Re: DIS: Suggestions on the Absurd

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-07-02 at 17:51 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-
discussion wrote:
> Further gamification perhaps?
> 
> Maybe "achievements" once we accomplish something peculiar with the
> boulder, or the possibility to earn lootboxes with silly, pointless
> prizes.

Thinking about this: some sort of bonus to pushing the boulder to
particular numbers (square numbers, for example) might be interesting
and add some strategy to it.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Full Transparency (@Tailor)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-07-01 at 18:52 -0400, Mischief via agora-business wrote:
> I qualify for a White Ribbon, as I have never previously owned one

I was a little surprised by this one, so I checked: you had Orange and
Blue ribbons in 2008, but not White. (Previous rulesets count.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: OFF: [proposal] It's about time

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-06-30 at 11:34 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
>  5. Any anniversary, monthly anniversary, or quarterly anniversary that
>     would otherwise occur on a day of the month that does not exist
>     (after considering any leap day) instead occurs on the following day.

What's the day that follows a nonexistent day? You probably mean
"instead occurs on the first day of the following month".

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Herald) Victory by Quickdraw

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2024-06-28 at 11:20 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> I believe that deals and alliances are going to be extremely strong here.
> To me, it seems to be in practice a prerequisite to incarnating at all in
> the first place.

There is no downside (other than the rather problematic tracking
burden, which is a SHOULD) to incarnating if you don't intend to win
via Bangs yourself – it helps to block a win, and may produce Bangs
which could potentially have value as trade items.

If enough players incarnate, it'll make a win via pooling quite hard to
achieve, because (under the current rules) the pool has to form at
least half of the players who incarnate (and would have to be an even
greater proportion if the cost to eliminate someone were increased).

There's also an interesting sort of relationship in which the more
players incarnate, the more valuable Bangs become (due to reduced
supply: some players would be willing to sell Bangs very cheaply, but
others will demand more, and with lots of players incarnated then deals
will have to be made with the more demanding players). That means that
even if a player would be willing to sell their Bangs cheaply, if lots
of players are incarnated, it makes more economic sense to increase
your price because you're still likely going to be within the top X
players to buy from. And that in turn means that the price of buying a
win is going to go up faster than linearly as more players incarnate.

All this means that players should be encouraged to incarnate rather
than discouraged: staying Ghostly only benefits players who are trying
to pool for a win.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Herald) Victory by Quickdraw

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2024-06-27 at 21:34 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business
wrote:
> I stand Alone.

Now I'm trying to figure out how you could afford to bribe so many
people (particularly along the lines of "are these bribes large, in
which case you might not be able to pay for them, or small, in which
case how did you persuade people to accept them?"). I think it's
possible that there is some sort of win-trading going on (i.e. you
bribed the players by planning to support future wins).

In any case, this has demonstrated that a 1 Bang = 1 elimination ratio
is probably not enough to handle high levels of trading – possibly
players should start with half a Bang rather than a whole one. (Because
the way you eliminate a player is, in effect, to transfer a Bang to
them, there will always be enough to finish the game unless players
start hoarding.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Bangs and such

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2024-06-27 at 21:25 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business
wrote:
> I eliminate ais523 by paying a fee of 1 bang.

I have 2 Bangs for sale. Is anyone willing to make offers?

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [ADoP] Metareport

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-06-24 at 11:50 +1000, Matt Smyth via agora-discussion
wrote:
> Query: This report lists my lateness as !!! - but Simplifior was only
> enacted in the past 24 hrs, right? Am I misinterpreting something in
> this report?

My guess is that the report is automatically generated, and the
automation hasn't taken this case into account.

For what it's worth, I'm unsure on what our actual precedents are on "a
player becomes an officer close to a deadline for the office", although
generally players are reluctant to penalise new officers for duties
that they didn't have a realistic chance to fulfil.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: [@ais523] CFJs 4084, 4085 [Re: BUS: CFJ - 4st/apathy name clarifications (@Arbitor)]

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-05-27 at 12:59 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 5/27/24 12:53, nix via agora-business wrote:
> > > I CFJ: "The CFJ above bars the player currently named 'apathy'"
> > I number this CFJ 4085. I assign it to ais523.
> 
> Gratuitous: This is trivially TRUE. Names have no legal meaning in
> Agora, and plenty of case-law covers synonymous names. CFJ 4033, 3225
> (implicitly), 3467. Nothing stops anyone from referring to anybody by
> any name or referent, as long as it's clear. Only reason I didn't assign
> to myself was to follow the arbitor's requirement to give "reasonably
> equal opportunities to judge".

It isn't trivial – the statement doesn't match what the intent of the
CFJ is. I agree that it's trivial that the player variously known as
4st/apathy is barred from the CFJ. However, the CFJ statement also
(probably unintentionally) requires me to determine whether the player
in question is currently named 'apathy', and I think that's less
obvious – that's what I'm going to be spending the bulk of my thought
judging on.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Referee] The Blotter (and a history lesson @Mischief)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-05-19 at 15:09 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote:
> ais523 wrote:
> 
> > particular, if a contract would be given a Rest (the equivalent of a
> > Blot), every member of the contract would be given a Rest instead.
> 
> > the Insulator (equivalent of today's Referee) was required to report
> > the Fugitive status.
> 
> For those wondering how "Rest" and "Insulator" fit together: the
> primary currencies at the time were Notes, tracked by the Conductor,
> whose author evidently had a shameless disregard for mixed metaphors.

It was quite a well-constructed series of interlocking puns (starting
with "Notes" = banknotes or musical notes; and if you did something
helpful to Agora you would be noted for it). It is possible that some
of these were fortunate coincidences rather than intentional. A Rest
had a value of -1 Note (originally, you could use a Note to cancel out
a Rest). I am surprised that puns on "ar-Rest-ed" weren't made more
often.

Incidentally, I vaguely remember that Notes and Ribbons were
descendants of the same system (i.e. originally a Ribbons win was
obtained via getting an ancestor-of-Notes from every possible source,
with the ancestors of Notes having ribbon-style colors rather than
musical pitches), although they had diverged somewhat before I started
playing and no longer matched up to each other. That economy ended up
being temporarily revived semi-recently under the Glitter system (which
was effectively an economic reward for doing something that would give
you a Ribbon).

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] An Agoran Standoff

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-05-14 at 06:55 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote:
> A ghostly player CAN incarnate by announcement, which means
> to flip eir Vitality to Invulnerable, provided there are only
> Invulnerable or Ghostly players.
[snip]
> When the match is reset, each player is set to Ghostly, all bangs are
> destroyed, and then each player gains 1 bang.
> 
> When 3 days have passed since the match is reset, all Invulnerable
> players have eir Vitality set to Alive.

The timing here is incredibly tight given Agora's typical pace of
play – not only is it faster than the "once per week" cadence at which
many players seem to be paying attention, it's even faster than the 4-
day without-objection timer.

This makes it likely that only players who are continuously paying
attention will end up joining the match, and could arguably be
considered a scam, or at least biased proposal-writing in favour of the
continuously active.

> Each corporeal player SHOULD list eir Vitality and Bang Balance in
> all eir messages.

This one is also a problem, seeing as it includes things like official
reports (and even the SLR/FLR) – although some means is needed to track
things, and I think officer-less subgames are an experiment worth
trying, "every message" seems like too high a frequency for this.

> Eliminating a player makes em Unalive, and then grants em 1
bang.

The eliminated player has no obvious use for the granted bang, as it
will be destroyed before they next become alive. Is this intended to
give em something to trade with?

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Proposals (attn Promotor)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-05-12 at 15:32 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-business
wrote:
> Proposal: No apathetic apathy
> 
> Amend Rule 2465 (Victory by Apathy) by appending this text:
> 
>    A player SHALL NOT announce intent to Declare Apathy and then
>    fail to Declare Apathy before that intent ceases to be ripe; such
>    failure is the Class 5 Infraction of Not Reading the Room.

What's the intention behind this one (and why such a high class)? Is
the intention to make failed Apathy attempts illegal?

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Winpalooza

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2024-05-09 at 09:11 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 5/6/24 15:15, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote:
> > So ais523 has basically won 3 times, paradox, stones, and radiance, pretty
> > much in a row.
> > 
> > Just would like to point that out.
> 
> A portion of this, at least the radiance portion, is because e's been
> sitting on a large stockpile of stamps from before they had the value
> they currently do. I wonder if we should do a one-time reduction in 
> stamp holdings, with enough warning for people to spend them before the 
> reduction happens.

The large stockpile of ais523 stamps was fairly valuable back when I
originally created it, too (and is not really enough for a win on its
own; most of the Radiance I used for the win came from stamp trades in
the intervening months).

It's also been substantially crippling my gameplay ever since we
switched to the new system – stamp creation is based on the number of
stamps of your type that exist, so I haven't been able to create ais523
stamps since the system was enacted, meaning I've been locked out from
a portion of gameplay.

(It is worth contrasting with Yachay's stamps-into-radiance win, which
was achieved fairly quickly by a new player soon after registering –
because Yachay stamps were easy for em to create and valuable, e was
able to trade for stamps that gave enough radiance to win, with no pre-
existing asset stockpile to use.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: (@Herald, Illuminator, Collector, Stonemason) BUS: A hat-trick

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-05-07 at 09:30 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> Perhaps, I'm personally not too sure about it, although I haven't
> participated in Radiance yet, myself. I think it's good to have the
> different subgames have different levels of risk and gameplay style. We
> already have Stamps (and Ribbons) for relatively riskless grinds.
> 
> To toss out more ideas, perhaps the "winning" threshold could be reduced by
> half, which award you 1 Radium, and you can cash in 2 Radium for a win. Or
> the threshold is reduced by a third, and you need 3 Radium.
> 
> I think having to race for Radiance is exciting.

The problem is that it makes it impossible to use radiance to reward
things like judging CFJs and holding offices (and writing good
proposals) – if people are racing for Radiance that gives them an
incentive to try to hold other players back from Radiance by, e.g.,
voting down their proposals.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Winpalooza

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-05-06 at 13:15 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion
wrote:
> So ais523 has basically won 3 times, paradox, stones, and radiance,
> pretty much in a row.
> 
> Just would like to point that out.

The wins came together at around the same time, but the start of
planning for them was quite separate. (For example, I'd been setting up
for the radiance win for well over a year, whereas the paradox win was
attempted almost as soon as I noticed it was possible and wasn't pre-
planned.)

A sequence of two unrelated wins by the same player in quick succession
has definitely happened before. I can't remember having seen sequences
of three unrelated wins in the past, though.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: (@Herald, Illuminator, Collector, Stonemason) BUS: A hat-trick

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-05-06 at 17:47 +0100, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> My radiance is 100. This announcement causes me to win the game.

…which reminds me that the radiance reset is still broken.

I have been wondering if it would make more sense to cap the value of
the reset, i.e. if you have less than 40 Radiance you lose half your
radiance, but if you have more, you only lose 20. That way, players
wouldn't be punished for gradually working towards a win over time (in
particular, the relative timing of two players winning would continue
to matter, but wouldn't matter to nearly the same extent).

I also think that doing that would help decouple radiance wins between
the various players to a sufficient extent that we could at least use
radiance as officer and judge pay (although probably not proposal pay).

-- 
ais253

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: New week, new push (attn Absurdor)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-05-05 at 21:38 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-
discussion wrote:
> It's crazy to me how they've made a whole video game based on an
> Agoran subgame.

