An Ethics OXP?

[Cholmondely]

I have for some time wanted to include more options for ethical choices in Oolite, and Alnivel suggested to me that an Ethics OXP might be a possible solution.



My thinking was along these lines:

•Help an escaping astro-gulag convict actually escape ( Commies)
•Help a refugee adder safely dock at the GalCop main orbital ( Refugee Adder)
•Volunteer ab initio on docking to release slaves (not be asked and then be paid as the  Illegal Goods Tweak OXP does)
DONE! Thank you, Phkb!

These can of course all be incorporated as tweaks to the original OXPs.

More could be added, but those are my thoughts so far. Does anybody else have any ideas/suggestions?

References:
 Ethics
Escaping Prisoners (in Mining Pods from Commies OXP) - issues of communication, scooping etc.
Refugee Adders (Murgh .oxp) - issues of survival, transferring food/water/medicine etc.


Updated to include more references

•And see Bicorn's comment below about Dictatorships.

[Redspear]

Does anybody else have any ideas/suggestions?

When handing over/freeing an escape pod occupant, an option to donate 100Cr to help them get started again.

• perhaps the poor adder pilot needs all the help they can get or the anaconda pilot is at a loss without the rest of the crew and escorts that were needed to pilot the ship their employers had entrusted to them.

An option to report piracy and relevant threat level

• more relevant in the 'safer' systems but would suit the idea of inter-system raiders and providing intelligence on their whereabouts

Charity markets

• that poor industrial multi-government doesn't have enough food to go around (or communist if you prefer), could you ship some over at cost and the expense of missing the chance to ship the same quantity of something more lucrative?

Emergency relief contracts

• medical supplies to the system affected by civil war - you won't get paid much and the time constraints will be tight but perhaps there a new type of reputation to be gained by running such contracts... do-gooder > philanthropist > folk hero, etc.

[Cholmondely]

Does anybody else have any ideas/suggestions?

When handing over/freeing an escape pod occupant, an option to donate 100Cr to help them get started again.

• perhaps the poor adder pilot needs all the help they can get or the anaconda pilot is at a loss without the rest of the crew and escorts that were needed to pilot the ship their employers had entrusted to them.

An option to report piracy and relevant threat level

• more relevant in the 'safer' systems but would suit the idea of inter-system raiders and providing intelligence on their whereabouts

Charity markets

• that poor industrial multi-government doesn't have enough food to go around (or communist if you prefer), could you ship some over at cost and the expense of missing the chance to ship the same quantity of something more lucrative?

Emergency relief contracts

• medical supplies to the system affected by civil war - you won't get paid much and the time constraints will be tight but perhaps there a new type of reputation to be gained by running such contracts... do-gooder > philanthropist > folk hero, etc.

Nice! Thank you!

[Switeck]

Piracy check...

Determine if the player is shooting repeatedly random non-offender/non-fugitive traders. (Different than a stray hit in a dogfight with lots of pirates + friendlies.)
Picking on a <10 credit bounty trader is also pretty mean.

Likewise, determine if they always run away from pirates fighting other traders.
It's not so much ethics as a death-wish if it's 1 trader vs a group of 5+ pirates, but when it's a freighter and 3+ escorts vs <6 pirates...your lone ship might easily turn the balance.

Generic Contraband check...

Does the player willfully trade in slaves/narcotics/firearms, outside of scooping cargo off pirates?
If they have appropriate OXPs/OXZs installed they could voluntarily give up any credits for that cargo at a main station.

[Cholmondely]

Piracy check...

Determine if the player is shooting repeatedly random non-offender/non-fugitive traders. (Different than a stray hit in a dogfight with lots of pirates + friendlies.)
Picking on a <10 credit bounty trader is also pretty mean.

Likewise, determine if they always run away from pirates fighting other traders.
It's not so much ethics as a death-wish if it's 1 trader vs a group of 5+ pirates, but when it's a freighter and 3+ escorts vs <6 pirates...your lone ship might easily turn the balance.

To me, this sounds more like a behaviour code than an OXP offering more ethical choices - or have I misunderstood? Unless you are thinking of scoring and giving an ethical rating (such as those offered by the Explorers' Club OXP or - more amusingly - by Reval's Elite Trader). I did play with the idea. But.

I'm not so keen on ethical scoring. While the choices in Oolite are more restricted than in Real Life (none of this tricky interaction with real people where there are considerably more than the 3/4 choices of BroadcastComms), there is enough complexity to render it a tough programming job. And, just because I regard something as ethical (and even if Alnivel agrees with me and I can bamboozle Cody into it), does not mean that you do. Or that Redspear does. I feel that programming all this into an OXP would be a dog's dinner!

[lecture on meta-ethics] Furthermore, my approach to ethics is decidedly deontological. (I never got into utilitarianism - although JS Mill's scheme of measuring happiness in Utils/Hedons - see his Felicific Calculus - was fascinating) Like Kant, I feel that it is important to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I do not want to free slaves because I would get a reward for doing so. So I feel that offering brownie points (even if one could come up with an agreed yardstick for measuring ethical behaviour) is besides the point. [/lecture on meta-ethics]

Generic Contraband check...

