So what exactly do we mean by chaos anyway?

Since folks are talking about alignment

check out this article in Ten Ton Hammer

Grumpy Gamer - Gone But Not Forgiven: Alignment

 

Where's RG here?

 

Chaos & order thrive together one trying to follw Rules The other living by a wing and a prayer or the roll of the dice.....What better way to infiltrate order by allowing chaos and order to thrive one is always thinking the other roll of the gambit ......Choas will always triumph How many believe keep your friends close and your enimies closer goes well with the chaos theory Right

 

Chaotic Chaotic would be my guess ...

 

This thread is unbelievably awesome. +100 Community

One last thought:

Control / Order (Lord British, albeit less douchey )


Chaos / Anarchy (Darkstarr)


Each can be seen to be disruptive to the other.
For them to meet would create disorder in itself just like the Chaos and Order Serpents. In this case there needs to be an Earth serpent to balance out the two. A Neo figure of sorts?

There is also the obvious Order and Chaos as factions that may or may not be in direct conflict

 

"Ditto selbie!" !
~Time Lord~

 

Getting caught up here...

Except that chaos continually does things that don't follow this absolute principle. For example, I imagine Amber would gladly do something Darkstarr asked her to do. It's hard to make absolute principles within a framework that disdains absolutes. And this may be at the heart of the problem - it's really almost impossible to define chaos.

There is a reason why mad hermit is a common appellation. However, traditional hermits who don't go mad usually have subtle forms of remaining in relationship with others. I've studies hermits and I don't want to go into it here and bore people.

As long as people have been farming, there has been a necessity for the virtue of patience. Virtues have their ground in living in the world not because of society, although societies try to codify and explain them. For example, courage is usually considered a virtue in most societies because of all the difficult stuff that even ancient societies had to face. I think @Redfish has it right in seeing virtues as part of all societies in some form or fashion and under different names.

 

Here are some other dynamics to consider in defining chaos.

1) Oftentimes people choose their dispositions based on what they fear. It's very popular in today's world to fear moral standards, to fear excessive control - and I'm not saying in any particular way because there are all sorts of this type. Chaos oftentimes comes across as the fear of excessive control, of not being able to do what I feel I should be able to do. Order also has its fears... fear of the harm that people trying to do good or evil can inflict on others. Laws, norms, expectations are often made with a fear in mind... I fear that people will take my stuff so I support laws against thievery. Both fears left unchecked can cause all sorts of strange behavior.

In all this, I think people have to be honest about what it is they fear the most.

2) A disposition in making the game and playing a character in game are related. @Darkstarr is not very chaos lord-ish by coding in controls. E.g., people can be locked out of others' houses. And this limits the chaos that chaotic characters can do. The multiplayer game design process seems to be all about the fears that inspire people to order - what will players do to each other to mess with the experience and ruin the playability? Can a game that is designed to promote some sort of order (nothing is ever really a fully open sandbox) really ever allow for true chaos as it was defined - "No boundaries, no judgments, no causes?" I don't buy that the game is separate from real because there is an interaction between the two always - real people playing characters. An extremely chaotic person according to the above definition will not be able to live fully according to that credo. Nor will an extremely ordered person be satisfied with what other players can do to rock their world. It leads to a lot of hard design choices.

3) I think a lot of people are attracted to chaos in game because it is a release. Common sense doesn't allow them to live that way in real, so they indulge in being a little more chaotic as an escape and a fun diversion. I get that. Some (maybe less?) look forward to trying to establish themselves as the ones who decide on the order because they feel powerless in real too. It works both ways, but I think in today's world there will always be more of those seeking chaos for a difference from real.

Thanks for the great discussion so far everyone....

 

redfish Said;
Where's RG here?



redfish, Yesterday at 11:36 PM Report
#102

"Best Post Here So Far!"
~Time Lord~

 

Chaos can come in degrees. True chaos cannot be defined because to do so would give it a degree of order.

 

Speaking of Balance, I just have to bring up one of my favorite fantasy books - Garth Nix's Sabriel :



In the Old Kingdom which borders the conventional "real world - magic still works and sometimes even seeps over to the other side (causing anything technological to fail). Magic is Chaos and it's rawest form - Free Magic - is very corrosive and ends up warping it's user in strange & horrible ways. Charter Magic imposes Order on Magic by an intricate system of Charter Marks or Symbols making it both useful & safe to use.

Sabriel is an Abhorsen , the one who keeps the balance between Life & Death / Free Magic & Charter Magic. The bells she wears in the picture are the same bells necromancers use to control the dead ,bring them back to the land of the living or send them back into Death. But at the same time she - like the other Abhorsens - uses Charter Magic and wields a powerful enchanted sword full of Charter Marks.

