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[SixOfSpades]

SixOfSpades, surely if you're suggesting self harm be due to anxiety bordering on insanity, it would do better as a precursor symptom of the suicidal behaviour you mentioned wouldn't it? And maybe once religion gets expanded, a method of showing devotion to gods of pain and suffering, for people who don't enjoy/need cruelty.

Yes, it'd add a good bit of flavor, as well as a final warning before somebody goes melancholy or whatever. Ditto for appropriate worship spheres.

Each Deity should require procedurally generated religious requirements . . . Put a minimum and maximum amount of requirements per deity

The number of requirements should be proportional to the number of spheres that each god controls. If the ratio is even 1:1, then each requirement could be specifically tied to just one sphere, and different worshipers (say, a Blacksmith and a Gem Cutter both praying to a deity of metals & jewels) might think that different requirements are more important to follow. But this deserves its own topic.

The whipping boys idea simply does not work for two reasons.  One is that is requires a high level of societal organization to reliably enforce such a status, meaning goblin society/states must have already reached a certain level of size and complexity, . . .

Did the Goonies need a large or complex population in order to unanimously make Chunk into their patsy and verbal punching bag? Granted, that's a work of fiction, but was their behavior anything but realistic in this matter? The only level of societal organization required is mutual recognition of relative status, which the stronger goblins would naturally encourage and even enforce. The smallest/weakest/etc. goblin in any group is almost certainly going to be taking more than his fair share of abuse.

. . . or else the whipping boys will simply keep escaping or murdering their tormentors.

If the whipping boys are indeed restrained, it quite plausibly is as punishment for a (failed) crime, and a couple of days as a whipping boy should be quite an effective deterrent. After their time is up, yes, naturally they're still going to harbor resentment toward those who mistreated them--but the experience of being released, and knowing that everyone knows you're no longer the whipping boy, is also a powerful psychological burden being lifted from you. (Or should be--goblin psychology is of course something of a guess.) And then, before too long, maybe there'll be a new criminal to be the whipping boy.

The second is the whipping boys are themselves subject to the same cruelty need as the regular goblins.  They will hence be forced to lash at the other whipping boys, resulting in conflicts that will reliably result in them all killing eachother.  Once the whipping boys have killed eachother, the other goblins will be forced to turn against eachother.

Again you pretend that there are no beings other than goblins to torment, again you assume that all goblin conflicts end in death.

Why do all most other sentient beings hate goblins?

Because they have a long and storied history of attacking foreign settlements, killing & maiming the citizenry, and dragging off their children to be worked as slaves until the day they die? Just a guess.

Really, how did you think I was going to answer this?

You seemed to have trouble with people having opinions that were different from yours, and running their forts unlike the way you (apparently) do. . . . That's the way you imagined it, and therefore that's the only way it could be.

. . . The cleverer you are, the more predictable things are, conversely the stupider you are the more things seem to be an accidental.

Seriously? Are you actually arguing that your hidebound mindset comes from being SO intelligent, while my own open-ended approach indicates relative stupidity? Don't try it. You won't like what's down that road.
(For starters, lessons like not to say things like "stupider," and "an accidental," while trying to sound smart.)

Where is your evidence for the existence of inalienable human rights?

I do hope you're not literally asking me to show you one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy, or otherwise summon physical proof of intangibles. As you well know, such things exist not through their presence, but through their demonstration, and so naturally a degree of subjectivity is not only expected, but unavoidable. This does not make them any less real. Certain human rights are judged to be inalienable because they descend directly from mankind's most fundamental trait: sentience. To consciously strip a fellow mind of its inherent bodily sovereignty and treat it as if it were nothing more than an object, with no capacity for reason or emotion--well, that displays a callous disregard of empathy on par with the very textbook examples of evil. GoblinCookie, questioning the existence of human rights is evil. Not as evil as actually doing evil deeds, of course, but to deliberately try to equate morality with legality and argue that historical slaves had no inherent right to personal autonomy because they predated the Geneva Accords just makes you sound like a character of LE alignment, looking for a loophole to exploit.

So punishing the bullies is now hypocrisy.

Punishing bullies is not, but punishing them by precisely replicating their own actions is. For a punishment to fit the crime, it must cause suffering in proportion to, but always less than, the amount of suffering caused by the crime itself. If a goblin resident goes on a torture tantrum and starts whipping random dwarves, the just sentence is not an equal amount of lashes inflicted on the goblin. Such a lesson does not teach him that "Whipping people is wrong," but rather, "I can be just as cruel as you can," and indeed, "But I'm better at it than you are." Which, incidentally, is almost certainly the exact mindset the goblin left behind when he abandoned his old civ. Congratulations, you're running your fort just like a goblin might.

Religions don't historically behave any differently to how we are behaving here in this place; they fight and argue with each-other.

The history of religion isn't simply that they fight, but that they fight over nothing. "Elohim is the One True God!" asserts the Jew, simply because that's what he was raised to believe. "There is no God but Allah!" retorts the Muslim, because that's how he was raised. Meanwhile, thousands of Christians kill each other over whether the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all of the same essence, or separate manifestations of the same indivisible godhead. Almost the entire history of religion is people dismissing, without evidence, what other people have claimed without evidence.

Okay, now if I were to take that quote's meaning, and extrapolate on it with as little regard for accuracy as it seems to give me license to do, I could say that it boils down to "Historians just make stuff up."

No historians do not simply make things up.  You can legitimately draw conclusions from evidence and you can draw conclusions from conclusions.  Lastly you can in some cases debunk apparent evidence using conclusions.

Note that I did not actually say that historians make stuff up--merely that your sentence was so loosely worded that merely to accept it at face value and follow in its footsteps would be an insult to your entire field of study.

Just because somebody criticizes an idea does not mean their criticism is valid

That is quite true, but it doesn't mean that the criticism is invalid, either. The critique, as well as the idea, must be judged on its merits. I judged your idea, found that your logic contained two faulty assumptions, and indicated them to you. You then judged my criticism, found it "pretty good", and then ignored it completely, going right back to your original (indeed, only) argument, which you now knew to be incorrect. You would rather weld yourself to a bad idea than admit that I had a better one.

