1869 réponses à ce sujet

[moilami]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

It's not a matter of morality or some sort of racism, but simple security.

And that security treats a segment of the population unfairly.

Do you value security more than equality and freedom?  If so, then your position is obvious.

But others can reasonably disagree.  And there's no middle ground.

Security vs. freedom? I value both. Up to a point.
Normally, I prefer freedom over security...but sometimes one has to make hard choices (like let's say a hijacked plane taken by going for a populated city. Shoot it down or not? You're gambling with lives either way, so you might as well gamble with less lives)

...

Now mages are compared to hijacked plane taken down by going for a populated city? LOL. LOOOOL. Is this Fox News report? HAHAHHAHHAHAA. You mister should become a comedian. Or just send Fox News a job application with that posting. I am sure they would reply "You're hired."

[Lotion Soronarr]

moilami wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Security vs. freedom? I value both. Up to a point.
Normally, I prefer freedom over security...but sometimes one has to make hard choices (like let's say a hijacked plane taken by terrorists, going for a populated city. Shoot it down or not? You're gambling with lives either way, so you might as well gamble with less lives)

...

Now mages are compared to hijacked plane taken down by going for a populated city? LOL. LOOOOL. Is this Fox News report? HAHAHHAHHAHAA. You mister should become a comedian. Or just send Fox News a job application with that posting. I am sure they would reply "You're hired."

What?

Oh....no, no.
Mages are not compared to planes...WTF is wrong with you?

I was just giving an exmaple of a moral dillema where you're sacrificing few to save many.

[moilami]

McHoger wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

A difference that makes no difference is no difference.  The supposed justification for the circle is that some mages will "go bad" without warning and cause too much destruction for this to be worth the risk.  The same argument can (and has been in history!) used against the mentally ill.  The agent may be different but the justification and response to it is not.  Thus I'd say the original statement about locking up the mentally ill and locking away mages is basically valid.

-Polaris

It makes plenty of difference. A mentally ill person is the same person before and after the act. The reason we see it wrong to hold them accountable is because they lack the capabilites to comprehned what they had done. A mage essentially stops existing as they were when they become an abomintation and the new being moves with malicious intent. Whether or not the mage is aware of what is going on doesn't matter because the being performing the act is no longer the mage.

The demon is not some instrument that the mage is unwittingly using to perform evil acts. It's quite the opposite in fact.

The analogy was about mages being as beings comparable to mentally ill. The connection was inherit abilities. Mentally ill could be changed to "blond haired" and it would work better. Every blond haired must be slain or put to a prison because they are inheritly able to cause massive destruction and none knows when they might do that.

[Raven_26]

Just pointing one small thing you seam to all forgot, mages aren't the
only ones how can become possessed by demons, if  you pay attention to
the game as a whole. Demons want to be in the same realm as man, they
will possess mages if the can (which is preferred by them) but they will
also possess trees (brecilian forest, the war between human and elf,
spilled so much blood that the Vail became thin enough for them to pass
true, no magic was mentioned). Of course if you really want to blame it
on mages or magic, one could point out that the ruins in the brecilian
forest, had mages, in fact that is where you learn Arcane Worrior.

But let's not forget that if the Vail is thine, the lesser demons will possess the dead, Shades will get coporial as well.

Is the circal a good or bad place for mages? It is both, the Circal could
be a place where Mages whent to learn to control their magical talents
and to resist the demons, which would be a good thing. But what makes
the Circal bad, is the way mages are treated in said Circal, there is no
reason or excuse for the Chantry to label mages as less then human,
which they do, pay attention to the game.
Mages have no freedom, they can't get married (they are to feared by non-mages) and it isn't tolerated that one mage marries another mage. A Mage isn't allowed to raise their own children, they are taken away at birth and raised by the Chantry, if they show magical affinity, they are plased in a circal, if not they are raised as priests or templars.

All this is in the game, read and listen to it. Read the Lore.

Saying you need to lock mages up because they could become abominations, is wrong. I get that people want that, because hey mages
can wreck havoc with their magic, that no non-mage can't come close to.
But if that is ok, when where should one draw the line?

Any human/elf ect can become a monster, they don't need a demons help to become one
(not saying the same cannot be said for mages) but because a person
could be dangerous, should we lock a them all up?

Modifié par Raven_26, 27 janvier 2011 - 02:49 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

moilami wrote...
Anyone can cause destruction anywhere except in some very high secure areas. You are again thinking mages are lunatics who are very suspectible to cause destruction anywhere anytime. You should seriously get some real arguments. Your current ones just suck. Unless you get some real arguments consider yourself being failed in defending chantry.

Mages are their own weapon, they can be possesed at any time. They are exceptionaly dangeroud even when not possesed, on a level no non-mage can duplicate.

