Evil but No Good

[Mord]

I have to disagree. What the Joker believes matters, and his actions do not, except in so far as they reflect his beliefs.

Alignment isn't a about behavior, it's about beliefs and philosophies. Those beliefs are expressed through behavior, but the behavior itself is unimportant. If an evil person goes his entire life without committing even a single evil deed, then he still goes to an evil afterlife.

Each alignment is supposed to represent a set of related beliefs that follow a general trend.

This is basically the sola fide doctrine for D&D. Martin Luther would approve.

[Occluded Sun]

Deleted because of weird multiposting

[Occluded Sun]

I suppose you could lock a person in a box and give them no opportunities to act upon their beliefs and worldview, and they would still have an alignment - but that's not very realistic. Especially in a game where the players have agency.

In practice, how people behave determines their alignment - most especially in that actions incompatible with their nominal beliefs WILL cause that alignment to shift. People don't always believe what they believe they do. And beliefs, even in real life, tend to shift to be compatible with our actions.

If the Joker doesn't actually go around making people suffer for the LOLs, and he has occasional moments of compassion and generosity, eventually his alignment will shift to Chaotic Neutral, and then to Chaotic Good. Given his very strong initial alignment, though, it'll take a very long time.

[virgil]

I suppose you could lock a person in a box

How do you know it's a person in that box?