The funny thing in this thread however is that I have mostly been trying to figure out how we could best implement *your* own ideas here, so where is the gratitude?

WTF? So far, your thoughts as to the "implementation" of goblins needing to be cruel have mainly focused on dire prognostications that the change could never work, as it would infallibly and immediately cause all goblin civs to crumble and die. Not exactly in the spirit of constructive criticism.

As for the rest: Nobody has the right to demand someone change another person's opinion nor to complain when they do not do so.

I may not have the right to demand that you change your opinion, but I do have the right to say your opinion is wrong--and even prove it, if I can. More relevant is the fact that different opinions should not automatically be assumed to be of equal merit: If one person says, "It's night-time", and the person next to them says, "No, it's broad daylight," an impartial observer should not simply let them agree to disagree, the impartial observer should look out the damn window. But our differences are even more fundamental than that: I am arguing like someone saying, "I'm pretty sure there could be at least eight different flavors of ice cream," to which you reply, "No, flavors other than mint chip are impossible, as anything else would cause the freezer to short-circuit, and all the ice cream would melt." Now, I like mint chip, and could happily go the rest of my life eating no other flavor. But I know that it's factually wrong to pretend that other ice cream flavors either don't or can't exist, and it's morally wrong for me to try to force that flavor onto those who might prefer chocolate, or those that like variety. That's why I'm not the one arguing that the only way to play Dwarf Fortress, is the way that I like to play Dwarf Fortress.

[Dorsidwarf]

I think that the ethics of goblin social life are very interesting, but I feel that as the discussion drags on interminably it may be detracting somewhat from the focus of how dwarves need a social life beyond richocheting off other dwarves in the tavern to become pals.

[Ninjabread]

Just a thought seeing as this thread is bordering on double digit page numbers; should I collect suggestions as the thread progresses and edit them into the end of the OP, so it's easier to jump right into the discussion? Kinda like what I did on pg 3, but with 6 more pages of stuff, and right at the end of the first post of the thread so it's always easy to spot no matter how long this thread goes on for.

[SixOfSpades]

Just a thought seeing as this thread is bordering on double digit page numbers; should I collect suggestions as the thread progresses and edit them into the end of the OP, so it's easier to jump right into the discussion? Kinda like what I did on pg 3, but with 6 more pages of stuff, and right at the end of the first post of the thread so it's always easy to spot no matter how long this thread goes on for.

Agreed. Someone unbiased (that is, not GoblinCookie or myself) should probably decide what ideas / details are worthy suggestions or not, and compile them for Toady.

If GoblinCookie & I clash ever again, I'll simply start a new thread just for that purpose--if, while arguing, either of us manages to say anything suggestion-worthy, we can copy just that bit out to the main thread.

[GoblinCookie]

GoblinCookie, Disallow creatures from dying? Those worlds sound like they'll get crowded fast.

I'm not sure about your suggestion for the raw tag, it still relies on the addition of conditional tags to switch things around based on the evilness/violence slider value if you want cruelty quota implementation to vary based on slider value. Maybe if there were a variable that could be used in place of the number, and reference slider values, then you could have the tag be independent of conditional tags. So, your [CRUELTY_QUOTA:1] (and other quota intensities, each nested in a conditional statement) becomes [CRUELTY_QUOTA:WORLD_VIOLENCE]. Added bonus of that is that it makes the new additions to the raws required for the addition of the sliders more concise, and should be quicker to compile and run.

The worlds will not get crowded because the population cap still applies and will stop the creatures from multiplying beyond a certain point. 

The problem with using a purely raw tag based approach is that there is interaction with other systems involved.  If I mod goblins so that they have a cruelty-quota in a world where suffering does not exist, what then? 

Oh, and Exail did already mention, only highly faithful (so maybe exclusively "ardent") worshippers would put their own life at risk to satisfy religious traditions. You wouldn't have people dying left and right because of that stuff, you'd have the occasional death and a load of bad thoughts because your fortress doesn't actually provide necessary facilities for people to properly practice their religion. It'd be like exclusively providing a community of jews with non-kosher foods, I doubt you'll find a great deal of people willing to die via starvation rather than eat it, but you can bet people won't be happy about it.

Also worth mentioning: not all dwarves worship the same gods. Religious dietary restrictions, especially temporary ones, will not likely be a fortress-wide issue.

The only problems I can foresee with it is if one possible tradition is that people can only eat [insert randomly selected food(s)] for a period of time, simply because of potential unavoidable bad thought flood. The Aztecs did it IRL with beans and maize, but I don't really trust my dwarves or their gods to pick a sensible food.

The problem is that once the gods exist independently of civilizations, we can end up with a whole civilization worshipping a god that utterly prohibits the staple foodstuff they depend upon.  Worse, ot might also be possible to convert a civilization of that nature and use dietary prohibitions as a weapon to depopulate a group.  Also what does the god think about it, would the god change it's mind in order to save it's only worshippers in the world from starvation?

Did the Goonies need a large or complex population in order to unanimously make Chunk into their patsy and verbal punching bag? Granted, that's a work of fiction, but was their behavior anything but realistic in this matter? The only level of societal organization required is mutual recognition of relative status, which the stronger goblins would naturally encourage and even enforce. The smallest/weakest/etc. goblin in any group is almost certainly going to be taking more than his fair share of abuse.

The difference is that every goblin knows that every other goblin is going to try to hurt them.  Every goblin is also trying to hurt all the other goblins.  That basically means that all goblins inherently fear all other goblins, the only way for goblin society to come about in our scenario is if the individual goblins are already in the predatory relationship of preying on some other suitable creature so they can de-facto have a reason to trust each-other. 

If the whipping boys are indeed restrained, it quite plausibly is as punishment for a (failed) crime, and a couple of days as a whipping boy should be quite an effective deterrent. After their time is up, yes, naturally they're still going to harbor resentment toward those who mistreated them--but the experience of being released, and knowing that everyone knows you're no longer the whipping boy, is also a powerful psychological burden being lifted from you. (Or should be--goblin psychology is of course something of a guess.) And then, before too long, maybe there'll be a new criminal to be the whipping boy.

