On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 7:46 PM nix via agora-business < agora-business@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> My office has received a thesis! I'm going to stick with the strategy > developed last time, summarized below: > > * Three people from the Review Board (which anyone can sign up for) will > be assigned to review the thesis. I will preference people on the board > who have not recently reviewed a thesis. > > * These 3 people will have 1 week to read the thesis and return a verdict > of either "UNSUITABLE FOR DEGREE", "REVISE & RESUBMIT", or "NOMINATE FOR > [DEGREE]". Each one should have suitable amount of detail on why that > specific verdict. > > * For each NOMINATE, I'll intend to award. Otherwise, I'll do nothing > until a revised submission. > > This is the board as of last time I called for reviewers: > > Reviewer Last Reviewed > -------- ------------- > 4st > Aspen 2023-02-11 > Janet 2023-02-11 > juan > nix 2023-02-11 > snail > > Since it's been about two months since that list was made, I will give a > few days for people to either ask to be excused from the board or added to > it. So, let me know. > > -- > nix > Prime Minister, Herald > > Essentially, this thesis is just a proposal, accompanied by a large amount of reasoning for it. This reasoning, in my opinion, is quite well put forth, and I believe close to worthy of a degree. What I find significantly good: The arguments for the issues and how they would be fixed are informative, intuitive, and succinct. The solution logically solves each of the 3 presented problems. Upon my first read of this I found it extremely compelling, and outlining a wise path to take when analyzing a problem in agoran mechanics: looking at the history of how the mechanic has changed and what those changes did, identifying problems that exist now, and how they arose from such changes, and proposing a solution that addresses the problems, with past changes, successes, and failures in mind. I'll hopefully look back on this when considering how to fix other issues in Agora. The categorization of win types is also insightful, as is realizing anti-radiance sentiment for proposals stems from the competitive nature of radiance clashing with proposal-making ideals. Some criticisms: The thesis doesn't touch much on the different kinds of radiance gains from dreams, only the revolution one, the consequences of which were not explored. The mechanism of the charity dream should have been included, at least, for its ability to greatly change stamp balances in an instant. The history also runs a bit too long for the point of the thesis, I think. That would be more appropriate for a thesis about how score systems have worked in the past, and to what degrees of success, though this is just a minor gripe. The later examples of different victory conditions seem far more relevant, in contrast, though I am surprised the competitive Sets win condition wasn't mentioned, given the similarities to our current situation: rewards for proposals (coins) that could be used to win the game (buying winsomes) and reset the gamestate even more destructively. The thesis also, more importantly, talks about the issues the proposal would fix without giving much time to the issues it might CAUSE, notably how much easier it would be to win. Under the change, a player with 0 stamps of eir own type existing could get 14 radiance worth of stamps in 4 weeks. That's about 44 radiance per quarter (13 weeks). A player that starts a quarter with 56 radiance would be assured victory by the end of it, knocking 2 weeks off for each proposal of theirs that passes. This alone could cause issues, but in all likelihood trading will likely make this faster because of the quadratic redemption method. Getting 8 different stamps would get you to 56 radiance condition you need, thus securing yourself a win. A more practical example is if this proposal passed saturday next week, the 29th. 5 weeks would pass, then the quarter would end. 10 stamps would get you 18 radiance at the start of the quarter, plus the 44 you're guaranteed would give you 60 total, you'd just need to get 40 radiance more to win (which would only need 7 unique stamps, or 6 unique stamps and 3 proposals, or 5 unique stamps twice, etc.) A cabal of 4 could guarantee they all win 9 weeks into a new quarter, getting 12 radiance every week! And that's assuming they all start with 0 stamps and 0 radiance. Extra stamps, or radiance to begin with, could reduce the time needed / the cabal members needed (even down to 1). As Agora doesn't typically hand out wins willy-nilly (as far as i'm led to believe, since wins should feel important), I feel it is very unfortunate to leave out that radiance resets discourage these cabals. The thesis mentions that a win condition like this became "too easily obtainable" but makes no attempt to determine if that would be the case here, which I think it clearly would be, without a mechanism to stop the would-be unending increase of radiance accumulation. I am also unsatisfied by the notion this change would really prevent voting against proposals because of radiance, since it would still lead to other players winning, thus devaluing your own win, compounding with the previous issue. And so, my Verdict: REVISE & RESUBMIT. A version of this thesis that addressed the too-much-winning concerns would get at least an Associate of Nomic from me. The fact the proposal this thesis supports is accompanied with no win-balancing mechanism, makes me want to vote against it. I look forward to seeing what you have to say on the matter. -- snail
