47 KiB
Rational Batman Story brainstorming
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Author: u/NeilOnTheRocks *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5xfmwq/rational_batman_story_brainstorming/
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Score: 28
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Created: 2017-03-04T06:25:31
Post:
Hey guys, I recently read "The Metropolitan Man" fic dealing with Superman in a rational universe, and felt that the story was really interesting, if a little too harsh on the Man of steel. But that got me thinking, how would one create a rational Batman story? especially as Batman is always shown to be the most rational superhero, but ironically, he is also the hero who enjoys the most Deus Ex Machina moments/ Plot armor moments. How would one go about telling a logical Batman tale? And not something like where he dies by a goon's shotgun :v but a story where he comes out on top.
The closest rational character I an think of as Batman is Quirrelmort from HPMOR btw. levels of preparation. absolutely loved it.
Thoughts welcome.
Comments:
u/FishNetwork [+62] (an hour later)
Batman could be building his image around the Availability Heuristic.
People are bad at risk assessment. We massively over-focus on vivid threats. Especially threats that make us feel powerless.
Use JAWS as a baseline. Shark attacks are astonishingly rare. But water makes people feel helpless. Point this out in a popular movie, and you've got a huge, national phobia.
Batman could doing the same thing. With the right media coverage, he could be a huge perceived threat, even if he only stopped 1 or 2 crimes a year.
And, if Rationalist-Batman only needs a handful of masterfully-scripted interventions a year, his character starts to make sense.
From the outside, a typical Rationalist-Batman adventure probably looks like this:
I'm a mid-level thief. I hear that the Gotham Museum is putting up a rare jewel exhibit in their east wing.
I go check out the venue before the exhibit takes place. I even bring a few friends to see what they think.
We go back to my place, and, over a couple months, plan the robbery. Gotham is dangerous, so we get ourselves some guns
A couple days before the robbery, a sign goes up saying that the jewel will be temporarily removed for restoration! This breaks our main plan. Fortunately, it looks like there's a back-way into the museum we can use.
We're halfway through the robbery, when this figure in black comes diving through the skylight! Glass shatters everywhere.
I don't notice at the time, but at the trial, it happens there's a camera catching everything. Seems like we got unlucky and the museum upgraded their security just before my robbery.
So, I pull my gun and start shooting! But somehow, he dodges my bullets! How can anyone roll out of the way of bullets?
I'm shooting even as he rushes up to me. Point blank. I couldn't miss. But somehow the bullet passes right through him. The batman is a ghost!
He hits me. And everything goes black.
u/FishNetwork [+50] (an hour later)
If you want to do the campy 'Master Detective' aspect, I'd have Batman use parallel construction.
He's actually be finding criminals using super-mundane (if privacy violating) methods. Once he's found them, he can invent some post-hoc chains of evidence.
Like, rather than, "I bugged their apartment" his note to the police could say, "The Bat-Computer noticed that the thieves had purchased a spark plug for a 1983 Camero, and 2 regular screwdrivers. But a Camero uses Phillip's head screws! So, clearly, these were robbers tools."
The point would be to convey to the criminals that there's an omnipotent, near-omniscient foe hunting them, with infinite resources.
That would make anyone paranoid. And the resulting paranoia might legitimately help reduce crime on a national scale.
It would certainly impact more people than batman would be able to personally punch.
u/trekie140 [+11] (23 hours later)
I don't know if this makes Batman more or less cool. On the one hand, I love all the crazy stunts he pulls with his mind and body. On the other hand, this manages to be really awesome in a completely different way. It's...interesting.
u/None [+8] (2 days later)
And, if Rationalist-Batman only needs a handful of masterfully-scripted interventions a year, his character starts to make sense.
To be an effective ghost story, not to actually stop crime though.
Crime is pretty darn resilient. Gang members and mobsters must know that very determined and funded law enforcement groups are out there after them for a fact at least some of the time but they continue on.
At the end of the day a ghost story about a man that is also a bat won't change the nature of sociopathy, unskilled workers who mostly profit off crime, desire for drugs and other illegal activities.