Everbody knows there *has* to be a whipping boy, everyone knows there *has* to be a punishment.  It's like with your cats before, except that the only thing on the menu is cat and the cats all know that. 

Again you pretend that there are no beings other than goblins to torment, again you assume that all goblin conflicts end in death.

No pretending at all, that is the situation we are talking about remember? 

Because they have a long and storied history of attacking foreign settlements, killing & maiming the citizenry, and dragging off their children to be worked as slaves until the day they die? Just a guess.

Really, how did you think I was going to answer this?

None of that has happened yet.  Goblins aren't megabeasts, they cannot wreck mayhem on a civilisation scale as individuals. 

Seriously? Are you actually arguing that your hidebound mindset comes from being SO intelligent, while my own open-ended approach indicates relative stupidity? Don't try it. You won't like what's down that road.
(For starters, lessons like not to say things like "stupider," and "an accidental," while trying to sound smart.)

Stupider is a word.  An accidental is probably also a word, but coincidence is the word we usually use. 

I do not recall intending that to be an ad-hominen.  What does lead down that road?

I do hope you're not literally asking me to show you one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy, or otherwise summon physical proof of intangibles. As you well know, such things exist not through their presence, but through their demonstration, and so naturally a degree of subjectivity is not only expected, but unavoidable. This does not make them any less real. Certain human rights are judged to be inalienable because they descend directly from mankind's most fundamental trait: sentience. To consciously strip a fellow mind of its inherent bodily sovereignty and treat it as if it were nothing more than an object, with no capacity for reason or emotion--well, that displays a callous disregard of empathy on par with the very textbook examples of evil. GoblinCookie, questioning the existence of human rights is evil. Not as evil as actually doing evil deeds, of course, but to deliberately try to equate morality with legality and argue that historical slaves had no inherent right to personal autonomy because they predated the Geneva Accords just makes you sound like a character of LE alignment, looking for a loophole to exploit.

You believe in intangibles, so do I but that was the point I was making.  You can provide no evidence for those intangibles, yet you claim they exist. 

I was claiming that human rights confuse legality with morality.  My question to you was whether human rights are morality or law, a question you dodged by taking objection to my disbelief in the concept as it stands. 

You cannot have it both ways.  If human rights are morality they can in fact be universal, but they stand on an even footing with all other moral systems, including that of slavers.  If humans rights are law they are enforceable over those that disagree with them but as law they cannot be binding on those not under the jurisdiction of the authority or authorities that establish human rights as law, basically it is the Is-ought problem.

Punishing bullies is not, but punishing them by precisely replicating their own actions is. For a punishment to fit the crime, it must cause suffering in proportion to, but always less than, the amount of suffering caused by the crime itself. If a goblin resident goes on a torture tantrum and starts whipping random dwarves, the just sentence is not an equal amount of lashes inflicted on the goblin. Such a lesson does not teach him that "Whipping people is wrong," but rather, "I can be just as cruel as you can," and indeed, "But I'm better at it than you are." Which, incidentally, is almost certainly the exact mindset the goblin left behind when he abandoned his old civ. Congratulations, you're running your fort just like a goblin might.

That is your opinion but a number of historical civilisations were definitely committed to the eye-for-an-eye principle that the punishment should be of equivalent nastiness as the crime.   

Yes I am running by fort very much as a goblin would, because I am running a fort of goblins, one with goblins in it or with a number of dwarves that are as cruel as goblins generally are.  This brings us to a concept I have been itching to bring up, that of the necessary good.  In order to increase his chances of successfully taking over and enslaving the world the demon overlord of a goblin civilisation has to get the majority of his goblins to get on harmoniously, not because this is what he really wants but because it serves the greater evil.

As I see it questions of the justice of punishments are irrelevant.  You have a responsibility to the victims, past and future to keep those inclined to harm them from carrying out what is in their nature, punishments are judged by whether they will terrify the perpetrators enough to keep them from actually doing what they wish to do.  In inverse of the above situation, punishments are necessary evils that exist to compel individuals into serving the greater good which is society/state.  The only injustice is to allow the evilly inclined beings to hurt those you are responsible for, what the punishments are is a pragmatic consideration. 

That is why it matters whether goblins are cruel due to this just being the expression of their personality or whether this is an actual *need*.  In the former case you can deal with them as you would any other being with undesirable characteristics, in the latter case however tolerating their very existence effectively betrays their present and future victims. 

The history of religion isn't simply that they fight, but that they fight over nothing. "Elohim is the One True God!" asserts the Jew, simply because that's what he was raised to believe. "There is no God but Allah!" retorts the Muslim, because that's how he was raised. Meanwhile, thousands of Christians kill each other over whether the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all of the same essence, or separate manifestations of the same indivisible godhead. Almost the entire history of religion is people dismissing, without evidence, what other people have claimed without evidence.

No, all those parties are basing their views of evidence.  The Bible is evidence to the Jew or Christian, the Koran is evidence to the Muslim. 

That is quite true, but it doesn't mean that the criticism is invalid, either. The critique, as well as the idea, must be judged on its merits. I judged your idea, found that your logic contained two faulty assumptions, and indicated them to you. You then judged my criticism, found it "pretty good", and then ignored it completely, going right back to your original (indeed, only) argument, which you now knew to be incorrect. You would rather weld yourself to a bad idea than admit that I had a better one.

No, I just pointed out that they were quite valid, in a wider context than the narrow context we were discussing. 

WTF? So far, your thoughts as to the "implementation" of goblins needing to be cruel have mainly focused on dire prognostications that the change could never work, as it would infallibly and immediately cause all goblin civs to crumble and die. Not exactly in the spirit of constructive criticism.

It won't work unless there are suitable victims other than goblins to torment, otherwise it is basically like trying to base a population on cannibalism.  My other point is that because this is the case it creates a moral dilemma by which genocide arguably becomes right, a situation that does not exist with the present goblins.  The present goblins create no more problem than the existence of cruel dwarves does, your new goblins on the other hand are quite something different. 

