Hypotheticals and RPGers...

[seawasp]

So my good online friend burger_eater  posted this question on his LJ today. (Summary: your only child, a 5 year old girl, has been turned to a vampire without warning, and without knowledge of how. Knowing she'll live forever as a child will you turn yourselves into vampires to care for her?

My response was: 

Too too too many variables in that to answer. I need the specs on the type ov vampire, variations base on age (do you get stronger as you age, etc), position of vampires in society, existence or not of organization surrounding either or both vampires and hunters, etc., etc., and so on. Without that, reasonable answers range from "Hell yeah, we're changing!" to staking my own daughter out of mercy and necessity. And I do have a 6 year old daughter who was five only a week ago.

burger_eater responded with "you can't find out that information", and the discussion went a couple on in that vein.

I sensed some frustration there in that I think he felt it was a chilling but fairly clear choice one way or the other. To me, though, any such hypothetical can't be presented that way, because the decision is predicated on the precise details of the situation. This may come from the fact that I've been a roleplaying gamer (RPGer) for... um... 34 years now. Present me with a character-type choice, I'll analyze it the way I would playing the game. I want to know the rules. I want the stats of my opposition. I want to know the limits and advantages of the choices. It's like asking "would you throw the switch on a condemned prisoner"? Some people may answer "yes" automatically, and others may answer "no" automatically, but I'll answer "What was he condemned for? Do I think he got a raw deal on the trial? Why am I in the position of throwing the switch -- what's my authority?" and so on.

In that specific case, of course, he presented it in a context that is a VERY strong emotional one for any parent. As I pointed out, I *have* a little girl about that age, and so making a snap decision about how to address it just wouldn't EVER happen. I'd exhaust all possible resources to address and define the problem before making any decisions.

How many others out there are like me? Or are most of you more able to block out the questions and just answer the hypotheticals as framed?

Comments

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

In this case as in most of its kind, I find the framing constraints too absurd to consider. "Vampire turns my five-year-old daughter," or even, "the Man in the Moon climbs down my chimney and tries to sell me a used time machine," sure.

"Know all the conditions in advance so I can decide on them, and know also I can't ever find out more?"

The me who is capable of having even that one belief, is not capable of being me. The asker is licked before he starts. Though since there exist people who can believe such things, I guess it isn't an idle question, either.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I'm with everyone who asks for context on hypotheticals. In fact, I once irritated a lawyer voir-dire-ing me during jury duty for just that reason; his hypothetical -- "Would you sue the landlord of an apartment building if your mother was injured in a slip-and-fall accident on one of its sidewalks?" -- left out all kinds of things I would have wanted to take into account, such as how the accident took place, whether the landlord had a history of negligence or not, how bad the injury was, and whether this particular slip-and-fall constituted a suing matter by law. "It depends" evidently wasn't a good answer. (I've never served on a jury yet, though I actually wouldn't mind doing so. I think it would be interesting.)

Hell, no!

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Without context, it's worse than meaningless!

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

The antagonism inherent in RPG interactions (in which you have a scenario in front of you that you have to best in some way) misses the point of a question like this. I'm not a GM and there are no XP at stake here. It's not an opportunity to rules-lawyer a situation or demand information the decider doesn't have.

For instance, several people have been talking about demons and souls, but the whole point of having the child unaffected by religious symbols is to take that sort of easy moral certitude off the table. That didn't stop people from turning immediately to euthanasia for quality of life issues.

Also, people need to make all sorts of difficult decisions without knowing exactly what will come from it. You've read Child of Fire and will probably not be surprised to hear that I'm interested in the way people make decisions based on imperfect information. In a way, stripping away easy predictability of the outcomes changes the hypothetical from a less interesting question (How would you maximize happiness in this situation?) to one that interests me more (What seems to be the right thing to do?)

Which is why the gamer/genre tendency to argue the rules ("Vampires such as you describe should be extinct!" "I'm going to uncover the secret vampire subculture!") misses the point, which is to ask: Would you give over your life to care for your own child? Would you risk taking on her illness in the hopes of protecting her, whatever that might mean?

