Moral analysis #3: Are the Puritans the good guys?

[holdingsix]

[Heavy plot spoilers - if you still plan to complete the game, you might not want to read on]

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Sorry for the clickbait title - my take on the question would be: not really, but it's more complicated than one could think.

Let's start with the observation that the Overseer in her final speech raises a plausible point: protolanguage and some vox are extremely powerful tools. In the wrong hands, they can cause significant harm, including to innocent people. We see this potential indicated in examples in the game as well as the prolog comic.

To provide some context for further analysis, it's interesting to apply the moral frameworks of Nietzsche and Kant (which we explored in the thread on moral analysis #2) to the three factions with protolanguage ambitions. The following will only scratch the surface - let's see what we can make out of it together:

- Justice is Nietzsche's "will to power" done poorly. Justice wants to concentrate power as an end rather than a means to one, without a vision and an ambition to create something of value beyond power. Their attempts to create anomal soldiers as well as the broadcast illustrate this.
- Nova Scotia are Nietzsche's "will to power" done right. They want to use protolanguage to make the world better and foster the autonomy of people, including anomals. Nova Scotia both as a faction and as the geographical destination of our crew's journey symbolizes personal growth, making the most out of our potential, a process we observe during the story.
- The Puritans align with Kant's categorical imperative, focusing on absolute moral truths. From their perspective, protolanguage and vox are dangerous because they can be used to violate universal moral laws. However, unlike Kant, they disregard individual human lives and seem to have sinister motives.

Nova Scotia and The Puritans both come from a legit moral motivation, but face significant challenges:
Nova Scotia's vision "protolanguage for the people" has the challenge of unsafe protolanguage use and morally bad actors who could use protolanguage to do bad stuff.
The Puritans, unlike classical Kant, have no respect for individual human lives and seem up to something really bad that could wipe out masses of individual lives.

This tension creates a complex moral dilemma. Should we embrace the potential of protolanguage despite its risks, or prioritize control and safety at the expense of autonomy and progress - and if we go for the latter, how do we align it with the basic human rights of anomals?

[Xacova]

Originally posted by holdingsix:

[Heavy plot spoilers - if you still plan to complete the game, you might not want to read on]

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Sorry for the clickbait title - my take on the question would be: not really, but it's more complicated than one could think.

Let's start with the observation that the Overseer in her final speech raises a plausible point: protolanguage and some vox are extremely powerful tools. In the wrong hands, they can cause significant harm, including to innocent people. We see this potential indicated in examples in the game as well as the prolog comic.

To provide some context for further analysis, it's interesting to apply the moral frameworks of Nietzsche and Kant (which we explored in the thread on moral analysis #2) to the three factions with protolanguage ambitions. The following will only scratch the surface - let's see what we can make out of it together:

- Justice is Nietzsche's "will to power" done poorly. Justice wants to concentrate power as an end rather than a means to one, without a vision and an ambition to create something of value beyond power. Their attempts to create anomal soldiers as well as the broadcast illustrate this.
- Nova Scotia are Nietzsche's "will to power" done right. They want to use protolanguage to make the world better and foster the autonomy of people, including anomals. Nova Scotia both as a faction and as the geographical destination of our crew's journey symbolizes personal growth, making the most out of our potential, a process we observe during the story.
- The Puritans align with Kant's categorical imperative, focusing on absolute moral truths. From their perspective, protolanguage and vox are dangerous because they can be used to violate universal moral laws. However, unlike Kant, they disregard individual human lives and seem to have sinister motives.

Nova Scotia and The Puritans both come from a legit moral motivation, but face significant challenges:
Nova Scotia's vision "protolanguage for the people" has the challenge of unsafe protolanguage use and morally bad actors who could use protolanguage to do bad stuff.
The Puritans, unlike classical Kant, have no respect for individual human lives and seem up to something really bad that could wipe out masses of individual lives.