Can a non-mage fuels spells using your life? Can he mind-control you to kill your family? Can he throw entire towns into the fade and torture you for eaons?
No, he can't.
And that just a regular mage..abominations are worse.

- mages require no weapons
- mages can do incredibly dangerous and twisted stuff
- mages can mind-control
- mages can become possesed at ANY TIME, ANY PLACE (effectively loosign their will..so they will kill you even if they dont' want to do it)

It's exactly the combinations of these factors that make the situation so f***-up.

[LobselVith8]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Then why do you keep doing it? I though it was your favorite strategy?

Pointing out how you failed to provide any proof that the Chantry is doing anything productive with the mages would be boring to you, Lotion. You gloss over all the alternative societies of mages and non-mages living together because it hurts your argument, and you ignore how the codex entries and the storyline have shown how harmful the Chantry demonizing and imprisoning mages has been when innocent people can be murdered because templars thought they were mages (D'Sims) or how time and again we see abominations as a direct result of the Chantry controlled Circles.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
You haven't provided anything to show it's not.

The fact that the codex History of the Circle proves the Circles were never established to protect people from mages, and the codex entries and the story show how abominations happen because of the oppression that mages endure at the hands of the Chantry, is sufficient for me. Whether it's a mage who becomes an abomination because templars are hunting him down (Abomination codex) or Uldred turning into an abomination when he's fighting to free the mages from Chantry control, all I see are incidents that keep happening as a direct result of the Chantry

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
You're worse than Loghain.
Your obsessive hate for all things Chantry is creepy and boring at the same time. I've seen Yehovas Witnesses and Priests that preach less than you do.

Your failure to articulate an argument for your side shows with your incessant need for personal attacks, Lotion. You have no valid argument to make supporting the Chantry's actions regarding the Circles.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
All you ever do is harp against the Chantry, latch onto anyone who agrees with you like they are the messiah, and accuse anyone not agreeing with you of being a Chantry-lover.
You see obsession everywhere, except in you.

I've got news for you N00ber.
You're wrong about me....and you're pretty much wrong in general.

Maybe if you tried to sound like an adult I could take you seriously, Lotion, because instead of a compelling argument supporting the Chantry all I see is another personal attack from you.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Keyword Lob...keyword.

You just admitt you're merely asusming.
Meaning you got no real evidence to support your claim. So assume all you want - just don't claim it is the one and only truth.

Asusming? Learn how to spell, Lotion. Please.

Akizora wrote...
But then again, all we know is what the Chantry CLAIMS, they claim that the only way to prevent it is to make a mage tranquil or put them in a tower under full control. Is that true though? Or is that a way for the templars, the circle and the Chantry to keep a itght leash on a very powerful force that could be used by them to wage war and destruction, enforce laws, rules and beliefs? Are mages tools of war for the Chantry?

Considering that the Circles weren't created to protect people in the first place (according to the codex written by a member of the Chantry), there's no evidence that it's necessary to imprison a mage and segregate them from society, especially when other societies have mages and non-mages co-existing.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Circle fate horrible? Depends on whom you ask. Plenty of mages are content there.
Of course, given that people have their oppinions, things willdiffer.
To Isolde, letting go of her son was horrible.
But to think similar things would not happen is folly. No matter what system you think off, there will be plenty of people who will not like it, for one reason or another.
Not to say that the Chantry system doesn't have flaws and that sometimes it backifres.. But every system does.

Particularly a system that openly demonizes mages and imprisons them with no evidence that their actions are doing anything productive. You also gloss over the role that the Chantry played in Isolde's decision to hide Connor's magical ability and ignore how there are plenty of mages who want to be freed from the Chantry system (the meeting in Cumberland, for instance). Connor was possessed directly because of the anti-mage environment that the Chantry cultivates.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Untrue. Uldered didn't have a large support even so. The fighting broke out between mages. Uldred side was loosing, so he panciked and summoned a demon.
People will do stupid things and fight and argue for various reasons..as long as they think their goal is important enough, they will take risks. Suppose the goal of Uldred was not to fight the Cahtnry , but to fight the Orlesians (let's say he's a big patriot) and the other mages disagreed... Would the situation end up differently?

You have no evidence Uldred had minimal support. You have no evidence that Uldred resorted to demonology for any reason other than trying to remove the Senior Enchanters who had turned against him. You also lie about Uldred's motive, which is made perfectly clear by the unnamed blood mage who says the entire point of the rebellion was to gain freedom from the Chantry.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Nope. That was the reason Connor was not sent to the Circle, not the reason he was possesed.
Can you really claim he woudln't have been possesed either way? Or for a different reason?

