Neutrality

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ophelia
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Fri Dec 07, 2018 10:04 am

Alex Ayres wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:53 am
ophelia wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:25 am


The stigma is rooted in the fact that generally folks that donned the cloak of neutrality used that particular aide to run amok unchecked, insulting and provoking without any real and painful consequences because they do not want to lose their blood but they do want to be ~insert whatever description tickles your fancy~ . Aka- blood whores. Cowards. A variety of other colorful names a lady won't repeat.
Is this true, though? You say generally people who took the power of neutrality behaved this way, but where are the numbers to support this?
As I said, the stigma around neutrality is just as I stated. Not that everyone does it, simply that it was done enough in the past when it was introduced with a smattering of incidents over the years to led whatever colorful terms are used for it.

To which I added:
Then there are those that take on neutrality because they have no dog in any particular fight, don't want one and it offers protection from blood loss should they get caught in the crossfire of a skirmish and simply enjoy an existence of gaining blood and coins
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Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:33 am

Alex Ayres wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:53 am
Is this true, though? You say generally people who took the power of neutrality behaved this way, but where are the numbers to support this?

Of course, I would be interested in seeing how many people have had the power and what percentage of those people went out and insulted people and provoked them before landing on either side of the issue.
I genuinely wish you'd do some research before you formulate an opinion on something. Look up Miranda Dawn, and Lord Galamushi. I'm not going to pretend I'm some kind of fount of knowledge on the two of them, but I'm sure you can find someone more than vaguely familiar with those events, and his thrall bounty hunter program.

Alex Ayres wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:53 am
Anecdotally, the only experience I have with someone who has the power was when they posted in this thread, and DezMarie seems like a reasonable, in fact, brave, person to take on the power amidst the strong negativity surrounding it.
Dez is lovely, yes, but ultimately because she is lovely and actually neutral, her having the cloak is a formality rather than enforced necessity.
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Alex Ayres
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Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:43 am

ophelia wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 10:04 am
Alex Ayres wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:53 am
ophelia wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:25 am


The stigma is rooted in the fact that generally folks that donned the cloak of neutrality used that particular aide to run amok unchecked, insulting and provoking without any real and painful consequences because they do not want to lose their blood but they do want to be ~insert whatever description tickles your fancy~ . Aka- blood whores. Cowards. A variety of other colorful names a lady won't repeat.
Is this true, though? You say generally people who took the power of neutrality behaved this way, but where are the numbers to support this?
As I said, the stigma around neutrality is just as I stated. Not that everyone does it, simply that it was done enough in the past when it was introduced with a smattering of incidents over the years to led whatever colorful terms are used for it.

To which I added:
Then there are those that take on neutrality because they have no dog in any particular fight, don't want one and it offers protection from blood loss should they get caught in the crossfire of a skirmish and simply enjoy an existence of gaining blood and coins
I think the miscommunication here was in the fact that you used the word "generally" in your original post and didn't actually say it was "done enough times."

If what you meant was it was done enough times, then, in my opinion, that's a subjective measure that there would be no data for. Enough times for one person may not be enough times for another. At which point, I would agree. Based on the fact that there is a stigma, then we seem to have met that threshold to create a stigma.

Did you add the second part as an edit to your original post? If so, I think I started responding before the edit. If not, I honestly missed that paragraph and apologize for discounting it!
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Alex Ayres
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Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:58 am

Vex wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:33 am
Alex Ayres wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:53 am
Is this true, though? You say generally people who took the power of neutrality behaved this way, but where are the numbers to support this?

Of course, I would be interested in seeing how many people have had the power and what percentage of those people went out and insulted people and provoked them before landing on either side of the issue.
I genuinely wish you'd do some research before you formulate an opinion on something. Look up Miranda Dawn, and Lord Galamushi. I'm not going to pretend I'm some kind of fount of knowledge on the two of them, but I'm sure you can find someone more than vaguely familiar with those events, and his thrall bounty hunter program.
I hear you on this, and I'm sure if I asked around I would hear stories about the awful things those two did.

But stories and memories on two individuals aren't reliable data points. They are anecdotal. I could tell you about some things that are characteristic of mobsters that Al Capone and Vito Genovese did (and had other people do). I'm not going to go around and say that most Italians, or generally Italians, are mobsters, though.

I'm not saying that people don't abuse neutrality. I'm just posing the question: Is the ratio of people who abuse neutrality vs people who have neutrality high enough to say that abusing neutrality is "generally" what happens or is the standard practice?
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Sat Dec 08, 2018 12:42 am

Vex wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:33 am

I genuinely wish you'd do some research before you formulate an opinion on something. Look up Miranda Dawn, and Lord Galamushi. I'm not going to pretend I'm some kind of fount of knowledge on the two of them, but I'm sure you can find someone more than vaguely familiar with those events, and his thrall bounty hunter program.
I was in Hells Angels when this happened. Miranda was using HA for a personal vendetta and took on the pink panties to keep from being zeored. That was the downfall of the clan becuase it was a direct order to never take on neutrality. You can point to that time that closed Hells Angles. We all left and it folded.

