclusion based on anything except sidewalk psychology.

The original and contentious use of the word 'Lawful' and the two following responses did not refer to D&D, and the first reference to D&D was to declare its irrelevance. I will therefore ignore it.

As I said, I reject the DnD alignment system wholesale, so I don't really care. Someone else has pointed out that the Code of Conduct rule pre-dates 3.0 and the SRD, so is entirely irrelevant. But whatever.

A code of conduct must be consciously maintained to be a code.

Rejected. I do not agree with the basic assumption. Morality, while not identifiable as a singular code, is a code by which many people live.

Therefore, {
The laws of physics don't count as a code of conduct. (incidentally, they don't imply that we're unthinking 'automatons' either, but that's tangential)

? Never said they did. Straw man.

The ability to predict someone's behavior also does not mean that they are acting under a code of conduct.

If isolated to a singular instance, no it does not. We're talking about pattern behavior, here, over the long term. I can predict that a man if surrounded by 20 cops is highly unlikely to steal from the cash register in the middle. That certainly doesn't make him predictable, just reasonable. But a man that will always try to steal from the cash register if the proprietor goes into the back is definitely predictable and living to a code that excludes the immorality of theft.

It is not meaningful to speak of acting by a code of conduct if the person is not consciously aware of the code.}

Few are unaware of the concept of immorality. Morality is a code, taught to us by our parents, and even understood by those that lacked such guidance.

Someone is acting by a code of conduct to the degree to which they actually act by the code of conduct (yes, that was intentionally close to the null statement; I am emphasizing that there are degrees to this. You can be mostly chivalrous. This may not be good enough for some people)

The DnD Lawful alignment does not require strict and constant adherence to a Code. It only requires a desire to live up to it whenever possible, to choose the Code's guidance, allowing for exceptions because people are human and subject to emotion.

Corollary: A code of conduct can specify how severe various breaches are.

*shrug* I think you need to work on that one: it lacks bite.

PRIMARY CLAIM: many people do not adhere to a code of conduct, even to their own satisfaction.

If you choose to ignore morality as taught by a community as a Code by which actions are chosen, then you can be right. I do not. Morality, as a limiter of action choice, is a Code that restricts us, through the mechanism of guilt as punishment, even if we are alone when we commit the immoral act. A few people avoid that by lacking a conscience, but that is a rarity.

[The.Healing.Mage]

I play Lawful as meaning that you act in such a way as to promote some societal system, and it usually implies that you believe strongly in the validity of that system. I play Chaos as acting against all societal systems, with the implied belief that there is a fundamental flaw in the validity of societal systems in general. {snip}

That system may not always be perfect, but there are very, very few cogent people actually advocating anarchy.

What is Anarchy? Ayn Rand, Alan Moore, and Norman Spinrad all share a distaste for centralized political power. However if you were to somehow stick all three in a room (we'll assume all are alive for this exercise), at most one would come out still breathing. (My bet's on Moore.)

More to the point, Anarchy (in its various interpretations, and I'll admit lumping Libertarians and Anarchists is a bit of slight of rhetoric) is a societal system. And said various incarnations have enough proponents.

Here, I'll quantify my vague statements for you. Be that way. I believe that society is essentially a system where everyone gives up a bit of personal freedom (by extreme example, the freedom to run around punching people in the face with screaming porcupines duct-taped to one's hands) because we'll be better off (continuing that example, you can walk the streets without looking around nervously for banshee-porcupine-face-sockage). I believe that a lawful person is one who has Faith in (at least one model of) that system. I guess you could call anarchy a form of society, in the same way that "void" is a data type. But I actually describe anarchy as the lack of a system of mutually giving up rights for benefits. Chaotic folks are ones who do not believe that the benefits gained in ANY system is worth the loss of freedom (even freedoms such as screaming-porcupine-face-surgery). That is the specific definition of anarchy I use. Lastly, Neutral folks ride the very nice wave of the benefits of this system, but when the responsibilities don't suit them, they blow society off. They are what we know as "assholes". (They're also centrists who believe that the societal system is abusing its authority to demand sacrifice, but that wasn't half as funny.)

In a sense, I believe that anarchy (in the very specific definition I posited above) is actually the true default. But so is allowing porcupine-face-inversion.

Speaking of Anarchy-

I therefore use a slightly different axis - the axis of personal freedom/lack thereof or personal rights/lack thereof. A true LG character, to me, is one who empowers everyone they meet, works to improve the law, but adheres strictly to it until then.

By that definition, an Anarchist or Libertarian are Lawful, or whatever you call the LG end of your alignment. Socialists would be the other end, right? Because that's the political battle (supposedly): individual freedoms/rights vs. responsibility to the collective.

I'm not sure this idea of mine has congealed enough to present to your deft poking and prodding. I'll take it back until then, m'kay?