Would anything have changed if ther was no Chantry circle system? Connor would still be with his mom, Eamon would stil lget sick and hte demon would still go after Connor.

Yeah, if Isolde didn't automatically view mages as evil because the Chantry villified them (and as Jowan said, she is a pious woman) and if there was an effective system in place instead of the ineffective Chantry system, then Connor would have understood what demons were and never made a deal in the first place.

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Yes. Even without the Cirlcle, Uldred might still beomce possesed. For another reason.

Uldred used demonology to be free from the Chantry, as it was the entire point of the rebellion - the blood mage admits this in A Broken Circle. If the Chantry wasn't oppressing mages to the point that they felt the need to fight for their freedom, then it wouldn't have happened.

[LobselVith8]

[quote]Lotion Soronnar wrote...

[quote]LobselVith8 wrote...

[QUOTE]Lotion Soronnar wrote...
No, I mean obvious lies. Like claiming I said something I didn't. Or things that aren't proven.

Oppinion, as long as it's presented as opinion, is fine. [/QUOTE]
You mean like when you claimed I called you a Chantry fanboy, but never bothered to provide a link to this accusation when I called you on your b.s.?
[/quote]

Dude, you were calling me pro-chantry and talkign about how I adore chantry and Wynne in your previous posts. You should remeber what you posted an hour ago! [/quote]

In other words, I never called you a Chantry fanboy - despite your claim that you simply agreed because it was the correct course, I pointed out you consistently took a pro-Chantry stance when you denied it had anything to do with supporting the Chantry view. You lied about what I said.

[quote]Lotion Soronnar wrote...

[quote]LobselVith8 wrote...

The History of the Circle codex explains why the Circle was formed; it was written by a Chantry scholar, so it's not biased in the favor of the mages (as clearly evident by the way it's written at the end) and yet it makes it clear that the Circles were never formed as a means of protection against blood mages or abominations. You have yet to prove that the Chantry controlled Circles are warranted, and the alternative societies of Rivain, the Dalish clans, and Haven prove that mages can co-exist alongside non-mages, as they did in Orlais and other Andrastian societies before the non-violent protest in Orlais that lead to their segregation from society.[/quote]

As said before, the History os hte Circle is a very short entry, so it jsut skims the issue. It doesn't say there weren't other reasons...nor does it specificly say the reason. You INFER the reason. [/quote]

If the Circle happened because of a non-violent protest and not because of blood mages or abominations, you can't fan fic blood mages and abominations as the reason.

[quote]Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Also, no-one said that mages and non-mages cannot co-exist. The issue is if that's a good idea, and what price one must pay for that. If in order for that to happen, you have to accept occaisnally loosing a few villages to abomination, then yes...it is a issue. [/quote]

Considering that the Chantry system has this habit of bringing forth abominations (Abominations codex, A Broken Circle), an alternative would be better.

[quote]Lotion Soronnar wrote...

[quote]LobselVith8 wrote...

[quote]Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Take a dictionary. Learn to read. My previous posts prove that my stance on the Circle from the very begining was that is was a grey issue. My stance never changed. [/QUOTE]

Your lack of a substantial argument is the issue here, Lotion. You failed to prove that the Chantry system is necessary.[/quote]

Nope. But even if that was true, what does that have to do with  you claiming I changed my argument?
My stance never changed. [/quote]

You went from claiming that the Chantry system was the best to saying we can't disagree with you because it's all morally grey.

[quote]Lotion Soronnar wrote...

[quote]LobselVith8 wrote...

[QUOTE]Lotion Soronnar wrote...
Ians hypothesis is a bucketload of c*** and everyone knows it.
Usin Ians logic I can hypotheticly prove ANYTHING. And I mean ANYTHING.
One can't just pull a number out of ones a** and claim it's perfectly rational. He claimed a 10,000% increase in abomination rate was perfecty rational. Even someone with 2 brain cells would see that number is redicolous. The more rediclous the claim, the greater backing and justification is needed. [/QUOTE]

You mean Ian made an argument with storyline examples and codex entries while you call people names and pretend you're right because you can't properly read the quotes made by the developers? And "rediclous," Lotion? Maybe you should stop attacking people's ability to read when you can't even spell.[/quote]

Focusing on my typo? Dont' you have anything better to do?

Let's stop pretending. Prove his hypothetical numbers make sense.
They make as muhc sense as me saying that Dalish experienced a 10000% increase in reproduction rate after the DA:O boon of a land of their own. [/quote]

Considering your incessant name-calling and your deplorable behavior, I wish you could take a page from Sir JK and simply disagree without resorting to name calling and personal attacks, Lotion.

Regarding numbers, Ian already provided a hypothetical analysis of this in explanining how the Chantry system could be producing much more abominations than there previously were prior to its existance, and you lost your composure.