BF Joust escaped its origins as an Agoran subgame and became something
that received intermittent play for over seven years. I'm not sure
whether or not it counts as a video game (but the submissions were
moderated automatically by computer and we had visualisations for
seeing how the various competing warriors did, so it's a video game in
the sense of "a game played by interacting with a computer program that
provides graphical feedback").

You can see https://esolangs.org/wiki/BF_Joust_strategies for some of
the nonsense we came up with over the years. (The rules were slightly
different from the original ruleset that was run at Agora - the "flag
zero" victory condition was changed to require the flag to be at two
cycles rather than one, the tape was made shorter, and a command was
added to wait for one cycle. Competitions also started to be run
continuously, rather than in weekly batches, and with a draw being
counted as a draw rather than a double loss. But most of the rules are
still the same as in the Agoran original.)

For those who weren't active in 2008, here's how it looked at Agora:
https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-business@agoranomic.org/msg10766.html

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement of CFJs 4075 and 4076

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-04-30 at 09:52 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion
wrote:
> I object.
> Per Rule 2576 "Ownership", the asset goes into abeyance as soon as the
> owner is ambiguous.
> The owner becomes ambiguous at step 2, wherein we are not sure if ais523
> can take the asset due to the ensuing contradiction.
> Therefore, both CFJs should be FALSE, as neither party can cash a promise
> that is in abeyance.

This argument assumes that the paradox has already occurred – if there
were no paradox there would be no ambiguity. So this is a self-
defeating line of reasoning: you're saying that the first transfer
causes the promise's ownership to be ambiguous because it would cause a
paradox, then that the second transfer unambiguously fails because the
first transfer moved the promise to the L – or in other words, this
is an argument that says "if there were a paradox, that would cause
there to not be a paradox".

This doesn't lead to a consistent outcome because it requires a view of
things in which the paradox both does and doesn't occur; it's just as
self-contradictory as the scenarios in which the first transfer fails
and in which the first transfer succeeds. (Or to think about it another
way, Murphy has proved that if there were not a paradox, there would be
a paradox, and you are arguing that if there were a paradox there would
not be a paradox, and thus we have constructed a paradox as to whether
there's a paradox!)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement of CFJs 4075 and 4076

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-04-28 at 15:38 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote:
> I was looking for (but couldn't find) one or two other cases that G. was
> involved in, along the lines of:
> 
>    * A player plays card X which gives em card Y, then plays card Y
>  which retroactively negates eir playing card X

CFJ 1563 (was DISMISSed, apparently because no paradox judgement
existed in the ruleset at the time).

>    * The Arbitor (maybe named CotC at the time) ambiguously assigns a
>  CFJ to either X or Y, both of whom would be in a position where eir
>  judgement would imply that the other one was assigned the CFJ

I wasn't able to find this one, although I think it happened before I
first registered.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Self-Promotion

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-04-21 at 15:16 +1000, Matt Smyth via agora-discussion
wrote:
> Good something to you all,
> Is there a circumstance where the Promoter is allowed to promote
> themselves
> to some role, or when (rarely) creating a new role, do we assume the
> Promoter cannot do this self-despotism?

Normally, when a new office is created, it's given to the author of the
proposal (rule 1006).

The Promotor's job is to distribute proposals; it's the Assessor who
actually resolves them. As such, the office of Promotor has very little
impact on the way players are allocated to offices. (The Promotor might
end up in a new office when a proposal is resolved, if e happened to be
the author of the proposal, but that would be unrelated to eir status
as Promotor.)

The officer who tracks offices is the ADoP. E does have a small
advantage when it comes to gaining offices, because the vote collector
for an election has the ability to break ties (rule 955).

In any case, it's more common for Agora to struggle with finding anyone
who has the time/motivation/ability to run an office than it is for it
to struggle with people fighting over who should get the office.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Civic Duty (Absurdor)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 22:11 -0400, Quadrantal via agora-business wrote:
> I push þe boulder.
> 
> --
> 
> The above message shall be read, to the fullest extent possible, as if 
> it was sent with the digraph "th" in place of all occurrences of the 
> character thorn ("þ"), and such digraphs were capitalized equivalently.
> 
> Quadrantal

Isn't that "th" actually a ð rather than a þ? Admittedly they were
pretty much used interchangeably in Old English (and ð ended up dying
out even before þ did, and before the distinction was commonly made),
but when writing the "th" sounds using historical letters, it makes
sense to give the two different sounds two different letters.

(IPA confuses the matter by using ð and θ for the two sounds, rather
than ð and þ, but the latter pair were both historically used for "th"
sounds in English and are rather easier to type.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: CFJs 4075 & 4076 Assigned to kiako [Re: BUS: (@Notary, Arbitor) A Broken Promise]

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2024-04-10 at 09:17 -0500, Kiako via agora-discussion wrote:
> ARGUMENTS FOR [X]
> 
>    i. We again suppose (D) succeeds. Then one of (A) or (C) succeeds.
>   ii. (B) fails, to avoid a paradox/indeterminacy.
>  iii. (A) fails, because (A) implies (B), and (B) must fail.
>   iv. (C) succeeds, because (A) fails and (D) succeeds.

At least this argument is explicitly disallowed by the rules. From rule
217:

  Definitions and prescriptions in the rules are only to be applied
  using direct, forward reasoning; in particular, an absurdity that
  can be concluded from the assumption that a statement about
  rule-defined concepts is false does not constitute proof that it
  is true.

which implies that you can't validly use step "ii." above in order to
try to resolve the situation. (This was added to the rules
intentionally in order to stop scams of the form "if I don't have a
dictatorship, there is a paradox, therefore I have a dictatorship" – if
someone sets up such a situation, the correct/intended resolution is
that there is a paradox and no dictatorship.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Referee] Infraction Reaction

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-04-08 at 11:21 -0300, juan via agora-discussion wrote:
> 4st nomic via agora-discussion [2024-04-05 19:16]:
> > What does take complete control of Agora mean?
> > 
> > Is any statement that is simply "not true" sufficient?
> > 
> > Overall I find this to be unsavory.
> 
> Yeah, rules be rules, but jokes shouldn't be punishable. Could we
> improve things?

The easy way to avoid the punishment would be to send the joke to DIS:
rather than BUS:, where it would likely have been pretty much as
effective. (And I don't think I agree with the principle of "jokes
shouldn't be punishable" in the general case, as opposed to this case
specifically - if someone does something that hurts other people, it
shouldn't matter whether it was a joke or not, because the effect on
the victim is more important than the intentions of the culprit.)

-- 
ais523
Referee

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Referee] Infraction Reaction

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2024-04-05 at 19:16 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion
wrote:
> What does take complete control of Agora mean?
> 
> Is any statement that is simply "not true" sufficient?

If the statement is meaningless, then it is not true. To what extent it
is meaningful, it is incorrect.

(It is also worth noting that whatever you think of the first
paragraph, the second paragraph, "Full explanation here:", is clearly
both meaningful and false.)

Being not true is not on its own sufficient for an infraction: the
author also has to have believed it not to be true (or in a situation
where they should have known it was not true), and to have either made
it with intent to mislead, or under penalty of No Faking. Most messages
sent to Agora aren't made with intent to mislead, even if they may be
mistaken sometimes (and "under penalty of No Faking" is rarely used).
This one was a bit unusual in that respect.

-- 
ais523

DIS: (@Janet) Re: BUS: [Arbitor] Judgment Reminder @Kate @Janet @Murphy @Gaelan

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sat, 2024-03-16 at 16:23 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:



Janet, you've just sent two blank messages in a row – has something
gone wrong with your email client?

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: (@arbitor, @referee) Re: BUS: A lie

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-03-12 at 14:29 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> Or, in the alternative, based on the authority Rule 2125, Rule 2471
> prohibits sending a message with certain attributes, and that is what
> the infraction is. So, the infraction isn't contained within the message
> in any case. Thus, even if all infractions are judged to be game
> actions, whether or not sending the message was an infraction has no
> bearing on whether the message *contained* a game action. So, the
> message does not contain any game actions and the statement is FALSE.

Something I'm confused about (and which is relevant to me because I
need to make a ruling as Referee): I think it's undisputed that rule
2125 allows the rules to prohibit the sending of messages even if doing
so is not an action (it says that very explicitly). However, it is less
clear whether rule 2471 actually makes use of that permission; it says
"A person SHALL NOT make a public statement that is a lie.", and "SHALL
NOT" is defined (by rule 2152) as "Performing the described action
violates the rule in question."

If rule 2471 is therefore read as "It is a violation of this rule to
perform the action of making a public statement that is a lie", it
therefore matters whether or not the making of the statement is an
action, because rule 2471 criminalises only statements that are
actions, not statements that are not actions.

For what it's worth, I'm currently leaning (based on the above
expansion) towards a reading in which rule 2471 defines lying to be an
unregulated action that is nonetheless a rules violation (rule 2125
states that the rules cannot proscribe unregulated actions, except for
the sending of public messages, so this is not a violation of rule
2125). But I'd be interested in feedback from other players in this
respect.

-- 
ais523
Referee

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Arbitor] New Arbitor in Town @kiako @Kate @Yachay @ais523 @Janet @Murphy

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 18:01 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion
wrote:
> from Rule 2481 (Festival Restrictions) Power 3.1:
> 
> {
>  While Agora's Festivity is nonzero, the following apply:
> ...
> 
>   2. Quorum for Agoran Decisions is equal to half the number of
>  Festive players, rounded up;
> 
> }
> 
> Quorum was 1 if Festivity was 5, since Kate would be the only Festive
> player. Except!

I think that the underlying problem/bug here is "the Festivity
mechanism is intended to ensure that there are always at least 5
Festive players during a Festival, and the Festivity rules assume that;
but if Festivity is set via a mechanism other than that in rule 2480,
it is possible to end up with fewer Festive players than that".

Presumably the fix is to add a failsafe that platonically turns off
some of the Festival restrictions if there are insufficiently many
Festive players (either directly or by platonically changing the
Festivity back down).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Arbitor] New Arbitor in Town @kiako @Kate @Yachay @ais523 @Janet @Murphy

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 15:38 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion
wrote:
> If so, and if Kate indeed gained five Ribbons on 2023-08-31, and no
> one else gained as many, then:
>    * Only Kate's vote counted on any proposal resolved after 230.
>    * Only Kate's support counted on any tabled action resolved after
> 230.
> which should have been enough for eir dictatorship to become
> effective.

What was quorum? If it ever got low enough for that to work, then there
is something badly broken with the quorum rules and we need to revise
them.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Registering

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 12:46 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote:
> Aris wrote:
> 
> > Erm... that CFJ doesn't do what you want it to. CFJs are supposed to be
> > statements, not questions, and interpreting something out of context is
> > different from interpreting it in context.
> 
> At one point we did legislate that, for CFJs asking yes/no questions, a
> judgement of TRUE/FALSE is appropriate if the answer is yes/no
> (respectively). Is it worth bringing that back?

I suspect that it isn't – this doesn't happen often enough to make it
worth the additional rules complexity, and the consequences of getting
it wrong are pretty small/minor and easily fixed.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Covering bases

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-03-05 at 14:36 -0600, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 3/5/24 14:24, Rowan Evans via agora-business wrote:
> > After that: If I have granted myself a welcome package 52 times AND
> > not granted Murphy 2.4, then 2.4 times, I grant Murphy a welcome
> > package.
> 
> This still fails, you can't do something a fractional amount, so the
> specification of what you're doing is too unclear.

I guess this is yet another example of the "I say I do, therefore I do"
fallacy, which has plagued Agora for a long time.