Does the player willfully trade in slaves/narcotics/firearms, outside of scooping cargo off pirates?
If they have appropriate OXPs/OXZs installed they could voluntarily give up any credits for that cargo at a main station.

Yes. I like it. Thank you! As a further tweak to the Illegal Goods OXP, possibly! Give the money to charity (currently do-able through LitF - you can give it all away through ML's update at the Church of Giles the Creator!), or donate the weapons to GalCop for use against pirates.

[Switeck]

I was thinking more like loose estimates rather than anything certain, since ethical scoring is at best very subjective.

Something to consider is the whole point of the "Elite" rating for someone with extreme number of kills in the first place.
Is that really a fair way to measure how "good" a player is?

Or does measuring kills encourage them?

Who would even bother scooping inactive Thargons if they can get 50 credits and a kill for destroying them?
...Especially if traveling with a likely-full cargo bay anyway?

Anything that goes beyond kill-or-be-killed nearly unavoidable combats with pirates, assassins, and obviously Thargoids...is likely an improvement.
I mean this both as player choices and possible mission goals.

The player trading (or not) in slaves/narcotics/firearms fits nicely as a further tweak to the Illegal Goods OXP...not that I'm offering to code that!

[Cholmondely]

Who would even bother scooping inactive Thargons if they can get 50 credits and a kill for destroying them?
...Especially if traveling with a likely-full cargo bay anyway?

Just re-reading this. Thargons? Which are robotic drones? ..."Alien Items"

[Bicorn]

Sometimes when I see someone get shot down by the cops in a Dictatorship system and bail out in an escape pod, after scooping the pod I jump systems before handing them over at a station. I figure that if they're a genuine criminal GalCop'll deal with them, while if they were unjustly persecuted by the dictator they'll be better off on a different planet.

[Cholmondely]

Sometimes when I see someone get shot down by the cops in a Dictatorship system and bail out in an escape pod, after scooping the pod I jump systems before handing them over at a station. I figure that if they're a genuine criminal GalCop'll deal with them, while if they were unjustly persecuted by the dictator they'll be better off on a different planet.

Nice! I like it!! Well done!

Those dictatorial annihilations at the Witchpoint beacon were only just recently added in by Phkb. Do you think that they are too frequent?

[Bicorn]

Those dictatorial annihilations at the Witchpoint beacon were only just recently added in by Phkb. Do you think that they are too frequent?

They're certainly frequent, but not sure if I'd call them too frequent. They certainly do the job of setting the tone of "life in a dictatorship".

[UK_Eliter]

Cholmondely: two things.

1) I like the idea of this OXP. Are you going to code it?

2) You seem to have misconstrued meta-ethics slightly. Meta-ethics is less a part of ethics and more about ethics. (The term suggests as much, at least if one construes 'meta' as meaning 'about'/'beyond'; the Greek word from which the English 'meta' derives can mean various things. Aristotle's Metaphysics is so-called because on a library shelf it came after his Physics. Or so anecedote says.) Meta-ethics asks, what is this right-and-wrong stuff anyway? To be more specific, and less Douglas-Adams-y: meta-ethical questions include the following. What does 'good' - or the moral sense of 'good' - mean? Is there any objectivity to ethics? You mention utilitarianism and Kant's ethics. Insofar as those ideas are about how we should live, they are ethical - or, in the more specificl jargon, normative ethical theories - rather than meta-ethical. I could go on (!).

PS: Goodness, CloudFlare is causing havoc with this board . .

[Cholmondely]

Cholmondely: two things.

1) I like the idea of this OXP. Are you going to code it?

2) You seem to have misconstrued meta-ethics slightly. Meta-ethics is less a part of ethics and more about ethics. (The term suggests as much, at least if one construes 'meta' as meaning 'about'/'beyond'; the Greek word from which the English 'meta' derives can mean various things. Aristotle's Metaphysics is so-called because on a library shelf it came after his Physics. Or so anecedote says.) Meta-ethics asks, what is this right-and-wrong stuff anyway? To be more specific, and less Douglas-Adams-y: meta-ethical questions include the following. What does 'good' - or the moral sense of 'good' - mean? Is there any objectivity to ethics? You mention utilitarianism and Kant's ethics. Insofar as those ideas are about how we should live, they are ethical - or, in the more specific jargon, normative ethical theories - rather than meta-ethical. I could go on (!).

PS: Goodness, CloudFlare is causing havoc with this board . .

1) Already done:

i) Phkb added in a "release slaves" option to the Illegal Goods Tweak OXP.
It's not quite what I'd envisaged... you get rapped over the knuckles for just releasing them rather than doing it through Amnesty Intergalactic and collecting their reward.
I suppose that it might be better/more realistic to have a range of such options (do you have any ideas?) - his option might be better for say a Corporate State station which has horrors of not controlling everything happening on station and has no wish to pay for any of it itself.


ii) Refugee Adders & Commies
DGill was good enough to provide me with a test OXP which features a Feudal ship which after BCC nattering follows one to the ends of the earth. I lack the skills to integrate it into either of the above OXPs. Both DGill and Phkb have offered to help - but I've been too distracted.