I may not have the right to demand that you change your opinion, but I do have the right to say your opinion is wrong--and even prove it, if I can. More relevant is the fact that different opinions should not automatically be assumed to be of equal merit: If one person says, "It's night-time", and the person next to them says, "No, it's broad daylight," an impartial observer should not simply let them agree to disagree, the impartial observer should look out the damn window. But our differences are even more fundamental than that: I am arguing like someone saying, "I'm pretty sure there could be at least eight different flavors of ice cream," to which you reply, "No, flavors other than mint chip are impossible, as anything else would cause the freezer to short-circuit, and all the ice cream would melt." Now, I like mint chip, and could happily go the rest of my life eating no other flavor. But I know that it's factually wrong to pretend that other ice cream flavors either don't or can't exist, and it's morally wrong for me to try to force that flavor onto those who might prefer chocolate, or those that like variety. That's why I'm not the one arguing that the only way to play Dwarf Fortress, is the way that I like to play Dwarf Fortress.

I don't think I ever claimed people were obliged to agree with me!  It is just not the case that a person can criticise a person for not changing their mind about something. 

In many cases, the "only 8 flavors of icecream" argument is very much valid.  The tricky part is that often this is not so much a case as the 9th flavor cannot exist but that it is so improbable/contrived/unlikely that it can usually be discounted.  The trouble is that we are dealing with procedural generation however, then this question is very important. 

Agreed. Someone unbiased (that is, not GoblinCookie or myself) should probably decide what ideas / details are worthy suggestions or not, and compile them for Toady.

If GoblinCookie & I clash ever again, I'll simply start a new thread just for that purpose--if, while arguing, either of us manages to say anything suggestion-worthy, we can copy just that bit out to the main thread.

That sounds like a disastrous idea.  Especially if it catches on, imagine if every last element of discussion in every thread ends up with it's own thread?

[Ninjabread]

OP updated with all the relevant suggestions I could find. Things I'm not counting as relevant are:

Desks, altars, and gaming tables
The lighting/oxygen discussion
High-privacy dwarves getting bad thoughts from having to use public rooms (dining rooms, temples, e.c.t.), and good thoughts from using personal rooms
Race-specific needs
The cruelty dependency discussion
Self harm
Specifics on how religious traditions could work

If there's stuff that's neither here nor in the OP, lemme know, probably missed it while skimming through the derails.

GoblinCookie, oh yeah I forgot about world pop caps.

And mods will be mods, I could currently make it so good biomes are populated exclusively by my own handcrafted jabberwockies and also it rains elf tears, if I so desired.

Also, I'm not even gonna bother delving any further into arguing which religious traditions should be allowed, I don't really care to be honest, the concept adds flavour which I like, but exactly what is allowed isn't something I'm bothered about. The implications of any such traditions on social lives have already been discussed, nobody seems to take issue with the suggestions in that part, so further discussions belong in another thread, that is if anyone actually cares.

[SixOfSpades]

OP updated with all the relevant suggestions I could find. Things I'm not counting as relevant are:
. . . gaming tables

Actually, gaming tables do seem relevant, as some games could attract a number of spectators (given a setting with enough bystanders), perhaps even with some gambling on the outcome.

If I mod goblins so that they have a cruelty-quota in a world where suffering does not exist, what then?

Cruelty-dependent goblins would either not exist at all (just as they are currently dependent on the existence of demons), or they would be forced to subsist on nothing more than harsh language as their only outlet.

The only level of societal organization required is mutual recognition of relative status, which the stronger goblins would naturally encourage and even enforce. The smallest/weakest/etc. goblin in any group is almost certainly going to be taking more than his fair share of abuse.

The difference is that every goblin knows that every other goblin is going to try to hurt them.  Every goblin is also trying to hurt all the other goblins.

Close--each goblin (I'll call him Goblin Bob) knows that all the other goblins are trying to hurt someone or something, so Bob knows that as long as he can avoid being chosen as a target of abuse (i.e., avoid screwing up or appearing weak in front of the other goblins), Bob knows that he's going to have a good day. Smack some lower-ranking goblin upside the head, take a child's sweetroll. The kid's mom might cuss Bob out as he walks away, but if he flips her off in reply he still saves face. And as long as the majority of goblins can usually have good days, the band can have enough cohesion to stay together.

That basically means that all goblins inherently fear all other goblins, the only most common way for goblin society to come about in our scenario is if the individual goblins are already in the predatory relationship of preying on some other suitable creature so they can de-facto have a reason to trust each-other.

YES. Finally. (I took the liberty of replacing your "only" with "most common", but at this stage I'll settle for that minor edit.) It's not that goblins don't hate/fear/despise each other (they do), it's that they hate/fear/despise other creatures more. And in the extreme case where there literally are NO other creatures but goblins about, or for some other reason the level of intra-group mutual hatred reaches the critical tipping point, the civilization would most likely not break down to the level of individual, solitary goblins: what would happen is the civ would split, forming two or more new civs that each coalesce around a particularly strong goblin. Bob knows that if he's alone, and he encounters goblins that have already reformed into a band, he's much more likely to be made into their whipping boy, so he wants to join a band as quickly as possible. Result? At least two new groups, all members of which hate each other, but not as much as they hate the other group. If one group conquers the other(s), repeat as needed.

Again you pretend that there are no beings other than goblins to torment,

No pretending at all, that is the situation we are talking about remember?

It may be what you were talking about, but I sure wasn't--when I described a goblin civilization as being "isolated," I thought that was understood to mean "isolated from other civs", not "cut off from literally every other type of animal, including vermin". The only time I think I've ever discussed goblins existing entirely on their own was in the paragraph just above.
     Personally, I think goblins having animals nearby is pretty much a given, quite apart from their known behavior of using trolls and mounts. Even if their dietary needs don't turn out to be largely carnivorous, they should still desire to (be seen to) eat lots of meat, because vegetarianism would almost certainly be perceived as an extreme weakness--and besides, you've GOT to be at least as carnivorous as those pansy elves, right? Ideally, goblins would both hunt AND keep livestock: There's cruelty in knowing that you're running an animal to its death, but it's also good to keep your torment animal close by, in case you don't feel like chasing anything today. And since we know goblins are particularly fond of raiding other sites and kidnapping living things, it's odd to suppose that they'd steal children but not animals.

Everbody knows there *has* to be a whipping boy, everyone knows there *has* to be a punishment.

