
The Robin Hood Morality Test - RodericDay
http://www.talisman.org/quizzes/robin-hood-morality.shtml
======
aston
This is very poorly set up. What are even the facts of the case?

0\. We're instructed to forget what we know about these characters, but then
through hints we're supposed to recover the details of these characters'
relationships to each other and the world?

1\. Is this a real sheriff?

2\. Did Robin Hood and Little John do anything deserving of being locked up?

3\. What was the previous relationship between Maid Marion and Robin Hood?
Were they truly lovers or something less?

4\. What was the previous relationship between Maid Marion and the sheriff?
Were they necessarily citizens with a power differential?

5\. Would the sheriff have released his prisoners the next morning regardless
of Maid Marion's actions?

6\. Was Robin's "abuse" verbal or physical in nature?

7\. What was the previous relationship between Little John and Maid Marion?
Were they necessarily unlinked except via a mutual tie to Robin Hood?

8\. What was the previous relationship between Little John and Robin Hood?
Were they friends with some obligation to each other, or merely cellmates?

9\. Was Little John truthful in his promise of devotion?

Many different rankings can stem from differing understanding of those facts
rather than differing moral standards. Not to mention the conflation of
Honesty with Morality.

~~~
eldude
> We're instructed to forget what we know about these characters, but then
> through hints we're supposed to recover the details of these characters'
> relationships to each other and the world?

Honestly, I think that's the point. You're told to forget your predispositions
and be objective, and it's the degree to which you're able to and the biases
that surface to fill the gaps of unknowns that this test is revealing.

~~~
aston
Fair. But then you read the answers list ([http://www.talisman.org/cgi-
bin/robin-hood-morality?all=true](http://www.talisman.org/cgi-bin/robin-hood-
morality?all=true)) and learn that there were right answers (jrms, jmsr) and
everyone else gets insults.

~~~
eridal
Yeah, felt the same, but it could be our own head that's just playing against
ourselves.. it's a psycho game after all

The hostile tone is part of the game which, in a sense is trying to be well
balanced, and it may help to avoid your brain filtering the message.

------
banachtarski
MSJR

I'm quite the minority. My thoughts were as follows:

1\. Maid Marion did something she didn't want in order to rescue a lover, and
deservedly went with someone in the end. Understandable particularly after
being the victim of unappreciation and abuse.

2\. The sheriff imprisoned them for reasons that are not explained by the
story. Can't fault him here. He allows himself to be bribed with sex which
could be seen as a mercy in a certain light. More importantly, he was good on
his word to release Robin and Little John, as opposed to abusing his power
even further. Basically, he could have done far worse than he did.

3\. Little John had the least to lose in all this, and as far as I can tell,
hasn't done anything necessarily correct either. It's very easy to start off
fulfilling the white knight role, but then have nothing to follow it up with.
Neutral on his behavior and he ranks lower than the sheriff only because he
had an easier decision to make.

4\. Robin is the real cunt in this story from my perspective. Ingratitude
coupled with abuse, and lack of empathy as to Marion's motivations.

The claims:

> Such an emphatic rejection of ready-made values is probably partly
> camouflage. You hate to be thought weak or insecure. You value honesty, and
> abhor hypocrisy.

> Men: Women are very much part of you life, and you are - or perhaps would
> like to be - quite ruthless, both with women and life in general.

... interesting.

*edit:formatting

Final edit:

I guess the underpinning difference between my perception of morality is that
it's a bit relative based on the search space of decisions available. There
are a ton of details omitted that would likely sway my decision a different
way, however, so the solution set to this problem seems a bit unstable.

~~~
eemax
Eh, it seems to me the sheriff horribly abused his position of power. Either
LJ and RH were imprisoned rightfully, in which case perhaps they shouldn't be
just be released, or else the sheriff wrongly imprisoned them. Either way, he
exploited his power as sheriff and blackmailed MM for sex.

RH's actions, on the other hand, while certainly misguided, are at least
understandable, if he lives in a typical culture of masculinity, monogamy, and
Victorian-era purity, where it's embarrassing to be rescued by a woman and
shameful for women to have sex. He was probably feeling emasculated after
being rescued by in such a fashion, and took out his anger on MM. (Which is
bad, of course, but I don't think it's worse than what the sheriff did).

Finally, RH's "abuse" is left ambiguous, as opposed to the sheriff's which is
very much explicit.

~~~
j2kun
Blackmail is not quite the right word. There is no evidence in the story that
MM is not free to reject sheriff's offer without consequence (above RH/LJ
remaining in jail, which as we've all observed is not necessarily unjust).

