Board Thread:False Info and Speculative Discussion/@comment-11533671-20140912050918/@comment-6383956-20140912182330

Okay, but let's take, for instance, Doctor Doom from Marvel comics.

Bad guy, right? Evil evil evil, yes? Are we all agreed? I mean, his name is Doctor Doom, for crying out loud.

Except, uhm, he came into all of his mystical and scientific know-how seeking a way to avenge his parents death at hands of Mephisto -- who, for those of you who may not know, is a demon who pretty much personifies evil for Marvel comics. Later, he was bent on using science to free his mother's soul from Mephisto. The machine he constructed blew up, scarring his face (hence the metal mask) and he was expelled from the university he was attending for "unethical experiments" (even though he was the only person hurt in the blast, so way to go school.). When he overthrew the government of Latveria and became king, he was planning to use the country's resources to further his plans to rescue his mother's soul. It was only after having all that power went to his head that he was like "hey, lemme rule the world too".

And, yet, with that goal of ruling the world, he's helped the good guys more often than he ever has in his quest to save his mother's soul. (Because you can't rule the world if the world no longer exists!)

So my point is, neither one of those theories is a complete picture. Like, is it ethically wrong to try to save your mother's soul from demons? Can you make that claim? And yet, if he's saving the world -- solely because he wants to rule it later -- how can that ethically be right? So neither intention or effect is solely the deciding factor. It's either going to have to be a comparison to your own personal ethics and morals, or it's got to be a mixture -- like, when considering how to accomplish their goals how much did they weigh the possible consequences for other people?

I mean, with any of the four ways of determining it, though, Peter still comes out to be evil in my book.