Just saying you perform an action doesn't actually perform it unless
there's a rule that causes that statement to have an effect; when I
make a statement like "I wield the Radiance Stone", the statement
doesn't directly do anything, and the Radiance Stone only gets wielded
because rule 2641 triggers as a consequence of the announcement and
changes the gamestate (due to the definition of "by announcement" in
rule 478).

For something that isn't rules-defined, like taking an action a
fractional number of times, there's no way to trigger the relevant rule
because there isn't one.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Registering

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2024-03-05 at 15:45 +, Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion
wrote:
> On Mar 5, 2024, at 4:37 AM, Aris via agora-business
>  wrote:
> > 
> > Erm... that CFJ doesn't do what you want it to. CFJs are supposed to be
> > statements, not questions, and interpreting something out of context is
> > different from interpreting it in context.
> 
> Without commenting on the rest of the situation (I haven’t looked into
> it), we have precedent that CFJs phrased as questions are fair game; see
> CFJ 3505.

Well, the precedent of CFJ 3505 also states that CFJ 3505 was never
validly judged, although the CFJ record seems to ignore that. (FWIW, I
disagree and think that that part of the judgement was given validly,
but is wrong.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: ѕёѦѤ ѦѯќѤѦі (ѯѴњѩћѰ ђѨѯ ѕёѪѐ ѥѰ)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 13:48 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> Transliterated from the Shavian alphabet to standard English:
> 
> {
> Hello Agora,
> I declare victory by apathy for Ben and Goren. To object, write "I
> object to victory by apathy"
> 
> Goodbye Agora
> }
> 
> This wasn't reasonable effort, by our precedents, almost surely does
> nothing. In any case, can you point to any prior intent made?

I suspect this was (intended to be) the intent, rather than the actual
action, despite the wording forgetting to use the word "intend".

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: ѕёѦѤ ѦѯќѤѦі (ѯѴњѩћѰ ђѨѯ ѕёѪѐ ѥѰ)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 18:19 +, Goren Barak via agora-business
wrote:
> ѣѧѤѴ ѩќѹѩ,
> Ѳ ћѧђѤѺ ѝѦђёѹѰ њѲ ѨѐѩєѰ ѓ ·њѧѯ ѯ ·ќѹѧѯ
> ё ѳњѡѧђё, ѮѲё "Ѳ ѳњѡѧђё ё ѝѦђёѹѰ њѲ
> ѨѐѩєѰ"
> 
> ќѫћњѲ ѩќѹѩ

I haven't even tried to translate this yet, but my immediate reaction
was that, based on contents and on there apparently being a double-
quoted statement, it at least contains an attempt to call a CFJ.

(Posting this now in case it ends up being relevant for evidence.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: (@Stonemason, Illuminator) BUS: Re: OFF: [Stonemason] Billboard Rock Chart - 4 Mar 2024

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 00:57 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 3/4/24 00:48, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> > 
> > I wield the Anti-Equatorial Stone, specifying the Recursion Stone (the
> > Power Stone is protected).
> > I wield the Recursion Stone as the Protection Stone, specifying the
> > Recursion Stone.
> 
> Rude.

There were only two valid targets, and the Blank Stone isn't very
useful.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor) Proposal - Agora of Empires

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-03-03 at 11:45 +0100, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-
discussion wrote:
> > This *really* seems like an infinite free win generation machine. At the
> > *very* least there should be some cooldown between wins (I'd argue for a
> > global 30 day cooldown at minimum)
> > 
> 
> I'm flattered that my incompetence is mistaken for some kind of plot. The
> suggestion seems good and easy to implement to me.

I guess this is worth expressing in a different way – even if it isn't
intended as an infinite free win generation machine, it is very likely
that at least one (and probably several) Agorans will attempt to use it
as one, because there aren't sufficient safeguards to prevent it being
used as one. So your proposal is unlikely to lead to the sort of
gameplay that you apparently expect it to.

A historical point of view: one of my favourite scams from the past of
Agora happened when someone suggested a similarly well-intentioned
contest that nonetheless had loopholes which made it very easy for a
small group of players to use it to win immediately. The scam wasn't
against the contest itself (which was quickly recognised by Agorans as
a whole to have insufficient safeguards against an immediate win), but
rather against the dependent/tabled actions system, with a group of
conspirators (including me) managing to get a without-3-objections to
occur and create the contest even though the rest of Agora thought
that, as there had been 3 objections already, the contest creation
attempt had failed. (At the time there were no restrictions on how
quickly a dependent action could be taken after an objection was
withdrawn, so we simply just made the objections ourself, and withdrew
them when it was time to scam the win. Nowadays, that doesn't work:
rule 2124 imposes a 24-hour delay.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Geologist] shiny stuff

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-02-25 at 13:41 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote:
> 4st wrote:
> 
> > The Geologist isn't real, and there are no crystals. If they do exist, it
> > would look like this:
> > Geologist Weekly:
> > Snail owns Crystal 2463 with size 2.
> > Snail owns Crystal 2659 with size 2.
> > Snail owns Crystal 2451 with size 2.
> > 
> > Murphy owns Crystal 2642 with size 2.
> > 
> > 4st owns Crystal 2685, with size 1.
> > 4st owns Crystal 1607, with size 3.
> > 4st owns Crystal 106, with size 3.
> > 
> > Janet owns Crystal 869, with size 3.
> > Janet owns Crystal 2201, with size 3.
> > 
> > Per the 18th February SLR, 133 rules are enacted.
> > 
> > Changes:
> > None.
> 
> This is a Claim of Error, just to ensure that this quasi-report doesn't
> self-ratify. (I'm pretty sure it wouldn't anyway, because it doesn't
> purport to be the Geologist's report; instead, it purports that no such
> office or report exists, then provides explicitly hypothetical data for
> what it would look like if it did.)

It isn't a (valid) Claim of Error: those have to "explain[] the scope
and nature of a perceived error" and you didn't. (Also, making a claim
of error is an action by announcement nowadays: so I suspect this also
failed on the grounds of "you didn't say you were making a claim of
error, you just stated that the message was a claim of error".)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: ranting about potential ruleset issue

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2024-02-19 at 10:43 -0800, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote:
> fwiw, I plan to vote AGAINST any attempt to ratify the ruleset as the
> ruleset is currently as if we had been playing "correctly" this whole time.
> 
> As it currently stands, a vote FOR would be a vote to maintain the status
> quo that got the ruleset into its current predicament.
> The status quo is very platonic, and I don't want it to be. However, that's
> an old debate:
> https://agoranomic.org/Herald/theses/html/-XX-XX-Vanyel.html

I actually see ratification as a compromise between the pragmatists and
platonists – it's a way to allow both sides to agree on the gamestate.
Generally speaking, ratifications are to the advantage of pragmatists
because, whilst changing nothing from the pragmatic point of view, they
cause the platonic point of view to start agreeing with it.

So a vote FOR a ratification (assuming it's being done correctly)
basically means "sure, I'm happy to accept the gamestate we're
currently playing in". A vote AGAINST only really makes sense if you
think that either something is wrong with the process of ratification,
or with the gamestate being ratified; or if you actively *want*
platonists to disagree with you about what the ruleset is.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 9053-9057 [attn. Arbitor]

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-02-11 at 15:36 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> *sigh* here we go again
> 
> I CFJ, barring Maloney: "Proposal 9055, as part of its effect,
> enacted a rule."

I think the more interesting question is whether it enacted a
regulation (which has a lower standard): the rule vs. regulation
ambiguity might potentially have been resolved via the imprecision of
the specification. That said, there's also ambiguity around who the
Promulgator would be, which might tip the balance there into "the
proposal is trying to enact a rule".

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Stone actions [attn. Stonemason]

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2024-01-07 at 02:31 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> I wield the Recursion Stone as the Power Stone, specifying the
> Recursion Stone.

This isn't a valid specification: the Recursion Stone is not a player.

I am not sure whether it fails outright, or whether it defaults to
specifying you.

(Also, due to the way the rules are worded: does the affected player
become Power Stoned or Recursion Stoned?)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Registration restrictions

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2024-01-05 at 01:40 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> * Inserting the following paragraph after the paragraph:
> 
> {
> 
> The basis of a person is the set of all persons that are (recursively)
> part of em, in addition to emself. Rules to the contrary
> notwithstanding, a person CANNOT become Registered if eir basis overlaps
> with that of any current player
> 
> }

I suspect this won't have the effect you want on the rule, because you
didn't specify which paragraph to insert it after. (There's also a
missing full stop.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9046-9048

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-12-17 at 13:05 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion
wrote:
> Recommendation: As you suggested on Discord, have the Assessor
> explicitly announce the things being attested. Then submit a new
> proposal to fix the rule bug.

I'm not convinced that actually works – it seems more like a scam than
anything else, and that sort of scam has a historical tendency to not
work correctly.

This sort of thing does at least tend to win the rule 217 "best
interests of the game" test though!

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Yes we can lift

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-11-26 at 16:52 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> On 11/26/23 16:52, Agora amdw42 via agora-business wrote:
> > I, Ben, push the boulder
> 
> This fails, as you are not a player. You need to register first, e.g. by
> sending "I register as a player" to agora-business.

This sort of thing has become very common recently, possibly due to
confusion between "register for the mailing lists" and "register as a
player". I wonder if it'd be possible to reduce the confusion with,
say, updates to the website?

-- 
ais523

(@Promotor) DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 9032-9034

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-11-24 at 03:26 +, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> I vote as follows:
> 
> > 9033*   4st, Janet, nix, snail  3.0   It's been 4 years, Agora. 4
> > YEARS.
> AGAINST. I will explain why to a-d.

So there was a minor mistake in the recent dictatorship scam attempt,
which I pointed out as part of a counterscam attempt.

It is possible/probable that the distribution of this proposal (and all
proposals recently) contained the same mistake; and it is also possible
that me pointing out the mistake to counterscam the dictatorship also
invalidated this decision.

I don't want there to be ambiguity about whether or not a ruleset
ratification succeeded, especially because those things have to be
written to work under as many potential versions of the rules as
possible. As such, I'm voting against the decision for reasons related
to the decision, rather than reasons related to the proposal to which
it pertains. I encourage the authors/Promotor to try again, with a more
carefully worded distribution message.

(This message was sent to DIS: because it might otherwise potentially
be a claim of error, under some past rulesets; sending it to a-d
removes any risk of that, and I'd rather avoid any additional sources
of ambiguity.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proto: A new economy

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-11-19 at 03:57 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 11/19/23 03:55, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote:
> > Fwiw I don't mind incentivizing change nor more blots. If what it takes to
> > win becomes being a super goodie two shoes so be it
> 
> The last time we incentivized finger-pointing for personal economic gain
> we had a long-term player FAGE. This is not something we should be
> trying to repeat.

This isn't intended to incentivize finger-pointing – there is no reward
for being the person who notes an infraction, only a penalty for the
person who infracted.

Do you think that people would be sufficiently anxious to try to
slightly impede the leader that it would become a problem?

-- 
ais523

DIS: Proto: A new economy

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

Here are some thoughts about a new economy that I've been thinking
about. These would ideally work in tandem with existing subgames /
other subgames that other players might propose / other economies that
other players might propose, rather than being a replacement.

This is just a sketch, so it doesn't contain enactment language,
Powers, etc.. yet (what would be a good power for the rules in
question? is this the correct spelling of Jeweller in Agoran English?)