This tension creates a complex moral dilemma. Should we embrace the potential of protolanguage despite its risks, or prioritize control and safety at the expense of autonomy and progress - and if we go for the latter, how do we align it with the basic human rights of anomals?

Well for those of a more pious nature it would make sense to back to the puritans i would imagine, but could more powerful anomals with dangerous new powers be used as a weapon or means for control or manipulation become an unreasonable existence.

If that was to happen then perhaps maybe they are the good guys ?

[Loot Hunter]

Justice in the Republic is the game's stand-in for Republicans. Puritans are a stand-in for "progressive" corporations like Google or Twitter (before it was bought by Musk), who took all the "fight the hate speech" to heart and tried to sanitize all their online spaces by censoring all the conversations and banning all who wouldn't comply. Of course, since concrete opinion on which phrases and views exactly are "hate speech" is highly subjective, many activists (for whom Pax and crew are stand-ins), found themselves on the other side of the fence, being very surprised that their self-righteous bashing of groups of people was considered too toxic.

[Houseman]

Nova Scotia and the Puritans think the same way. They see it as dangerous in "the wrong hands" and they view themselves as the only ones intelligent enough to control it, and moral enough to use it.

For example: https://imgur.com/dVqDHG4
https://imgur.com/GsTxQ2i

And the weird lady says this, regarding Novia Scotia: https://imgur.com/7CpXtrF

If Novia Scotia wanted to "set it free" and give everyone equal and unlimited access to use it, then great, the playing field would be equal. But they don't want that. They explicitly want to be the only ones to use the power.

The Puritans claim to want to erase the protolanguage right? They want to cure anomals. Correct me if I'm wrong. What's so bad about that? Who are they hurting?

[andrew.blackledge]

I thought Purity was meant to be a technocratic cult state, a whole society of the kind of people who would simp for the infantile troll that destroyed Twitter, for instance. Exclusive for the rich and guarding their city with robot dogs. A corporation-state that would send Axiom to extrajudicially execute Theo for stealing their data (even if it wasn't necessarily what they wanted, it's ultimately what ended up happening), and they likely did some kind experiments on Axiom to turn him into whatever he is. All of that to me is a sign they're not good people. Was there also a reason they were wanted for arrest in the republic other than just being enemies of the state? I'll have to replay a few more times.

They want to cure all anomals, but some might not want be cured. Some of them may see their Vox as part of their identity. And we don't know for sure if their "cure" would have meant just killing them.

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

Puritans are a stand-in for "progressive" corporations like Google or Twitter (before it was bought by Musk), who took all the "fight the hate speech" to heart and tried to sanitize all their online spaces by censoring all the conversations and banning all who wouldn't comply.

You think that was Twitter BEFORE elmo nuked it?

[Loot Hunter]

Originally posted by andrew.blackledge:

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

Puritans are a stand-in for "progressive" corporations like Google or Twitter (before it was bought by Musk), who took all the "fight the hate speech" to heart and tried to sanitize all their online spaces by censoring all the conversations and banning all who wouldn't comply.

You think that was Twitter BEFORE elmo nuked it?

It literally WAS for people who weren't far woke. And even for some, who were. The very fact that you don't think that Twitter banned people for ideological reasons in 2020 and earlier tells how are you detached from reality.

[andrew.blackledge]

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

Originally posted by andrew.blackledge:

You think that was Twitter BEFORE elmo nuked it?

It literally WAS for people who weren't far intelligent. And even for some, who were. The very fact that you don't think that Twitter banned people for ideological reasons in 2020 and earlier tells how are you detached from reality.

I didn't say it wasn't like that back then, too. But censoring everything and banning all who wouldn't comply is also the whole reason it was bought.

[Loot Hunter]

Originally posted by andrew.blackledge:

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

It literally WAS for people who weren't far intelligent. And even for some, who were. The very fact that you don't think that Twitter banned people for ideological reasons in 2020 and earlier tells how are you detached from reality.