Especially not in a rathole like Gotham.
u/None [+40] (an hour later)
[removed]
u/Evan_Th [+16] Sunshine Regiment (an hour later)
That's not the classic Batman... but I would read that story. In large part because it isn't the classic Batman.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+9] (an hour later)
That's a neat idea. and The one above with the smoke and mirrors is awesome as well. I think the main problem with batman is there simply isn't enough time for anyone in the world to know all the skills Batman knows, and know how to implement them at any situation plus have a large enough IQ to think of solutions where none of the above technique works. How about going the J.A.R.V.I.S way with Batman? Thomas Wayne was computer Engineer, founding WayneCorps as a Operating System and Business Management Software Solutions company. He Creates an ASI ( not super as in God-level but Super as-in IQ around the upper 800-1000 mark. Obviously this AI wasn't created with the recursive improvement method, otherwise the IQ spike wouldnt have stopped). As part of beta-testing and monitoring, he incorporates this AI into his robot butler, and also gives it control over WayneCorps and WayneManor Systems. The AI has a value system built in to give priority to Bruce Wayne and Gotham.
Fast Forward to young bruce returning from the Ra's al ghul academy and finding all the wayne finances perfectly managed and in order. A.L.F.R.E.D takes care of everything. Bruce decides to be Batman. Alfred's value system has priority of protecting bruce so he is always urging him to stop. but failing that, he does the next viable option, give bruce the best chance of survival. i.e Give him the technology, assist him in the skillsets, make suits suitable for street level survival, do a real time monitoring of the situation by keeping a small unit in the cowl which processes every crime scene where the batman is in real time and gives alternatives.
WOW. that doesnt sound like a Batman fic at all, does it? :P
u/oliwhail [+19] Omake-Maximizing AGI (8 hours later)
You could also have the focus be on "Batman" actually be a bunch of people working together - a martial arts and infiltration front man, with one super-sleuth and one computer/security expert constantly looking over his shoulder via comms and video (or being brought to the scene as needed), all funded by entrepreneur rationalist Bruce Wayne.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (4 days later)
Some versions of the Bat-Family are like this. Alfred and Barbara Gordon doing the prep work and research, with Batman and Robin getting onto the scene and finding the clues.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+1] (8 hours later)
ya I basically replaced the team with the ALFRED AI, thus keeping Batman as a lone agent.
u/Calsem [+1] (a day later)
An IQ of 800-1000 is bit high - that's 4x as smarter than genuis-level intellect. The highest iq ever recorded was 300, so putting the AI somewhat above that (400?) would make more sense.
u/xamueljones [+25] My arch-enemy is entropy (14 hours later)
Here's a version of batman that /u/MugaSofer came up with here from two years ago. I'm just copying over the text and cannot claim any credit for this idea.
OK, so you're Bruce Wayne. Your parents were murdered in front of you, so you taught yourself martial arts until you ran out of masters to beat. You inherited their company, and a few obvious suggestions meant profits are though the roof and new technologies are trickling out of R&D at a steady rate. Life is good. But you know that Gotham, that the world is sick.
The obvious first step is to start funding effective charities. Bruce Wayne already has the Wayne Foundation, which you both own and fund, so it should only take a few changes to improve that. Pretty soon your agents have their fingers in every element of infrastructure around, from schools to subways, and they're all improving ...
... except for the literal gangs roaming the streets with impunity. And wrecking your stuff. And recruiting the kids your shiny new schools are turning out, and bribing the cops, and stealing from the hospitals and businesses.
The next obvious step is to set up a working justice system, right? Thankfully, You already have a like-minded friend whose ambition is to do exactly that: good old Harvey Dent. You fund his political campaign, pretty soon he's making sweeping and effective changes. It's slow going, and the mob is fighting back, but it's working.
Then, suddenly, Superman. It's usually assumed that he was he first "out" superhero - a symbol of hope, and all that - and all those rumors are suddenly making a lot more sense. There is a god, and he's American, and he's cleaning up the streets in Metropolis. Turns out, an alien superbeing watching over them is a pretty effective deterrent even though Superman is only physically present at a small fraction of crimes (he's a busy guy.)
So you back to your company, and you tell them two things: first, start working on superweapons, we can't rely on this one guy to defend the planet from aliens. Second, start working on superweapons, we can't trust this random guy to be god. Thirdly, I need this list of parts. For ... research purposes.
You take your computers and equipment down to the basement - always hated that place - and you start designing an optimal superhero. One who may not stop the next alien invasion, but by God can he make teenagers think twice about attacking people on the street.
You don't have powers, sure, but special effects don't cost that much. You rew some basic knockout gas, dye your old kevlar body-armour from your ninja days matte black, and patch it up into a kickass-looking outfit. You pick something creepy - bats, who doesn't hate bats? - and come up with a signature so people will know what hit them (tie 'em up with bat-shaped bolas, ruin their stuff with bat-shaped charges and knives.)
You sneak out with your new bat-shaped listening devices - may have gone a little too far there - and start bugging local mob hangouts. Pretty soon you know where some big fish are swimming. You show up at a bank robbery, announce your presence to the world when the cops show up to find it already taken care of.
