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DemetriDominov wrote:And I asked you.... why not both?

Because I am not asking "which is correct?" -- I am asking "which do you prefer?"

You already know the answer I prefer, and as far as I am aware, there are others that prefer mine as well. Not having that option in a poll makes the poll somewhat misleading to those who would want to see the results from it.

No, I really don't know what option you prefer. "Both" is not a preference one way or the other. If I ask whether you prefer red or blue, purple isn't a good answer but at least it's actually a color. Saying "both" translates to "I prefer blue to red and I prefer red to blue." It's a meaningless statement. A lot of people have tried to explain to me the "purple" option in this thread but it invariably comes down to one or the other of the existing options ("reddish blue" is blue; "bluish red" is red) or, like you, an attempt to answer some completely different question.

Clearly define your third option in the same way that Manchu has for the 'Greater Good' and 'Lesser Evil' options and perhaps you'll be understood.

Everything that you and others have said can either be put under one of the titles, mostly Lesser Evil, or it isn't backed by any fluff making it irrelevant.

Then you aren't listening and you've missed the point many have tried to convey. Your survey is incomplete and is recording inaccurately. A survey is meant to gather data on the views of others regardless of whether or not you agree with them- by not including a full spectrum of options there is little point in doing one.

More importantly, why ask a question you've already answered? What knowledge has been gained from this, by anyone? What purpose does this thread even have apart from philosophically debating tones of colors or the existence of light after switches have been thrown. Purple may still be a color, light may be emitted or even lost due to black holes in varying degrees, but it does not answer why limits be put on answers that are only half of the picture. Both are true, yet both are wrong without the other half. The truth is, the ideologies of the Tau in which you've described are not mutually exclusive, they do not, and cannot solely stand in a vacuum on their own. Just as the real histories that have inspired the fiction behind them, Imperialism, and Utilitarianism are both good and bad; just as The Greater Good the Tau strive to achieve is plagued by aspects of the Lesser Evil's they employ to achieve that ideal.

Right.. clearly defined then:

Option 3: (1.+2): (1.) The Tau wholeheartly believe in their own manifest destiny of uniting the galaxy for the Greater Good. (2.) happily accepting the obligation that they must lead the galaxy in its liberation from the dark age by any means necessary.

Fair enough?

DemetriDominov wrote:Option 3: (1.+2): (1.) The Tau wholeheartly believe in their own manifest destiny of uniting the galaxy for the Greater Good. (2.) happily accepting the obligation that they must lead the galaxy in its liberation from the dark age by any means necessary.

This sounds like the poll option I labeled "Greater Good" but it does not actually speak to the relevant issue so it is not even relevant to the thread.

Just answer this: are the Tau, from their own point of view, doing what's in the best interest for all or are they only doing what is in their own best interest?

I can't even answer that question because from their point of view, it could be that their interests are best for the rest of the galaxy.

Oh for crying out loud, it's not a factual question. It's a question about what you prefer regarding an imaginary race of toy soldiers. You know what, this just ins't the poll for you. We've established that much, I doubt we can do anything more than that.

Medium of Death wrote:I can imagine the Tau forming non-aggression pacts with smaller Alien races if they didn't want to join the Tau.

Actually, this is already official background with the Battlefleet Gothic rules:

There are other races still who do not wish to fully submit to the Empire, but who likewise have no wish for war with the Tau and will instead strike up armistices or treaties of neutrality, opening up lucrative new markets or providing new allegiances for mutual protection.

Oh, and I think it is now proven enough that DemetriDominov can't answer what he prefers

And what exactly is the greater good? Has that been defined?

Manchu, I think you need to just add an "I dunno" option.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:And what exactly is the greater good? Has that been defined?

The first step to getting a definition relies on answering the poll one way or the other. Put it another way, there is not one necessary definition.

How do you answer a question that's based on an unknown?

DemetriDominov wrote:How do you answer a question that's based on an unknown?

with a same "unknown" answer:-)

DatrhMarko wrote:

DemetriDominov wrote:How do you answer a question that's based on an unknown?

with a same "unknown" answer:-)

I like you.

Manchu wrote:

Pilau Rice wrote:So to me, the light is on, but the light bulb is not lit yet.

But this is just a semantic quibble as the room is still totally dark -- at least regarding the light source in question. The switch being turned on while the bulb is not actually producing light is technically another option but it is not meaningfully different from "off." In fact, it is just another way of saying "off."

I'll remember to tell my misses that the next time she says, you haven't turned the light off properly.

Pilau Rice wrote:I'll remember to tell my misses that the next time she says, you haven't turned the light off properly.

Sounds like her concern doesn't have anything to do with light or darkness.