[BLANDCorporatio]

A code of conduct must be consciously maintained to be a code.

Rejected. I do not agree with the basic assumption. Morality, while not identifiable as a singular code, is a code by which many people live.

{snip}

PRIMARY CLAIM: many people do not adhere to a code of conduct, even to their own satisfaction.

If you choose to ignore morality as taught by a community as a Code by which actions are chosen, then you can be right. I do not. Morality, as a limiter of action choice, is a Code that restricts us, through the mechanism of guilt as punishment, even if we are alone when we commit the immoral act. A few people avoid that by lacking a conscience, but that is a rarity.

drachefly's point isn't that most people are un-Lawfully aligned, as far as I understand it. If morality is a consciously assumed code, and the second part of your post that I quoted seems to indicate it tends to be so, then most people are Lawful as per the way that drachefly put forth. Nothing wrong on their part.

[BLANDCorporatio]

I believe that a lawful person is one who has Faith in (at least one model of) that system. I guess you could call anarchy a form of society, in the same way that "void" is a data type. But I actually describe anarchy as the lack of a system of mutually giving up rights for benefits.

That's ok, we just need to be prepared for the occasional confusion and one side accusing the other of being uninformed. For example, how come nobody yet called me out on not knowing diddly-squat on DnD alignments yet

I would point out that "Anarchy" as understood by some is a rejection of central, usually political, authority. In that sense it is different from Chaos. An Anarchist in this sense would find sticking porcupines to people's faces as a bad thing to do (unless safewords or such are involved); also a bad thing, for this Anarchist, is relying on The Man to settle that dispute.

Even that is subject to interpretation. "We need an administration at the most" says Moore. What does that mean? Caring for the roads, healthcare, education, police, where do we draw the line? But whatever it is, the idea is that Anarchists (at least in the Moore sense) reject the contract Hobbes put forth as a concept: citizens give up the use of violence (EDIT^2: and something I'll call "administrative agency" to cover more bases) to just one agent, the State, to prevent society from reverting to barbarism.

"We need an administration at the most" is where I dared bring Anarchists and Libertarians together. Because Libertarianism is also about not trusting a big powerful centralized government to look out for your rights. And make no mistake, both Anarchy and Libertarianism understand that one's rights must be balanced against the rights of others. Where they'd disagree with other politics is who does the rights-defending.

EDIT: do not confuse this post with an in-depth explanation of either Anarchy or Libertarianism. I'm sure actual proponents of these systems would be more than happy to go in detail, and indeed, I'd think they would have slightly different ideas. A kind of politics is not a monolithic bloc.

[Housellama]

A code of conduct must be consciously maintained to be a code.

Rejected. I do not agree with the basic assumption. Morality, while not identifiable as a singular code, is a code by which many people live.

The ability to predict someone's behavior also does not mean that they are acting under a code of conduct.

If isolated to a singular instance, no it does not. We're talking about pattern behavior, here, over the long term. I can predict that a man if surrounded by 20 cops is highly unlikely to steal from the cash register in the middle. That certainly doesn't make him predictable, just reasonable. But a man that will always try to steal from the cash register if the proprietor goes into the back is definitely predictable and living to a code that excludes the immorality of theft.

it is not meaningful to speak of acting by a code of conduct if the person is not consciously aware of the code.}

Few are unaware of the concept of immorality. Morality is a code, taught to us by our parents, and even understood by those that lacked such guidance.

PRIMARY CLAIM: many people do not adhere to a code of conduct, even to their own satisfaction.

If you choose to ignore morality as taught by a community as a Code by which actions are chosen, then you can be right. I do not. Morality, as a limiter of action choice, is a Code that restricts us, through the mechanism of guilt as punishment, even if we are alone when we commit the immoral act. A few people avoid that by lacking a conscience, but that is a rarity.

*facepalm* Okay. Here's where the logic breaks down, guys. Morality is something that we inherit, sure. However, holding TO that morality is a CHOICE. To act in accordance with the morality that we have developed over our lives is a choice. It is a choice made every day, with every action. Our conscience acts as a guide, but nothing more. Morality does not restrict our actions, nor does it limit the choices we are allowed to make. We are fully capable of choosing to do anything that the laws of physics allow us to do. Now, sometimes our choices appear to be limited because that code of morality causes choices to be made at a level below that of consciousness. But a choice is still a choice, whether made consciously or not. It was a non-random event, a deliberate action taken by a sentient being.