More superheroes start appearing, following Supes' lead. A couple of people with alien hypertech - one guy has a magic ring, for Chrissakes - and some people who seem to have been mutated or something by chemical compounds. One or two are openly nonhuman.
You push more money into research, quietly reroute some ideas to your lab and then declare them failures. Soon you've found ways to counter the most obvious risks. Things are going well. You even have a sweet bat-car, and pretty soon you'll get around to finish those bat-shaped wing designs. The police are co-operating, the mob is falling apart under your dual assault;soon you'll be able to start duplicating your success in other cities.
And then you catch a small-time crook. He's stealing what you realize, too late, was his competitor's biotech research, and he starts mocking you. He knows just what to say, how to needle you. Bastard. You snap, push him off a girder into a vat of chemicals.
And everything goes to hell.
Turns out that if he wasn't a psychopath before, he is now. And now he's immune to poison, including your gas, and he's got ideas for gadgets of his own. And he's moving into the power vacuum, with startling speed, gathering followers who know the only thing that beats a superhero is a supervillain.
And he's killing people, of course, whenever it would be amusing.
He's making up his plans on the spot, changing them whenever he gets bored or has a bright idea. You can't track his organization, because even they don't know what he's going to do next. Of course, he's killing them too, but since when have humans been rational? He pulls off a few high-profile crimes without a hitch.
He - well, he kidnaps Harvey. Mutilates him. Tortures him. By the time you track him down, your friend has been broken. Completely insane. You have to fight him hand-to-hand just to stop him hurting anyone. He goes to that new maximum-security asylum you funded.
More supervillains start moving in, and you're starting to realize that this just the way things are now. "Supervillain" has become a viable job opening, a role ready and waiting for anyone who invents a freeze-ray and doesn't have too many moral qualms. This is rapidly becoming your full-time job, but who else is competent enough to fight metahumans on their own terms, day after day?
Eventually you meet Superman, a few of the others, give them a few suggestions. You meet a teenager who remind you of yourself; give him a bit of a leg up into the vigilante business. He survives. You train a few others, hand-picked, but several of them die.
You start working with metahumans more and more; you make friends, allies. When you propose a "Justice League", a way to give structure and legitimacy to superheroes, you end up running that as well. It works. But you still can't keep up. You can only keep fighting, and planning, and hope to hell that it's enough.
The moment an existential threat is beaten back, the Joker drives his psychiatrist crazy and escapes with her. Just when you track him down, an alien superintelligence tries to assimilate New York for data-collection purposes. Some of your enemies have died and come back, more powerful and angry than before. Worse still, our best fighters are so powerful that they're attracting a new class of enemy to this tiny planet; you set up an extradimensional prison using hypertech you barely understand, and still they keep coming.
At some point, you stopped calling yourself "Bruce Wayne". You didn't really notice. You're the goddamned Batman, now.
And then Darkseid shows up ...
TL;DR: rational!Batman is the Worm-like story of continual escalation and seat-of-your-pants munchkinning.
Every time he starts to solve a problem - and he does, he's the smartest man alive and also a billionaire with social skills and the body of an athlete - it's only long enough for a momentary lull, before the universe slides another notch toward total annihilation.
[It's a comic, so we only see possible end points - but generally, the whole "Justice League" thing works and super-villainy eventually calms down, I think.]
u/trekie140 [+9] (23 hours later)
I think this is awesome, but that's mainly because it is the exact story from the comics and films. The details and continuity have been changed, but there's no substantive difference between this story and canon except for the shift in perspective. I mean, if someone just decided to rationalize these stories without seriously altering them I'd read them.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+5] (23 hours later)
this was good.
But I dont see how this is "rational this is basically just the comic timeline highly compressed.
u/xamueljones [+13] My arch-enemy is entropy (23 hours later)
It's not an attempt to come up with a different version of Batman. It's a rationalization of canon Batman.
It's to explain how and why Batman does what he does without assuming him to be holding an idiot ball. Rather it's to explain how an intelligent Bruce Wayne can turn out into the Batman we all know and love. Hence restating the entire comic timeline while showing the motivations behind Batman's behavior.
u/nerdguy1138 [+1] GNU Terry Pratchett (3 days later)
To provide a semi permanent end to that whole mess. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5536346/1/Inviolate
u/DCarrier [+13] (9 minutes later)
One way would be to simply make him not a superhero. I've seen a spiderman fac that went that route. But it was really short, and if you didn't make it short then it would be pointless to involve batman.
