Watching several TV drama serials, the borderline between bad guys and good guys gets blurred.

How do they really interact? What is the asymmetry?

eg.
Bad guys want good guys to inform on other good guys.
Bad guys want to bribe or blackmail hood guys.
Bad guys want good guys to remove their bad guy competitors.
Bad guys want undercover good guys to commit crimes.
Bad guys want to continue ruling their empires from prison.
Bad guys know the’re safe in the hands of good guys tthan in the hands of their competitors.
Bad guys want to hide their actions from both good guys and competitors.

Good guys want to use bad guys to inform on worse bad guys.
Good guys use undercover good guys to gather information on bad guys.
Given a choice between “follow the money” or “follow the drugs”, good guys follow the money.
Good guys want to sweep up as many bad guys as possible in synchronised raids.

What’s the mathematics/philosophy/morality of all this?

What?

probably need see it from the perspective of territory, different views on operating space, and the largely informal dimension of deterrents

monkey skipper said:

What?

+1

If you really want to lose a few hours, I suggest https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

mollwollfumble said:

What’s the mathematics/philosophy/morality of all this?

It’s complicated.

SCIENCE said:

mollwollfumble said:

What’s the mathematics/philosophy/morality of all this?

It’s complicated.

In principle it’s simple.

In practice it’s very difficult.

Just like finding the optimum shape of a compression truss.

The Rev Dodgson said:

SCIENCE said:

mollwollfumble said:

What’s the mathematics/philosophy/morality of all this?

It’s complicated.

In principle it’s simple.

In practice it’s very difficult.

Just like finding the optimum shape of a compression truss.

You’re seeing too much it’s really quite simple the bad guys wear the black hats

The Rev Dodgson said:

SCIENCE said:

mollwollfumble said:

What’s the mathematics/philosophy/morality of all this?

It’s complicated.

In principle it’s simple.

In practice it’s very difficult.

Just like finding the optimum shape of a compression truss.

so we should just stick to principle component analysis then

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

SCIENCE said:

It’s complicated.

In principle it’s simple.

In practice it’s very difficult.

Just like finding the optimum shape of a compression truss.

so we should just stick to principle component analysis then

Dunno.

Might help.

Might not.

The overall question hanging over this thread is “how do you tell the white hats from the black hats?”
eg. which was Trump, a white hat or a black hat?

In “the magnificent seven” at least four of the good guys wear black hats.

transition said:

probably need see it from the perspective of territory, different views on operating space, and the largely informal dimension of deterrents

Yes. That makes sense. Can you expand that with examples of operating space”?

There’s a symmetry in that each side wants to subvert people on the other side. And that each side wants to get as much information as possible about the other side. There’s a symmetry of threats and carrot on stick from both sides.

Crime bosses (and bribed politicians) tend to use cut-outs (intermediaries) to separate themselves from any provable crime.
Police (and secret service) task force leaders tend to use staff to separate themselves from the likelihood of getting killed.

Both use massive over-reaction as a means of intimidation.

Both the good and bad guys operate in secret.

The above are symmetries. Some asymmetries would be:

Crime tends to act fast with minimal planning. High risk high reward.
Police opposed to big crime tends to act excruciatingly slowly. With maximal planning over periods of years. Minimal risk little reward.

Bad guys kill bad guys.
Good guys don’t kill good guys.

Bad guys threaten families and loved ones.
Good guys shouldn’t threaten families and loved ones.

From a morality perspective, the bad guys each have few if any “peers”, everybody is above or below everybody else.
Whereas the good guys often have dozens or hundreds of “peers”, equal in status working as a team towards a common goal – supposedly.

>Yes. That makes sense. Can you expand that with examples of operating space”?

discretional space, is soft territory, substantially indeterminate, there are forces that protect it for utilitarian purposes, good ways, and forces that tend to corrupt it

discretion features important from personal individual discretion (internal), to larger spaces of the ways of groups, and groups of groups if you will, shared ways

I will choose the speed I travel when driving home, I will avoid exceeding the posted speed limits, but have endless choices below the speed limit, I will give consideration to being too slow as to become an obstacle on the road and impede or become more of a danger to other traffic, and the occupants(including me) of the vehicle I am in control of

the discretion I exercise is of an informal nature, an attribute of the informal dimension, largely indeterminate, it is soft territory

if I exceed the posted speed limits and a policeman catches me the softer territory will become more subject to formal intervention, tightened up

transition said:

>Yes. That makes sense. Can you expand that with examples of operating space”?

discretional space, is soft territory, substantially indeterminate, there are forces that protect it for utilitarian purposes, good ways, and forces that tend to corrupt it

discretion features important from personal individual discretion (internal), to larger spaces of the ways of groups, and groups of groups if you will, shared ways

I will choose the speed I travel when driving home, I will avoid exceeding the posted speed limits, but have endless choices below the speed limit, I will give consideration to being too slow as to become an obstacle on the road and impede or become more of a danger to other traffic, and the occupants(including me) of the vehicle I am in control of

the discretion I exercise is of an informal nature, an attribute of the informal dimension, largely indeterminate, it is soft territory

if I exceed the posted speed limits and a policeman catches me the softer territory will become more subject to formal intervention, tightened up

Well , there’s an Australian psychologist that asserts good and evil is how humans define acting outside of programming , our more primitive instincts or evolutionary necessity, compared with other species… who often run by their instincts only and/or programmed survival needs/skills.