The "gamer" response loses you a chance for self-examination and self-reflection.

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Not having had children of my own, I'm already convinced that all five year olds are the spawn of the devil and should be staked on general principles. But that's just me.

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

misses the point, which is to ask: Would you give over your life to care for your own child? Would you risk taking on her illness in the hopes of protecting her, whatever that might mean?

If that's the core question that whoever intended to ask, they should have done so in a less emotionally-charged way. The word 'vampire' evokes strong imagery and emotions.

Try this: A nanotech experiment has escaped from a laboratory and infected some of the populace, including your daughter. Nobody knows what the nanites are doing to these people. It is likely to change their bodies and their minds in unknown ways, but nobody knows how. The infection is not contagious but it can be transmitted between willing participants. What do you do?

I think the answer here is very clear; without the connotations of demonic presenses and immortality, it's plain that your daughter is sick and you should care for her, but acquiring her illness yourself just to better understand her condition is idiotic. If it detrimentally affects your mind, how will that help you help her?

But maybe that's just my perspective, and as I said before any excuse to stake five-year-olds is okay by me.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

... but acquiring her illness yourself just to better understand her condition is idiotic.

And not at all part of the hypothetical.

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

Need more context of course. It isn't a simple stake/change question. What kind of vampire leads the questions and no that isn't being cute. Even with out the variant there are to many types of vampires in myth to simply make a yes/no answer to this. Again which of the varieties of vampire are we talking about? From what culture and what background?

[seawasp]

No, it doesn't lose any such chance, because your rephrased hypothetical doesn't improve the question, really. Of course I'd give over my own life to care for my child; I've effectively DONE so to a considerable extent -- if I had no kids, I'd be living a vastly different life today.

The hypothetical as posed has not only emotionally-charged issues associated with it but too many questions open to make a meaningful decision. You weren't asking "how much is your child's life worth", you were posing a situation without any opportunity for me to actually understand the situation, so to speak.

If you put my child in peril, I will do what I can for them. "What I can" will of course vary drastically depending on the peril, and THAT is the point. If I ask you "would you do X for Y amount of money", the answer to the question will depend on X and Y and on your own personal preferences. You handed me X, but didn't hand me Y, so to speak.

[seawasp]

Doesn't quite work; in the Vampire hypothetical he's established a number of known effects of the infection, just not enough of the world conditions to make a decision.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Most parents give over a portion of their lives to care for their kids--some give up even more than that for a child with special needs. But I notice you skipped over the second question, about whether you would take on her condition if it meant you could protect her for her endless life.

And if I told you that she was still your same old daughter, but with the fangs, thirst for (small amounts) of blood and aversion to sun/garlic, if I said she stopped aging and developing but didn't show any signs of being "unholy," and if I said there was no guarantee the transformation would work the same way for you... Well, you don't have enough information to act yet and you don't know what you'd do.

Which is perfectly fine.

[seawasp]

I didn't skip the question, I pointed out there was insufficient data as of yet to make the decision. And no need to make it for quite some years. I would do what was best for her in the long run. What that is depends on exactly what the condition is, how it affects her -- and you've only touched the surface -- what else is, or can be, learned about it, what other events may happen in the interim, and so on.

There's no effective way to HIDE the condition, though you might tapdance around calling it "vampirism' for several years (though I'd bet not).

The "unholy" bit's a red herring, really; that's just one possible aspect of one set of vampires, and not even the worst possible aspect.

Taking on her condition would eliminate many people's ability TO take care of the daughter, even if I assume there aren't any negative PSYCHOLOGICAL limitations of the condition, just the physical ones described. I'd have to stop working except as a writer, and even there my work's going to be rather circumscribed. I suppose I, personally, might be able to get some traction from being the only writer of vampire fiction who's writing from experience. But as a general thing, taking on that condition without the RESOURCES to basically survive forever on is going to be problematic at best. You can't care for your child if you can't work anywhere, unless you're already rich.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

It's not a red herring at all; it's put there in an attempt to head off the "God wants me to kill her" thing, which some people (here and in my own comments) seem determined to invoke.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

So far the critical issue among the commentators seems to be the mental problems; the original poster has a form of vampirism where the kid won't become an adult mind in an undead child's body, but rather an undead kid with some form of learning disability or anterograde amnesia. For obvious reasons, many posters are wondering how taking on the same mental health problems would help.

