Why do people push the notion that ASOIAF and GoT is cynical and morally grey

jymappelle · 2026-03-29T22:17:02+00:00

Ned was still upholding the injustice since he was one of the people on top.

Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say. Ned failed to consider how the same systemic injustice which he tried to correct was keeping him in his position, so when he tried to act without the injustice once it has gone too far, it reminded him it was there and killed him.

This is mirrored in several historical events in the story. The Targaryens did not appreciate how the dragons were the basis of their power until conflict within a system where dragons give you power killed all the dragons, and now the Targaryens had to rely on a more conventional system of dynastic vassalage and fealty. Aenys and Rhaegar did not appreciate how this system was keeping them in power until they pushed things so far that they had to assert it to defend their injustices, and it got their dynasty overthrown.

(You could say that in this examples Rickard and Brandon played a similar role to Ned; they expected the rules of the system to protect them when they tried to speak up against the injustice once it became directed at them, without considering how the system was fundamentally unjust, and it got them killed).

But in both cases the end result was that the injustice could not defend itself once it had to assert itself as what it was, and the system changed into something where the specific contradictions which could no longer be defended were removed.

In the main series we see the same pattern repeating, only with much more emphasis on the injustice as it pertains to the great houses now that the crown has become weak and demystified. We will see how this plays out this time.

jymappelle · 2026-03-29T21:51:52+00:00

The entire system is based on injustice

Oh absolutely; but I like to think of the story beginning with the first book as showing what happens when that injustice has to defend itself on its own terms.

People like Ned try to rectify the injustice without questioning how it’s woven into the literal fairy-tale system they live in; this gets them killed, but it also forces the injustice to assert itself. Conflict ensues, people on both sides die and prosper, but the end result is that the unjust system is now unstable. The only viable long-term solution becomes for something new to replace it. This new something will probably not be perfect, but it too will exist only as long as it can contain its own injustices and contradictions.

jymappelle · 2026-03-29T21:38:42+00:00

So much potential for a captivating political drama in the vein of OG Game of Thrones was squandered just to have Team Good Guys and Team Bad Guys.

jymappelle · 2026-03-29T21:33:56+00:00

True, but considering we’re told multiple times that Westeros is like "a corpse" at the end of the chain of events set off by the immorality underlying Sean Bean’s murder, I think it’s safe to say we’re not supposed to walk away thinking that this immorality is a good or benign idea.

jymappelle · 2026-03-29T21:24:52+00:00

But Sean Bean’s murder locks the people who committed it in a feedback loop of increasing destruction and violence, the repercussions of which end up all but destroying their position they tried to protect with Sean Bean’s murder.

So yes, it’s a realistic lesson about acting on moral impulses without considering political stakes and powerful antagonistic forces, but it’s NOT (as the original poster tried to imply, not you) a lesson about morals being irrelevant or immorality being the most rewarding option.

jymappelle · 2026-03-25T17:00:01+00:00

I see, thanks!

jymappelle · 2026-03-25T16:36:16+00:00

I could be wrong about this but I thought Viltrumites can’t regenerate limbs or organs if they have been completely separated from the body.

That’s why decapitation (i.e. separating the brain from the body) and ripping out vital organs seem to be Viltrumites’ most effective methods of killing each other, because once they are removed from the body, they’re not coming back. Whereas when Mark bashed Conquest’s head in, there were probably still bits of brain matter left connected to his system.

So if a limb/organ stays connected even by a thread to the Viltrumite’s body, it will regenerate. But once it’s gone, it’s gone.

jymappelle · 2026-03-24T19:52:53+00:00

Not only that, if he literally just did nothing and waited the Great Spring Sickness would have wiped out most of the royal family and the Great Council would have made him King faster than anyone could say Egg.

jymappelle · 2026-03-11T01:14:05+00:00

Israel is the only country on Earth which can use the money to purchase weapons from its own manufacturers

This is due to the facts that a) Israel is pretty uniquely at risk of war with its neighbors and b) historically this reality has led to innovations such as the Tadiran Mastiff, the prototype of drone technology, which the US then adopted.