I've tried to choose the timings of the various Gem awards to be easy
for the officers in question (generally the timings are set up so that
they could be performed at the same as the time at which the officer
would be performing actions anyway). It is possible that this is too
slow in some cases (e.g. potentially having to wait a month for the
Tailor's report to gain Achievement Gems).

I'd be interested on feedback both on the general concept and on the
details. The basic idea is to award Gems in various categories for
various different aspects of Agoran gameplay, which are used to buy
Purchase Packs whose prices vary randomly each month, meaning that
different aspects of the game randomly become more relevant from month
to month. Gems are sort-of grindable over time, but decay slowly if not
used, and can be converted to fast-decaying Score Stars, or non-
decaying Stamps, or various other things. Some Purchase Packs are more
valuable than others, but each can only be bought once per player per
month.


Gems

The Jeweller is an office, and the recordkeepor of each type of Gem.
Gems are a category of assets ownable by players and contracts. Each
type of Gem is a currency, and has an associated office; the following
list specifies the types of Gem, their associated offices, and one or
more mechanisms for gaining each type of Gem (but other rules may
specify additional methods to gain Gems).

* Duty Gem (ADoP): As part of eir weekly duties, the ADoP SHALL, and
CAN by announcement, grant each player a number of gems equal to twice
the total complexity of the offices e holds.

* Decision Gem (Arbitor): As part of eir weekly duties, the Arbitor
SHALL, and CAN by announcement, grant a number of Decision Gems to each
player equal to 4 times the number of CFJs that player judged in the
previous week (except that e NEED NOT grant gems for a CFJ if the judge
exceeded the time limit to judge it).

* Democracy Gem (Assessor): As part of eir weekly duties, the Assessor
SHALL, and CAN by announcement, award 3 Change Gems to each player who
voted FOR on at least half the referenda that were resolved that week;
and SHALL NOT resolve referenda for the rest of the week after doing
so.

* Trade Gem (Collector): Trade Participation is an untracked negative
boolean player switch. When a player pays a Stamp of another player's
type to perform an action defined in the rule "Stamps", eir Trade
Participation becomes True. As part of eir weekly duties, the Collector
SHALL, and CAN by announcement, grant each player whose Trade
Participation is True 3 Trade Gems; such a grant causes the player's
Trade Participation to become False.

* Vision Gem (Dream Keeper): As part of eir weekly duties, the Dream
Keepor SHALL, and CAN by announcement, award 5 Vision Gems to each
Mining Dreamer. [With rule 2675 amended to add the new Dream.]

* Triumph Gem (Herald): Whenever a player wins the game, the Herald CAN
once by announcement, and SHALL within one month, grant em 25 Triumph
Gems.  Whenever a player gains a Patent Title other than Champion, the
Herald CAN once by announcement, and SHALL within one month, grant em
10 Triumph Gems.

* Conspire Gem (Notary): As part of eir monthly duties, the Notary
SHALL, and CAN by announcement, grant 35 Conspire Gems to each Group
which has, or is tied for, the most, second-most or third-most parties.
[With the rules amended to define a Group, which is a special case of a
contract, designed so that each player can only be part of one Group at
a time.]

* Idea Gem (Promotor): Proposal Participation is an untracked negative
boolean player switch. Whenever the Promotor distributes a proposal,
the Proposal Participation of its author and coauthors becomes True. At
the end of each week, the Proposal Participation of all players becomes
False. When a player's Proposal Participation becomes true, the
Promotor CAN once by announcement, and SHALL before it becomes false,
grant 3 Idea Gems to that player.

* Clean Gem (Referee); As part of eir weekly duties, the Referee SHALL,
and CAN by announcement, grant 2 Clean Gems to each player who does not
have Blots.

* Activity Gem (Registrar): As part of eir weekly duties, the Registrar
SHALL, and CAN by announcement, grant 2 Activity Gems to each active
player. [Perhaps Welcome Packages should contain lots of these, and
smaller amounts of the other types of gem.]

* Change Gem (Rulekeepor): Whenever a proposal (other than a
disinterested proposal) takes effect and enacts, repeals, or changes a
substantive 

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Rulekeepor) cleaning

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-11-17 at 16:21 -0800, 4st nomic via agora-business wrote:
> I intend to clean rule 2480 ("Festivals") by replacing
> "grater" with "greater".

For the intent to work, you need to specify the mechanism, e.g. "I
intend without objection to clean…"

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Monthly report: Arrivals and Departures

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2023-11-08 at 20:22 -0800, 4st nomic via agora-business wrote:
> if it helps, I think the following groups constitute the same person
> (not player):

Several of these (most of these?) are wrong – they are mixing up
natural persons and legal constructs.

For example, the AFO was an artificial person who multiple players
could cause to act by announcement. The exact membership changed over
time; I know at one point I was able to send messages as the AFO.
Saying that, e.g., Murphy and the AFO are the same person makes about
much sense as saynig that I and the AFO are the same person.

Agora currently doesn't (as far as I know) have players who aren't
natural persons, but it was very common in the past and is responsible
for a lot of the apparently duplicated email addresses. Through most
(but not all) of Agora's history, there was a rule that at least two
natural persons had to be involved with each of the artificial persons,
so most of the artificial persons had multiple natural persons
controlling them. (There are some exceptions, dating from rulesets that
allowed single-person control of an artifical person, e.g. Slave
Golems.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Poll on email address obfuscation on reports

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-11-06 at 12:43 -0300, juan via agora-discussion wrote:
> Hello y'all,
> 
> Here are some questions for you:
> 
> - Do you want your address to be obfuscated?
> - Do you want every address to be obfuscated?
> - Do you want the obfuscation to be uniform?
> - Do you think each player should get to choose?
> 
> Please elaborate! And, if you wish, send the message privately.

I think that not doing the obfuscating ourself is likely to hide the
addresses better than doing it would (and thus is a strict improvement,
because the unobfuscated addresses are also more convenient to use).

Spambots are unlikely to be subscribed to the Agoran mailing lists, so
they would only be able to see a Registrar report via the archives. The
archive on agoranomic.org requires logging in, so they can't see that
one.

As for the mail-archive.com archive, this is how a Registrar report
looks there:

The addresses spelled with "@" are detected as email addresses and
obfuscated by the archiving site. The addresses spelled with "at"
aren't, and thus are left open (and obfuscation with "at" is something
that many spambots will be able to understand).

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9020-9026

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-11-05 at 15:42 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-business
wrote:
> > 9026~   Janet, Kate 1.5   It's a bit dark in here
> endorse Herald

The office of Herald is vacant; you may want to add a default for if
there is no Herald when the proposal is resolved.

(For what it's worth, I think that it might be easier to get a Herald
if the office were split into two, thus my FOR vote.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9011-9019

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-10-20 at 17:18 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote:
> This seems about the same as changing a rule by saying "Add the following
> sentence: Things are a currency. Things are tracked by the Thinger." Which
> would fail to do anything because "any ambiguity" is present (I think this
> has been held before). There's the same ambiguity here.

Do you have a reference? I agree that the cases are comparable, but
think that both are unambiguous.

Compare "Add the following sentence: Things are a currency. Then
retitle the rule to 'Things'." I would consider that to be unambiguous,
and yet it isn't any grammatically different from your example.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9011-9019

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-10-20 at 16:37 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business
wrote:
> I deny this CoE. The proposals were not submitted. You said "I submit the
> following 3 proposals" and proceeded to list 4 proposals, so the action was
> not clearly and unambiguously specified as required for by-announcement
> actions.

Doesn't "following 3" unambiguously specify the next 3 proposals to
appear in the message?

The main ambiguity is as to whether the fourth proposal was also
submitted via specifying it in the message, without a speech action
specifically saying so.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: (@Notary) Re: BUS: A promise for a promise, a stamp for a stamp

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2023-10-11 at 15:31 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> On 10/11/23 15:30, Kiako via agora-business wrote:
> > On 10/11/2023 2:29 PM, Kiako via agora-discussion wrote:
> > > I transfer one kiako stamp to ais523.
> > > 
> > > > I grant kiako the following promise:
> > > > {{{
> > > > Cashing condition: kiako has transferred a kiako stamp to
> > > > ais523 in 
> > > > the message in which this promise is cashed.
> > > > Expiry condition: It is 14 October 2023 or later.
> > > > 
> > > > I transfer a Madrid stamp to kiako.
> > > > }}}
> > > I cash the above promise granted to me.
> >
> > TTttPF
> 
> This fails. The cashing condition was not satisfied.

I think it succeeded – there's a transfer before the innermost quote.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Stone Actions - 27 Aug 2023 [attn. Stonemason, Collector]

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-08-27 at 20:01 +0100, Katherina Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion 
wrote:
> On 27/08/2023 19:59, Katherina Walshe-Grey via agora-business wrote:
> > On 27/08/2023 19:57, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> > > Oops. This reach fails, I already got the Hot Potato Stone last week.
> > > 
> > > I wield the Hot Potato Stone, specifying Kate.
> > > 
> > > I reach for the Anti-Equatorial Stone.
> > 
> > Aww. Thank you!
> > 
> > In that case, I reach for the Hot Potato stone myself.
> 
> Wait no I just looked at the rule and the Hot Potato stone doesn't do
> what I thought it does

I recommend wielding it rather than reaching for it.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4034 Assigned to ais523

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-06-04 at 17:42 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 5:04 PM ais523 via agora-business
>  wrote:
> > It's also worth noting that G. explicitly stated in eir message that e
> > consented to the Rice Plan – the subsequent withdrawal was sent in the
> > same message. Although Agora assumes that multiple actions listed in
> > the same message happen one after another, this isn't something that
> > can be true of a player's state of mind, because the entire message is
> > sent at a single point in time; if the player had changed eir mind and
> > no longer consented, e would just not send the email, or edit it before
> > sending.
> 
> I disagree with this rather strongly with this statement, given the
> Agoran strong assumption of sequential actions within a message.  It's
> perfectly possible for a person to say "I consent to this at this
> stage of the message, then I do some stuff, then I withdraw my consent
> at the end of the message [after stuff is done]."  That's really very
> standard practice, and it is possible to have that sort of consent
> process in one's mind when hitting 'send'.

But a Rice Plan is resolved at the end of the week. There is no purpose
for which consenting to it at some points in a message, and not at
others, would be meaningful.

It's possible to consent to an action occurring during particular parts
of a message, but not during other parts (i.e. the state of consent is
continuous, but the scope of consent is limited to particular points
within a message). However, it is meaningless for you to natural-
language consent, during some parts of a message but not other parts,
to an action occurring at a particular point in time (i.e. the scope of
the consent is continuous, but whether the consent is present or not
varies over the course of the message); such a thing would necessarily
be a legal fiction because that's not what natural-language consent is.
It would only be possible if Agora managed to define consent to mean
something other than what it actually means in natural language.

It is reasonable to argue that Agora has actually done this (rule
2519), but my judgement was considering the two cases separately (i.e.
consent-as-legal-fiction versus consent-as-state-of-mind), and the
paragraph you quoted was about determining what the message meant under
the consent-as-state-of-mind interpretation. I agree that it's possible
for the legal fiction to vary within a single message.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] The Button

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-06-02 at 14:18 -0300, Juan F. Meleiro via agora-business
wrote:
> I create the following proposal, entitled “Game Theory”:
> 
> {
> Create a Power 1.0 rule called “The Button” with text:

This isn't really game theory, but "who has the most reliable Internet
connection / is best at being online at the right time of day". The
optimal play is to press the button 144 hours after a previous press,
unless someone else does so first. In practice, the "unless someone
else does so first" is going to be impossible to check for due to email
communication delay, so we're going to have to come up with some rule
to decide who pressed the send button first (which is likely to be
practically impossible to determine, given the 1 second granularity of
most email servers' timestamping – if two people seriously try for this
then their emails will have the same timestamps on them).