Eh, not necessarily. A goblin society could probably exist with just random and/or hierarchical cruelty for quite some time, especially if the lowest-tier goblins have some animals to abuse. Whipping boys might simply be a nice change of pace, to unify the band against a minority of scapegoats, or the leader could believe that a rival is growing too strong, and this is a way to bring him down a few pegs.

Goblins aren't megabeasts, they cannot wreck mayhem on a civilisation scale as individuals.

Who said they had to act as individuals? If Goblin Bob kidnaps some tigerman's nephew (and gets seen doing it), that tigerman's going to hate Goblin Bob. But if a bunch of goblins attack and babysnatch, then the tigerman is just going to hate "goblins" in general. Tough luck for Bob if the tigerman catches him alone, whether or not it was actually Bob who took the kid.

Stupider is a word.

Descriptively, yes. Prescriptively, no. If your dictionary says that the word "literally" also means "figuratively", then it's a descriptive dictionary and should be used only if you don't particularly care about being accurate when you speak. In short, "stupider" only became a word because enough stupid people didn't care that it wasn't a real word. So using it (and "an accidental") when you're trying to sound impressively well-read is counter-productive.

I do not recall intending that to be an ad-hominen.  What does lead down that road?

Well, it sure came off that way. But I suppose if you can be wrong about me sounding angry, I can be wrong about you sounding belittling.
If you really were trying to equate intelligence with surety of opinion (and I fail to see what other line of attack that passage could have had), then I would simply mention the huge abundance of cases of profoundly ignorant people being absolutely dead-set in their ideas (so much so that literally nothing can dissuade them), crossed with a quote or two about highly intelligent people actually being the most imaginative. Or, even worse, the two of us could compare our academic credentials, because I know that the entire forum's just dying to see us get into an actual pissing contest. 

You can provide no evidence for those intangibles, yet you claim they exist.

I say again--I hope you're not literally asking for physical proof. If that's what's required, then a VAST wealth of things, including Dwarf Fortress itself, arguably do not exist. Please specify what you would/would not consider to be evidence in this regard, and be advised that I will hold other intangibles to this same standard.

I was claiming that human rights confuse legality with morality.  My question to you was whether human rights are morality or law, a question you dodged by taking objection to my disbelief in the concept as it stands.

My "dodge" originated out of my surprise that anyone would actually question their existence. The only "confusion" was created when the pre-existing moral rights were given formal legality, a distinction that most people do not find confusing in the least. And when you say "my disbelief in the concept as it stands," should I take that to mean that you do indeed actively disagree with the idea of inalienable human rights?

You cannot have it both ways.  If human rights are morality they can in fact be universal, but they stand on an even footing with all other moral systems, including that of slavers.

Ah, but I can have it both ways if I accept that some people are evil. But are you truly arguing that all moral systems, perhaps even by definition, are equal? In other words, what IS evil, from your point of view?

basically it is the Is-ought problem.

We don't need a philosophy derail on top of everything else, come on!

For a punishment to fit the crime, it must cause suffering in proportion to, but always less than, the amount of suffering caused by the crime itself.

That is your opinion but a number of historical civilisations were definitely committed to the eye-for-an-eye principle that the punishment should be of equivalent nastiness as the crime.

True. But it is also true that Gandhi is regarded as having been considerably more ethical than those civilizations. Take a tooth for a tooth if you want to, it's your fort, but don't try to lecture me on morality while you're doing it.

You have a responsibility to the victims, past and future to keep those inclined to harm them from carrying out what is in their nature, punishments are judged by whether they will terrify the perpetrators enough to keep them from actually doing what they wish to do.  In inverse of the above situation, punishments are necessary evils that exist to compel individuals into serving the greater good which is society/state.

The word is "deterrent". Yes, I admit there is some justification for the eye-for-an-eye approach, the problem is it simply places the local government on equal footing with the criminal. You could even go well beyond equal, and exact extremely harsh penalties for even minor offenses, but of course at that point, you're doing more harm than good, so what the hell are you doing, trying to govern? As for demonic rulers, demons most likely wouldn't balk about inflicting more pain than good, but they still wouldn't want to cause more actual harm than good.

That is why it matters whether goblins are cruel due to this just being the expression of their personality or whether this is an actual *need*.  In the former case you can deal with them as you would any other being with undesirable characteristics, in the latter case however tolerating their very existence effectively betrays their present and future victims.

Fair enough, but in both cases, the overseer must weigh the goblins' inherent drawbacks (pain/fear/anger/possible violence of their victims, both animal and dwarf) against the benefits of having them around (expendable shock troops to bear the brunt of attacks?). Since their outward behavior is likely going to be pretty much the same if they have a quota or not, you must ask yourself how you'd feel about them if you didn't know one way or the other.

The Bible is evidence to the Jew or Christian, the Koran is evidence to the Muslim.

Evidence cannot be subjective, it must be agreed upon by all parties--or at least a quorum of educated and disinterested outsiders. Also, physical existence does not constitute being physical evidence, just thought I'd mention that. An intelligent Christian, for example, can believe that the Bible is the Word of God, while also acknowledging that it is not proof of the existence of God, or of the validity of the laws espoused therein.

My other point is that because this is the case it creates a moral dilemma by which genocide arguably becomes right, a situation that does not exist with the present goblins.  The present goblins create no more problem than the existence of cruel dwarves does, your new goblins on the other hand are quite something different.

I'm just going to admit that even the most persuasive argument I (or indeed, probably anyone) could muster here would just be wasted breath at this point.

I don't think I ever claimed people were obliged to agree with me!

Forget "is" and "ought", the problem here is "could" and "could not". This is the Suggestions forum, and here, "could" is king. Things that could be done, features that could be added, ways the game could be improved. It's about broadening the range of possibility. Now look back over your posts. Count up all the times you expressed exclusive certainty, every time you embraced "could not". Every time you said that goblin society was certain to crumble, or that goblins must kill each other, or that goblins would always avoid each other. Every time you took a basic premise, and reduced it to only one inevitable outcome. THAT is "could not", THAT is dealing only in absolutes, THAT is having only mint chip ice cream, and THAT is not what we do here. Or at least, ought not.
By pretending that there was only one inevitable outcome to the idea I proposed, you were essentially telling me, and indeed everyone else, how to play the game--and if we didn't agree with you, then we must be stupid.