Modifié par LobselVith8, 27 janvier 2011 - 03:58 .

[LobselVith8]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
I never claimed that. Hence, why I said lies. Because you do lie...shameleslyy I might add.

You did claim that there were abominations in the Mages Collective in another thread, your buddy Emperor tried to clean it up by mentioning the apprentice we encounter in the Mages Collective quest, where I pointed out that we had no proof that we was even tied to the Collective any more than the other three apprentices from a seperate quest. You lied. And you failed to provide any substantial argument for the Chantry dehumanizing and demonizing mages.

Nope. Never said that. Again, something you infered.
Provide a quote if you can. I dare you.

Because you asked so nicely:

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...
There are free mages; are you forgetting about the mages of the Mages Collective, who police themselves?

You mean the bunch full of blood mages and abominations that hires other people to take care of their mess?

Yes, very effective..especially given that they're so spread out, that by the time any action is taken, the blood mage/abomination has already done enough damage.

You also claimed you never said this later on in the thread, and I called you out on it back then, too:

LobselVith8 wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

I never did that. I said that abominations come from ALL mages, and if mage circles can become abominations, so can hedge mages, apostates and members of the Collective.

You said, and I quote:

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...
There are free mages; are you forgetting about the mages of the Mages Collective, who police themselves?

You mean the bunch full of blood mages and abominations that hires other people to take care of their mess?

So I'm on the fail train for thinking you changed your screenname, and you completely fan fic'd abominations into the Mages Collective.

As I also said, this was soon followed by your buddy Emperor trying to come to your rescue and calling mages "property" of the Chantry:

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

Mages of the Collective might not be abominations currently, but that does not mean tehy are safe from possession. No matter how you put it, no matter which examples you bring forth, every mage everywhere is constantly under threat of possession. There is no use denying it. The lore states as much. So it stands to reason that some mages in the collective, at some point in the past or in the future might have been or will become abominations, and once that happens, the abomination won't be contained in a tower like circle mages, but it will be free somewhere on the countryside.
The amount of mages amongst the Dalish and the Cult of Andraste is so small that they would have few troubles with abominations to begin with, add to that that they probably can't control them, so they kill them. That is the sole reason we don't see abominations in those groups. Aside from the fact that they are rare to begin with. Just because we don't see them doesn't mean they don't exist or is somehow immune to possession.

Also, the Chantry owns all the Circles. If Ferelden were to expel the Templars and "free" the mages. It would basically be theft of Chantry "property", and borderline heretical. So of course that would result in an Exalted March against Ferelden.

In other words, Lotion, you're a liar.

Modifié par LobselVith8, 27 janvier 2011 - 04:25 .

[moilami]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

moilami wrote...
Anyone can cause destruction anywhere except in some very high secure areas. You are again thinking mages are lunatics who are very suspectible to cause destruction anywhere anytime. You should seriously get some real arguments. Your current ones just suck. Unless you get some real arguments consider yourself being failed in defending chantry.

Mages are their own weapon, they can be possesed at any time. They are exceptionaly dangeroud even when not possesed, on a level no non-mage can duplicate.

Can a non-mage fuels spells using your life? Can he mind-control you to kill your family? Can he throw entire towns into the fade and torture you for eaons?
No, he can't.
And that just a regular mage..abominations are worse.

- mages require no weapons
- mages can do incredibly dangerous and twisted stuff
- mages can mind-control
- mages can become possesed at ANY TIME, ANY PLACE (effectively loosign their will..so they will kill you even if they dont' want to do it)

It's exactly the combinations of these factors that make the situation so f***-up.

If you are so scared of mages you shall be put in to the DAMNED TOWER and before that every mage taken out of it, and from that on the tower shall be guarded better than anything else to keep you safe from mages too.

[Erani]

moilami wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

moilami wrote...
Anyone can cause destruction anywhere except in some very high secure areas. You are again thinking mages are lunatics who are very suspectible to cause destruction anywhere anytime. You should seriously get some real arguments. Your current ones just suck. Unless you get some real arguments consider yourself being failed in defending chantry.

Mages are their own weapon, they can be possesed at any time. They are exceptionaly dangeroud even when not possesed, on a level no non-mage can duplicate.

Can a non-mage fuels spells using your life? Can he mind-control you to kill your family? Can he throw entire towns into the fade and torture you for eaons?
No, he can't.
And that just a regular mage..abominations are worse.

- mages require no weapons
- mages can do incredibly dangerous and twisted stuff
- mages can mind-control
- mages can become possesed at ANY TIME, ANY PLACE (effectively loosign their will..so they will kill you even if they dont' want to do it)

It's exactly the combinations of these factors that make the situation so f***-up.