I feel like you at least need to make a few major changes. For one, he doesn't use a gun. Supposedly he's afraid of what he'll become if he uses one, but if he's willing to handicap himself that much he really should just leave the job to someone else. There's also the vast amount of money he has. There's no way it's cost-effective to use it to personally fight crime. He could fight crime without spending much of his money, but then he risks getting killed and being able to use his money in other ways. I think his best bet would be to use the money to fund other crimefighters, like [Batman incorporated](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman_Incorporated_(Prime_Earth)), or just funding the police. And that's all assuming that spending money on crime-fighting is even a good way to use the money, as opposed to something like mosquito nets.
So, you'll need to give him a gun, and either ditch the fortune, or make him not fight crime personally. At this point I feel like you're better off abandoning him entirely and writing Rational Man with a Shotgun fanfiction.
u/Draconomial [+21] Sunshine Regiment (2 hours later)
In canon Batman does fund the Gotham Police Department. Wayne Tech supplies the GPD with a ton of equipment, which they always seem to have the budget for even though they're understaffed. And he fights crime through preventative measures, providing jobs, funding orphanages and hospitals. Wouldn't be surprised if Wayne was involved in providing small business loans in Gotham. And still, it's not enough
u/Draconomial [+11] Sunshine Regiment (2 hours later)
Every party that Wayne throws is either for charity, or a birthday.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+3] (2 hours later)
that ................ is true :O
u/trekie140 [+3] (a day later)
I think that kind of ties into what a superhero is thematically. Try as he might, one man cannot change the world by himself no matter how powerful or intelligent. All he can do is fight for what he believes in as hard as he can and hope it's enough to do some good and inspire others to do good as well.
u/DCarrier [+2] (11 hours later)
That just makes it worse. As unlikely as it is, it's possible in principle that a billionaire fighting crime in person is the most effective way to combat it. What's not possible for that to be true, but to fund the police department is also the most cost-effective and proving jobs and funding orphanages and hospitals is as well. In no universe would doing all of those things be a good idea. Not unless his budget is high enough to significantly change all of those things, and unless he only cares about Gotham that's not likely. He should take whichever one of those works best, and do it everywhere.
u/Amonwilde [+4] (12 hours later)
I think it's safe to say that he does only care about Gotham, unless you're talking about a more campy Justice League sort of Batman. And also this observation assumes that his interventions don't follow a curve representing diminishing returns. It's possible that there's low hanging fruit in the orphanage funding, police supporting, and bad-guy punching domains, but that each (or some) of these areas have rapidly diminishing returns.
Additionally, billionaires do have suprisingly massive resources, especially in relation to a single city. The budget of the entire New York Police Department is just under 5 billion yearly, but 92% of that is salary and pensions. If you imagine that Batman can donate 80 million or so to the Gotham Police department, that could easily double or triple the amount of money spent on equipment or training. If the GPD is leaving out training or not buying equipment that has been scientifically demonstrated to be especially effective (which is likely), that could lead to decent returns in terms of crime-fighting efficacy. Additionally, Batman could double up his use of this funding by getting some pull in the GPD, which would allow him to influence GPD policy.
I'd say a rational Batman should take advantage of social science to get the most out of his limited resources, i.e. be up on the latest "nudge" science to influence people not to do crime. He could be a sort of neuromarketer. He might also consider giving directly (as in the Give Directly movement) to reduce poverty in Gotham.
u/DCarrier [+2] (12 hours later)
There's nothing strictly irrational about only caring about one city, but it's not the sort of view I'd expect to see espoused in rationalist fiction.
u/None [+4] (22 hours later)
On the other hand, limiting your scope and testing solutions on the small scale is a pretty solid strategy. A Batman who's basically using Gotham as a crimefighting laboratory, testing out tons of different strategies and keeping track of how they influence eachother, all in preparation for a world debut - that would be kind of neat.
u/Draconomial [+1] Sunshine Regiment (14 hours later)
Bruce Wayne was orphaned by a mugger.
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+9] (2 hours later)
I think his best bet would be to use the money to fund other crimefighters, like Batman incorporated, or just funding the police.
Or political change to raise standards and social security for the least fortunate, since poverty (and the hopelessness and desperation it leads to) is a huge factor in crime, drug use and other sordid stuff.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+5] (2 hours later)
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorinnnnnnnnnngggg
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+4] (2 hours later)
This is true :)
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+7] (2 hours later)
ya, more often than not, the rational solution to a problem is very mundane.
middle fingers to occam's razor.