If GoblinCookie & I clash ever again, I'll simply start a new thread just for that purpose--if, while arguing, either of us manages to say anything suggestion-worthy, we can copy just that bit out to the main thread.

That sounds like a disastrous idea.  Especially if it catches on, imagine if every last element of discussion in every thread ends up with it's own thread?

No, I mean a single thread for ALL of our messes. If you and I start a new argument ever again, one of us will make the thread, and that's where all of our fights will be contained from that point on. If we say anything actually relevant to the original idea (in this case, Dwarven Social Lives), we can copy that idea to where it might do some good. This forum ain't big enough for the two of us, so I'm proposing that we both leave, when we're not getting along.

[Ninjabread]

SixOfSpades, gaming tables aren't relevant, particularly because they likely won't even be necessary for all games (IRL examples of table-less games being horseshoes and darts, as well as a large number of sports). Spectating games hasn't actually been discussed, but that does sound relevant, especially if sports happen cause there seems to be a big social component in being a sports-fan.

I reckon if this becomes a thing, they should have some of the one-sided relationship effects mentioned earlier, so that people start to admire expert players, become fans and stuff, and if they lose a lot on a bet they could blame the guy they bet on, or accuse the opposing contestant/team of foul play. Being fans rival contestants/teams could cause a slight relationship debuff too, for people who are particularly invested in the games at least, or just accusations of cheating could strain relations, either works. The same framework could also be used for gladiatorial combat too, though the one-sided relationship stuff might not really have much effect if the guy dies upon failure, they'd still accrue fans for killing stuff successfully. How about hooligans though? Fans that like to cause trouble/brawl getting a little overexcited and trashing the place, especially if their preferred contestant/team loses?

[SixOfSpades]

How about sports teams from other forts visiting your site for away games, and your team visiting theirs?

[Ninjabread]

I'd imagine depending on how impressive your stadium was, you may even get visiting teams from other civs provided there was a game that both civs played. Interestingly, this would mean that as long as you weren't formally at war, you could get visited by goblins asking to play sports, provided your civ plays a sport that the goblins do too. I imagine most goblin sports would be blood sports, but I don't imagine dwarves shying away from having a little blood in their sports, especially if it's (mostly) goblin/elf blood.

[AceSV]

I only read the first page, but I remember posting something kinda related to this that might be of interest:  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150064.15

Maybe dwarf friends could work kinda like The Sims?  In The Sims a leader (usually the player controlled character) forms a "group" and the other members will "follow the leader" to whatever the leader wants to do.  Generally this is controlled by the player, but NPC sims also wander around in group-like units.  New people can join the group, and people can leave the group if they need to eat, sleep or go to work.  At the end of the outing it gets a grade (the sim will say something like "I had a great time" or "Yawn, snoozeville...") that impacts the relationship levels.  The full info:  http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Outing

[Ninjabread]

AceSV, looking through your thread, I'd say:

Singles bars seem a bit redundant if the stuff in the OP in this thread are implemented, so it's kinda a question of which one Toady prefers the flavour of and/or thinks will be easier to implement.

Aphrodisiacs seem reasonable, alcohol can temporarily affect personality so other consumables increasing lust for a while should be possible without too much work

Obviously I have no issue with dating, not a big fan of date reports though, seems like it'd be unnecessary work for Toady and unnecessary clutter on the reports screen, you can tell whether or not the date went well by changes in relations, or in extreme cases, whether there's a combat report or not.

I'm with the other posters there on the subject of arranged marriages, if arrangements happen it should be the family that does it, not the player, cause if the government is involved it isn't arranged marriage, it's eugenics.

I do like the suggestion that came up later in your thread, that children could occasionally be born out of wedlock, bastards certainly have created their fair share of drama in both history and fiction.

As for the "follow the leader" behaviour, that'd work for gangs, militia squads, or other groups that actually might have a leader, but for anyone else it's just unneeded, dwarves can already gather around any random pathable position, and travel between multiple such positions. To see what I mean, all you need to do is tell a militia squad to go patrol a route.

[scourge728]

But what if eugenics is the intended goal?

[Ninjabread]

If you're actually planning on eugenics? You can already lock them in a room together with nothing to do but talk and produce the next generation. Why add in government mandated marriage as a feature when it already exists as a workaround to an existing but incomplete feature?

[GoblinCookie]

Cruelty-dependent goblins would either not exist at all (just as they are currently dependent on the existence of demons), or they would be forced to subsist on nothing more than harsh language as their only outlet.

That question was not addressed to you. 

Close--each goblin (I'll call him Goblin Bob) knows that all the other goblins are trying to hurt someone or something, so Bob knows that as long as he can avoid being chosen as a target of abuse (i.e., avoid screwing up or appearing weak in front of the other goblins), Bob knows that he's going to have a good day. Smack some lower-ranking goblin upside the head, take a child's sweetroll. The kid's mom might cuss Bob out as he walks away, but if he flips her off in reply he still saves face. And as long as the majority of goblins can usually have good days, the band can have enough cohesion to stay together.

Each goblin knows that every goblin is going to try to hurt him and therefore he avoids all the other goblins, except when he is seeking to hurt another goblin.  Whenever another goblin seems interested in you, you avoid that other goblin particularly since you know that that other goblin is only interested in you because he wants to hurt you.  If another goblin successfully hurts you, then you both fear and hate the other goblin, causing you to avoid him all the more.  But you also need to hurt other goblins, but every other goblin knows that already. 

There is no goblin society is there? 

YES. Finally. (I took the liberty of replacing your "only" with "most common", but at this stage I'll settle for that minor edit.) It's not that goblins don't hate/fear/despise each other (they do), it's that they hate/fear/despise other creatures more. And in the extreme case where there literally are NO other creatures but goblins about, or for some other reason the level of intra-group mutual hatred reaches the critical tipping point, the civilization would most likely not break down to the level of individual, solitary goblins: what would happen is the civ would split, forming two or more new civs that each coalesce around a particularly strong goblin. Bob knows that if he's alone, and he encounters goblins that have already reformed into a band, he's much more likely to be made into their whipping boy, so he wants to join a band as quickly as possible. Result? At least two new groups, all members of which hate each other, but not as much as they hate the other group. If one group conquers the other(s), repeat as needed.