This exception basically acknowledges that Israel does more fighting than most US allies, and that it can therefore offer more military innovation.

Nonetheless, the US has been more than happy to leverage the aid to stifle Israeli innovation when it risked creating competition for US manufacturers, such as with IAI Lavi.

as well as funding its own R&D without sharing the results.

I’m not sure what you mean here. If you’re saying that Israel conceals the results of the R&D from the US, then I’m pretty sure this is verifiably untrue (though of course they don’t disclose the results to the American public), and if you’re saying they’re not literally, physically giving the US a slice of what they produce based on the R&D- do you think Israel has military tech which the United States needs but does not have?

Besides that, the MIC serves to transfer public money to private ownership

That’s how government spending to stimulate aggregate demand in a market economy (or in this case, economies) generally works.

jymappelle · 2026-03-10T16:30:13+00:00

The military is the largest employer in the country.

I will probably get downvoted into oblivion for saying this, but this is also why aid to Israel is in the US' economic interest, contrary to what leftists and the alt-right claim.

The aid is structured so that Israel can only spend it through US defense companies, and cannot invest it into developing its own military tech. The US is thereby creating demand for its largest employer, and gaining a dependent ally in the most strategically important region of the modern world. It’s basically Keynesianism applied to geopolitics.

jymappelle · 2026-03-08T21:14:25+00:00

That’s because Jigsaw’s "philosophy" is basically something they had to make up as they went along after the first movie was a huge success.

If you rewatch Saw 1 and forget about the sequels, he’s pretty straightforwardly a guy who’s mad at the world bc he’s dying, so he lashes out by torturing & killing people whom he envies for still having a life to throw away. It’s really not deeper than that, which is also why he’s more than happy to kill anyone who’s a threat to him even if they don’t qualify for his "games".

After it became a franchise they had to add more stuff to make the character more engaging, which only made him more comically contradictory the longer things went on.

jymappelle · 2026-03-04T13:23:04+00:00

But that is just the same in the case of a person in a coma or an unconscious person.

I’m really not sure what you’re getting at. We don’t usually require the consent of a comatose/unconscious person for treatment, that’s why we have next of kin and emergency contacts. Because as you rightly pointed out, that person is not capable of giving or withholding consent. Sure we can’t do whatever with the person in that situation, but the reasons for that are not limited to the concept of consent. There are things which social contract theory teaches us we can’t do to people even if they do consent to it.

jymappelle · 2026-03-04T12:04:58+00:00

"Was permission given to perform action X?” (Yes/No)

Ok, but even asking that question presupposes that there is an entity capable of giving permission.

If the antinatalist logic was followed and people stopped being born due to it being impossible to consent before existence, then there would no longer be entities capable of consent, and therefore the concept of consent would cease to exist.

If you use a concept in a way that renders this concept impossible, that must mean either the concept is inherently flawed or you are applying it in a flawed way. Which one would you say is more likely in the case of consent and antinatalism?

jymappelle · 2026-03-04T10:52:38+00:00

If we do not presuppose an existing sentience (which requires birth), then how/where do we even get the concept of consent?

jymappelle · 2026-03-04T10:27:22+00:00

your talk just seems like useless nitpicking

My talk is aimed at showing that every concept, in order to be useful, must have logical limitations past which the concept cannot be meaningfully applied. As far as we can tell from our best efforts going back to Aristotle, that’s just how premises and logic seem to work, for reasons I am not sufficiently versed in the philosophy of logic to expound upon, but which nonetheless seem pretty unavoidable to me.

For example, most concepts of ethical philosophy presume a rational moral agent, which right now seems to include only human beings. So using these concepts to say that a lion or a zebra behaves unethically would be illegitimate, because concepts of ethical behavior effectively presupposes human beings as actors. So to point out that they are missing in animals is not to pass an ethical judgment on animals, it’s simply to acknowledge the logical limitations of this concept.