If you are so scared of mages you shall be put in to the DAMNED TOWER and before that every mage taken out of it, and from that on the tower shall be guarded better than anything else to keep you safe from mages too.

LOL FTW!!!!

[moilami]

Erani wrote...

moilami wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

moilami wrote...
Anyone can cause destruction anywhere except in some very high secure areas. You are again thinking mages are lunatics who are very suspectible to cause destruction anywhere anytime. You should seriously get some real arguments. Your current ones just suck. Unless you get some real arguments consider yourself being failed in defending chantry.

Mages are their own weapon, they can be possesed at any time. They are exceptionaly dangeroud even when not possesed, on a level no non-mage can duplicate.

Can a non-mage fuels spells using your life? Can he mind-control you to kill your family? Can he throw entire towns into the fade and torture you for eaons?
No, he can't.
And that just a regular mage..abominations are worse.

- mages require no weapons
- mages can do incredibly dangerous and twisted stuff
- mages can mind-control
- mages can become possesed at ANY TIME, ANY PLACE (effectively loosign their will..so they will kill you even if they dont' want to do it)

It's exactly the combinations of these factors that make the situation so f***-up.

If you are so scared of mages you shall be put in to the DAMNED TOWER and before that every mage taken out of it, and from that on the tower shall be guarded better than anything else to keep you safe from mages too.

LOL FTW!!!!

I will name my next female toy toon Erani. Will be a mage.

[IanPolaris]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

I would like to point out that the Collective does not really police themselves. At least none of the quests we get are meant as policing.
The one with the Abomination: It is not because they know about an Abomination they send you out. It is becase one of their amges has gone missing, and they would like you to make sure he is okay. That his apprentice had turned into an Abomination was totally incidental, and probably didn't even matter to them. So no policing act here. At least not intentional anyway.

This is a form of policing oneself.  The National Park Service has Rangers and Rangers will look for hikers that go missing and ask others to help (esp Explorer Scouts).  This is very much an act of self-policing.  Don't believe me?  Then why is missing persons invariably assigned as a police function!  [Hint:  It's because if a person goes missing, there is a high probability that there may well be criminal activity behind it.]

So this argument fails.

The Maleficar Covenant (Brecillian Forest): They send you out to kill a covenant of Maleficars, but not because they are Maleficars. But because they are practicing their magic too close to one of the collective's own's hideout. So out of fear of his own detection, he wants them eliminated. Again, no intentional policing here.

Getting rid of undesirable elements is another very traditional role of the police, so this argument fails as well.

Instead they actually send you out to warn several Maleficars of an impending Templar raid on their homes, so they actually do not police themselves. At least not against Blood Magic.

Not Malificars.  The relatives of Malificars, and it's accused Malificars.  Considering how little 'evidence' (hearsay will do) for a templar to run through a person for being a Malificar, I have zero problem with this.

-Polaris

[IanPolaris]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

Even if a mentally ill hears voices, he isn't about to go throw fireballs around.

And I know which tangent you are gonna run out on now.... "Oh but he could go get a weapon, or make a bomb, or, or, or..."
And yes. He most certainly could. But a man with agun is an obvious threat, and he can be disarmed. His bomb can be discovered and defused. Hell... He could be denyed in the counter of the Gas Station. For any non-mage to cause destruction you have to count in several factors.
For a mage, you don't need any more factors, than that he is a mage. A Mage can cause destruction, whenever, whereever he feels like it.

You obviously have not watched much evening news.  When a civilian sees a lunatic waving a gun, the first instinct is to RUN not to try to disarm the lunatic.  Also a person could seated next to you could have several pistols or even a sawed off shotgun and you'd never be the wiser.  Likewise that thermos bottle could easily be filled with Kerosene rather than Coffee.

See the point?  In modern society anybody can be  a mage and anyone can cause a lot of damage if they decide to suddenly go off the deep end and do a killing spree.  That's especially true of the mentally ill but as Lob says, you can make the same argument about boys with blond hair and blue eyes.  It doesn't follow that they should be locked away and the key tossed.

I was extending the mentally ill analolgy because Western Society used to regard the so-called "violent" mentally ill in the same way you regard Mages in DAO and used almost exactly the same arguments.  Now, preemptive use of Aslysums is considered regressive and wrong.  Why?  Because Clinical Psychiatrists determined that it did more harm than good and for almost exactly the same reasons that we've been pointing out with mages.

-Polaris

[McHoger]

moilami wrote...

The analogy was about mages being as beings comparable to mentally ill. The connection was inherit abilities. Mentally ill could be changed to "blond haired" and it would work better. Every blond haired must be slain or put to a prison because they are inheritly able to cause massive destruction and none knows when they might do that.

