Raildex verse (A Certain Magical Index, A Certain Scientific Railgun, A Certain Scientific Accelerator)

yeah,i found it pretty bad.its kinda needed though,cause when you get to high scale reality warping,its kinda bad already.

Plus, this arc cemented the resons why I don't like Touma as a character - personally, I find it very difficult to sympathize or empathize with him. His point of view is too radically different from my own. I believe that, after a certain point, redemption stops being possible. And I think Othinus, like Accelerator and Mugino before her, went above and beyond that point.

What, exactly, do you mean by "appalled and disgusted?" And are there any other reasons for why you feel that way?

\*cracks knuckles* Start prayin', boy.

I just can't stomach the fact that Othinus made an Heel–Face Turn so easily, after all the atrocities she committed. Makes her a Karma Houdini, in my opinion. And I hate the fact that Tohma easily forgave her and is willing to fight all of his friends to protect her.

edited 16th Apr '14 1:21:19 PM by JG98

Contemporary morality gets thrown out of the window fast when you have the ability to manipulate the fundamental laws of the universe to suit your whims. What's an atrocity if it never happened to begin with?

Touma has always done that.

Still an atrocity.

And that's one of the reasons I never liked him. He's too much of a saint, he's always right, he's so much of a Purity Sue...

Again, that's your morality. Not the morality of a god. Would you scold a child for breaking a vase if you could just effortlessly will the vase into being whole again? Or, in a more relevant example, if the vase was never broken to begin with?

edited 16th Apr '14 1:28:10 PM by KSPAM

Yes, I would. The child would still need to realize that he shouldn't break a vase.

edited 16th Apr '14 1:32:24 PM by JG98

But the vase was never broken. So now you're the one in the wrong for scolding them for something they never did. If this example is getting confusing, would you assume a Sufficiently Advanced Alien with no concept of life or death was evil for killing someone because they were curious, even if they brought them back to life? No, you wouldn't. At least I'd hope not. They're not good or evil, they operate on a completely different set of moral values than you do, not to mention an entirely different system of logic.

Similarly, do you consider animals evil because they will murder one another without a second thought for the resources they need to survive? What about humans? Are we evil because we kill to eat or burn the dead for fuel?

edited 16th Apr '14 1:37:44 PM by KSPAM

Touma is, like, the most Kantian person imaginable with regards to saving people and standing up against what he regards as injustice. And it's hard to argue against the conclusions an ethical system leads to unless you outright reject the premises - Touma considers saving people to be a moral obligation, and therefore he must do it regardless of what else that forces him to do. Deontology is weird like that (and this is, in fact, a common criticism of it). If you don't like him because the implications of Kantian Deontology don't sit well with you, then that's a perfectly respectable opinion.

I am pretty meh about Othinus' motivations, but they aren't abhorrent to me. Definitely not enough to make me think her to be irredeemable, as her motivations were at least not for the sake of evil. To me, crossing the Moral Event Horizon requires someone to actually refuse to admit that what they are doing was wrong - hence why I'm fine with Accelerator's character development and path towards redemption. Mugino, though... yeah, she's still a Complete Monster, and probably always will be. I don't know if it's possible to make her likable without some radical character development, possibly on the level of a retcon.

And KSPAM... you're wrong about this. Subjective morality is not the way to go when trying to justify the actions of someone, even if they're a god. Actions that cause suffering are still wrong, whether or not you can change reality later. Even more extreme forms of utilitarianism would have trouble justifying that.

edited 16th Apr '14 1:40:50 PM by clockworkBabbage

I don't consider animals evil: they kill to survive, and they are not sentient anyway. Nor do I consider humans evil for killing animals to survive. I do consider Othinus evil for manipulating and killing her underlings, torturing Touma and destroying the world.

I understand what you are saying, Clockwork. Myself, I don't consider saving people to be a moral obligation, if the person in question offends my morality - I wouldn't lift a finger to save a rapist from being lynched by a mob, for example. I am not okay with Accelerator's Heel–Face Turn, since I don't think there's coming back from sadistically killing 10k people, but I see where you are coming from.

edited 16th Apr '14 1:49:12 PM by JG98

>animals aren't sentient

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... no. Not even close. Most complex multicellular organisms are sentient (i.e. able to experience subjective emotions like pleasure and pain). You're confusing sentience with sapience, the ability to make complex judgments and form opinions based on experience and common sense, as well as the ability to be self-aware. And even then, there are animals capable of sapience, most notably dolphins, which many have suggested should be recognized as non-human persons due to their intelligence and capacity for complex emotion.

And I think subjective morality is an entirely apt comparison here, clockwork, because all morality is subjective. Giving morality a definition like "anything that causes suffering" is not at all apt. What if you had to kill a hundred people, devastating thousands of the lives they've touched, in order to save millions more, bringing joy to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people, maybe even billions? Is that an evil act?

edited 16th Apr '14 1:56:49 PM by KSPAM

Don't nitpick. You knew what he meant.

I do know what he meant, I just don't agree with it. It's this kind of black and white objectivism that's caused more suffering than anything else in the history of the human race. You can't judge other people by the same standards you use to judge yourself, because they're not you. They're nothing like you. Yes this makes morality and the application of traditional justice extremely difficult, that's the point.

If anything, I believe the morally ideal person to be someone like Touma, who strives to improve the lives of everyone around him regardless of who they are or what they've done.

If there are alternatives to save all those millions people, then yes, it's an evil act.

If there aren't alternatives, it's still a necessary evil at best.

edited 16th Apr '14 2:02:54 PM by JG98

*shakes head* This kind of reasoning is abhorrent to me. So, basically, you're saying that everything is fair game because everyone is different? That's kinda the logical conclusion to this line of reasoning.

What if there wasn't an alternative? What if the person who did it didn't want to, but he did anyway because he felt like that was the right thing to do? If morality is defined by the propagation of suffering like you claim, then surely an act which creates joy in equal or greater amounts would cancel out any evil act which causes an equal or lesser amount of suffering, yes?

And yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. You don't truly have the luxury of passing judgment onto someone else until you know what it's like to walk a mile in their shoes. The morality of man is not a simple construct. It has layers and layers of complexity.

edited 16th Apr '14 2:08:29 PM by KSPAM

Go tell that to the people who lost a loved one because of something I did.

No one ever said it was going to make everyone happy. If there was some sort of secret visual novel style "True Ending" to real life where no one had to suffer, that'd be one thing. But there isn't. At least chaos is fair. Nature is fair. By definition it does not possess bias, therefore it understands no one. And if chaos understands no one, it is the best suited to treat everyone equally.

edited 16th Apr '14 2:12:25 PM by KSPAM

Now you're trying to play mind games on me. I don't agree with your point of view, plain and simple. I believe in good and evil, and while circumstances and upbringing surely play a part, and there are always shades of grey in real life, some actions are unquestionably good, and some actions are unquestionably evil.

All I'm saying is that from a truly objective viewpoint, what is and isn't moral depends entirely on who you're asking. And that's the inherent flaw in human morality. True morality requires you to lack bias, and if you're a sapient organism with the ability to make judgments and form opinions, you are by nature incapable of being unbiased. It's a logical contradiction. So what you have to realize is true morality is objective and without bias, but it is also something humans are incapable of comprehending. The only truly moral thing in this universe is the abstract of notion of chaos, the very force that created life, guides life, and will inevitably end life.

I'm going to stick to my own conscience, thank you very much.