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+6] (3 hours later)
So maybe there is something blocking political progress, and batman is the tool to overcome this. Perhaps highlighting the uselessness of the police, or the unwillingness of politicians to improve the life of its poorest constituents, or maybe just put crime in the media in a way that upper-class corporation-beholden media are normally unwilling to do.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+4] (55 minutes later)
This is exactly the reply that came into my mind, and what I was afraid of :(
I want a cool batman who swings from buildings and fights crime, but I want the story to show-not-tell intelligence.
As for your points they re all valid, but they are not a solution are they? I came in to write a Batman fanfic and finally I thought myself out of writing it :P net gain = 0.
Perhaps we could drive somewhere along the lines of Bruce Wayne not being Batman himself, but funding and maintaining Batmen incorporated, something like a highly trained and motivated special Vigilante Force, doing justice when law systems cannot?
u/trekie140 [+2] (23 hours later)
I'm wondering, why do you have to reimagine Batman in some way like Metropolitan Man did with Superman? Couldn't you just write a standard Batman story with rational sensibilities? It wouldn't be all that hard.
u/TimTravel [+7] (2 hours later)
Another approach is to take Batman as-is with few changes and see what you'd have to change about the world in order to make his standard methods reasonable.
u/Jakkubus [+4] (3 hours later)
To be honest one would have to drastically change the entire setting to make Batman's standard methods seem remotely reasonable.
u/Amonwilde [+6] (12 hours later)
This is pretty true. But if you were being charitable to canon, that explanation is probably supervillains. If crime is less an everyday occurrence and more a series of pockets of deep and intractable supervillainy, then having a Batman who is a specialist in getting rid of supervillians makes sense. In canon, the police are unable to catch supervillains ever, and so are 100% ineffective against supervillains.
u/Jakkubus [+2] (12 hours later)
I was more reffering to the fact, that Batman's methods of catching supervillains are not rational and he does really lousy job at getting the most of his resources.
That's not to say Batman ratfic is impossible. I would be really like to see mind games between him and Joker or Riddler, though it would require quite a lot of changes in the universe itself.
u/TimTravel [+1] (4 hours later)
I think the best approach is to do something in between. Keep some of the original style and rationalify the rest. Keeping none of the original style leads to the rational option being some sort of boring political stuff, and keeping all of it makes the task of making it rational too difficult.
u/Jakkubus [+1] (4 hours later)
I am not saying that the original style should be discarded whatsoever. My point was that there is too much irrationality, plot armor and asspulls in Batman comics to make it rational with just few changes.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+1] (2 hours later)
examples of such changes in the world?
u/GullibleCynic [+7] (20 hours later)
It may be best to embrace the craziness of the extended DC universe instead of ignoring it.
You may recall that in the DC multiverse there is a universe where after Jason Todd died Batman decided to abandon his no killing code. Soon after all the villains are dead and Earth is described as a Utopia.
Imagine if you will, instead of abandoning his code, or his mission, Batman takes Jason's death as a signal to evaluate his goals, specifically his end goals. For the first time he actually sits down and asks himself what his end game is, what does he really want the world to look like.
At this point he notices, really notices, how crazy his world is. Costumed lunatics everywhere, both helpful and destructive. Aliens, immortals, gods. Some beings that are all three. Superpowers, psychics, magic, xenotech, self-aware robots. Even death isn't the end. Souls seem to retain some memory and are often used as fuel for empowering demons. And the worst of the lot become demons themselves.
Clearly, this is not an optimal situation.
Once he figures out what he wants he has massive resources to enact a plan, both his own and his allies. But what should the future look like? Immortality? Resurrection? Super powers for all? Would he be willing to self-modify? He has been offered both a green lantern and yellow lantern ring.
What roadblocks would be encountered. Clearly some of his allies would have thoughts. Most of them are so blinded by the naturalistic fallacy that they are incapable of imagining a better world as anything other than the current world but with less crime. Just as he was.
Storywise it would probably be better to have an established, self-contained story to base this rational-fic on. Zoat's With this Ring does an entertaining job of this using Young Justice. The DC animated universe would be an obvious choice because as of the Justice league series there are ongoing storylines in which to situate your story. The DC animated movies could also be a good choice. There are several in the New 52 style continuity. Whatever is chosen, the comics are always available to help fill in the gaps when needed.
Stories about rationalist awakenings are rare, so I would love to read one if this is the direction you go.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+6] (9 hours later)
I'd really like a "rational Batman" story that truly follows the Metropolitan Man formula - that is, feature a rational Joker as the protagonist, facing a world that truly has gone batshit, trying to drive some sense into the bizarrely over-competent and over-equipped Batman in the only way he seems to understand - costumed violence.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+8] Godric Gryffindor (19 hours later)
I can see sorta-rational!good!Joker in the Wormverse but very few other places. I'm not sure you can create him without turning the local continuity into what is effectively the Wormverse.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+4] (21 hours later)
To get a rational, good Joker, you basically need a scenario where terrorism is the rational response to Batman. This needs a few ingredients, all of which seem totally reasonable to me.