It would be possible to attempt to ruin other people's attempts to win
by sending an email just before the 144-hour limit, but doing so would
give up on your own chance to win, so it doesn't really make much sense
(and you won't know whose attempts you are trying to ruin, because
nothing's forcing players to try to win 144 hours after the *first*
press – waiting for the later ones is just as good as winning at aiming
for an earlier one).

"Be awake at a specific time of day, chosen by the Assessor" is also
the sort of gameplay that can unfairly disadvantage some players
compared to others (depending on where they live compared to the
Assessor's timezone, and/or at what times of day they are busy and thus
unable to send email).

Incidentally, the original Button that this was referencing had, IIRC,
a 1.5-second grace period, which would remove the simultaneous-timing
issues but lead to the win condition probably being too easy
(especially if the grace period were scaled up to "1.5/60th of a week"
rather than being left at its original length).

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Herald) Keeping up with the Agorans

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-25 at 17:00 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business wrote:
> As annoying as it is, it seems perfectly legal to do, to me.
> 
> I create and submit the following Proposal:
> 
> Title: Go Home, You're Drunk
> AI: 3
> Author: Yachay
> Co-Authors: None
> // Comment: This is a hotfix to the still-open issue of ais' Dancing Around
> the Town Fountain scam.
> // Comment: Retroactive changes are secured at Power 3, hence the AI of 3.
> 
> Retroactively make it so that this rule has been in effect since this
> Proposal was created.

That's a proposal, not a rule, so "this rule" has no referent. I think
you may have omitted some of the proposal.

Besides, this sort of thing is usually unnecessary: if we decide
collectively that it's best to stop people repeating scams, and people
do it anyway, we can wait for the loophole to be fixed and then reverse
any "excess" abuses of it by proposal at that point (which is simpler
and less confusing then trying to make retroactive changes, and also
can usually be done with less than 3 power so is more likely to pass).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: (Proto) Raybots

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-05-21 at 13:13 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 1:01 PM ais523 via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
> > We've had artificial persons in the past, and they ceased to exist with
> > no real issues. That predated Promises, which probably need a fix to
> > cease to exist when their creator does.
> 
> When you say "no real issues", IIRC we had to think really carefully
> about things like rights, and repeal parts of R101 guaranteeing rights
> to persons before we "destroyed" artificial persons, then put it back.
> Someone might make a slight case that "Persons" are the core of the
> game in the current R101 (though that's really a stretch) and
> interestingly, reading the rule on Banning, we could probably Ban
> artificial persons - a "runaway bot" should something like that ever
> exist seems to meet some of the banning criteria of "the person's
> actions have been deemed harmful to Agora".
> 
> While I haven't been following the Raybots proposal, I think the main
> issues were learned from zombies - there's lots of things (like having
> your bot support your own tabled action announcement) that need to be
> strictly off-limits for bots in general - the zombie nerf list from a
> couple years back is worth a cross reference if that hasn't been done
> already.

Well, Raybots are safer than zombies in that everything they can do is
known in advance while the Agoran consent action to create them is
pending – it would probably even be safe to allow them to have full
voting strength, because people should in theory object to abusive
Raybots being created in the first place, but Agorans have been known
to vote for bad ideas on occasion so it's probably worth the safeguard
of preventing them voting.

I agree that it's probably possible to ban a runaway Raybot, something
that seems useful rather than broken (although just exiling it would
have the same effect).

It's worth noting that although zombies got abused a lot, that sort of
abuse seems to have been mostly unique to "artificial person with a
single owner" systems. Agora has in the past tried things as simple as
the Partnerships mechanic: the more recent version of it was "any group
of two or more non-artificial persons can create an artificial person,
if they come to some agreement between themselves as to how to control
it, and can only create one at a time", and that (amazingly) wasn't
abused to any major extent despite there being few limits on what they
could do.

There definitely *were* abuses in the partnerships era (e.g. the AFO
was used for several scams, and P1-P100 – immortalized in the Writ of
Fage report – were definitely part of a scam, although one that IIRC
didn't work as intended). But that was a minor part of it, and there
were partnerships that became a major part of the game for a
substantial length of time without any major drama stemming from the
fact they were persons. The abuses also tended to generally be
interesting rather than boring (e.g. partnerships designed to create
interesting scenarios for CFJs but that ultimately didn't do anything,
or that time I achieved a "blot everyone" victory condition by using
the equivalent of today's PM's Dive power on a partnership to blot
numerous players at the same time).

The other thing about zombies is that they weren't artificial players,
but rather former players being controlled by the rules – many of the
zombie protections were to protect *the zombie*, rather than to protect
the game from its owner. That's the primary reason why it was dangerous
to let them self-blot, deregister, or agree to contracts. I think the
only zombie protections that were designed to prevent them being
overpowered were the protection against table/support/oppose (which was
in my proto), and the protection against recursive zombie use (which
probably isn't necessary here because Raybots don't have owners).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: (Proto) Raybots

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sat, 2023-05-20 at 23:43 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote:
> Actually, in general persons ceasing to exist is likely to cause
> problems, and the current ruleset is careful to avoid it (R869/51's "is
> or ever was"; you remain an Agoran person after you die).
> 
> I'm not sure there's a good solution here. Having disabled Raybots just
> sit around doing nothing isn't ideal. Auditing the whole ruleset for
> issues caused by this is probably good to do anyway but error-prone (and
> future proposals are reasonably likely to introduce new problems).

We've had artificial persons in the past, and they ceased to exist with
no real issues. That predated Promises, which probably need a fix to
cease to exist when their creator does.

The main potential issue I could think of is "what happens to a CFJ if
its judge ceases to exist", but it turns out that there's a specific
allowance for that in rule 991 (the nonexistent person remains assigned
as the judge). Likewise, rule 649 allows non-persons to bear patent
titles (oddly, it even allows non-persons to be *awarded* patent
titles). According to the FLR annotations, we were fixing bugs with
loss-of-personhood as recently as 2020, so it's historically been
considered desirable to have rules that make sense in that context.

I checked every use of "person" in the rules to find uses that might
cause issues:

* Rule 1742 - what happens to a contract if a party ceases to exist?
* Rule 2659 - stamps - already addressed in my proto
* Rule 2644 - lockout on Stone win condition ends early if the
  winner ceases to exit - probably not going to matter in practice
* Rule 2464 - tournaments have no Gamemaster if their creator is no
  longer a person, but work just fine in that state
* Rule 869 - playerhood - already addressed in my proto
* Rule 1023 - definition of "round" - may need fixing, although the
  definition is used only to fix the First Speaker rule, which
  wouldn't be affected
* Rule 1728 - if an officer tabls an intent as an official action of
  their office, then ceases to be a person, the new officer can't
  then resolve the intent if it's an action without objection:
  potentially buggy, but unlikely to be a major issue in practice
* Rule 2530 - potentially weird if a proposal's coauthor ceases to
  be a person, we might want to reinforce that (although I don't
  think anything is actually breakable there)
* Rule 2493 - regulations - the definitions here break if the
  promulgator of a regulation ceases to be a person, although I don't
  think that causes any actual rules to break as a consequence
* Rule 2127 - conditional votes - an attempt to endorse a voter breaks
  if the voter ceases to be a person (even though the non-person's vote
  is still valid)
* Rule 2210 - self-ratification - not broken, only persons can CoE but
  the CoE remains valid even if the CoEer ceases to be a person
* Rule 2478 - investigation of infractions - potentially broken, could
  most simply be fixed by allowing Favoritism towards non-players
* Rule 991 - CFJs - judgehood works fine, but recusal is broken

Probably the best approach here is to ensure that loss-of-personhood
works: it's something that used to happen at Agora all the time (there
have been many eras where a couple of conspiring players could create
and destroy an legal-fiction person pretty much at will, and the rules
used to use the terminology "first-class person" and "second-class
person" so that the legal fnctions could be easily identified). I
suspect that regardless of how Raybots goes, it's worth a big fix
proposal to make sure that loss of personhood is something that the
rule can handle.

This does make me think that something like the Raybots proposal is
worthwhile, though: the best way to ensure that the ruleset can handle
loss of personhood is to make sure it's something that regularly gets
tested, thus incentivising us to fix the bugs in it. (The proposal's
inspiration came from the direction of "legal-fiction persons would be
interesting to have again and we haven't had them for a while, can we
find a way of doing them that's significantly different from what we've
had before?".)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Stonemason/@Assessor) SABOTAGE!

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-05-21 at 10:50 -0700, Forest Sweeney via agora-business
wrote:
> I change my vote on 8983 to ABSENT, or PRESENT if I cannot change my
> vote to something invalid.

The wording you want is "I withdraw my vote on 8983" or "I retract my
vote on 8983" (these are synonyms).

To "change a vote" is to retract your vote, then cast a new one. So
it's unclear whether "I change my vote to ABSENT" would have the
desired effect or not.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: (@CotC, Yachay) BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4030 Assigned to Yachay

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-05-21 at 19:43 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> Oh, I just finished writing/posting my Judgement when I saw this. I don't
> think it's essential for the case and I'd rather not bite more than I can
> chew for my CfJ. It felt very difficult as it is.
> 
> You could always just call a new one for that though.

That's OK – it isn't your fault that I was a little late in submitting
my arguments. I guess it can stay there and be relevant if there's an
appeal.

Rule 217 cases are always difficult to handle, even for people with a
lot more experience.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: (@Collector, Herald) BUS: The Never-Ending Dance

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 11:29 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote:
> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 11:25 AM Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> > 
> > > I'd like to thank ais523 for the 4pocalypse where everyone has 44 points.
> > > As such, if the 4pocalypse is real, I intend to, with Agoran Consent, 
> > > grant
> > > all current players the badge 4.
> > 
> > I object.  -G.
> 
> Side-question:  I'm trying to remember if the set of "all current
> players" in a tabled action intent is evaluated at the time of intent,
> the time of action, or is too unspecified to work as a tabled action
> (because the announcer could have meant either).  I feel like there
> are precedents - anyone remember/point to one?

I suspect that under the present rules the tabled action can only work
in the case where it's evaluated at the time of the intent, as rule
1728 requires specifying non-default parameter values. This of course
doesn't necessarily mean that any specific tabled action attempt must
be interpreted in the way that works – it's possible to attempt to take
a nonexistent regulated action, it just doesn't work when you do.

I also suspect that in this particular case, the specific wording "all
current players" unambiguously refers to the player list at the time of
the intent, due to the use of the word "current" (which is normally
used to clarify, in ambiguous cases, that you're talking about the time
at which the message is sent rather than some other relevant time).

That said, I don't have any relevant precedents memorised and didn't
find one in the parts of the FLR annotations that I checked. They seem
most likely to be related to Apathy attempts (a fairly commonly-
attempted dependent action that requires specifying a set of players),
but given that Apathy attempts almost always fail by a huge margin,
there may not have been much cause to CFJ about what happens if they
succeed. It's also quite possible that any older precedents will have
been invalidated by the change from the old dependent action framework
to the tabled action framework that we use nowadays (the nature of the
"I intend to …" action was significantly changed, in a way that may
well be relevant).

