Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] The Daily Recognizer (Sunday morning)

[Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoth Glotmorf,

> --- Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> I actually don't believe it's even possible for a
>> CFI to contravene a rule.
>> The ruleset, when you really look at it, is really
>> nothing more than a
>> collection of words. Actually, it's worse then that
>> - it's really just a
>> bunch of binary switches in interesting positions
>> inside Dave's computer.
> 
> Which came first, the chicken-scratch or the
> concept-egg?  If we go by the idea that the gamestate
> is a thing independent of any representation of it,
> and that the gamestate includes the ruleset, then the
> magnetic field states of the portions of oxidized
> material in Dave's computer become representations of
> the ruleset rather than the ruleset itself.  The
> gamestate Is, Dave's copy of the ruleset Claims to Say
> What Is, and our reading Dave's copy of the ruleset is
> Our Perception of What Is.  Neither our perception nor
> Dave's hard drive, from an absolute perspective, is
> necessarily accurate.
> 
> But you knew that.

The Gamestate Is. Our Perception of What Is isn't just based on reading the
ruleset, because the ruleset isn't clear. The Gamestate is absolute, but the
only part of the rules that is absolute is their text. What we decide their
text means is entirely a function of us. For example, if it were determined
that 'The name of this game is B Nomic' ought to be interpreted to mean that
the player known as Wonko should be awarded a win every nweek, it would be
fine. The gamestate wouldn't be changing when we adopted that
interpretation, only the meaning of the gamestate.

>> Most of the game is
>> ruled by convention. But a corrolary to this is that
>> whatever the game
>> dictates as a means of interpreting the gamestate is
>> essentially
>> all-powerful, as it's the only official way we have
>> of changing our
>> interpretation.
>> 
>> That, by the way, is why I was so irritated when
>> Glotmorf and bd decided to
>> fix the results of a CFI. There is no way to stop
>> CFI scams short of making
>> Dave responsible for all judgments (which, I
>> suspect, is a prospect nobody,
>> least of all Dave, would enjoy). The only thing we
>> can do, then, is hope
>> that nobody will exploit the CFI system, as
>> exploiting it can cause
>> permanent damage to the game's interpretation.
> 
> I would like to take this moment to point out the
> fundamental difference between uin's scam and CFI
> 1205: uin's scam was an attempt to change reality,
> whereas CFI 1205 is (whatever people may think of its
> judges) an interpretation of reality.  I honestly
> believe my interpretation of the former Societies rule
> is a valid interpretation.  I believe other people
> honestly think that too.  My approach for
> demonstrating said validity may have been what people
> might call Machiavellian, but that doesn't discount
> the validity.  Here, it seems, is where Wonko parts
> from Mr. in a Spacesuit: Wonko doesn't disagree with
> what I was saying quite as much as the baseball bat it
> was written on.

I think the difference between CFI 234 and CFI 1205 is that 234 was a scam
in and of itself - it was uin's attempt to alter the gamestate so e would be
in charge. Your actions, however, were instead an attempt to force a certain
interpretation on the game as a whole, an interpretation which nobody else
seems entirely to believe - bd said e would have said NO had e not been
bribed, and I got the impression that the Baron wasn't entirely certain e
was right either. So no, I don't specifically disagree with your point; I
object to the fact that you managed to force an interpretation into the
gamestate that does not, as far as I can tell, reflect the interpretation of
any player save yourself.

>> Okay, enough of that. On to some other stuff:
>> 
>> First of all, I think we need a constitution. I'm
>> looking around, and it
>> occurs to me that, for example, r0 is no longer as
>> powerful as it once was,
>> as it now has the least Serial Chutzpah. That makes
>> me nervous. Might it not
>> be a good idea to, say, turn all rules numbered less
>> than 100 into some sort
>> of Constitution? Perhaps proposals that modify them
>> would require a greater
>> majority to pass, and non-Const rules would always
>> defer to them?
> 
> Layers.  The ruleset should, perhaps, have layers,
> each layer containing one or more rules.  Lower layers
> defer to higher layers, and rules in the same layer
> duke it out with each other.
> 
> Chutzpah attempts to do this, but it's too easy to
> just slap another zero onto the new rule's chutzpah
> number.  Make it necessary that a new rule be placed
> into a layer, even if a layer has to be created or
> inserted for it, and attach a certain level of
> difficulty to the creation of a new layer, or the
> movement of a rule from one layer to another.
> 
> We can even, for the geometrically inclined, introduce
> cells to layers, which can contain multiple rules that
> relate to each other (to break up some of those
> monsters), and which can even have layers of their
> own.
> 
> Dan tried to do something like this, didn't he, with
> three layers?  I say, why stop at three?  At the
> moment, for all practical purposes, the ruleset
> consists of a mess of layers, each containing one
> rule.

The problem with Dan's, though, was that it did some fundamental reworking
of the game that nobody really trusted, involving some weird distinctions
between rules that forced people to do things and rules that merely required
people to do things (?), and that turned people against it. A better idea, I
would think, would be to create a bunch of layers originally with nothing in
them, except for maybe two layers, and then we could move things around
later.

>> Maybe we could call them "const rules"...
> 
> Looks too much like a Pascal declaration.

I was thinking C++.

>> Two nweeks later, the toad
>> Foobar is still in the Siren's range, so e Makes
>> Whoopee again.
>> A toadly 3 is rolled again.
>> What happens?
> 
> Encapsulation:
> 1. "for 4 nweeks" is an absolute, and further toadings
> are irrelevant during it.
> 
> 2. "for 4 nweeks" relates to the most recent toading,
> if toadings are layered.
> 
> 3. "for 4 nweeks" means four additional nweeks after
> the current toading ends.
> 
>> Anyone have any opinions? I can't figure out how to
>> effectively CFI this
>> (that's one of the advantages of the Suberian system
>> - the Judge just
>> 'decides' on the issue, instead of having to judge
>> TRUE or FALSE on a
>> statement).
> 
> I'd say #2 is the clear choice.  Someone gets toaded,
> e stays that way for four nweeks; that e was toaded
> before is irrelevant, so that e would have been
> untoaded in two nweeks is too.  In that instance, I'd
> say that since the rule doesn't say toading has a
> cumulative effect, toading doesn't have a cumulative
> effect; cumulativeness (?) would be an effect over and
> above that stated in the rule.

But it says, 'for 4 nweeks'... this implies that for each time a player gets
toaded, e should spend 4 nweeks for it. Under number 2, e'd only have spent
3 nweeks per toading, a violation of the rule.

>> Finally, something I suspect would be useful. How do
>> people feel about these
>> definitions:
>> {{
>> A game object is any single thing, or type of thing,
>> that exists within the
>> context of the game.
>> 
>> An Entity is a game object which is capable of
>> taking actions.
>> 
>> An Outside Influence is anything that exists outside
>> the context of the
>> game, but not inside it.
>> 
>> An Agent is an Entity which has free will.
>> 
>> A player is any Agent who is capable of passing the
>> Turing test, consents to
>> said designation as a player, has become a player in
>> the manner described by
>> the rules, and consents to be governed by the rules.
>> }}
>> The Admin should probably be in there somewhere...
>> something like, 'an
>> Agent, who cannot be a player, and who has become an
>> Administrator in a
>> manner prescribed by the rules, or who was
>> Administrator when the game
>> began'. Any thoughts?
> 
> I'd still like to see a default provision for
> dictionary use, but other than that it looks okay.
> 
> Would you define the Administrator in terms of eir
> powers and responsibilities in the same rule or
> another?

Perhaps the whole thing should be in a separate rule?

-- 
Wonko

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