(Before we start, though, I should note that Batman himself is already basically a terrorist. Dressing up as a bat doesn't help him arrest people; it makes other people afraid to fall afoul of him. Indeed, much of his schtick is designed to optimize making criminals feel afraid; making society contain less criminals is a more indirect goal. The Joker is not escalating by employing terrorism against Batman; he's merely holding up a mirror to Batman's own tactics.)
- First, Batman needs to be doing a lot more harm than good. This is the same as The Metropolitan Man's starting point in justifying Lex Luthor's antagonism towards Superman, and frankly it's not a hard argument to make against most canonical iterations of Batman. Batman is clearly not an effective use of Bruce Wayne's resources in an effective altruism sense, and there's a good reason that vigilantism is frowned upon in real life. If the no-kill rule is bent, this is an even easier argument to make; simply dispensing with it entirely wouldn't feel true to the character, but it would fit right in if he had a rule not to deliberately kill anyone but, as with many superheroes, was extremely cavalier about collateral damage.
- Second, Batman must be basically impossible to kill. Perhaps his effectively-tinker-tech has rendered him capable of standing up against even armies. This would require some comic-book-technobabble-bullshit, but that really comes with the territory here. In any case, if Batman's bad enough to justify the Joker, he's definitely bad enough to kill, so that has to simply not be a possibility.
- Third, Batman must be a stubborn asshole who proves to be highly resistant to logical persuasion, demanding the use of emotional persuasion instead. If you're a rational Joker, you're trying to do one of two things through terrorism - you're either trying to directly convince Batman that being Batman is a bad idea, or you're trying to convince the general public so that they'll convince Batman that being Batman is a bad idea. Neither of these things are necessary if Batman will respond to direct rational communication. So you need to establish that Batman isn't responding to reason, so that you have to resort to terrorism to either shake or shame him out of being Batman.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (a day later)
First, Batman needs to be doing a lot more harm than good. This is the same as The Metropolitan Man's starting point in justifying Lex Luthor's antagonism towards Superman, and frankly it's not a hard argument to make against most canonical iterations of Batman.
I thought it was fairly clear in Metropolitan Man that Lex's rampage wasn't justified?
u/ParadigmComplex [+1] (a month later)
Could you elaborate? It's likely that I've missed, misinterpreted or forgotten something here. From what I recall, Superman was a potential existential to humanity - difficult to be certain he wouldn't snap or 180 at some point, at which time it may be too late to be able to stop him. Later events in the work, as I recall them, seemed to justify this concern.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a month later)
Two problems with Lex's logic:
- Lex's attacks do more to push Superman toward becoming a threat than anything else ever managed. He totally discounts the risks of his actions.
- Superman can be a great force for good as well as for evil. The author has mentioned that he seriously considered ending the story with Zod arriving and no Superman to defend the Earth, but felt that would have been a little too dark.
As I interpreted it - and this is just my personal impression - Clark talking about how his thought processes toward Calhoun were distorted was intended as a lampshade of Lex's similar mistakes, and his offer to Lex at the end to help him revolutionize the world was intended to hammer home the fact that Superman can revolutionize the world.
Certainly his actions were justified from his perspective, but Lex's perspective is warped. He's a supervillain, not a role model.
u/ParadigmComplex [+1] (a month later)
Interesting, thanks! I hadn't hard the author's considerations of ending the story with Zod - that certainly punctuates your point well.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+3] Godric Gryffindor (a day later)
Why would terrorism actually work to do that? At all?
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (a day later)
If Batman is a problem to be solved, and stopping him physically is ruled out as a solution, this implies that a solution is needed that convinces Batman to stop. Once simple, honest, rational communication is also ruled out, all that's left is psychological warfare. If Batman does more harm than good and he won't accept this when it's flatly told to him, perhaps a real-life demonstration of the point will. How would Voldemort stop Harry from destroying the world if he could only do it by teaching him and not by killing him? Maybe by killing others in an attempt to give him maturity and rattle him out of childish delusions.
The Joker is essentially holding a mirror up to Batman. "This is what you get when you run around in a funny costume at night and try to 'improve society' by hurting people you don't like."