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: (@Collector, Herald) BUS: The Never-Ending Dance

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 11:29 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote:
> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 11:25 AM Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> > 
> > > I'd like to thank ais523 for the 4pocalypse where everyone has 44 points.
> > > As such, if the 4pocalypse is real, I intend to, with Agoran Consent, 
> > > grant
> > > all current players the badge 4.
> > 
> > I object.  -G.
> 
> Side-question:  I'm trying to remember if the set of "all current
> players" in a tabled action intent is evaluated at the time of intent,
> the time of action, or is too unspecified to work as a tabled action
> (because the announcer could have meant either).  I feel like there
> are precedents - anyone remember/point to one?

I suspect that under the present rules the tabled action can only work
in the case where it's evaluated at the time of the intent, as rule
1728 requires specifying non-default parameter values. This of course
doesn't necessarily mean that any specific tabled action attempt must
be interpreted in the way that works – it's possible to attempt to take
a nonexistent regulated action, it just doesn't work when you do.

I also suspect that in this particular case, the specific wording "all
current players" unambiguously refers to the player list at the time of
the intent, due to the use of the word "current" (which is normally
used to clarify, in ambiguous cases, that you're talking about the time
at which the message is sent rather than some other relevant time).

That said, I don't have any relevant precedents memorised and didn't
find one in the parts of the FLR annotations that I checked. They seem
most likely to be related to Apathy attempts (a fairly commonly-
attempted dependent action that requires specifying a set of players),
but given that Apathy attempts almost always fail by a huge margin,
there may not have been much cause to CFJ about what happens if they
succeed. It's also quite possible that any older precedents will have
been invalidated by the change from the old dependent action framework
to the tabled action framework that we use nowadays (the nature of the
"I intend to …" action was significantly changed, in a way that may
well be relevant).

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor) Proposal Submission - Democratization

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 09:59 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 9:50 AM ais523 via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
> > I sometimes feel like half my arguing at Agora is dedicated to trying
> > to persuade people not to repeal the economy.
> > 
> > It rarely works, and the consequence is that most of the time we don't
> > have a functional economy. (Having a history of the economy being
> > repealed is *also* a problem because it makes it harder to get a new
> > economy off the ground – why invest if you think that everything is
> > likely going to end up repealed again in the future?)
> 
> Define "works"?  tbh, I mostly prefer the periods with no/very limited
> economies, because I like the various different subgames on their own,
> and whenever we have a "full" economy, then subgame wins become far
> too transactional and full of contracts/meta-subgame deals to be very
> playable as a standalone competition.

"Works" as in inspiring either a replacement economy, or some other
sort of replacement gameplay. What normally happens is that there are a
few half-hearted attempts to create something new that don't go
anywhere, and then the lists fall mostly silent for a few months.

Meta-subgame deals don't necessarily require an economy to happen, just
two or more subgames. (See, e.g., snail and Murphy trading a stone win
for a horse win – as far as I can tell, that transaction didn't involve
the economy at all.) The real fix for those, based on experience at
other nomics, is to either design the subgame in a way that makes it
hard for that sort of deal to have any influence on the subgame, or to
create a rule banning players from cooperation for a subgame win.

They also don't necessarily seem to happen even when there are lots of
subgames and a strong economy (e.g. in the AAA era, the *other*, non-
AAA, subgames basically got to run autonomously and I don't recall
anyone trying to buy or sell advantages in them; and trading subgame-
defined assets seems to have been the intended gameplay of the AAA).

(Another interesting data point: Promises were originally partially
intended as a method of letting people mint their own currency, backed
by things like officer perks. This use never caught on, however, even
though there have been times where it could have served as a
replacement for a repealed economy. One of the things that I'm hoping
for with my Raybots proto is that we end up with tradeable Promises
backed by Raybot actions rather than player actions; because Raybots
have a limited lifespan, we'd have a currency that naturally decays
over time, and because they don't create ongoing obligations on any of
the human players, there would likely be less aversion to creating
them.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor) Proposal Submission - Democratization

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 09:37 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion
wrote:
> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 9:26 AM Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-
> discussion  wrote:
> > With radiance and Stamps seemingly on their way out, I believe that your
> > Officer salary problem is part of a larger problem of Agora overall needing
> > a proper economy again, not a voting strength problem.
> 
> So offer that as a package?  In my experience, when things are taken
> away with the promise of new things to be added later, those things
> stay taken away, and the new things never arrive.

I sometimes feel like half my arguing at Agora is dedicated to trying
to persuade people not to repeal the economy.

It rarely works, and the consequence is that most of the time we don't
have a functional economy. (Having a history of the economy being
repealed is *also* a problem because it makes it harder to get a new
economy off the ground – why invest if you think that everything is
likely going to end up repealed again in the future?)

I'd much rather take the route of trying to get the Radiance/Stamps
system functional again, than of trying to repeal it. (Stamps in
particular are one of the most powerful "new player perks" we've seen,
and I suspect that that's a good thing.) I'd especially be against
repealing it without a replacement.

(Incidentally, IIRC many of the "officer perks" that Yachay is talking
about elsethread were intentionally added a few years ago, during a
time when there was no functional economy, as an attempt to give the
officers some sort of reward – because there was nothing economic to
reward them with, we needed to use some sort of more direct reward
instead. Some of them are still around nowadays, like the Gray Ribbon.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposal 8971

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 00:01 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion
wrote:
> It doesn't do anything. It has insufficient power to create blots.

Ah right, AI 1 but it needs 1.7 (rule 2555). So I agree with you, false
alarm.

Assuming that the author didn't intentionally set the AI incorrectly,
though, this is still evidence that the original proposal was ill-
advised.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposal 8971

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 23:09 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
> The full text of each ADOPTED proposal is included below:
>
[snip]
> 
> Grant each player that did not vote FOR this proposal 2 blots.

Whoever decided to propose this immediately before several new players
joined (with timing that meant that they had no ability to vote on it
and thus save themself from the blots), you should be ashamed of
yourself. (I think it was mentioned at the time that it was unfair on
inactive players – we missed that it'd be unfair on new players too,
but it's a similar principle.)

The players who have been around a little longer should probably be
working on cleaning them off the players who just joined? I'm willing
to use my weekly expunge on this, but am not sure which of the new
players to use it on. (I'm planning to use it later this week on one of
the new players, whoever's had the least help from other established
players, randomizing if there's a tie.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: (Proto) Raybots

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

Here's an idea I had as a way to a) shake things up in a way that's
likely to lead to lots of interesting CFJs for the next few months (I
came up with it after reading the CFJ archives for cases that looked
interesting), and b) let us experiment with mechanisms for awarding
Radiance that don't need a whole proposal cycle to go through.

The basic idea is to reintroduce the idea of artificial / legal-fiction
persons, but this time, instead of treading back over the old ground of
"let's let players create new persons that they have control over more
or less at will", the new persons are created with 2 Agoran Consent and
are effectively "powered by promises", so everyone knows what the new
persons will and won't do, and any abusive or unfair design can be
objected to. (Using Promises rather than having things happen
platonically makes things easier to track, as the Raybots won't do
anything unless someone cashes the promises.)

In addition to being powered by promises, they serve as a source of
Radiance, being created with some and being able to transfer it to
other players. So the basic economic idea is that if you have a good
Radiance award condition in mind, you can try it out without needing to
go through a whole proposal cycle, and it disappears naturally after
paying out a certain amount of Radiance so there isn't too much cost to
experimentation. In addition to the economic side of things, I'm hoping
there'll be a lot of gameplay simply stemming from trying to create
weird situations, e.g. can we get a Raybot to play the game as a semi-
autonomous player (with the only human action being to cash its
promises when they become cashable)? Could we get one to win? Could we
(and should we) get one to do the duties of an office?


In rule 869, amend
{{{
Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, no other entities are persons.
}}}
to
{{{
No other entity can be a person, unless explicitly defined to be so by
a rule with power at least 3.
}}}
[Makes it possible to create legal-fiction players again.]

Create a new power-3 rule, "Raybots":
{{{
A Raybot is a type of entity that has been created using the process
described in this rule. Raybots CANNOT be created except as specified
by this rule, and entities that came to exist by any other means are
not Raybots.

Raybots are persons. Raybots are created with their Citizenship switch
set to Registered and their Radiance switch set to 40. Raybots agree to
abide by the Rules.

Motivation is an untracked Raybot switch whose possible values are
texts, and whose default value is "I deregister."

A player CAN create a Raybot with a specified Motivation with 2 Agoran
Consent, unless a Raybot with an identical Motivation was created
within the previous 14 days, and SHOULD specify a name for the Raybot
when doing so.

If, for any given Raybot, at least one of the following conditions is
continuously true for at least 10 seconds, that Raybot ceases to exist:
* e is not a player, and/or
* e is not the creator of any currently existing Promises, and/or
* eir Radiance is 0.

When a Raybot is created, it grants the Library a promise, becoming the
creator of that promise, and whose text is that Raybot's Motivation.

Raybots CANNOT support or object to tabled actions. The voting strength
of a Raybot on an Agoran Decision is 0.

Players SHALL NOT cause Raybots to perform ILLEGAL actions.
}}}
[The basic mechanic: Raybots are created with 2 Agoran Consent, and act
only as a consequence of players cashing their promises. The idea is
that the Motivation – the initial promise – will specify everything
that the Raybot can do, probably by creating more promises. The
Motivation is untracked because it has no effect beyond the Raybot's
initial creation.

Being players, Raybots are (under this version of the proposal) tracked
by the Registrar. It doesn't seem like that should be enough additional
work to require a new officer?

Raybots are made unable to support/object/meaningfully vote as a
precaution, in order to prevent them being used to flood our consensus
mechanisms if someone finds a way to mass-produce them.

The starting value of 40 Radiance is a guess.]

In rule 2618, amend
{{{
A consenting player CAN, by announcement, grant a specified entity a
promise, specifying its text and becoming its creator.
}}}
to
{{{
A Raybot or a consenting player CAN, by announcement, grant a specified
entity a promise, specifying its text and becoming its creator.
}}}
[It's an interesting philosophical question as to whether Raybots can
consent to things, so avoid the issue by making it possible for Raybots
to create promises by announcement even if they don't consent to them.
For what it's worth, rule 2519(3) means that the Raybot probably is
consenting, but it's better to make it clear.]

Create a new power-1.5 rule, "Raybot Transfer":
{{{
A Raybot CAN spend a specified amount of radiance to grant that much
radiance to a specified player.

A player CAN spend a specified amount of radiance to grant 

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Referee] Scamster

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 18:57 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 5/18/23 18:54, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> > --
> > H. ais523, Champion×17, M.N., D.N.Phil, Marvy Scamster
> 
> Appreciate the little humble brag in the signature :p

A portion of that was the result of scams, and scams have historically
been a source of the Scamster title itself, and the fact that I already
had the Scamster title was relevant, so it felt appropriate to use the
whole title (although I had to look it up – it's been a while).

It's the sort of thing that's best brought out only on special
occasions or when it happens to be extremely relevant to the message,
though.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Intent to register to Agora

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 18:49 -0500, blob via agora-discussion wrote:
> I, being the new player, totally agree with this. I would be more than
> willing to put some sort of marker in front of my name, as others in the
> past have done. How should I go about changing my name--or how have others
> in the past done it?

Agora doesn't have an "official" concept of names of players: all
that's required of, e.g. the Registrar, is to track "information
sufficient to identify [...] each player". So a player's name is, in
effect, the sequence of letters that other players generally use when
referring to them, and to change it, you just need to persuade other
players to refer to you in a certain way.