My point is largely that trying to come up with a real world analogy is always going to be flawed reasoning because nothing in this world encapsulates the abomination/Circle situation in Dragon Age.

[IanPolaris]

McHoger wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

A difference that makes no difference is no difference.  The supposed justification for the circle is that some mages will "go bad" without warning and cause too much destruction for this to be worth the risk.  The same argument can (and has been in history!) used against the mentally ill.  The agent may be different but the justification and response to it is not.  Thus I'd say the original statement about locking up the mentally ill and locking away mages is basically valid.

-Polaris

It makes plenty of difference. A mentally ill person is the same person before and after the act. The reason we see it wrong to hold them accountable is because they lack the capabilites to comprehned what they had done. A mage essentially stops existing as they were when they become an abomintation and the new being moves with malicious intent. Whether or not the mage is aware of what is going on doesn't matter because the being performing the act is no longer the mage.

The demon is not some instrument that the mage is unwittingly using to perform evil acts. It's quite the opposite in fact.

No it really doesn't.  I agree that the mechanics are different, but the justifications (which is what matters here) is not.  In both cases, the justification is that a mage (or 'insane' person) might suddenly become a dire danger to society with little or no warning, and the damage such a person does to society makes it such that the cost of keeping him in society exceeds what society is willing to pay.  Frankly it's the same justification you see for a lot of preemptive imprisonment and concentration camps.  The security of the many (based on what the undesirablyes might do) is worth more than the human rights of the few.  THAT is the circle tower in a nutshell.  THAT was the justification for how Insane Asylums used to be run.

The problem is, it probably isn't true and the Chantry (at least high ranking Chantry) probably knows this.  So why lie about it?  Power.  Specifically power over magic.

-Polaris

[IanPolaris]

McHoger wrote...

moilami wrote...

The analogy was about mages being as beings comparable to mentally ill. The connection was inherit abilities. Mentally ill could be changed to "blond haired" and it would work better. Every blond haired must be slain or put to a prison because they are inheritly able to cause massive destruction and none knows when they might do that.

My point is largely that trying to come up with a real world analogy is always going to be flawed reasoning because nothing in this world encapsulates the abomination/Circle situation in Dragon Age.

Fair enough. Any analogy is going to be necessarily imperfect esp when you are dealing with something that isn't real (magic).  That said, I think the mentally ill one is likely the best RL analogy we're going to find....although Political Prisoners in time of war (concentration camps) isn't a bad one either.

-Polaris

[Beerfish]

"Saying you need to lock mages up because they could become abominations, is wrong. I get that people want that, because hey mages
can wreck havoc with their magic, that no non-mage can't come close to.
But if that is ok, when where should one draw the line?"

Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in Redcliffe this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in the circle incident this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in wardens keep this.[b]

The big difference is not whether any peson can do bad things, cause havok etc, it's the scale of the problem when you have people with magical talents.  In any case I'm all for making the life of mages better, I still haven't heard a credible plan at this point. And with no proper plan the life of mages could actually become worse than it was before.

Modifié par Beerfish, 27 janvier 2011 - 06:10 .

[LobselVith8]

Beerfish wrote...

"Saying you need to lock mages up because they could become abominations, is wrong. I get that people want that, because hey mages
can wreck havoc with their magic, that no non-mage can't come close to.
But if that is ok, when where should one draw the line?"

Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in Redcliffe this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in the circle incident this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in wardens keep this.[b]

The big difference is not whether any peson can do bad things, cause havok etc, it's the scale of the problem when you have people with magical talents.  In any case I'm all for making the life of mages better, I still haven't heard a credible plan at this point. And with no proper plan the life of mages could actually become worse than it was before.

You mean the power to destroy entire nations with mere words, the kind of power that only the Andrastian Chantry has? Let's ask the Dalish elves how they feel about the Chantry and about the templars they said came into their nation when they kicked out the missionaries, let's ask the relatives of D'Sims how they feel about templars murdering him because they wrongly thought he was a mage, let's ask the relatives of all the mages who were falsely accused of being maleficarum and murdered how they feel about the Chantry system, and let's see how many more mages die because they're condemned to an inhumane system of imprisonment under the guard of armored drug addicts who only answer to an anti-mage organization.

[EmperorSahlertz]

IanPolaris wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

I would like to point out that the Collective does not really police themselves. At least none of the quests we get are meant as policing.
The one with the Abomination: It is not because they know about an Abomination they send you out. It is becase one of their amges has gone missing, and they would like you to make sure he is okay. That his apprentice had turned into an Abomination was totally incidental, and probably didn't even matter to them. So no policing act here. At least not intentional anyway.