Not so, the cruelty-quota goblins hate each-other more than they hate all other creatures, that is because all the other goblins have to hurt each-other but the other creatures don't need to hurt goblins.  The necessary basis for cruelty-quota goblin society is that the goblins agree to, under normal circumstances refrain from being cruel to each-other and meet out their cruelty on their hapless victims, which having banded together they can now reliably subjugate. 

The victims however cannot be goblins, since they would themselves have to be cruel to a third party, but they don't have any outlets except each-other or their masters, both of which results in their self-destruction. 

It may be what you were talking about, but I sure wasn't--when I described a goblin civilization as being "isolated," I thought that was understood to mean "isolated from other civs", not "cut off from literally every other type of animal, including vermin". The only time I think I've ever discussed goblins existing entirely on their own was in the paragraph just above.
     Personally, I think goblins having animals nearby is pretty much a given, quite apart from their known behavior of using trolls and mounts. Even if their dietary needs don't turn out to be largely carnivorous, they should still desire to (be seen to) eat lots of meat, because vegetarianism would almost certainly be perceived as an extreme weakness--and besides, you've GOT to be at least as carnivorous as those pansy elves, right? Ideally, goblins would both hunt AND keep livestock: There's cruelty in knowing that you're running an animal to its death, but it's also good to keep your torment animal close by, in case you don't feel like chasing anything today. And since we know goblins are particularly fond of raiding other sites and kidnapping living things, it's odd to suppose that they'd steal children but not animals.

I don't think it matters much if the goblins have torture-slaves or torture-animals.  I was operating on the assumption that animal suffering does not count, in order to avoid opening a huge can of worms and derailing the thread into a discussion of animal rights.  Basically speaking, if animal suffering counts towards the cruelty-quota then we have an answer to Jeremy Bentham's question concerning animals "can they suffer?" in the affirmative.

Basically if you let the goblins live, you have collaborated in the suffering they *must* inflict on animals and the fact that torturing animals works confirms that animal suffering is similar to human suffering.  You solution of isolation was assumed to imply either that animal suffering does not work for goblins, or the isolation is from animals also. 

Eh, not necessarily. A goblin society could probably exist with just random and/or hierarchical cruelty for quite some time, especially if the lowest-tier goblins have some animals to abuse. Whipping boys might simply be a nice change of pace, to unify the band against a minority of scapegoats, or the leader could believe that a rival is growing too strong, and this is a way to bring him down a few pegs.

That is a rather unlikely scenario given there is no goblin society.  The goblins also presumably know that they have to inflict a given amount of cruelty per month and they also know all the other goblins in their group are also goblins.  That creates a problem in that it makes minor forms of cruelty that are physically less damaging ineffective, if a goblin insults another goblin, rather than properly suffering he will just say "aha you just said that because you had a cruelty-quota to meet,".  Only really nasty forms of torture can overcome this rational comprehension.

Who said they had to act as individuals? If Goblin Bob kidnaps some tigerman's nephew (and gets seen doing it), that tigerman's going to hate Goblin Bob. But if a bunch of goblins attack and babysnatch, then the tigerman is just going to hate "goblins" in general. Tough luck for Bob if the tigerman catches him alone, whether or not it was actually Bob who took the kid.

If a group of goblins attacks a group of tigermen, then the tigermen group will hate the goblin group.  Do not make the fundamental intellectual error of the racist and ethno-nationalist, that of confusing groups with classifications.  Two things that have traits in common do not exist in a common relationship simply by virtue of that fact. 

In some cases however conflicts exist between classifications themselves.  Cats and mice are both classifications, but they are classifications that are inherently in conflict.  In the case however, the goblin-group knows that their conflict with the tigerman group is a classification level conflict, the tigerman group however does not realise that (yet) and the goblins are better off if they remain ignorant. 

This is why goblin-groups are a bad idea for goblins.  Goblin Bob does better if instead of fighting along with his fellow goblins, he defects to join the tigermen group and fight against the other goblins.  Joining that group means he has a huge number of victims to choose from, enough that the tigermen will not realise the classification-level conflict that exists.  It gets better in that if the tigerman group expands and grows, there are an ever greater number of victims for Goblin Bob and an even lower risk of exposure. 

Descriptively, yes. Prescriptively, no. If your dictionary says that the word "literally" also means "figuratively", then it's a descriptive dictionary and should be used only if you don't particularly care about being accurate when you speak. In short, "stupider" only became a word because enough stupid people didn't care that it wasn't a real word. So using it (and "an accidental") when you're trying to sound impressively well-read is counter-productive.

I could have said "less intelligent" but that would not do.  The reason it does not do is because the very phrase implies that creatures have some essential attribute of intelligence prior to the situation I was describing.  Cleverness and stupidity are preformative, not essential.  It is like a person goes to the gymn ends up with large muscles, the person who acts clever becomes clever because in acting cleverly he develops his brain physically.

Well, it sure came off that way. But I suppose if you can be wrong about me sounding angry, I can be wrong about you sounding belittling.
If you really were trying to equate intelligence with surety of opinion (and I fail to see what other line of attack that passage could have had), then I would simply mention the huge abundance of cases of profoundly ignorant people being absolutely dead-set in their ideas (so much so that literally nothing can dissuade them), crossed with a quote or two about highly intelligent people actually being the most imaginative. Or, even worse, the two of us could compare our academic credentials, because I know that the entire forum's just dying to see us get into an actual pissing contest. 

People can basically be sure for two reasons.  One is they are clever enough to know why everything they are saying is true and you are not yet clever enough to prove them wrong.  The second is that they are what I call intellectual authoritarians, they are sure because their authorities have told them such is so and all truth comes from those authorities.  To argue with them is to argue with their authorities and their authorities are clever than they are, so if anyone disagrees with them it must imply they are claiming equality with their authorities, but their authorities have [Insert Special Qualification here] unlike you.

I say again--I hope you're not literally asking for physical proof. If that's what's required, then a VAST wealth of things, including Dwarf Fortress itself, arguably do not exist. Please specify what you would/would not consider to be evidence in this regard, and be advised that I will hold other intangibles to this same standard.

