Interesting. I always thought the D&D alignment chart was just a random first stab at quantizing a standard superficial Disney attitude toward ethics. This modification seems pretty sensible.
I think your good/evil axis is correct in terms of a deeper sense of the common terms. Evil people don’t try to harm others typically, they just don’t care- so their efforts to help themselves and their friends is prone to harm others. Being good means being good to everyone, not just your favorites. It’s the size of your circle of compassion. Outright malignancy, cackling about others suffering, is pretty eye-catching when it happens (and it does), but I’d say the vast majority of harm in the world has been done by people who are merely not much concerned with collateral damage. Thus, I think those deserve the term evil, lest we focus on the wrong thing.
Predictable/unpredictable seems like a perfectly good alternate label for the chaotic/lawful. In some adversarial situations, it makes sense to be unpredictable.
One big question is whether you’re referring to intentions or likely outcomes in your expected valaue (which I assume is expected value for all sentient beings or somethingg). A purely selfish person without much ambition may actually be a net good in the world; they work for the benefit of themselves and those close enough to be critical for their wellbeing, and they don’t risk causing a lot of harm since that might cause blowback. The same personality put in a position of power might do great harm, ordering an invasion or employee downsizing to benefit themselves and their family while greatly harming many.
Yeah I find the intention vs outcome thing difficult.
What do you think of “average expected value across small perturbations in your life”. Like if you accidentally hit churchill with a car and so cause the UK to lose WW2 that feels notably less bad than deliberately trying to kill a much smaller number of people. In many nearby universes, you didn’t kill churchill, but in many nearby universes that person did kill all those people.
Interesting. I always thought the D&D alignment chart was just a random first stab at quantizing a standard superficial Disney attitude toward ethics. This modification seems pretty sensible.
I think your good/evil axis is correct in terms of a deeper sense of the common terms. Evil people don’t try to harm others typically, they just don’t care- so their efforts to help themselves and their friends is prone to harm others. Being good means being good to everyone, not just your favorites. It’s the size of your circle of compassion. Outright malignancy, cackling about others suffering, is pretty eye-catching when it happens (and it does), but I’d say the vast majority of harm in the world has been done by people who are merely not much concerned with collateral damage. Thus, I think those deserve the term evil, lest we focus on the wrong thing.
Predictable/unpredictable seems like a perfectly good alternate label for the chaotic/lawful. In some adversarial situations, it makes sense to be unpredictable.
One big question is whether you’re referring to intentions or likely outcomes in your expected valaue (which I assume is expected value for all sentient beings or somethingg). A purely selfish person without much ambition may actually be a net good in the world; they work for the benefit of themselves and those close enough to be critical for their wellbeing, and they don’t risk causing a lot of harm since that might cause blowback. The same personality put in a position of power might do great harm, ordering an invasion or employee downsizing to benefit themselves and their family while greatly harming many.
Yeah I find the intention vs outcome thing difficult.
What do you think of “average expected value across small perturbations in your life”. Like if you accidentally hit churchill with a car and so cause the UK to lose WW2 that feels notably less bad than deliberately trying to kill a much smaller number of people. In many nearby universes, you didn’t kill churchill, but in many nearby universes that person did kill all those people.