There also seems to be an implied game-rule that even afflicted bystanders must maintain the Masquerade, although panicky governmental over-reaction has been brought up more often than irate vampire enforcers.

[seawasp]

As a side issue, I don't see RPG interactions as "antagonism" inherently. The GM is not an adversary, he or she merely presents a world. You choose what challenges to address, and how to address them.

Asking a question which involves any sort of conflict of decisionmaking is a challenge. If challenge = antagonism, then there's pretty much no interaction that doesn't involve some level of antagonism, I guess.

[seawasp]

But the Masquerade is inherently impossible in this scenario, unless the parents in question happen to be pretty wealthy and properly situated. I can't even begin to imagine how I could hide such a condition; my little girl goes to school, there's MANY people who would come to inquire if she stopped going, and medical excuses require medical examination and certification. And a medical exam is going to bust the masquerade WIDE open.

[othercat.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a "find out all background information pertaining to the situation" type, even if I don't game very much.

[othercat.livejournal.com]

((The "gamer" response loses you a chance for self-examination and self-reflection.))

I don't see much self-reflection/examination in the the question. Leaving aside lack of context/information there are two equally bad choices where one is presented as good (taking care of the kid by sacrificing your life) and one is presented as bad (killing the kid vampire). Depending on your cultural background/society/cultural norm/personal gut feeling one of these choices is going to be seen as the good one and the other is the bad one. Lacking context, you are going to go for the one that makes sense according to your norms.

But both are bad options and there is no third choice/option compromise that doesn't involve death. (in my head the nearest middle road options are a) abandonment of the child--allowing a third part to dispose of the kid and b) murder-suicide.)

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I concur. Oh, it would be possible to move every two years or so, but someone's going to start asking questions sooner or later. burger_eater seems to think that the only government response is to kill all vampires no matter how friendly or co-operative they are; I am unconvinced.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

I should point out that I never offered "kill the child" as an option in my original post. It was all "care for her forever or age normally and find someone to take over when you pass." The euthanasia option was introduced by commenters

[seawasp]

And "kill her" never occurred to me until then. It was either take care of her myself, or arrange for caregivers as time goes on.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

The GM isn't a direct adversary, but they create trouble for the PCs. For fun.

And cooperation doesn't have to involve antagonism.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Alternatively, if they refuse to supply the context, just make your own up to make it easy on yourself and provide the answer accordingly.

Apparently this began as a different discussion elsewhere. But just as a general thing, if someone poses a hypothetical in casual conversation, then it may be for the sake of seeing what context the responder makes up.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

I'll join with Burger Eater - too many of my interesting (to me) hypotheticals seem to hang up on people bringing demands for what seems to me to be irrelevant information. When I am posing a hypothetical I am not usually postulating a complete and consistent world - rather the world's borders extend to the end of the question and from there on it is turtles all the way down. Verbal shorthands I or other people have developed in order to cut these digressions out and get to the question itself include "Alien Space Bats [do something]" - to skip how it was done, or why and "If you were a Brustian(*) god would you ...." to remove the reply of "I wouldn't do either one - both are immoral".


(*) Brustian god - Some of the Dragerans in Stephen Brust's Vlad Taltosh universe define a god as 'someone who may morally perform an action that would be immoral if it were not performed by a god.'

[gil-liant.livejournal.com]

True, but this came up in the context of not being able to answer hypotheticals with inadequate context. Typically my goal isn't to deny the questioner information so much as be able (to the best of my ability) to fulfill their request while remaining true to myself.

I absolutely agree that by supplying context I might well reveal much more about myself than if I simply offered a response to the question in its original form. The most secure way to answer a hypothetical question is always. "No comment. We'll have to see what happens if the situtation actually comes up."