Most people will make a choice and then tell you it was the 'right' or 'wrong' thing to do. That is acting in accordance with their morality (ie, a specific code of conduct) via a conscious choice. They may not call it a code of conduct, but if you ask them more about it, they will be able to tell you what's right and what's wrong. That indicates an awareness of the code, and shows a conscious choice to live in accordance with it. What the code of conduct is called is irrelevant. The pattern of belief and behavior is what matters. To wit, does the person have a specific pattern of behavior that they believe is right/wrong/correct/incorrect? If so, do they actively strive to act in accordance with that pattern? If the answer to both questions is yes, then they have a conscious code of conduct and choose to live by it. If the answer to the first is no, then they have no code at all and the question is irrelevant. A yes/no answer is where it gets interesting, but that rarely happens in a long term situation. Someone may argue that it does, but it is the behavior that matters. Acting a certain way based on a code, whether that way is defined as right/good, or wrong/evil is still acting based on a code of conduct. For a code of conduct to be meaningful, one must believe in it. Therefore, a yes/no answer is only applicable in the short term, because over the long term, the code ceases to be relevant and thus the first answer becomes no. One could argue that everyone has some form of morality, but if a person acts by it so rarely that it hardly ever comes into play, is it really relevant to their life at all? There's your yes/no.

Sorry Krestor, but drachefly's got this one right. A code of conduct is something that involves deliberate, conscious choice. I would say that the vast majority of people do strive to adhere to some form of moral or ethical code, but only succeed with varying degrees of success. The degree by which they succeed or fail could, in less clinical terms, determine whether or not they actually LIVE by that code. Ultimately however, morality, ethics or any other code of conduct is a CHOICE, and there is nothing short of physics that ACTUALLY limits our actions.

[Oberon]

Er, no. Everyone does not operate by their own code of conduct. There are plenty of people who espouse to value a certain code of conduct. They may even have such a code embodied within their worship.

Why should "worship" have anything to do with it? Do you think personal Codes require a Deity's involvement? (DnD doesn't require it.) So long as someone's actions are predictable, they're operating by a Code. Refer to the thief example above.

You're a funny man! Why do you ignore the intent and meaning of what I said and respond only to the last sentence, which was only by way of example and included the word "may", and treat it as if it were the straw man you were tilting against. Damn, I've just answered my own question.

I didn't say worship (why the quotes?) should have anything to do with it, I said it may. And I didn't say that I thought that a personal code (why did you capitalize the word?) required a deity's (again, why the caps?) involvement. I said nothing about deities at all.

All major religions put forth rules of conduct for their adherents. Many of those rules of conduct are regularly broken by those adherents, despite their belief that they and others should follow the code of conduct. You stated that everyone operated by their own code of conduct, and I provided a rebuttal which cannot be refuted unless you decide to move the conversation to just what the definition of "is" is. Well done, Bill!

Alas, poor sarcasm, shall you ever convey via text?

Yeah, it can, but you're just bad at it.

The funny man strikes again! But oddly, people other than you seemed to get it just fine. Must be you who are bad at it, being the odd MitD out.

I only have to deal with someone that feels justified in trying to hurt me.

If you feel that I was only attempting to hurt you, I apologize. That was not at all my intent.

[drachefly]

I would like to point out that I am nearly astonished that Kriestor took offense at Oberon's joke, which I took a moment to figure out but was funny when I did.

[Housellama]

I would like to point out that I am nearly astonished that Kriestor took offense at Oberon's joke, which I took a moment to figure out but was funny when I did.

I'm going back to college in a few weeks. One of the classes I'm taking is Philosophy 251 "Critical Thinking and Moral Communication" (apparently it's not PC to call it Rhetoric anymore). When I saw that this class fulfilled the Composition general ed credit, I fell over laughing. My adviser looked at me funny when I did. When I managed to get my breath back, I said "You mean I can get CREDIT for that?"

This is going to be an easy A.

[drachefly]

I fail to see the connection between the quote and the statement following it. Did you simply mean "+1, and this other thing"?

[Housellama]

I fail to see the connection between the quote and the statement following it. Did you simply mean "+1, and this other thing"?

There's a logical and fairly self evident connection from my point of view, but sometimes I think oddly.

For simplicity's sake (because I don't think I could adequately explain it), yes, it's "+1, and that reminds me of something else funny and tangentially related."

[Kreistor]

*facepalm* Okay. Here's where the logic breaks down, guys. Morality is something that we inherit, sure. However, holding TO that morality is a CHOICE. To act in accordance with the morality that we have developed over our lives is a choice. It is a choice made every day, with every action. Our conscience acts as a guide, but nothing more. Morality does not restrict our actions, nor does it limit the choices we are allowed to make. We are fully capable of choosing to do anything that the laws of physics allow us to do. Now, sometimes our choices appear to be limited because that code of morality causes choices to be made at a level below that of consciousness. But a choice is still a choice, whether made consciously or not. It was a non-random event, a deliberate action taken by a sentient being.

Okay, let me approach this from the other side, then. What Code of Conduct, existent TODAY qualifies someone as a Lawful person? Remember that merely obeying the Law is irrelevant. The Codes typically invoked in D&D were the Knight's Code and the Samurai's Code, and both are long dead except in reenactments. You might et a few peopel following one or the other, but not enough to consider it an archtype.

