The Patrician steepled his hands and looked at Vimes over the top of them.
“Let me give you some advice, Captain,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“It may help you make some sense of the world.”
“Sir.”
“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the
man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides. ”
He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window.
“A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh,
so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!” He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back.
“Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no. I’m sorry if this offends you,″ he added, patting the captain’s shoulder, “but you fellows really need us.”
“Yes, sir?” said Vimes quietly.
“Oh, yes. We’re the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no-one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don’t seem to have the knack.”
“Maybe. But you’re wrong about the rest!” said Vimes. “It’s just because people are afraid, and alone-” He paused. It sounded pretty hollow, even to him.
He shrugged. “They’re just people,” he said. “They’re just doing what people do. Sir.”
Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile. “Of course, of course,” he said. “You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you’d go quite mad. Otherwise you’d think you’re standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand.”
(...)
After a while he made a few pencil annotations to the paper in front of him and looked up.
“I said,” he said, “that you may go.”
Vimes paused at the door.
“Do you believe all that, sir?” he said. “About the endless evil and the sheer blackness?”
“Indeed, indeed,” said the Patrician, turning over the page. “It is the only logical conclusion.”
“But you get out of bed every morning, sir?”
“Hmm? Yes? What is your point?”
“I’d just like to know why, sir.”
“Oh, do go away, Vimes. There’s a good fellow.”
-- Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!”
I really like the character of Lord Vetinari. He’s like a more successful version of Quirrell from HPMOR who decided that it’s okay to have cynical beliefs but idealistic aims.
I really like this passage, and Vetinari in general, but I downvoted your quote simply because it’s too long. It would be better if you could somehow condense it into a single paragraph.
Vimes has the right of it here, I think. They are just people, they are just doing what people do. And even if what people do isn’t always as good as it could be, it is far from being as bad as it could be. Mankind is inherently good at a level greater than can be explained by chance alone, p<.05.
Simply writing “p<.05” after a statement doesn’t count as evidence for it.
Edit: “Goodness” can be explained from evolutionary game theory: Generous Tit-for-Tat behavior is an excellent survival strategy and often leads to productive (or at least not mutually destructive) cooperation with other individuals practicing Generous Tit-for-Tat. Calling this “goodness” or “evilness” (altruism vs selfishness) is a meaningless value judgment when both describe the same behavior. Really it’s neither- people aren’t good for the sake of being good, or bad for the sake of being bad but behaving a certain way because it’s a good strategy for survival.
“p<.05” is a shorthand way of saying “the evidence we have is substantially unlikely to be the random result of unbiased processes”. It wasn’t intended to be taken literally, unless you think I’ve done randomized controlled trials on the goodness of mankind.
Yes, surely the inherent goodness comes from evolutionary game theory, it’s hard to see where else it would have come from. But the fact that evolutionary game theory suggests that people should have evolved to be good should be a point in favor of the proposition that mankind is inherently good, not a point against it.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, doing an RCT on the goodness of mankind might help illuminate some points. You could put a researcher in a room and have him “accidentally” drop some papers, and see if it’s people or placebo mannequins who are more likely to help him pick them up.
-- Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!”
I really like the character of Lord Vetinari. He’s like a more successful version of Quirrell from HPMOR who decided that it’s okay to have cynical beliefs but idealistic aims.
I really like this passage, and Vetinari in general, but I downvoted your quote simply because it’s too long. It would be better if you could somehow condense it into a single paragraph.
Vimes has the right of it here, I think. They are just people, they are just doing what people do. And even if what people do isn’t always as good as it could be, it is far from being as bad as it could be. Mankind is inherently good at a level greater than can be explained by chance alone, p<.05.
Simply writing “p<.05” after a statement doesn’t count as evidence for it.
Edit: “Goodness” can be explained from evolutionary game theory: Generous Tit-for-Tat behavior is an excellent survival strategy and often leads to productive (or at least not mutually destructive) cooperation with other individuals practicing Generous Tit-for-Tat. Calling this “goodness” or “evilness” (altruism vs selfishness) is a meaningless value judgment when both describe the same behavior. Really it’s neither- people aren’t good for the sake of being good, or bad for the sake of being bad but behaving a certain way because it’s a good strategy for survival.
“p<.05” is a shorthand way of saying “the evidence we have is substantially unlikely to be the random result of unbiased processes”. It wasn’t intended to be taken literally, unless you think I’ve done randomized controlled trials on the goodness of mankind.
Yes, surely the inherent goodness comes from evolutionary game theory, it’s hard to see where else it would have come from. But the fact that evolutionary game theory suggests that people should have evolved to be good should be a point in favor of the proposition that mankind is inherently good, not a point against it.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, doing an RCT on the goodness of mankind might help illuminate some points. You could put a researcher in a room and have him “accidentally” drop some papers, and see if it’s people or placebo mannequins who are more likely to help him pick them up.
Chance as opposed to...?