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James_Miller comments on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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From a utilitarian perspective what Stannis did on last night's Game of Thrones was completely justified, correct? Yet Slate is calling him "This Week's Worst Person in Westeros." Please no spoilers from people who have read past this point in the books. It seems like a key theme of Game of Thrones is that you should be a consequentialist utilitarian.
Unless I missed an extremely large piece of evidence regarding the red-lord-of-light-lady's trustworthiness, I don't think we can say any assessment is "completely justified." My impression of Stannis' new advisor is someone with a nice looking bag of tricks that likes to take credit when things go right and likes to counsel faith and patience when things go wrong.
She could also be the real thing. She could also be the real thing but have her own selfish motives. She could be westerosi-satan tempting Stannis in preparation to suck him into eternal damnation.
While condemning Stannis solely on the "ick" factor of his actions is inadequate, so is calculating the utility of those actions starting from "the red lady is telling the truth."
Stannis has proof that the red lady has magical powers from when she ghearq uvz vagb n funqbj perngher fb ur pbhyq xvyy uvf oebgure. http://www.rot13.com/index.php
She may very well have magical powers, but the assumption that she is using them solely for his benefit and not misleading or manipulating him to her own ends is primarily what I take issue with.
Magical powers is not the same as powers divinely granted by a being that has your best interests at heart and whose servants have no agenda of their own. And, going genre savvy for a moment, the incident you refer to is pretty strong evidence that Mellie's powers tend to the less-luminous side.
I think it is Ice and Fire for a reason. Stopping the Others will take fire, either from dragons or the fire god, both are predicted by different prophecies. This gives 50% chance Melisandre is for real. Actually my bet would be more on the fire god. Dragons of this universe are not magic, just animals who happen to use fire to cook meals and hatch eggs. Something as big a deal as the Others probably requires input from a god to deal with. This makes it really likely she is for for real.
There's certainly a magical aspect to the dragons... there was an egg passed down for centuries that didn't hatch until the "dragon blooded" descendent was willing to sacrifice herself in a fire - which she then survived, and had hatched dragons.
The event that occurred in the show hasn't even happened yet in the books. So there are no additional spoilers for a reader to give.
Welp.
How does that compare to the utility of suing for peace and coordinating with the Boltons to defend the Wall?
Stannis assigns a very high utility to sitting on the Iron Throne, so he may believe it justified. However, that's a sign of his own obstinacy and unbending will rather than a dispassionate evaluation of the situation. Roose Bolton pointed out in the previous episode just how untenable Stannis' military situation is.
The Boltons are untrustworthy so it would be hard to reach an agreement with them, but even if what you write is the global maximum what Stannis did was better than if he didn't do that but still went on to attack the Boltons.
From a deontological perspective, what he did was terrible. From a utilitarian perspective, what he did was in order to enable a civil war which will kill thousands of people and drag the continent into chaos which it really can't afford right now.
The thousands that would die in a civil war are trivial compared to what the white walkers could do, and Stannis winning the civil war is the best hope at stopping the white walkers.
He seems to think that. I think they have a much better chance of stopping the white walkers if Stannis allies with the Lannisters.