Nor does it answer the issues of creating a believable dialogue with the refugee adder, transferring food etc to it et cetera.

Nor does it answer the issue of how it might be possible to communicate with Commie OXP's Convict Miner Minnow (I can't believe that they would have a BCC unit on board - at least, not one operating on a regular GalCop approved frequency). Moving away and waggling/rolling from side to side? But can the Oolite game engine recognise that?

This all involves the game's "AI" whose wiki pages I've failed to decipher.

iii) Other options
Dictatorships. Phkb has updated this - you now often arrive at the witchpoint to find a ship being attacked by the dictatorship police units. I'm not sure it happens at any other times (launching from the local stations, whizzing through the space lanes) - and there seems little chance to intervene. Perhaps interpose one's own ship as a shield between them and their prey?

I feel that this event should also occur in Commies and possibly in Corporates too!


Redspear has a useful post at the top of this thread with some more ideas.



2) My understanding was that meta-ethics contrasts the approaches of Deontology/Consequentialism/Virtue ethics from a higher perspective.
By the way, Aristotle's books were not in a library. There was supposedly a musty old chest or such mouldering away in an cellar with lots of manuscripts of his work inside.  Andronicus of Rhodes published them and tried to put everything in order, naming the various mss that he found.  Alexander of Aphrodisias was the crucial commentator/editor who really made sense of it all.

[UK_Eliter]

Thanks, Cholmondely.

Re 2

My understanding was that meta-ethics contrasts the approaches of Deontology/Consequentialism/Virtue ethics from a higher perspective.

That idea is new to me (and I have been in or at least near the philosophical world for a long time).

On the naming of (what became called) Aristotle's Metaphysics

(i) Someone, probably Andronicus, gave the name 'the after-the-physics' to some of Aristotle's scrolls. I had thought that (ii) the 'after' meant: subsequent in my - Andronicus's - ordering of the scrolls. (iii) That ordering, in turn, I took to be on a shelf - the cellar and/or cave having been the earlier location(s).

I find that I have a good source only for the first claim (that is, for 2.1 and not 2.2 or 2.3). That source is: van Inwagen, Peter and Meghan Sullivan (2020) ‘Metaphysics’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Web. URL = ‹https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/metaphysics›. But, ah: that source gives a different, non-library explanation of the 'after' (i.e. of ii; and hence this conflicts also with iii). Here is that other explanation.

The title was probably meant to warn students of Aristotle's philosophy that they should attempt Metaphysics only after they had mastered “the physical ones” [. . .]

[Cholmondely]

Re 2

My understanding was that meta-ethics contrasts the approaches of Deontology/Consequentialism/Virtue ethics from a higher perspective.

That idea is new to me (and I have been in or at least near the philosophical world for a long time).

On the naming of (what became called) Aristotle's Metaphysics

(i) Someone, probably Andronicus, gave the name 'the after-the-physics' to some of Aristotle's scrolls. I had thought that (ii) the 'after' meant: subsequent in my - Andronicus's - ordering of the scrolls. (iii) That ordering, in turn, I took to be on a shelf - the cellar and/or cave having been the earlier location(s).

I find that I have a good source only for the first claim (that is, for 2.1 and not 2.2 or 2.3). That source is: van Inwagen, Peter and Meghan Sullivan (2020) ‘Metaphysics’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Web. URL = ‹https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/metaphysics›. But, ah: that source gives a different, non-library explanation of the 'after' (i.e. of ii; and hence this conflicts also with iii). Here is that other explanation.

The title was probably meant to warn students of Aristotle's philosophy that they should attempt Metaphysics only after they had mastered “the physical ones” [. . .]

Maybe they kept the manuscript rolls in some sort of a bin? The Dead Sea Scrolls they found in Qumran were in jars. Don't know about Chenoboskion/Nag Hammadi. And the libraries at Ugarit & Ebla (clay tablets) look like collections of dog biscuits....

Codices - books with leaves, titles on spines and possibly even tables of contents and indices (individually scribed before the days of printing - each codex of the metaphysics would have had a different pagination...) only came in c.200 CE - the later time of Alexander of Aphrodisias. Before then we all used scrolls (left to right) or rotuli (up to down). Book names were usually taken from the first sentence on the scroll (You had to unroll it and look at the first few words) and hence the names of the books of the hebrew bible - Breishit/Shmot/Vayikra etc. Unlike the latin - Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus which refer more to the subject matter and presumably are more recent and after the introduction of the codices).

[UK_Eliter]

'Maybe they kept the manuscript rolls in some sort of a bin?' Perhaps. Or on a shelf?

You are a mine - or library! - of information.