I didn't say it wasn't like that back then, too. But censoring everything and banning all who wouldn't comply is also the whole reason it was bought.

I'm not going into the intricacies and the reasoning of Musk and Twitter deal. The point is the same: "hate speech" is a subjective category, so what and whom the corporation bans in the name of fighting "hate speech and toxicity" depends solely on who is in charge in said corporation and their opinion.

[Houseman]

Originally posted by andrew.blackledge:

They want to cure all anomals, but some might not want be cured. Some of them may see their Vox as part of their identity.

So? Should that be respected?

Let's say that a mad doctor goes around surgically attaching guns to people, with or without their consent, turning them into living, walking, weapons. Let's say that some guy goes "I love my gun-arms. They're a part of me! It defines who I am!"

Does he have a right to keep his gun-arms? Does he have a right to participate in society like everyone else, even though he's a danger to everyone around him?

He wasn't born with gun-arms, he was made to be that way. So too, were Deviants made, not born.

[andrew.blackledge]

Originally posted by Houseman:

Originally posted by andrew.blackledge:

They want to cure all anomals, but some might not want be cured. Some of them may see their Vox as part of their identity.

So? Should that be respected?

Let's say that a mad doctor goes around surgically attaching guns to people, with or without their consent, turning them into living, walking, weapons. Let's say that some guy goes "I love my gun-arms. They're a part of me! It defines who I am!"

Does he have a right to keep his gun-arms? Does he have a right to participate in society like everyone else, even though he's a danger to everyone around him?

He wasn't born with gun-arms, he was made to be that way. So too, were Deviants made, not born.

It's a gray dilemma to me and brings up questions of bodily autonomy. I could understand motivations for each side, in regards to curing anomals.

[holdingsix]

Originally posted by Houseman:

Nova Scotia and the Puritans think the same way. They see it as dangerous in "the wrong hands" and they view themselves as the only ones intelligent enough to control it, and moral enough to use it.

For example: https://imgur.com/dVqDHG4
https://imgur.com/GsTxQ2i

And the weird lady says this, regarding Novia Scotia: https://imgur.com/7CpXtrF

If Novia Scotia wanted to "set it free" and give everyone equal and unlimited access to use it, then great, the playing field would be equal. But they don't want that. They explicitly want to be the only ones to use the power.

The Puritans claim to want to erase the protolanguage right? They want to cure anomals. Correct me if I'm wrong. What's so bad about that? Who are they hurting?

The conversation snippets you made available are indeed crucial. I think it actually was the last thing that Jacob says -- "We're IDEALISTS, Pax. We want language to be FREE, not controlled by any single government or entity" -- that made me believe that Nova Scotia wants to give "protolanguage to the people". After all, they're also just a single entity.
But you're right in that "protolanguage to the people" contradicts everything else he says.
Potentially he doesn't have a fully formed and consistent opinion yet as these snippets, I believe, are from the conversation where Pax reveals the ME-EM to him.

The other relevant snippet I found is from Ruth: "Justice has been suppressing language and using it to CONTROL the people. We want to use it to FREE them, to give them AUTONOMY again." This doesn't say that Nova Scotia wants to give protolanguage to the people, but could be aligned with the idea of using protolanguage to spread positive memes to foster autonomy in people.

The "positive memes" interpretation indeed leads to a similar problem as the Puritans taking control - basically, who controls the controllers? We still can distinguish that their intention is different. If they took control, things COULD turn out in the way NaiNai fears from her own experiences and frustrations, that they will just become the next authoritarians. But we could hope for something else - history tends to repeat itself, but has also seen examples of lasting change and improvement.

To me, the Overseer's final speech sounds more threatening for anomals than only saying "we will take away your vox". The term "curing anomals" or "a cure for anomals" is controversial in the game as well, Sol suggests that it is the same as killing them - leaving somewhat open to interpretation what that means. I will later have a look to collect some relevant snippets from both the Puritans and the crew.