This is a form of policing oneself.  The National Park Service has Rangers and Rangers will look for hikers that go missing and ask others to help (esp Explorer Scouts).  This is very much an act of self-policing.  Don't believe me?  Then why is missing persons invariably assigned as a police function!  [Hint:  It's because if a person goes missing, there is a high probability that there may well be criminal activity behind it.]

So this argument fails.

The Maleficar Covenant (Brecillian Forest): They send you out to kill a covenant of Maleficars, but not because they are Maleficars. But because they are practicing their magic too close to one of the collective's own's hideout. So out of fear of his own detection, he wants them eliminated. Again, no intentional policing here.

Getting rid of undesirable elements is another very traditional role of the police, so this argument fails as well.

Instead they actually send you out to warn several Maleficars of an impending Templar raid on their homes, so they actually do not police themselves. At least not against Blood Magic.

Not Malificars.  The relatives of Malificars, and it's accused Malificars.  Considering how little 'evidence' (hearsay will do) for a templar to run through a person for being a Malificar, I have zero problem with this.

-Polaris

........... Did you on purpose miss the entire point of my post, and went on a rant?

Modifié par EmperorSahlertz, 27 janvier 2011 - 06:22 .

[moilami]

Beerfish wrote...

"Saying you need to lock mages up because they could become abominations, is wrong. I get that people want that, because hey mages
can wreck havoc with their magic, that no non-mage can't come close to.
But if that is ok, when where should one draw the line?"

Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in Redcliffe this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in the circle incident this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in wardens keep this.[b]

The big difference is not whether any peson can do bad things, cause havok etc, it's the scale of the problem when you have people with magical talents.  In any case I'm all for making the life of mages better, I still haven't heard a credible plan at this point. And with no proper plan the life of mages could actually become worse than it was before.

Then you haven't read or thought about the issue enough. I came independently for similar solution like I have seen IanPolaris coming. Great minds think alike? xD Or some things are obvious?

What would be your solution if you think about it? I am interested to hear it, for you could (in theory) come up with even better solution than me and Ian. Sometimes obvious is too obvious to see even better solutions.

[moilami]

McHoger wrote...

moilami wrote...

The analogy was about mages being as beings comparable to mentally ill. The connection was inherit abilities. Mentally ill could be changed to "blond haired" and it would work better. Every blond haired must be slain or put to a prison because they are inheritly able to cause massive destruction and none knows when they might do that.

My point is largely that trying to come up with a real world analogy is always going to be flawed reasoning because nothing in this world encapsulates the abomination/Circle situation in Dragon Age.

That's why in mechanical engineering and in many other areas applied math doesn't require exact calculations but approximations. Take for example Pi. It is enough for your high school math to use 3.14 as a value for Pi, and in Economics you don't need even close to that two decimal accuracy for some math to be greatly useful. The same goes even more with social sciences because the actual data in hand is inaccurate. If you say there is no perfect real world analogy and claim we can't say anything because of that you say Economics and Social Sciences and Engineering is just worthless crap.

This is why you just make sense as much as you can or default to pull things out of your hat.

[IanPolaris]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

I would like to point out that the Collective does not really police themselves. At least none of the quests we get are meant as policing.
The one with the Abomination: It is not because they know about an Abomination they send you out. It is becase one of their amges has gone missing, and they would like you to make sure he is okay. That his apprentice had turned into an Abomination was totally incidental, and probably didn't even matter to them. So no policing act here. At least not intentional anyway.

This is a form of policing oneself.  The National Park Service has Rangers and Rangers will look for hikers that go missing and ask others to help (esp Explorer Scouts).  This is very much an act of self-policing.  Don't believe me?  Then why is missing persons invariably assigned as a police function!  [Hint:  It's because if a person goes missing, there is a high probability that there may well be criminal activity behind it.]

So this argument fails.

The Maleficar Covenant (Brecillian Forest): They send you out to kill a covenant of Maleficars, but not because they are Maleficars. But because they are practicing their magic too close to one of the collective's own's hideout. So out of fear of his own detection, he wants them eliminated. Again, no intentional policing here.

Getting rid of undesirable elements is another very traditional role of the police, so this argument fails as well.

Instead they actually send you out to warn several Maleficars of an impending Templar raid on their homes, so they actually do not police themselves. At least not against Blood Magic.

Not Malificars.  The relatives of Malificars, and it's accused Malificars.  Considering how little 'evidence' (hearsay will do) for a templar to run through a person for being a Malificar, I have zero problem with this.

-Polaris

........... Did you on purpose miss the entire point of my post, and went on a rant?

I got your point loud and clear.  It was clearly wrong, but I did understand it.  I was poining out that all those missions fall under what is considered to be "police work" and thus are in fact examples of the Mage's Collective "policing themselves" almost by definition.