So today, right now, if Morality is *not* a Code of Conduct that qualifies someone as Lawful, what is? Because by your logic, no one I know is Lawful. No one that I know of has signed on to an organized Code of Conduct. Religions teach morality, not absolute codes of conduct.

(BTW, you choose a Code of Conduct as much as you choose your Morality, so i don't know why you think that changes anything. Lawful DnD Codes were not required to be immutable over one's entire lifetime. If you choose one like the Knight's Code, then yeah, you're stuck with what you got, but the later definitions that included Codes did not require a public Code.)

If you feel that I was only attempting to hurt you, I apologize. That was not at all my intent.

Okay, I'll explain it. It felt dismissive. I put a lot of work into trying to figure out things in this comic, and the eye thing has bothered me for a long time. I know there is something there to find, and I was hoping to find someone else had new insights to help me discover the pattern.

Instead, I get some sideways comment about my efforts that felt like a snarky, sarcastic attack that dismissed my general effort. It served to divert everyone from what I was hoping to gain, by mocking my efforts.

The joke wasn't directed at the irony of my avatar vs. the subject matter, it was directed at my effort to find a pattern. That made it personal, not ironic, to me. As an attack on my effort, and not on the subject matter, I was the victim.

"Kreistor, for example, has only red eyes. And the closer one is always much bigger proportionally than the few inches would indicate for perspective. Maybe he is Charlie! Or related to Parson!"

The bold parts attack my efforts, not the subject matter of my message. They mock the attempt to find pattern and explanation, not the irony of my avatar selection.

[Housellama]

Okay, let me approach this from the other side, then. What Code of Conduct, existent TODAY qualifies someone as a Lawful person?

That depends on what definition of Lawful you are choosing to use.

PERSONALLY, there are a lot of things that go into how I define someone on that axiomatic scale. However, the strongest one for me is acting in a logically consistent manner. If you take a person's actions over the long term, are they internally consistent? If there is a change in long term behavior, does that change in behavior make sense? Does the person have a coherent reason for it? (It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else, but it DOES have to make sense to them.) Lawful people do things for a reason. Their actions are internally consistent, meaning that future actions tend not to contradict past actions in the absence of a change in situation.

This is DIFFERENT from Chaotic, in that a person who acts chaotically does not have consistent reasoning. A Lawful person (under my personal definition) will usually act the same way in the same situation consistently. A Chaotic person may not. Given the same situation, without a change in circumstances, a Chaotic person will not act consistently over the long term. Their actions in identical situations vary over time without a logical reason.

Note that a Chaotic person can still be predictable. This classification of Lawful and Chaotic rely on knowing internal motivation and looking at actions over time, a somewhat omniscient viewpoint. Real life situations are rarely so clean. Therefore, predictability has less to do with where someone falls on the axiomatic scale than how well the person doing the predicting knows the subject of the prediction. A chaotic person can be predicted by someone who understands their tells and markers. Likewise, a lawful person acting with an occluded reason can be completely unpredictable for people who do not know their motivations.

[warriortribble]

Excellent update. I wonder if after this battle, Gobwin Knob will start keeping Archons in the throne room to supplement Maggie just in case she's is busy with something.

[drachefly]

They'll have to get them back from Spacerock first… not at all certain a proposition!

[warriortribble]

That's true. On a related note, anyone know of a strip that tells us exactly how many Archons Gobwin Knob has? The wiki says 28, but the closet thing I found to canon is this text update which tells us Ossomer has 27 Archons with him. Adding the one PCPed Archon that would, of course total 28. Just wondering if GK committed all their Archons to the fight.

[The.Healing.Mage]

That's true. On a related note, anyone know of a strip that tells us exactly how many Archons Gobwin Knob has? The wiki says 28, but the closet thing I found to canon is this text update which tells us Ossomer has 27 Archons with him. Adding the one PCPed Archon that would, of course total 28. Just wondering if GK committed all their Archons to the fight.

There is a contignent of Archons scouting around GK itself at approximately the same time - which by by-product is helping Stanley stock up on Dwagons. Those Archons are definitely in addition to Wanda's war party. Plus, the Archon Barracks (Summer) text update made it seem like there are still a fair number back at GK. However, I also find 28 mentioned (the fireworks display, summer Updates), and can't find anywhere with a higher headcount.

[Kreistor]

Duplicate data.

[QuothTheRaven]

I'm working on this theory that the GMTTA are actually a group of six or more thinkamancers that are permanently linked. Thoughts?

[warriortribble]

I'm working on this theory that the GMTTA are actually a group of six or more thinkamancers that are permanently linked. Thoughts?

Can't speak for all the GMTTAs, but this text update tells us that the leader of the bunch remains isolated out of respect.