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+8] Godric Gryffindor (2 days later)
This is not a solution that would occur to me, or you, if we weren't trying to rationalize it; and the rationalization is bad enough that I'd roll my eyes and/or throw the book out the window if a supposedly rational character tried it.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+2] (23 hours later)
I absolutely hated the way "rationalists" were portrayed as thinking of superman. Like Quirrel said in HPMOR, the moment a mythical hero arrives, common people tend to think of them as superpowered slaves, only fit to serve them and get criticised for not doing better. They have to be perfect, even though their masters are nowhere near perfect and very flaw of theirs is amplified while all good deeds are taken for granted.
TLDR - Lois Lane was a Bitch to superman in MM. And Luthor was a very well written Supervillian. But I still dont agree with the ending though.
u/trekie140 [+1] (23 hours later)
Haven't my childhood icons suffered enough already?
u/Jakkubus [+4] (3 hours later)
Make it so he doesn't forget each of his new gadgets after using them once.
u/Fruan [+4] (a day later)
Bruce Wayne is a hero. Batman is a mental illness.
Imagine Bruce Wayne as a Bill Gates style philanthropist, ruthlessly pursuing the most effective means to leverage mega-wealth for the common good. But unlike Gates, he's doing it in a world filled with magic and schizo-tech and all the other glorious oddities that litter the DC universe - much, much higher potential for positive outcomes, if only you can think far enough outside the box.
But he's a fundamentally broken man. His childhood trauma leads him to want to dress up as a bat and beat up muggers. In a world that literally contains the superman, is that the most effective use of his time? Obviously he's really really good at beating up muggers, but does that even matter? Does an hour spent patrolling the streets of Gotham save as many lives as an hour spent trying to, for instance, assemble the coalition of minds needed to mass produce Weather Wizard's weather control system to reverse the desertification of farm land in Africa?
On one hand, Bruce is smart enough to shut up and multiply. On the other, he's haunted by his past.
u/NoYouTryAnother [+3] (9 hours later)
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+1] (7 hours later)
Have you guys played the Crysis Games? The best bet for the BatSuit would be a modified Crysis Nanosuit IMO. Something like that and add non lethal weaponry and gadgets and we got a realistic crime fighting crusader.
u/None [+6] (7 hours later)
Except that the tech implied by the nanosuit is so amazing that putting it in a suit is ridiculous. It's rather like giant robots. Once you have that technology, there are a dozen better ways to use it.
It's a similar problem to Batman himself. Dude's armor, computer software, weapons and vehicles all represent possible humanity-improving advancements in material science, chemistry, computer engineering and AI. But he wears them all and punches muggers.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+1] (23 hours later)
how does the suits tech scale though?
Last time I checked, The suit had a basic light bending cloaking technology a.la predator, and injected nanobots into the wearers body to overdrive his muscles. plus the suit contained muscle strands itself which amplified the strength, speed and durability of the wearer. Oh and It had the basic crypto stuff, hacking, omnitool, radar, 3D sense,etc.
I see no tech in the suit that can scaled to humanity improving levels, it's basically just a battle enhancement armor.
u/None [+4] (a day later)
Nanobots that can improve/overdrive your muscles is a tiny step from life-extension disease-destroying injections, implantable growable cybernetic replacements, etc. You can argue that the tech ends up being super-specialized and thus not applicable, but the biggest obstacle to present-day adoption of such tech is construction and programming at the nanoscale, which the suit implies has been overcome.
Self-reinforcing and repairing materials? Spacecraft, buildings, clothing.
This is top of my head stuff here.
u/monkyyy0 [+1] (3 hours later)
Killing the joker
u/Izeinwinter [+8] (a day later)
Eh. The joker should be dead regardless of the batman's stance on the subject - most versions of him are so crazy other villains should have offed him long ago just for being bad for business. All business. It doesn't really matter what your plans are, the joker being in the same city as you is likely to be problematic - but he has plot armor, because the writers give him plot armor.
That said.. I have long had an idea for a rational Gotham. Not a rational batman, but a reason why gotham is how it is.
It's in the water: Wayne industries were founded on a particular steel surfacant - an anti-corrosion, anti-wear treatment that was a very neat black, and extremely durable. Popular in everything throughout the 20's, 30's, 40's. Still used in some applications to the present day. Only.. The manufacture of it leaked chemicals. Very interesting chemicals. That do odd things to human brains.
People who grow up in Gotham have shockingly low akrasia. They're not more intelligent, per say, but they are much, much harder working, which means they're often far better educated than anyone would expect, and since this has held from childhood on, the effective average intelligence in Gotham is very high.
And everyone works hard. Really hard. Companies put up with the insane crime levels because the average working joe or jane gotham is worth several normal workers in terms of output.