~~~
icebraining
We also have no evidence that she is sure there will be no consequences. In
her position, if the local sheriff had just arrested your loved one (for valid
or invalid reasons) and then called you saying he would free them if you only
had sex with him, would you really trust him not to take revenge if you
refused?

~~~
j2kun
I agree, but on the other hand sheriff's makes the offer after MM pleads. I
think that would suggest that sheriff is seizing an opportunity, not extorting
MM or demanding sex.

------
eemax
Interesting, but I'd be surprised if anyone who reads HN chose anything other
than some permutation of {{Maid Marion, Little John}, {Robin Hood, The
Sheriff}}, which cuts down the answer space by a factor of 6.

My own ranking was MM, LJ, RH, S. Did anyone choose something different from
that? Or seriously choose anything different than one of the four permutations
above?

~~~
jacobwcarlson
I had MM and LJ swapped, but otherwise identical to your rankings. Not that I
thought there was anything wrong with MM's actions, but she still did commit
adultery and engage in bribery to circumvent the legal system (albeit for
honorable reasons). LJ didn't do anything shifty.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Many people see LJ's proposal to MM as taking advantage of a woman in a
vulnerable position. I've seen people rank LJ at the bottom.

~~~
mcv
LJ lower than the Sheriff? I fail to see how LJ took more advantage of her
than the Sheriff. He's the only one supporting her. The only way I can see him
as ranking on the bottom is if you believe Robin "owns" Marion.

------
GavinMcG
I'm giving two totally different answers for morality and honesty. Why are
they conflated?

~~~
to3m
Muddies the water and fuels discussion! If the question were more precisely
specified, there might actually be a right answer :)

But, I wondered about this too. In fact my answers were pretty much opposites,
depending on which I prioritised. In the end I left the decision up to my gut,
and I'm kind of glad I did, because the results had some nice things to say...
about my gut, at least. Not sure where that leaves the rest of me.

(I found the author's willingness not to pull punches in their assessments
admirable, in that he/she avoided any MBTI-/horoscope-style wooliness - but
some of the results came across a little overly scathing. If there isn't
actually one right answer, there are certainly sections of the result space
they're clearly convinced are incorrect. But if its inventor is truly a
marriage expert, I've no doubt they have their reasons.)

------
sanqui
The particular analyses of the results here are dubious and in some instances
pretty ruthless, but the test itself is really quite interesting. My sociology
teacher used to present a morality test with a similar story, but with two
more characters. We spent a lot of time arguing about it in class, and it led
to some serious disagreements. I know I thought less of some people after that
day.

------
dietrichepp
Little John, Maid Marion, Robin Hood, The Sherriff

> Men: Perhaps you tend to idealize women and credit them with virtues they
> don't possess.

Swap Maid Marion and Robin Hood:

> Men: You are sexually inhibited with an underlying distrust of women.

This is crap. It seems putting Maid Marion in the top half means you credit
women too much, and putting her in the bottom half means you discredit her too
much.

~~~
vinceguidry
The first two spots are fairly easy decisions to make. Little John had the
hardest choice to make, and Maid Marion the second hardest. Both chose
rightly.

Your proposed swap is really weird, placing Little John above Robin Hood but
Robin Hood above Maid Marion. It indicates that you accepted that Little John
is the real mensch in this situation, yet identify with Robin Hood's caddish
behavior anyway.

The real decision here is whether Robin Hood is more honorable than the
Sheriff. Ultimately the Sheriff was more honest to his baser desires, whereas
Robin became irrationally controlling when confronted with a difficult
situation.

If you thought Little John should have gotten the prize, then to be
consistent, you have to put Robin in the loser's spot. Robin Hood chose
wrongly when confronted with a moral dilemma in a way that traumatized the
very person responsible for his freedom.

Giving Robin more credit than he deserves indicates that you identify with the
feelings he had. They're the feelings of sexual inadequacy and possessiveness.

~~~
dietrichepp
> Giving Robin more credit than he deserves indicates that you identify with
> the feelings he had.

This is _exactly_ the kind of information which you can't glean from rankings.

~~~
vinceguidry
I disagree. I think the way the quiz is set up and the question being asked,
"who is the most moral / honest," means that's exactly the sort of information
this is teasing out.

The quiz sets up a highly emotionally charged situation that a lot of people
are going to make snap judgments about. The first couple of ranking decisions
made are going to reflect those snap judgments. The neat thing about the
ranking process is that it forces you to think beyond the snap judgments and
consider the relative morality of _all_ the characters. It asks you to do this
while your guard is down, i.e. if they just asked you the relevant questions
about your moral leanings, you wouldn't necessarily give the ones you are
really operating on subconsciously.

The other neat thing is the ambiguity of the situation given. You don't know
the character's histories, you don't know why the sheriff locked them up, the
whole thing is set up so you read those details into the situation. What you
read into it will certainly affect your rankings. For example, an unassuming
reader won't snap to the judgment that the sheriff forced Maid Marion to have
sex with her.