I don't believe that, that is just what your position leads too. 

My "dodge" originated out of my surprise that anyone would actually question their existence. The only "confusion" was created when the pre-existing moral rights were given formal legality, a distinction that most people do not find confusing in the least. And when you say "my disbelief in the concept as it stands," should I take that to mean that you do indeed actively disagree with the idea of inalienable human rights?

I cannot really decide whether I disagree or disagree unless I know whether I am dealing fundamentally with a moral concept or a legal one.  Since a great deal of war and chaos is the product of such a confusion I am forced to reject the concept of human rights. 

Ah, but I can have it both ways if I accept that some people are evil. But are you truly arguing that all moral systems, perhaps even by definition, are equal? In other words, what IS evil, from your point of view?

You can declare them evil all you wish, they can also declare you evil all they wish.  The crucial thing here is that you can suppress slavery all you wish in your own legal domain and they can allow slavery all they wish in their own legal domain.  You can argue that they are wrong, but you don't have the 'right' to liberate their slaves because your morality gives them inalienable human rights not to be enslaved.

In order to be enforceable they would have to be law and that would require the slavers to fall under your jurisdiction.  You can legislate according to morality, but you cannot impose morality against law, even if that law is not your own. 

We don't need a philosophy derail on top of everything else, come on!

That is the fundamental problem though, is slavery actually prohibited or it just that it ought to be prohibited. 

True. But it is also true that Gandhi is regarded as having been considerably more ethical than those civilizations. Take a tooth for a tooth if you want to, it's your fort, but don't try to lecture me on morality while you're doing it.

There are too basic systems of justice.  The original system of justice, which was practised in full by the Anglo-Saxons is a compensatory system.  If I steal an apple from your orchard and am caught, all I must do is give you an apple or something of equivalent value to an apple and I have made amends.  When applies to violence a somewhat warped situation occurs to our eyes, everyone and everyone's body parts and lives end up having an actual monetary price, the price paid for murdering someone in called the Were-geld (man-price).  The higher your status, the greater the price that would have to be if you were murdered.

This system however has the problem that it basically makes no attempt to modify people's actual behaviour, nor is that it's purpose.  Hence the rulers at some point actually switch to deterrent justice, this is a 'pragmatic' system by which we devise punishments based upon what will terrorise the population into behaving according to your will.  The trouble is that they have to sell the new system according to the old system, creating an illogical 'eye for an eye' situation.

If I burn your orchard down, in the compensatory system I have to hand over my orchard to you.  In the hybrid system however, we burn your orchard down because you burned down mine first.  Ghandhi famously said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", but the whole thing was actually a compromise between the two systems of justice.  Given that violence already has a price, once we accept compensation is valid even if does not profit the victim, we have lots of deterrence potential.   

The word is "deterrent". Yes, I admit there is some justification for the eye-for-an-eye approach, the problem is it simply places the local government on equal footing with the criminal. You could even go well beyond equal, and exact extremely harsh penalties for even minor offenses, but of course at that point, you're doing more harm than good, so what the hell are you doing, trying to govern? As for demonic rulers, demons most likely wouldn't balk about inflicting more pain than good, but they still wouldn't want to cause more actual harm than good.

The idea is to convince individuals to act against their nature.  It is their basic nature to do stuff you don't like, but it is also their basic nature to be scared of something, we solve the first problem by the second.  The thing is however, that the very ideas related to the Fundermental Attribution Error, by which we ascribe the behaviour of individuals primarily to the individuals own internal nature. 

If evil things simply come from inherently evil people, then the only solution is to terrorise all the evil people into behaving themselves.

Fair enough, but in both cases, the overseer must weigh the goblins' inherent drawbacks (pain/fear/anger/possible violence of their victims, both animal and dwarf) against the benefits of having them around (expendable shock troops to bear the brunt of attacks?). Since their outward behavior is likely going to be pretty much the same if they have a quota or not, you must ask yourself how you'd feel about them if you didn't know one way or the other.

No their outward behaviour will not be the same.  In the present case anything that would work to discourage cruel dwarves from being nasty will work on goblins.  In your case however, the goblins will always hurt others and there is nothing that you can do about it, because there is nothing they can do about it. 

Evidence cannot be subjective, it must be agreed upon by all parties--or at least a quorum of educated and disinterested outsiders. Also, physical existence does not constitute being physical evidence, just thought I'd mention that. An intelligent Christian, for example, can believe that the Bible is the Word of God, while also acknowledging that it is not proof of the existence of God, or of the validity of the laws espoused therein.

Evidence is always subjective.  That is because to be evidence it has to be apparent and hence it is subjective.  The only things that are objective is the unknowable 'world of things in themselves' and the principles of logical reasoning. 

Forget "is" and "ought", the problem here is "could" and "could not". This is the Suggestions forum, and here, "could" is king. Things that could be done, features that could be added, ways the game could be improved. It's about broadening the range of possibility. Now look back over your posts. Count up all the times you expressed exclusive certainty, every time you embraced "could not". Every time you said that goblin society was certain to crumble, or that goblins must kill each other, or that goblins would always avoid each other. Every time you took a basic premise, and reduced it to only one inevitable outcome. THAT is "could not", THAT is dealing only in absolutes, THAT is having only mint chip ice cream, and THAT is not what we do here. Or at least, ought not.
By pretending that there was only one inevitable outcome to the idea I proposed, you were essentially telling me, and indeed everyone else, how to play the game--and if we didn't agree with you, then we must be stupid.

I am going to just let this rant go.  It is not my job to argue with myself. 

No, I mean a single thread for ALL of our messes. If you and I start a new argument ever again, one of us will make the thread, and that's where all of our fights will be contained from that point on. If we say anything actually relevant to the original idea (in this case, Dwarven Social Lives), we can copy that idea to where it might do some good. This forum ain't big enough for the two of us, so I'm proposing that we both leave, when we're not getting along.

I don't agree that we make big messes at all.  We have actually been talking about dwarven social lives all along.  I also don't want to have a whole other bunch of arguments about what exactly is on-topic and what should go in the main thread.