The ant colony survives by following the leader but a rogue queen ants needs an ant colony of her own to survive a new leader would now be the enemy of the colony but is that evil in the human world it would be perceived to be but genetic diversity matters and ensures the survival of species and therefore is not evil in the big picture is it all subjective?

monkey skipper said:

transition said:

>Yes. That makes sense. Can you expand that with examples of operating space”?

discretional space, is soft territory, substantially indeterminate, there are forces that protect it for utilitarian purposes, good ways, and forces that tend to corrupt it

discretion features important from personal individual discretion (internal), to larger spaces of the ways of groups, and groups of groups if you will, shared ways

I will choose the speed I travel when driving home, I will avoid exceeding the posted speed limits, but have endless choices below the speed limit, I will give consideration to being too slow as to become an obstacle on the road and impede or become more of a danger to other traffic, and the occupants(including me) of the vehicle I am in control of

the discretion I exercise is of an informal nature, an attribute of the informal dimension, largely indeterminate, it is soft territory

if I exceed the posted speed limits and a policeman catches me the softer territory will become more subject to formal intervention, tightened up

Well , there’s an Australian psychologist that asserts good and evil is how humans define acting outside of programming , our more primitive instincts or evolutionary necessity, compared with other species… who often run by their instincts only and/or programmed survival needs/skills.

The ant colony survives by following the leader but a rogue queen ants needs an ant colony of her own to survive a new leader would now be the enemy of the colony but is that evil in the human world it would be perceived to be but genetic diversity matters and ensures the survival of species and therefore is not evil in the big picture is it all subjective?

Animals, even the same species will adapt to local conditions and can eat different things, hunt differently and behave differently. All encompassing instincts are often exaggerated by learned people who lack field experience.

PermeateFree said:

monkey skipper said:

transition said:

>Yes. That makes sense. Can you expand that with examples of operating space”?

discretional space, is soft territory, substantially indeterminate, there are forces that protect it for utilitarian purposes, good ways, and forces that tend to corrupt it

discretion features important from personal individual discretion (internal), to larger spaces of the ways of groups, and groups of groups if you will, shared ways

I will choose the speed I travel when driving home, I will avoid exceeding the posted speed limits, but have endless choices below the speed limit, I will give consideration to being too slow as to become an obstacle on the road and impede or become more of a danger to other traffic, and the occupants(including me) of the vehicle I am in control of

the discretion I exercise is of an informal nature, an attribute of the informal dimension, largely indeterminate, it is soft territory

if I exceed the posted speed limits and a policeman catches me the softer territory will become more subject to formal intervention, tightened up

Well , there’s an Australian psychologist that asserts good and evil is how humans define acting outside of programming , our more primitive instincts or evolutionary necessity, compared with other species… who often run by their instincts only and/or programmed survival needs/skills.

The ant colony survives by following the leader but a rogue queen ants needs an ant colony of her own to survive a new leader would now be the enemy of the colony but is that evil in the human world it would be perceived to be but genetic diversity matters and ensures the survival of species and therefore is not evil in the big picture is it all subjective?

Animals, even the same species will adapt to local conditions and can eat different things, hunt differently and behave differently. All encompassing instincts are often exaggerated by learned people who lack field experience.

I think I meant what is good and bad can be very subjective.

monkey skipper said:

transition said:

>Yes. That makes sense. Can you expand that with examples of operating space”?

discretional space, is soft territory, substantially indeterminate, there are forces that protect it for utilitarian purposes, good ways, and forces that tend to corrupt it

discretion features important from personal individual discretion (internal), to larger spaces of the ways of groups, and groups of groups if you will, shared ways

I will choose the speed I travel when driving home, I will avoid exceeding the posted speed limits, but have endless choices below the speed limit, I will give consideration to being too slow as to become an obstacle on the road and impede or become more of a danger to other traffic, and the occupants(including me) of the vehicle I am in control of

the discretion I exercise is of an informal nature, an attribute of the informal dimension, largely indeterminate, it is soft territory

if I exceed the posted speed limits and a policeman catches me the softer territory will become more subject to formal intervention, tightened up

Well , there’s an Australian psychologist that asserts good and evil is how humans define acting outside of programming , our more primitive instincts or evolutionary necessity, compared with other species… who often run by their instincts only and/or programmed survival needs/skills.

The ant colony survives by following the leader but a rogue queen ants needs an ant colony of her own to survive a new leader would now be the enemy of the colony but is that evil in the human world it would be perceived to be but genetic diversity matters and ensures the survival of species and therefore is not evil in the big picture is it all subjective?

people use instinct all the time, native feels for things, native drives, intuit things, more people tend to be instinct blind, seems a downside to the consciousness business, perhaps a consequence of receptivity to social environment/culture

expert dissemblers humans