Only.. This includes the criminals. People who in other cities would have grown up to be grifters and petty thieves embark on massively ambitious criminal enterprises. nobody kites checks or deals a little weed. They're law-abiding citizens, or they're wannabe kingpins.
And then there's the overdose cases. Notice how a whole lot of gotham characters have nearly supernatural kinaesthesia, high intelligence and an overriding obsession with a theme, including a costume? It's a syndrome. The bat. Riddler. Catwoman. Ect, ect, ect. They all have the same screwed up wiring.
u/mcherm [+1] (a day later)
That's a really cool idea!
u/Achille-Talon [+1] (3 months later)
Extremely good idea. Presumably, the Joker, rather than being merely exposed to the diluted chemicals, fell into a vat full of concentrated solution, resulting in him being ten times more insane than anybody else but also extremely smart.
u/mcherm [+8] (4 hours later)
In cannon, Batman CAN kill the joker, but refuses to do so because it violates his personal ethical code. Disregarding one's ethical constraints is not a mark of great intelligence.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+6] Godric Gryffindor (19 hours later)
Neither is getting other people killed more than once by your ethical constraints.
u/PenultimatePresence [+7] I shall make a promisement to not perform malice (19 hours later)
...unless other people don't factor into your ethical constraints. Based on Batman's actions, he thinks the Joker's life is more valuable than the people he might kill.
u/mcherm [+2] (19 hours later)
When I think about, for example, how to build ethical constraints into AI with the potential to become extremely smart I really hope that the AI won't abandon its ethical constraints just because following the constraints got people killed multiple times.
u/ArisKatsaris [+4] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
If the ethical constraints consistently lead to more harm than good, then perhaps a different set of ethical constraints should be chosen.
u/mcherm [+3] (a day later)
Perhaps. I suppose there are (at least) three forms of ethical constraints. One is a kind of heuristic for one's fundamental values. For instance: "I base my fundamental values on maximizing total human welfare, but I have observed that it is nearly always better to let someone live than to kill them, so I'll use 'do not kill' as a reasonable presumption unless I find myself in a very unusual situation."
A second form is as a constraint for an untrustworthy reasoner. The superintelligent AI that has constraints programmed in is an example, but another would be "I, Bruce Wayne, have a terrible thirst for revenge against criminals lurking at the depths of my psyche. I suspect that if I ever really let loose, I would go on a huge murder spree. So I have laid down strict rules I must NEVER violate, such as 'do not kill'. If I ever made an exception, I fear I might lose the willpower that keeps me sane."
A third form is as part of one's underlying ethics. For instance, I am a strict Christian and I believe "God has specifically provided 10 commandments, one of which is 'do not kill'. My highest moral objective is to obey God's laws. Sometimes it appears that these laws cause more harm than good, but the ways of God are mysterious and the most ethical thing to do is to follow the rules regardless of apparent outcome."
In the first case (ethical constraints as an heuristic), Batman should realize that the Joker is a special exception and should change his ethical constraints. But for the second case (constraints on an untrustworthy reasoner) he should not. And for the third case (underlying ethics), the constraint IS his fundamental objective.
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (an hour later)
There's a rational!Batman quest somewhere in the archives here, which you might find by searching for it.
(And jsyk, brainstorming threads are generally frowned upon and are probably best-suited for one of the weekly threads.)
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+5] (an hour later)
why are brainstorming threads frowned upon? this sub is one of the more intelligent subreddits available and thinking about interesting things together is a really neat pastime I feel.
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (an hour later)
The subreddit was becoming unbalanced by them and we were getting more "Hey wouldn't it be cool if..." threads that never went anywhere than actual stories (not to mention the number of threads where people were talking about stuff that wasn't related to fiction at all). There was an exception for people who wrote stories (one brainstorming thread per chapter) but that isn't mentioned in the sidebar anymore so I'm not sure if it still holds.
We have Rationality Monday, Worldbuilding Wednesday, Off-Topic Friday, Munchkinry Saturday, and Writing Skills Sunday, however. This would probably fit best in Worldbuilding Wednesday, IMO, but you might be able to justify putting it in Writing Skills Sunday.
u/NeilOnTheRocks [+10] (an hour later)
Which day is the "i am bored af so I want an intelligent conversation on a topic of my liking with people that like the same" day?
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (an hour later)
Off-Topic Friday is explicitly for that purpose.
Or the Discord Channel, which seems to always have people there.
u/eroticas [+1] (11 hours later)
Rational batman donates his fortune to givewell / MIRI / basic science research or equivalent, and uses his celebrity to encourage other people do the same.