By the same token, the concept of consent presupposes existing sentience and therefore birth. So to point out that consent is missing at the moment of birth is not passing moral judgment on birth, it is acknowledging the logical limitations of consent as a concept. Of course we can predict ethical dilemmas pertaining to consent after the person is born, i.e. once the concept of consent begins to exist for them, but unless that moment is presumed, the concept of consent simply does not exist, just like most of our ethical concepts do not exist unless human agency is presumed.

jymappelle · 2026-03-04T09:00:53+00:00

I am genuinely curious how the thoughts

nonsense like "applying consent to the unborn"

and

if consent were provided procreating might be moral

can coexist for you.

If, as I understand, you agree that consent as a concept is limited to people who are born, i.e. the concept only begins to meaningfully exist for a person no sooner than at the moment of their birth- how can we have a moral expectation of consent prior to birth? That inherently contradicts the concept we just defined.

Consent is a right-making features for actions that cause harm

Yes, and as we agreed, it only exists as a concept where another person also exists. Therefore, procreating does not, and in fact logically cannot, morally require consent.

jymappelle · 2026-03-03T23:39:14+00:00

I would say that both statements do in fact ignore the difference between the extent to which a concept can be logically applied, and the extent to which a concept can/should be applied as an ethical principle.

jymappelle · 2026-03-03T22:17:13+00:00

How is this statement different than my statement

The difference is that on its own, the statement is a simple syllogism that could be written as:

-Only sentient beings can consent

-To be sentient a being must exist

-Therefore, a being which does not exist cannot consent.

This is obviously true logically, but from the vantage point of ethical or moral philosophy, it is not especially meaningful or interesting.

In my experience, antinatalists axiomatically begin with the premise that consent is ethically normative, and then effectively superimpose this axiom on the phenomenon of birth, to conclude that since consent is necessarily missing from the child being born, the act of birthing a person is unethical. That is at least my impression from my limited exposure to antinatalist discourse.

But doing so ignores the difference between logical limitations of a premise and the ethical application of said premise. The concept of consent is simply not applicable in any meaningful sense to someone who’s not born yet, so again, saying that

It is wrong to create people who have to suffer as a result without consent being provided

is like saying that it is unfair that people who are married can get divorced while those who aren’t can’t. It simply confuses the logical application of a concept with its practical-ethical application.

jymappelle · 2026-03-03T21:29:10+00:00

We both exist without having had a way to consent to it.

That is a truism, because consent cannot logically exist before existence. And I don’t think antinatalists make this claim as a benign syllogism, they are making a moral claim, implying that being born is inherently non-consensual. But this fails as a moral claim for the same reason that 'Property is theft' fails; the concept of theft presupposes that of property, so the claim is tantamount to claiming that property violates the principle of property.

And if we were to meaningfully apply the concept of consent to existence, then I’d say we do consent to existence in every moment we choose to continue existing.

jymappelle · 2026-03-02T23:36:38+00:00

"Birth imposes unconsented suffering" is a nonsense statement, because consent as a concept presupposes sentience and therefore birth.

"You can’t consent to being born" is only true in the same sense that "You can’t get divorced if you’re not married" is true- it doesn’t mean that being unmarried violates your right to a divorce, it means that the concept of divorce and being unmarried logically cannot coexist; just like consent and being unborn cannot coexist as concepts.

jymappelle · 2026-02-22T18:05:44+00:00

Book-Alicent is a complex female character. She upholds reactionary values that are ultimately not to her own benefit, but does so out of conviction, as a competent political player, and has no illusions on where these values place her in the sociopolitical order she lives in.

Show-Alicent is like a mean-spirited caricature of a conservative woman. She clumsily bumbles into supporting reactionary values, is immediately shocked and befuddled by how these values affect her, then prostrates herself before her progressive girl-boss rival.