[holdingsix]

I now collected some bits and pieces. The Overseer and Axiom parts have HEAVY spoilers for version 1.10 - they might change our understanding of the Puritans A LOT. If you want to play version 1.10 first, go for it.

Bits and pieces:
- Theo and Sol: Abandoned house[pastebin.pl]
- Overseer: Utah[imgur.com], Schoodic Point 1[imgur.com], Schoodic Point 2[imgur.com], Schooding Point 3[imgur.com]
- The Adjunct: Schoodic Point[imgur.com]
- Axiom: Campsite[imgur.com], Utah[imgur.com], Schoodic Point[imgur.com]

Comments:
- We don't know much about Nova Scotia's cure for anomals, and possibly they don't know much themselves, as it's still in the development stage. Will it allow the deactivation of specific anomal features, such as going nova, or turn anomals into normals? Anyways, I think we can reasonably assume that they're not planning to apply this cure to anomals against their will.

- When Sol talks about curing anomals being the same as killing them, he explains that with his fear that the Puritans might want to put powerless, cured anomals in camps. That fear might be biased by his general attitude towards political authority and their treatment of anomals -- why would the Puritans do that? But given that he does seem to have knowledge about the Puritans' ambitions, maybe we should not completely disregard his fear.
On a more subtle level, one can interpret his statement to refer to "spiritual killing" of anomals -- taking away a feature that defines them and serves as their weapon to oppose oppression in a world that is stacked against them. Ultimately, that's the core dilemma we're faced with, once we have chipped away the actual villain stuff.
About that:

- At face value, the Overseer does seem to mean that the Puritans are setting up a process to turn anomals into normals, by using a "reverse broadcast". Nothing indicates directly that anomals will be physically hurt in this process.
The Overseer also says "we're not murderers", but that doesn't mean much, given that murder, by definition, contains morally sinister motives, and she seems to believe that she's doing good. She does seem open to potentially killing crew members to get the data key, citing her potential impact on history books - that's villain stuff.
The Adjunct weirdly avoids Pax's accusation that the Puritans want to kill anomals. Saying "We all have to make sacrifices" in this context has an uneasy ring.
Now the juicy part:

- One could interpret the Overseer, the Adjunct, and all three new/revised Axiom speeches so that they would have much broader implications.
"Wrongspeak" might not necessarily be about vox only - it could be about ALL language!
Could it be that the "reverse broadcast" will not only remove vox, but somehow put the Puritans in place as a censor for words and language of ALL people?
If that is true, this would surely put the Puritans in the place as the super-villains of the story.

Final observation: The Overseer's speeches bring up new mysteries and questions.
- Who are the "investors" she mentions?
- The statement in Utah where she interrupts herself -- "once we have the--" -- could be extremely telling. They already have the information from the datakey. What's the missing ingredient? Could they actually be after Pax and her baby and/or the ME-EM? Axiom's words support that idea.

[holdingsix]

Originally posted by holdingsix:

If that is true, this would surely put the Puritans in the place as the super-villains of the story.

Thinking this further, for clarity, I could have added the words "...if we believe in the value of free expression". It is not wrong to say that free expression has a cost: language gets used in the real world to confuse, to manipulate, to mislead, to harm, to incite physical violence - the "real-life" version of negative vox. This is a price that we, in Western and other societies, are at least partially willing to accept (at varying degrees - even in the US, threats and fighting words are illegal types of speech).

[holdingsix]

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

Justice in the Republic is the game's stand-in for Republicans. Puritans are a stand-in for "progressive" corporations like Google or Twitter (before it was bought by Musk), who took all the "fight the hate speech" to heart and tried to sanitize all their online spaces by censoring all the conversations and banning all who wouldn't comply. Of course, since concrete opinion on which phrases and views exactly are "hate speech" is highly subjective, many activists (for whom Pax and crew are stand-ins), found themselves on the other side of the fence, being very surprised that their self-righteous bashing of groups of people was considered too toxic.