Historically, formatting a name change as an action by announcement,
i.e. "I change my name to …", has normally been enough to cause other
players to start using the new name (except in cases where players
attempted to change their name so often that the other players lost
track), but there's no actual formal process. Typically Agorans are
willing to refer to other players in the way they'd like to be referred
to, within reason (which is why there's a tradition of asking new
players for their preferred name, even though that isn't required by
the rules), so they're generally happy to comply with reasonable
requests to use a different name.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Sacrilege, but more this time

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 21:32 +0100, ais523 via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business
> wrote:
> > I informally risk being guilty of favoritism 7 days from now, by
> > saying that the combination of CFJ calling and parenthetical reminder
> > that it may fail is enough disclaimer to avoid no faking.  I'll also
> > note that Janet pointed out CFJ 1881 which asked if R2029 created a
> > duty to dance, and in fact Judge omd of that case found that R2029
> > *does* apply penalties to the Marvy (if there were any Marvy), and
> > CFJ 2589 which raised the matter again/independently. So it's not
> > 100% cut-and-dried that R2029's exhortation to dance has no legal
> > effect. And I'd forgotten at least one of those cases myself, so I
> > wouldn't expect 4st to know about them.
> 
> Are there any Marvy at the moment? IIRC the definition was something
> along the lines of "a player who has increased voting power but is not
> an officer", but I can't properly remember it (it was over a decade ago
> at this point).

Just happened to notice this:

On Tue, 2023-05-16 at 15:21 -0500, nix via agora-official wrote:
> Marvy:4st, ais523, CreateSource,
>   cuddlybanana, duck, G., Janet,
>   juan, Murphy, R. Lee, snail,
>   Trigon, Vitor Gonçalves

Marvy is a patent title that's currently in use. I suspect that this
has no impact on rule 2029 for much the same reason that a player named
"Marvy" wouldn't, but it feels like a relevant data point.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Sacrilege, but more this time

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 14:01 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 1:32 PM ais523 via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
> > That said, I suspect the word in R2029 is currently undefined: I don't
> > think "a definition that was in place at the time the rule was adopted"
> > is one of the things that we can legally use to interpret the rules.
> > (In fact, given that rules of lower power can't outright define terms
> > in higher-power rules – just clarify them – it may be very hard to
> > define a term in a power-4 rule at all if it has no common meaning, and
> > after this much time, I doubt it has a common meaning.)
> 
> It was CFJ 2585, and you (Judge ais523) found the exact opposite of
> what you just said above. In
> https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2585, Judge ais523
> wrote:
> 
> > However, by the implicit mention in CFJ 1881,
> > and the explicit precedent of CFJ 1534 (that in a rule of historical
> > significance such as 104 or 2029, terms used in the rule have the
> > meaning they had when the rule was created), not to mention rule 1586, I
> > can only conclude that "marvy" in rule 2029 has the meaning it did when
> > the Fountain was created.

This is a nomic, and rules change over time! I think my ruling in CFJ
2585, based as it was primarily on CFJ 1534, missed that the precedent
of CFJ 1534 was probably no longer relevant (and suspect that it may be
incorrect). The judge of CFJ 1881 may have made the same mistake.

At the time of CFJ 1534, rule 217 looked like this:

  All Judgements must be in accordance with the Rules; however,
  if the Rules are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the
  Statement to be Judged, then the Judge shall consider game
  custom, commonsense, past Judgements, and the best interests of
  the game before applying other standards.

This is much more permissive than the current rule 217: in addition to
applying only to judgements, it explicitly mentions "other standards"
which can be used in cases where none of the four main tests work.

At the time of CFJ 1881, it looked like this, somewhat more similar to
the current version:

  When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the rules
  takes precedence.  Where the text is silent, inconsistent, or
  unclear, it is to be augmented by game custom, common sense,
  past judgements, and consideration of the best interests of the
  game.

but I'm not sure whether the judge noticed that the change might
potentially cause the precedent of CFJ 1534 to no longer apply.

Additionally, CFJ 1534 was itself a judgement based on rule 217 tests,
specifically the best interests of the game: that ruling that Michael
Norrish had *continuously* been the Speaker since the start of Agora
would break everything (the office of the Speaker used to be *much*
more important to the functioning of Agora than it is nowadays), and
thus in cases where rules were unclear, it was better to rule that
transferrence of the Speaker worked correctly. This means that the
precedent might not apply to cases where the the rule 217 tests leaned
in a different direction.


There's also the factor of "this fits too perfectly to not mention":
the rules in place at the time of the Town Fountain's construction were
repealed at the time of CFJ 1881, but by the time of CFJ 2585, the
underlying rules had been re-enacted in pretty much the same form as
they had originally. As such, the old definition of "marvy" was
possible to apply to the rules at the time more or less directly. I
suspect that the me of 15 years ago would have been so excited that the
precedent *could* be applied in this way, that I didn't stop to
consider whether I *should*; in fact I suspect that I read the relevant
old judgements from the FLR annotations rather than actually reading
the judgement itself to see if it were still relevant. (My argument to
rule 1586 seems wrong, given that "marvy" wasn't rules-defined at the
time.)

Or perhaps this is just a case of "the ais523 who has been following
Agora for over 15 years spots things that the ais523 who had been there
for only one year didn't".

Apparently I can still in theory appeal the CFJ, but would require 728
support to do so, which might be hard to obtain in the current
gamestate. So we may just have to leave the precedent there.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Sacrilege, but more this time

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business
wrote:
> I informally risk being guilty of favoritism 7 days from now, by
> saying that the combination of CFJ calling and parenthetical reminder
> that it may fail is enough disclaimer to avoid no faking.  I'll also
> note that Janet pointed out CFJ 1881 which asked if R2029 created a
> duty to dance, and in fact Judge omd of that case found that R2029
> *does* apply penalties to the Marvy (if there were any Marvy), and
> CFJ 2589 which raised the matter again/independently. So it's not
> 100% cut-and-dried that R2029's exhortation to dance has no legal
> effect. And I'd forgotten at least one of those cases myself, so I
> wouldn't expect 4st to know about them.

Are there any Marvy at the moment? IIRC the definition was something
along the lines of "a player who has increased voting power but is not
an officer", but I can't properly remember it (it was over a decade ago
at this point).

That said, I suspect the word in R2029 is currently undefined: I don't
think "a definition that was in place at the time the rule was adopted"
is one of the things that we can legally use to interpret the rules.
(In fact, given that rules of lower power can't outright define terms
in higher-power rules – just clarify them – it may be very hard to
define a term in a power-4 rule at all if it has no common meaning, and
after this much time, I doubt it has a common meaning.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Proto] Clarifying Intentions

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:48 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> Any feedback on the below before I submit it?

The example should be introduced with "for example" not "For example"
(the capitalisation is wrong for mid-sentence). Other than that, it
makes sense.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Collector, Dream keeper) Intent to Register to Agora

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 11:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> hehe we can still fool old players sometimes - "intend" has a
> "specific meaning" for registration as well as for other contexts, so
> beokirby registered exactly as per the rules:
> 
> >  An Unregistered person CAN (unless explicitly forbidden or
> >  prevented by the rules) register by publishing a message that
> >  indicates reasonably clearly and reasonably unambiguously that e
> >  intends to become a player at that time.

It's still worth warning the new players, though, because "intend"
wording works for registration, and (for a different reason) for the
first step in taking a tabled action, but doesn't work for anything
else.

IIRC the reason it works for registration is partly that new players
kept getting it wrong, and partly because we wanted to change the
registration rules to have an entire new set of "did my registration
work?" CFJs. That change was ages ago now, though, so I might be
misremembering the details.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Intent to register to Agora

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2023-05-17 at 19:13 -0500, nix via agora-business wrote:
> On 5/17/23 19:10, Christian Arguinzoni via agora-business wrote:
> > I would like to register for the nomic game Agora. My preferred name is
> > blob. Thank you!
> 
> Welcome! I grant blob a Welcome Package. This is interesting because
> this might be the first time we have a new player with the same name as
> a previous player. I'm not sure how best to handle it in historical
> documents. Curious what people think?

I vaguely remember that precedent is along the lines of "a player's
name in Agora is the name that other players use to refer to em". If a
player attempts to select an ambiguous nickname, the resulting name
can't be used to unambiguously refer to em, so it doesn't work as a
name.

If someone posted "Blob" to the mailing lists without clarification,
which person would we take it as referring to? I think it would depend
on context, being an unambiguous reference to the new player in some
contexts, and being ambiguous in others.

As such, I think that anyone who has a duty to identify a *player* can
just use "Blob" unambiguously, whereas anyone who has a duty to
identify a *person* must clarify which "Blob" e is talking about.
Historical documents like the Registrar's and Herald's reports thus
most likely need footnotes to disambiguate.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Surveyor) Commune entry

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2023-05-16 at 19:28 -0400, Katie Davenport via agora-business
wrote:
> I intend to:
> 
> Enter the current tournament of Commune as a participant.
> 
> Set my (Left, Middle, Right) constructors to construct (7, B, D), 
> respectively.
> 
> Invest in Olive.

This is a little ambiguous, because it's unclear from your message
whether you're doing it now or planning to do it later. It's best not
to use words like "intend" unless you actually are trying to indicate
that you're planning to do something in the future rather than now.

I recommend repeating the message without the "intend" working, e.g. "I
enter the current tournament of Commune as a participant", because I'm
not convinced that it works as it's currently written.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: on invisbilitating

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Fri, 2023-05-12 at 06:04 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business
wrote:
> 
> Further it is clear from the text itself that it was intended
> that this definition be "hidden" and continue to provide definitional
> guidance (that's unique afaik when thinking of other old gamestate):

It can't provide definitional guidance. Rule 217 contains a complete
list of things that can be used to interpret and apply the rules where
their text is silent, and "the text of adopted proposals" isn't on the
list. (So neither the text of proposal 4513, nor the text of proposal
8961 which references it, is relevant in the interpretation.)

Do you have a past judgement to reference for the definition? (There's
no game custom remaining at this point – I remembered that
Invisibilitating had once been defined, which is why I voted AGAINST,
but couldn't remember the details – and common sense and the best
interests of the game may argue towards leaving the term defined or
undefined but don't provide a definition.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 4023 Assigned to 4st

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Thu, 2023-05-11 at 00:55 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> Sorry, I meant practical for the purposes of applying  "*Any* ambiguity in
> the specification of a rule change causes that change to be void and
> without effect."
> 
> Of course, this compromise-based definition of how ambiguous something
> needs to be in order to be ambiguous for Agora can change and vary and I'm
> not entirely sure what that definition is supposed to be right now, but I
> do feel like it's very likely to fall into one that I don't agree with
> personally but that I have no problem playing along with, because it's all
> compromise anyways.

We have a rule about how to interpret the rules (rule 217); we need to
rely on that when determining what the "any ambiguity in the
specification of a rule change…" rule means. I agree that "any" has a
clear meaning, but "ambiguity" doesn't – and the rule 217 tests make it
clear that it should be interpreted in a way that makes the game
playable.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 4023 Assigned to 4st

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2023-05-10 at 22:04 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> I'd really just need to prove once that one singular point in the mechanism
> is ambiguous, to any degree, to add "any ambiguity". It would help to
> define "ambiguous" as "capable of being understood in two or more possible
> senses or ways".

The unambiguity requirement is very narrow – it doesn't stop rule
changes on ambiguities in general, the ambiguity has to specifically be
an ambiguity in the way that the rule change is specified. That only
gives a very narrow area in which an ambiguity might occur, and most
rule changes are specified unambiguously by giving the old and new
text.