I agree, look at the old papers and see exactly what went on.
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Sat Dec 08, 2018 9:29 am

ophelia wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 7:19 am
Years ago, people wanted an enforced resting rule and went to RavenBlack. The suggestions were making it a power or just making it something that happened naturally to vampires when zeroed (which at the time was considered ten or less) Raven was having none of that forced nonsense and the battle cloak was introduced for those that wanted to fight and have a formally enforced resting period, and it backfired spectacularly in that respect and never really took off. There were a few instances, and Lucius comes to mind in which he donned the battle cloak to escape attacks, only to have a group of his attackers do the same and he then turned around and dropped the cloak (which you can do one time).
Just an add from someone with intimate knowledge of what exactly was asked for, what Raven implemented was one of those most bastardized things I have ever seen in my entire time here.

As far as neutrality as a power is concerned, every time I see the pink panties, I instantly think about the time Archangel had his entire clan take them in order to become blood gods to try and be un-killable once they took them off and attacked every clan that was an offshoot of theirs.

Neutrality as a mindset is what it is, honestly. Just keep your face out of my non-neutral affairs and I won't tell you're that you're a stupid hypocrite.
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Alex Ayres
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Sat Dec 08, 2018 9:49 am

Gypsy wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 12:42 am
Vex wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:33 am

I genuinely wish you'd do some research before you formulate an opinion on something. Look up Miranda Dawn, and Lord Galamushi. I'm not going to pretend I'm some kind of fount of knowledge on the two of them, but I'm sure you can find someone more than vaguely familiar with those events, and his thrall bounty hunter program.
I was in Hells Angels when this happened. Miranda was using HA for a personal vendetta and took on the pink panties to keep from being zeored. That was the downfall of the clan becuase it was a direct order to never take on neutrality. You can point to that time that closed Hells Angles. We all left and it folded.

I agree, look at the old papers and see exactly what went on.

This is a really great example of anecdotal evidence, the exact thing I'm saying is not a great indicator as to what the most common use of neutrality is.

I don't know how else I can say it, so instead I'll post an article that supposedly takes 9 minutes to read (it took me 25, but I am admittedly a slow reader) and it does a better job of breaking down anecdotal evidence.

https://towardsdatascience.com/how-anec ... 295303d577

Some highlights for me:

"In a nutshell, when you experience a data point yourself, you will associate greater value to it than if it was simply reported to you. Because you experience more emotions from a data point, you naturally (often subconsciously) assign it more importance.

How does this blow up your data insights? Too many times, these anecdotes are descriptions of data points that are no different than data points that provide you with your desired metric and your desired metric alone. The anecdote is a drop in bucket, and it can lure you into making it seem of greater significance than it actually is.

This occurs every day with customer service. The people most likely to call in will be dissatisfied customers, and you can bet they will providing descriptions at length as to how a product or service gave them a horrendous experience. If executives were to listen to these stories and compare them to raw data that showed that their sales were getting stronger, they might be prone to making ill-advised changes because of the emotional weight attached to consumer anecdotes. This is not to say that those dissatisfied customers don’t count as data points, or that there is nothing to be done to improve the product or service. It’s simply stating the fact that each customer should be weighted the same, even if the dissatisfied data point is more emotionally engaging."

"Without a data collection process set in place ahead of time, anecdotal evidence will make you susceptible to the basic human instinct to assign greater value to inputs that move you emotionally. Incorrectly weighted inputs lead to incorrect outputs. This could result in implementing the wrong strategy, costing you resources or worse, customers."

"Anecdotal evidence can be a powerful tool to derive unique insights from your data if used properly. Remember our definition of an anecdote? It’s a data point that provides additional information. If you have a disciplined approach, that information won’t mislead you, it can generate a better understanding of what you’re researching.

If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: let anecdotal evidence drive your questions, and data analytics support the answers."

[Note that, my picking out the highlights of the article is an example of anecdotal evidence. You should read the whole article and draw your own conclusions (I know you probably know this, but I wanted to make this clear).]

Or, even the summary on the Wikipedia page is decent, but I would encourage you to look into the topic on your own and find more reliable sources:

"Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes, i.e., evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony. When compared to other types of evidence, anecdotal evidence is generally regarded as limited in value due to a number of potential weaknesses, but may be considered within the scope of scientific method as some anecdotal evidence can be both empirical and verifiable, e.g. in the use of case studies in medicine. Other anecdotal evidence, however, does not qualify as scientific evidence, because its nature prevents it from being investigated by the scientific method.