-Polaris

[IanPolaris]

moilami wrote...

Beerfish wrote...

"Saying you need to lock mages up because they could become abominations, is wrong. I get that people want that, because hey mages
can wreck havoc with their magic, that no non-mage can't come close to.
But if that is ok, when where should one draw the line?"

Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in Redcliffe this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in the circle incident this.
Tell all the people and their freinds and relatives in wardens keep this.[b]

The big difference is not whether any peson can do bad things, cause havok etc, it's the scale of the problem when you have people with magical talents.  In any case I'm all for making the life of mages better, I still haven't heard a credible plan at this point. And with no proper plan the life of mages could actually become worse than it was before.

Then you haven't read or thought about the issue enough. I came independently for similar solution like I have seen IanPolaris coming. Great minds think alike? xD Or some things are obvious?

What would be your solution if you think about it? I am interested to hear it, for you could (in theory) come up with even better solution than me and Ian. Sometimes obvious is too obvious to see even better solutions.

I'll second this.  I believe I've come up with a good long term and reasonable solution, but it requires gradualism to work and I forsee a painful transition period.  If you can come up with something even better, I am interested in hearing it. 

-Polaris

[EmperorSahlertz]

IanPolaris wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

IanPolaris wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

I would like to point out that the Collective does not really police themselves. At least none of the quests we get are meant as policing.
The one with the Abomination: It is not because they know about an Abomination they send you out. It is becase one of their amges has gone missing, and they would like you to make sure he is okay. That his apprentice had turned into an Abomination was totally incidental, and probably didn't even matter to them. So no policing act here. At least not intentional anyway.

This is a form of policing oneself.  The National Park Service has Rangers and Rangers will look for hikers that go missing and ask others to help (esp Explorer Scouts).  This is very much an act of self-policing.  Don't believe me?  Then why is missing persons invariably assigned as a police function!  [Hint:  It's because if a person goes missing, there is a high probability that there may well be criminal activity behind it.]

So this argument fails.

The Maleficar Covenant (Brecillian Forest): They send you out to kill a covenant of Maleficars, but not because they are Maleficars. But because they are practicing their magic too close to one of the collective's own's hideout. So out of fear of his own detection, he wants them eliminated. Again, no intentional policing here.

Getting rid of undesirable elements is another very traditional role of the police, so this argument fails as well.

Instead they actually send you out to warn several Maleficars of an impending Templar raid on their homes, so they actually do not police themselves. At least not against Blood Magic.

Not Malificars.  The relatives of Malificars, and it's accused Malificars.  Considering how little 'evidence' (hearsay will do) for a templar to run through a person for being a Malificar, I have zero problem with this.

-Polaris

........... Did you on purpose miss the entire point of my post, and went on a rant?

I got your point loud and clear.  It was clearly wrong, but I did understand it.  I was poining out that all those missions fall under what is considered to be "police work" and thus are in fact examples of the Mage's Collective "policing themselves" almost by definition.

-Polaris

So you got it, but chose to ignore it? The point was that they did not care wether or not an Abomination or Maleficars were involved. They only care about their own security. I have no reason to believe that the Collective would bother with killing an Abomination, unless it was threatening one of their own, and much less with Maleficars.

[IanPolaris]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

So you got it, but chose to ignore it? The point was that they did not care wether or not an Abomination or Maleficars were involved. They only care about their own security. I have no reason to believe that the Collective would bother with killing an Abomination, unless it was threatening one of their own, and much less with Maleficars.

They only cared about their own security and that makes them different from the rest of the human race, how?  The collective didn't know that the apprentice had gone abomination, but did know that one of their own was missing.  They hired a crack team (your Warden) to investigate.  That's self-policing.

A member thought that the Malificarum were endangering the security of the collective (and his own).  So the Mage's Collective hired a crack team to take care of it.  Self-Policing.  Honestly "bloodmagic" isn't as evil as you or the Chantry would have everyone believe anyway.  It's the mind-control magic that is the most problematic and it's only a tiny part of bloodmagic.  There isn't a single stanza in the Chant of Light that forbids blood magic.  Not one.

As for the suspected Malificarum, the Collective was protecting it's own members against assult which is yet another police duty.  When you consider that the approved and accepted form of Templar Interrogation vs Malificarum is to run the sword through first and ask questions later, I find it difficult to fault the collective here.

-Polaris

Edit PS:  The Mage's Collective is self-interested (a mage's club).  It is not in the mage's best interests to let an abomination run rampant, so of course they'd try to stop it if they knew about it!  You accuse the Mage's Collective of being self-interested but aren't willing to take that to it's logical conclusion.

Modifié par IanPolaris, 27 janvier 2011 - 07:13 .