You're both right and wrong. I should've given it more thought. It's not the alignments themselves, but what they represent. Their descriptions and whatever examples one might come up with that fit those alignments can be inspiring. I remember, when playing Baldur's Gate, one of the alignments being exemplified with "a greedy merchant who..." I can't remember the rest. But I remember thinking such a merchant would be an interesting personality to write about. The part where you're wrong is that Chaotic Evil doesn't mean the devil himself in the flesh. A character can do good despite being of that alignment. The article uses Riddick as an example.
If character can do good, I wouldn't call them "Evil" unless he was actually evil for much of the story, and I advise you that Wikipedia isn't exactly go-to site for fiction "tropes" . Try reading TV tropes instead; If you are like me then you will stick with this site for a good portion of your life http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChaoticEvil
I agree. The alignment system is designed to anticipate how a character will react in the situations the DM proposes, not how they will react to a plot that you design. Unless you're writing with a DM who will tell you, "He's lawful good, he can't kill that child," the system is pretty much useless to you.