Where only one or a few anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases.[1][2] Similarly, psychologists have found that due to cognitive bias people are more likely to remember notable or unusual examples rather than typical examples.[3] Thus, even when accurate, anecdotal evidence is not necessarily representative of a typical experience. Accurate determination of whether an anecdote is typical requires statistical evidence.[4] Misuse of anecdotal evidence is an informal fallacy and is sometimes referred to as the "person who" fallacy ("I know a person who..."; "I know of a case where..." etc.) which places undue weight on experiences of close peers which may not be typical. Compare with hasty generalization.

The term is sometimes used in a legal context to describe certain kinds of testimony which are uncorroborated by objective, independent evidence such as notarized documentation, photographs, audio-visual recordings, etc.

When used in advertising or promotion of a product, service, or idea, anecdotal reports are often called a testimonial, which are highly regulated[5] or banned in some[which?] jurisdictions."


This topic for me just raised more questions. Note that the "you" I am referring to is a general one, meaning, if you are one of the people who stigmatizes neutrality:

1. If you want to stigmatize neutrality because you've personally had, or know people who personally have had, bad experiences with neutrality, there's obviously nothing anyone can do to stop you from doing so. I just question whether or not the people who are doing so would do the same thing in other aspects of existence?

2. (For the people who choose to launder money or benefit from laundered money) How do you justify being against the abuse of one system, but being for the abuse of another? And if you're for the abuse of any kind of system (and willing to pass judgement on people who abuse a system while you, yourself, are abusing a system), what does that say about you? (admittedly an off topic question, and probably goes back to the "inherently evil creatures who don't give a fuck" argument)

3. If when people were teaching newcomers to the city on the ways of city life, if Neutrality were taught from an unbiased perspective, and as one of many paths (not just the one of the warrior), would there be such a stigma around it, would more people have taken it, and would there be less war?
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Vex
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Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:46 am

... Yes, tons of people have neutrality and exist in their own little bubble and do not interact whatsoever. I'm not even bothering to read your bullshit human article because it's not relevant. What is relevant is the vast amount of those who interact with others in this city who choose to take the cloak do so for not-so-great reasons. Dez is one of a handful of people with neutrality that I've known to not abuse it. As for Seyda's example, that was dozens of people.
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Alex Ayres
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Sat Dec 08, 2018 2:25 pm

Vex wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:46 am
... Yes, tons of people have neutrality and exist in their own little bubble and do not interact whatsoever.
To live in a bubble and not interact whatsoever is probably the truest sense of neutrality that can exist. I agree with Ember in that no one can be truly neutral, but if I had to describe a perfectly neutral person...one of my examples would be the person you've described above.

And if there are "tons" of these people, that would mean "tons" of people use neutrality in a positive, or dare I say, neutral, way. Which would be the intended use of Neutrality.

But, because these people don't interact with anyone, a sign of their neutrality, they are not valid data points in whether or not neutrality is, in most cases, used "correctly," or "incorrectly."

Just to clarify what it seems to me like you're saying.
Vex wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:46 am
What is relevant is the vast amount of those who interact with others in this city who choose to take the cloak do so for not-so-great reasons.

So you're saying the vast amount of people who interact with others in this city, i.e., members of this community specifically, have taken the cloak for not-so-great reasons.

This is probably true. But not representative of the entire city. What you've said here is that members of this community specifically have taken something that was meant to be used one way, and done something shitty with it.

In the context of this community, how does that make neutrality any different from the system in place to stop someone from having multiple employees and the systems in place to make sure that individuals don't get money by illegal means?

As far as neutrality and this community goes, neutrality isn't the problem. The people in this community are the problem. We could introduce a teddy bear that only spreads love and joy to this community and someone would find out a way to turn it into something to hurt their enemies.

Vex wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:46 am
Dez is one of a handful of people with neutrality that I've known to not abuse it.
From what she has described, I agree that it appears that she does not abuse neutrality based on her description of how she conducts herself, and I would go as far as to say based on that description, she is a corageous person.

As far as "that I've known" goes, see my post on anecdotal evidence.

Vex wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:46 am
As for Seyda's example, that was dozens of people.
See my post on anecdotal evidence. Also, Seyda's example seems like a better example of the horrors of blind loyalty than the horrors of neutrality.


Vex wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:46 am
I'm not even bothering to read your bullshit human article because it's not relevant.
I'm going to let this sentence here speak for itself as to why I am going to disengage from any discussion with specifically you going forward on this topic.

Have a good afternoon, Vex!
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