~~~
dietrichepp
You haven't addressed my concern: you've focused on my judgments about Robin,
but my concern is that you can't analyze my opinion about Robin in isolation,
because it's only a relative ranking.

------
RestlessMind
One interesting twist - reverse the genders of the characters involved and
then decide your order of morality.

I did that with my girlfriend - both of us could make up our minds for the
original tests, but when the genders were reversed, it took a long time for
both of us to make sense of the situation and come up with the final ranking.

Very interesting to see how our brains are conditioned.

------
StavrosK
My answer would be different depending on whether the Sheriff was planning to
keep them for a day anyway, or for life, or even kill them the next day. I
feel this is an important part of the story, which is not clarified. Also not
clarified is whether MM could talk to Robin first and ask him what he wanted.

------
kstenerud
It's unfortunate that he conflates morality and honesty.

------
zdw
I find it the following interesting:

From this perspective, J did nothing wrong, and helped solve M's problems. M
had good intentions, but hurt R, but had little choice. S forced himself on
someone against their will as a form of ransom. R lost both his friend and
lover as a result of his actions.

The ranking of S and R comes down to whether you think that S forcing himself
on M was intended to hurt R, and if he knew what R would do to M as a result.

I wonder if this had been changed from imprisonment to death for R (and
possibly J, possibly not) if R's reaction would have changed, or if not, if it
would change the S/R ranking.

~~~
eldude
S did not force himself on M. Objectively, he abused his power to make a trade
for personal gain, and that's what you're judging. M was in no way forced to
do anything and the way the story is presented is nearly as guilty as S in
that she abused her sexual power for gain (undermining justice in the process)
to free someone. The way it is presented, we don't know if it's altruistic or
selfish.

For reference, I was JMSR.

~~~
icebraining
_the story is presented is nearly as guilty as S in that she abused her sexual
power for gain (undermining justice in the process) to free someone_

Considering S's actions - arresting someone and then giving someone the choice
between prostituting herself to him or leaving her loved one in prison - I
have no reason to assume any _justice_ has been undermined.

The name might indicate a position of legitimate power, but the actions
suggest he's nothing more than a kidnapper. Hell, who knows what he might have
done to the prisoners had she refused.

------
vinchuco
There's not enough information.

It's a 'morality' test. You should ask "which morality"?

If we agreed on the code of conduct (procedure) to use, we could agree on a
score for each.

Notice that two persons with the same ranking could have come from different
scores (i.e. person A: (25,13,7,1=JRMS) vs Ranking from person B:
(-1,-7,-10,-40=JRMS)). And this is just in the one-dimensional morality score
system.

The test is mapping an infinite set of scores to a set of 24 choices, and then
using those choices to criticize the chooser.

------
captainmuon
It's not clear to me what it means by "moral"... does it mean aligned with the
mainstream morality of our society, or does it mean what I believe is good
according to my personal morality?

There are a bunch of cases where these two differ (for me), just think of the
Snowden and Silkroad cases, or attitudes towards marriage or promiscuity, or
towards religion.

------
siliconc0w
Awesome, no matter one answer you pick the test condemns you. This is less
useful than even something like "What star wars character are you?" which is
at least coherent in what it is attempting to discern.

~~~
mintplant
Or maybe that's just the answer(s) you picked. MJRS gave me:

"We would expect you to be a happy, well-balanced person who likes people and
is liked by others. You question whether many conventional views on morality
are valid under all circumstances."

------
mintplant
Going for some of the "worst" answers produces some entertaining responses.

The Sheriff, Robin Hood, Maid Mario, Little John (Female):

"Women: If you really believe this is the right order, you baffle us
completely."

~~~
mintplant
And now I realize I wrote "Maid Mario", but I'm past the edit time limit. My
mistake shall be enshrined in eternity.

------
k__
They seem all pretty strange to me.

Marion bribed the sheriff. The sheriff got bribed. Robin is an asshole. John
an opportunist.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If they weren't all immoral or dishonest then the ranking wouldn't be
interesting.

~~~
k__
I simply can't order them.

Every time, the person who is on the last place seem to be undeserving of it.

~~~
mcv
I think Robin and the Sheriff are both pretty deserving of the last place.

------
thoughtsimple
Last page for accuracy is totally busted on an iPhone. Too bad.

------
yarou
Remember folks: social science != science.

~~~
wickawic
This doesn't appear to be social science either, though; more like a
horoscope.

To the point of your comment though, I don't understand why anyone would think
that applying scientific principles to humans and human interaction is any
less valid a use of our time than any other application of the same methods.

~~~
cousin_it
Maybe because it doesn't work as well?