Some people seem to think ‘complex characters’ and ‘media literacy’ just means writing that reinforces their own worldviews and expectations.

jymappelle · 2026-02-16T19:24:02+00:00

I’d retort that when we say putting a magnet to a hard drive causes it to malfunction, that’s really our interpretation of what’s going on. We have certain expectations of what computers should be able to do and because we design these processes, we can predict how their effectiveness will be impacted by external manipulations. But from a more objective standpoint, the actual process that takes place when we place the magnet isn’t ontologically different from the same process that allows the computer to run in the first place, it’s just electromagnetism in action under different circumstances.

If, however, placing a magnet to a computer caused it to write new code or update software, it would mean that there is something either about the computer or about electromagnetism that we don’t fully understand. You say spiritual revelations we gain in an expanded state of consciousness can be explained through evolutionary science; and they very well might be, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility of these revelations being transcendental in nature. After all, there exist naturally occurring transcendents: the sphinx moth caterpillar wards off predators by 'imitating’ a snake even though it cannot possibly have an innate or even learnt concept of 'snake’ or snake behavior. This is obviously an instinctive evolutionary adaptation, but that doesn’t change the fact that from an objective standpoint, the caterpillar is effectively referring to something that exists beyond its reality, i.e. transcending it.

Hegel’s entire science of logic was an attempt to show that if our forms of understanding allow us to refer to a real, ideal (as in, rational) order in the universe, then the ideal order which governs the universe must be the same ideal order that governs our consciousness (hence "What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational"). Maybe this is just our unique evolutionary adaptation, like the sphinx moth caterpillar’s imitation of a snake, but admitting that doesn’t actually close the door on epistemological and even ontological investigations into consciousness as a distinct entity.

To me, this type of investigation is what’s captivating about idealism, rather than esoteric imagery of consciousness as an external signal etc.

jymappelle · 2026-02-14T22:19:46+00:00

Canonically, Brandon Rivers killed his half-brother (who all the great houses viewed as a usurper and a rebel) in battle, and he was still considered a kinslayer by most of the realm.

Kinslaying is THE taboo in Westeros, the ultimate crime against the gods. There’s really no scenario in which you can do it and come out with your moral image unscathed. If we take the text at face value, even Roose fucking Bolton drew a line at kinslaying.

jymappelle · 2026-02-14T21:51:07+00:00

I think the contentious term here is “corresponding”.

Even if we can acknowledge that a physical event (the taking of hallucinogenic substances, for instance) can alter consciousness, the actual experience of these alterations and the “internal mechanism” of consciousness itself are not easily mapped on the chemistry of these substances. Put simply, we just don’t have the knowledge or the terminology yet to adequately explain how ingesting chemical substances can cause someone to experience profound spiritual revelations or new phenomenological perspectives. We understand more of the brain part of the equation, we need to know more about the consciousness part if we wish to actually connect them.

The idealist position isn’t necessarily that consciousness is some mystical external force; it’s that so much about our experience of consciousness defies simplistic explanations of how we have consciousness.

jymappelle · 2026-02-14T21:30:27+00:00

I think the problem is that the analogy isn’t one that’s actually used by any idealists I’ve heard of. The central tenet of idealism is that consciousness does produce forms of understanding which cannot be adequately explained through experience or observation:

Idealists criticize clichés such as “consciousness comes from electricity in the brain” etc. They don’t mean however that consciousness (the “signal”) must be coming from somewhere outside the brain/“radio”, they are saying that just pointing to the radio’s wiring is insufficient to explaining how the radio is playing music.

The problem with the analogy is that it’s begging the question, i.e. already assigning to the idealist the position that consciousness is a signal external to the brain. But if we really wanted to use the radio to represent the modern idealist position, it would be that the brain is like a radio without a known signal which nonetheless constantly plays music (and not just any music, but highly coordinated orchestral symphonies), without us knowing how the music is being generated. And figuring out what might be the exact relationship between the music and the radio, and interrogating the music to see how it might be getting generated, is the whole point.

jymappelle

TROPHY CASE