Manchu wrote:Well, the poll has been up for ten days now and we're currently seeing a significant preference for Tau as genuinely pursuing the Greater Good instead of being just one more "bad guy" faction. That makes sense in some ways: if the Tau were villains, they'd be pretty bad at it compared to CSM or Dark Eldar. But I am surprised at the results, too, because 40k is so often characterized as the setting without "good guys."

This is becuase of your baseless equation of sincerity with being good guys.

It's not baseless in the slightest. A person who is genuinely interested in the well-being of others is good for that reason if no other.

Manchu wrote:It's not baseless in the slightest. A person who is genuinely interested in the well-being of others is good for that reason if no other.

Look, I'm sure that many real medieval inquisitors who tortured witches and heretics in order to make them repent genuinely wanted to save their victims' immortal souls from hell. That doesn't make them good people.

Besides, whole sincerety thing isn't as clear as you seem to think either. People want to think themselves as good people, and they come up with all sorts of justificatons for their actions and they genuinely start to believe those justifications.

It's actually just as simple as I stated. We don't need to jump to ridiculous extreme examples and all of the weird, ahistorical assumptions underpinning them. When I qualify the verb "to be" with the adverb "genuinely" in the clause "who is genuinely interested in the well-being of others," I mean just what it says. So put your paranoid-delusional suspicions of human nature aside. I'm talking about blue aliens who live in an imaginary land. If I say they are genuine then they are genuine, as far as my interpretation goes. If you say they are ingenuine then that is true as far as your interpretation goes. See what the difference is? I have chosen the "Greater Good" poll option and you have chosen the "Lesser Evil" poll option.

Just amazing.

Manchu wrote:It's actually just as simple as I stated. We don't need to jump to ridiculous extreme examples and all of the weird, ahistorical assumptions underpinning them. When I qualify the verb "to be" with the adverb "sincerely" in the clause "who is genuinely interested in the well-being of others," I mean just what it says. So put your paranoid-delusional suspicions of human nature aside. I'm talking about blue aliens who live in an imaginary land. If I say they are genuine then they are genuine, as far as my interpretation goes. If you say they are ingenuine then that is true as far as your interpretation goes. See what the difference is? I have chosen the "Greater Good" poll option and you have chosen the "Lesser Evil" poll option.

Difference is that I assume Tau to behave like psychologically and sociologocally complex conscious beings, while you expect them to conform to bad comic book stereotypes. Things just aren't that black and white.

Nope. I think Tau are quite complex. But the issue here is one of intention. And intention is at least a very important aspect of the moral quality of any agenda. You seem to presume some kind of objective goodness that exists outside of lived experience. I do not. For me, goodness only exists as it is experienced by a subject. The idea that the Tau take a genuine interest in the well-being of other races makes them good for that reason if no other. Might there be other reasons that they are bad? Sure! But that's not what we're discussing here.

Manchu wrote:Nope. I think Tau are quite complex. But the issue here is one of intention. And intention is at least a very important aspect of the moral quality of any agenda. You seem to presume some kind of objective goodness that exists outside of lived experience. I do not. For me, goodness only exists as it is experienced by a subject. The idea that the Tau take a genuine interest in the well-being of other races makes them good for that reason if no other. Might there be other reasons that they are bad? Sure! But that's not what we're discussing here.

I do not presume existence of any objective evil/good, but It just bugs me how you equate sincerity with goodness. If you wanted to ask whether we prefer the Tau to be good guys, then you should have done that.

I prefer Tau to be mostly sincere in a sense that they believe the Greater Good to truly be an optimal world order*. But I definitely do not want them to be good guys. I want them to be happily promoting a flawed system that squashes individuality.

* except that they no longer even stop to think about that. The Greater Good has been so throughly internalised that not promoting it has been unthinkable. So it is just a system that propagates itself mindlessly.

Tau has been presented far too positively in GW stuff for my liking, and I want them to be darker. I would emphasise the negative aspects of Greater Good, how it is like somothing out of Huxley's 'Brave New World', and how Tau have so utterly internalised it that they're utterly blind to it and slaves to their own system.

It's not just any sincerity that I'm talking about -- it's the sincere intention to do good.

Manchu wrote:It's not just any sincerity that I'm talking about -- it's the sincere intention to do good.

But by whose definition of 'good'?

Why, the Tau definition of course.

Manchu wrote:It's not just any sincerity that I'm talking about -- it's the sincere intention to do good.

That's a pretty mundane point, criminals and other people who do horrific things may have the sincerest of intentions, it doesn't change the fact that they do them regardless of intent. Why would the Tau be any different?

A criminal, by definition, does not have a sincere intention to do good.

Manchu wrote:A criminal, by definition, does not have a sincere intention to do good.

A criminal, by definition, is one who has committed a crime. Intention has nothing to do with it.