Elon-era Twitter deliberately restricts speech just like pre-Elon Twitter did. Examples include their treatment of ElonJet and the banning of parody accounts. Their algoritm preferring Elon tweets and subscription users doesn't showcase a great example of unrestricted speech either.
To people like Elon, free speech is apparently not an end, but a means to an end, to make money and push their self-serving worldview on others.

In the most positive Interpretation, the Puritans morally have an edge over Elon, as they seem to have values other than their personal wealth, even if it's not the values we agree with.
In a less positive interpretation, these values are a pretext just like in Elon's case.
How bad things ultimately are depends on variables like if they intend or risk killing people, and if they really want to censor all speech -- and, of course, on our own values as the people who make the judgement.

[Loot Hunter]

Originally posted by holdingsix:

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

Justice in the Republic is the game's stand-in for Republicans. Puritans are a stand-in for "progressive" corporations like Google or Twitter (before it was bought by Musk), who took all the "fight the hate speech" to heart and tried to sanitize all their online spaces by censoring all the conversations and banning all who wouldn't comply. Of course, since concrete opinion on which phrases and views exactly are "hate speech" is highly subjective, many activists (for whom Pax and crew are stand-ins), found themselves on the other side of the fence, being very surprised that their self-righteous bashing of groups of people was considered too toxic.

Elon-era Twitter deliberately restricts speech just like pre-Elon Twitter did. Examples include their treatment of ElonJet and the banning of parody accounts. Their algoritm preferring Elon tweets and subscription users doesn't showcase a great example of unrestricted free speech either.
To people like Elon, free speech is apparently not an end, but a means to an end, to make money and push their self-serving worldview on others.

In the most positive Interpretation, the Puritans morally have an edge over Elon, as they seem to have values other than their personal wealth, even if it's not the values we agree with.

Why? If someone treats others' right to free speech with bias, does it matter if it's done for personal gain or some personal views on the "greater good"? In fact, if we take Musk's speeches at face value (as you suggest we do for Puritans), his personal interests are aligned with the interests of humanity in general (that's how he presents his SpaceX initiatives).

Originally posted by holdingsix:

How bad things ultimately are depends on variables like if they intend or risk killing people

Puritans clearly have no qualms with launching a strike force into sovereign foreign power.

[holdingsix]

Originally posted by Loot Hunter:

Originally posted by holdingsix:

Elon-era Twitter deliberately restricts speech just like pre-Elon Twitter did. Examples include their treatment of ElonJet and the banning of parody accounts. Their algoritm preferring Elon tweets and subscription users doesn't showcase a great example of unrestricted free speech either.
To people like Elon, free speech is apparently not an end, but a means to an end, to make money and push their self-serving worldview on others.

In the most positive Interpretation, the Puritans morally have an edge over Elon, as they seem to have values other than their personal wealth, even if it's not the values we agree with.

Why? If someone treats others' right to free speech with bias, does it matter if it's done for personal gain or some personal views on the "greater good"? In fact, if we take Musk's speeches at face value (as you suggest we do for Puritans), his personal interests are aligned with the interests of humanity in general (that's how he presents his SpaceX initiatives).

In an ethical framework like Kantianism, intentions do matter a lot for the moral judgement of actions.

It's correct that the interpretation I suggested as "most positive" is specifically most positive for the Puritans and not for Elon. That's arguably unfair, but not necessarily incorrect - in both cases, we don't know their actual intentions.

Moral judgement of Elon has an interesting nuance to it: can we even assume that he acts as a single moral entity?
Reports from previous subordinates suggest that he has several different personalities that he abruptly switches between in conversations.
So perhaps before we can compare him with the Puritans, we first have to ask: which Elon are we even talking about?

Puritans clearly have no qualms with launching a strike force into sovereign foreign power.

Good point that weakens the idea that the Puritans represent pure Kantianism, where this wouldn't fly.
They still might represent a "dirty" Kantianism that has some of Kantianism's original core left.