All necromancers are practitioners of Free Magic & are the enemies of Charter mages. The Abhorsens are the only necromancers on the side of Order which the Charter represents. But while the Charter mages can destroy a handful or even many of the undead, only the Abhorsens can put up powerful barriers /fields to prevent the dead from coming back to life. They are also the only ones who can send the Greater Dead ( & their followers) back to Death by using a special bell - but at great price because the wielder also crosses over.

I am hoping that SOTA's magical system can accomodate this kind of duality, it would be an incredible degree of complexity that I haven't found in any game yet.

 

Looks like I have a new author for my kindle.

 

The thing in particular that I disagree with is the argument that there's a biological imperative for humans to be social -- which is a claim that some psychologists have made. The alternative view would simply be that coping skills become necessary if you aren't used to isolation, and many people aren't able to able to adapt well to being alone for whatever reasons. Plus, people should keep in mind that solitude has also been shown to have beneficial effects; people who are never able to spend any time by themselves at all are also more at risk for mental health issues. So to any degree that socialization is a biological imperative, so is solitude.

But yea, to get into a real discussion of this, the thread would need to go off topic, which is why I was avoiding it.

I'd add that in many moral systems, even virtues that are on their face social, like compassion and honor, are argued for on the idea that it reflects poorly on who you are if you lack them; not on their social effect. Being a mean person, for instance, can be seen as a personal failing: it can show you're preoccupied with petty things that don't matter.

 

Chaos at its core is the absence of order - the trick in my mind is not to define chaos but to define order

Systematically chaos is entropy (simply disorder - not making a scientific argument here)

But the connotation with chaos as within the context of the "willful" action of an individual takes on a whole new dimension

being chaotic does not mean that you will never follow order / nor that you implicitly destain it or have an apprehension towards it

To me chaotic is more in tune with a free spirit and critical thinking - it's also not as simply as being self interested individual nor does it preclude values or construct of "morality"

Chaotic to me is simply someone who hums to a different tune, who beats to a different drum beat

Chaos comes from not adhering to an "established" order ... and the duality is simply that there is no chaos without order ... in the absence of order there's just "is"

 

But there is at least one undeniable biological imperative - every human being starts out in a social context. In a very attached relationship. There is too much evidence too that shows that relationship is essential for human development through childhood. Is it needed beyond childhood? I'm no expert. Again like you I don't want to go too far off topic... just want to add too that I find your perspectives insightful for the discussion....

 

I get what you're trying to say, and not trying to be a bum here but you said the trick is not to define chaos and then you gave several ways to try to define it. See how challenging this is?

 

Feral children would also play a role in that discussion

 

Only if people agree that it's a discussion worth having. Does anyone really care about feral children or people stuck on an uninhabited island in the context of the discussion of chaos vs. order? That particular focus might lend itself to determining whether order and chaos are ideas that exist apart from social influence, but since every single one of us who will be engaging with that dynamic are part of a social world, the point is entirely academic. And anyway, while it is an interesting thought exercise, there is no way any two people who disagree on the matter can resolve their disagreement, since (because it is a thought exercise) there is no defensible answer to the question.

 

I believe the world is mostly legalistic from my perspective. Societies tend to come up with so many laws, political correct speech, on and on...

There ought to be some kind of balance. However as an ideology I think chaos is more of a state of mind, and it doesn't have to mean disorganized.

I quoted this from http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Chaotic_good

The Chaotic good alignment combines a good heart with a free spirit. A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he’s kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.

This is a good example of a chaotic or freethinking outlook on life, that isn't evil or based on creating confusion or destruction in the world. The only confusion that happens is when somebody doesn't agree with society, society is generally quick to judge the person before even listening to the wisdom he or she possesses. Some people just aren't ready to be set free!

This is why Jesus says If you have ears to hear, let them hear. Jesus wasn't trying to spread chaos but he did come to set people free. He argued with religious leaders (people who strictly obeyed the laws rules and regulations of Judiasm), not atheists. He argued with them because they refused to understand the spirit of the message, and rather interpreted it as a static set of rules (which allowed them to exploit what they thought were loopholes)!!! Legalism is equal to hipocracy. At least so would someone who is good hearted, and freespirited would like to offer as sound wisdom to those who are trapped by legalism's grip.

 

Yea, of course, it's a separate discussion.

Anyway, it came up in this thread because there was a question about whether philosophies of living, or personal ideas of virtue, necessarily have to be directed around social interaction, and I said no. Isolation or no isolation, what you think of as good or bad doesn't necessarily have to be based on what those around you think.