The only situation I can remember where it was contentious as to
whether a rule change was specified ambiguously was proposal 8644 (see
 for a
description of what happened). In that case, a judge found that the
specification was not in fact ambiguous. The vast majority of rule
changes are specified considerably less ambiguously than that.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Draft Proposal] You can't just call points radiance and not have them do

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 16:39 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion
wrote:
> On 5/8/23 05:33, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote:
> 
> > A player CAN, by paying a fee of 5 brights, turn a specified rule
> > Radiant.
> > A radiant rule CANNOT be repealed. The player that turned a rule
> > Radiant
> > CAN, by announcement, make it cease being Radiant.
> 
> No. Please no.

This restriction is trivially circumventable with an AI-2 proposal (and
a proposal equal to the power of the radiant rule could amend it into
nothingness), so there isn't actually anything broken/breakable here.

There are other issues with it, though (it doesn't do what it seems to,
and it isn't tracked properly; there are also arguments that it doesn't
have enough Power to work).

It could maybe be changed to something along the lines of "specify a
rule of power below 2, any proposals that would repeal or amend that
rule have their AI increased to 2"? That would have similar
functionality to the apparently intended functionality, but very little
risk of breaking things.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: [Draft Proposal] You can't just call points radiance and not have them do

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 04:33 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote:
> [I hope you like this idea! Please let me know your thoughts, especially
> about the Bright Abilities. This system could easily be added to, with
> alternate ways to gain radiance! Or if someone comes up with one really
> good radiance gaining game, this would work with it.]

The basic system seems fine, but everything generally seems rather
expensive? I think this won't function at all unless it's paired with
better ways to gain radiance or easier ways to obtain stamps. (As it
is, creating stamps is almost impossible unless a new player joins.)

As an example, imagine a new player trying to do anything useful with
stamps. They can get to approximately 100 radiance by massively
devaluing their stamp (as seen with Yachay recently, who would have
struggled to get significantly more than 100). Spending that would let
them seal 10 stamps, but they no longer have the resources to obtain
any, so maybe they only get to seal 5 stamps, but they're going to have
trouble obtaining even those.

I guess one way to think about it is to consider how much time
investment a Bright reflects (taking into account the fact that new
players have some inherent advantages which gives them a starting point
with more than 0 "time investment" banked). Using Yachay's win as a
measuring point, one and a half months were enough for a new player to
gain, in effect, two Brights; thus it seems like it's likely that
without new player advantages, each Bright is going to take at least a
couple of months' worth of effort and neglect of other parts of the
game, which means that most of the Bright Abilities are too expensive
for people to consider using; I'd expect them to be confined primarily
to the victory-related requirements. (The system as a whole is somewhat
reminiscent of Leadership Tokens, which IIRC people were unwilling to
use for anything other than the victory condition.)

In terms of the abilities themselves, I have a feeling that there
should be something along the lines of "prevent this proposal passing",
which can be circumvented by making the same proposal week after week
until the obstructor runs out of Brights, but not by submitting the
same proposal repeatedly in the same week; that's an example of an
ability that is potentially useful economically rather than just as a
victory marker.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Plan B

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 13:55 +0100, ais523 via agora-discussion wrote:
> my current thoughts are along the lines of "add Radiance for
> participation actions like proposing / officiating / judging / even
> voting

And to clarify: by this I mean voting *at all*, not specifically for
contrary votes (which are clearly trouble).

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Plan B

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 01:24 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> Given a new player winning within a month and a half by stamps by
> simply trading, something needs to change

I disagree with this part of your statement – I don't think that
there's anything inherently wrong with a new player being able to win
within a month and a half by trading:

 * The fact that Yachay is new gave em something valuable to trade,
   Yachay stamps. The stamps system is inherently designed so that
   players who haven't previously engaged with it have an advantage, so
   we should expect new players to be able to take advantage of that.
   This sort of win can't easily be repeated by Yachay in the future:
   in order to pull it off, e's created a situation in which a) almost
   everyone who's economically active owns a Yachay stamp and thus b)
   not only are they hard to trade, they're also hard to create (with
   Dream of Wealth losing much of its power). Along similar lines, most
   established players would have difficulty doing the same thing, so
   it isn't like this is an overly easy route to victory.

 * Agora is probably making its victory conditions too hard nowadays:
   one and a half months historically seems to have been about right
   for a victory, for someone who's trying hard to get it. My first win
   of Agora was likewise around a month and a half after registering
   (April 28 2008 to June 17 2008). Likewise with Alexis (March 7 2009
   to April 27 2009). Bucky has won Agora four times despite never
   being a player at all. I was once able to keep up the pace of
   winning every 1½ months for an entire year (a sequence of 8 wins
   starting after Agora's Birthday 2008 and with the last on Agora's
   Birthday 2009).

 * Yachay's victory was beneficial for several players, such as me: I'm
   a long way behind, e.g., Murphy or snail in the Radiance race. A
   Radiance reset has effectively no negative impact on me, and yet it
   makes it harder for players to challenge attempts by me to Radiance
   win in the future. With wins by new players, it's often the case
   that more established players could stop the win, but choose not to
   (e.g. I could have stopped this win by reacting to the timing scam
   and winning first – I realised what was going on at the time – and I
   noticed the scam that Alexis used for eir first win at the time but
   likewise chose to stay silent).

 * In addition to devaluing eir stamps, Yachay also had to sacrifice in
   other parts of the game to make the win work: in particular, e was
   locked out of most of the Dreams due to eir need to print stamps.
   This means that aiming for this win gave em less influence in other
   parts of the game, such as the proposals system. This would be a
   more relevant drawback if more of the Dreams did something useful,
   but in general it does make sense that there's a tradeoff here.

All in all, I don't think there's a bug related to this in particular
to be fixed.

Repealing almost all the ways to gain Radiance does need fixing, of
course; but I don't think that repealing the others is a good way to do
it. After thinking things over during the revision process for my
thesis, my current thoughts are along the lines of "add Radiance for
participation actions like proposing / officiating / judging / even
voting, remove the reset on Radiance wins, and increase the amount of
Radiance that's required to win in order to reduce the rate of wins
obtainable purely by grinding"; when I find time to finish off my
thesis I'll try to formulate the argument for that more clearly.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: (draft) Rule Trolling

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-05-07 at 17:24 -0700, Forest Sweeney via agora-discussion
wrote:
> Title: Did you try turning it off and on?

Strongly AGAINST this, it would allow players to easily revoke any
asset defined at power 1 from everybody at once via disabling the rule
defining it. That would, in effect, make it impossible to have a
workable economy unless we went around specifically securing all the
economic rules against this.

As a simple example, Commune's assets are backed by a Power=1 rule, so
this would allow anyone to, with notice, reset the entire tournament.
That would make gameplay there effectively impossible.

It might also possible be possible to break the proposal system at
power 1, by causing the Assessor to no longer be an office (thus making
it so that there's nobody who CAN resolve proposals, and nobody can
deputise either). I'm not sure that works because there's a power-3
"defaulting" in rule 208 which may make it possible for the Promotor to
resolve Agoran Decisions in that case, as a fallback, but I think it
might fail due to Cretans. Perhaps we might want to clarify the rules,
to make sure. (Note that this would not be an ossification because you
could still fix things by RWOing the office, or indeed flipping the
switch back again – it's just something I noticed when trying to figure
out what implications this proposal would have.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Collector, @Herald) Stamps for Radiance 2

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 02:01 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business
wrote:
> I pay 5 different Stamps (ais523, nix, snail, Yachay, murphy) to gain
> 20 radiance ( 5^2 - 5 = 20 )
> I pay 5 of the same Stamp (ais523) to gain 8 radiance ( (5-1)*2 = 8 )
> 
> I announce that I have 100 radiance. I therefore win the game.

Congratulations!

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: (@Stonemason, Dream Keeper) BUS: Re: OFF: [Stonemason] Billboard Rock Chart - 23 Apr 2023

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-04-30 at 19:19 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> On 4/30/23 04:04, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> > On Mon, 2023-04-24 at 00:40 +0100, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2023-04-23 at 19:22 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-official
> > > wrote:
> > > > Stone    Mossiness  Owner    Last Wielded  Immune?
> > > > ---  -  ---    ---
> > > > Recursion    0  Agora    2023-02-08    Agora
> > > I reach for the Recursion Stone.
> > I wield the Recursion Stone as if it had the power of the Protection
> > Stone, granting the Recursion Stone immunity.
> 
> This fails. As far as I can tell, you do not own the Recursion Stone.
> snail gathered the Jockey Stone in the most recent gathering (you both
> had the same Modified Rockiness, and snail reached earlier).

Ah, I had misinterpreted the rule – I had incorrectly assumed that more
than one reaching could succeed in a single week.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: Race stuff (attn Horsened)

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-04-23 at 16:52 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-business
wrote:
> I pay 3 hooves to increase Alexia's Race Position by 2. (R2672)
> 
> I transfer Baxter to snail.

Out of interest, when did you decide to do this (and what did snail
trade for it)? The time window to come to an agreement about this was
pretty small.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: (@Herald) [Petition] BUS: A thesis: thoughts on Radiance

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2023-04-19 at 20:39 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 4/19/23 19:02, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> > I publish the following thesis, with intent to qualify for a
> > degree,
> > and petition the Herald to coordinate a peer-review process for it:
> In response to this petition, I have begun the process of convening a
> peer review board. Hopefully the process feels equitable to the
> petitioner.
> 
Nttpf, but I might as well reply now rather than waiting for the a-b
repost: I approve of how you're handling this.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: (@Notary, Herald) BUS: A speculative counterscam attempt

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-04-17 at 02:01 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Monday, April 17, 2023, ais523 via agora-business <
> agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> 
> > (Disclaimer: I'm attempting a counterscam here without knowing if
> > anyone's going to attempt the scam that I'm aiming to prevent. If no
> > revolution is happening, I don't have 100 radiance and so this message
> > will end up having no net effect; my main purpose in sending this
> > message is in case someone causes a revolution to happen sufficiently
> > close to the start of the new week that nobody else would have time to
> > react to the action in question unless they had already anticipated
> > that it would be happening.)
>
> Crap

I think the revolution failed (although I might well have miscounted) –
the last time I counted there were five participants and six were
required. Thus the possiblity of a timing scam, where someone new joins
it immediately before the start of the week, or someone becomes
inactive immediately before the start of the week.

If the revolution failed, there was no "race to claim victory" to lose.
(Probably the radiance rule should be changed so that players don't
lose radiance from someone else winning if they're already at 100,
though, to avoid this sort of race occurring in the first place?)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2023-04-11 at 13:54 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> Your client itself will normally display the timestamp attached by the 
> sending machine. This is usually assumed to be honest, but could 
> actually be forged (to amusing results, such as pushing a new email way 
> back in your inbox because it reports and old date, I believe ais523 or 
> someone else actually did this for an email in the archives). The 
> archives also use this date I believe.

I've been known to forge email timestamps in the past, mostly just
because it's another fun corner of the Agoran rules to mess around
with.

It is much harder nowadays than it used to be: the email system has a
lot more anti-forgery protection in it than it used to (the idea being
to make it hard for spammers to disguise where their messages are
coming from, thus making the spam easier to block), so if you try to
forge email timestamps the way I traditionally used to forge them, the
computers along the way are actually somewhat likely to notice
nowadays.

It is, however, still possible. I could probably manage it if I really
wanted to, but (assuming that I wanted the timestamp to be believable)
the easiest way to get an email with a given timestamp on it would be
to actually send it at that specific time. (With automation, it isn't
too hard to send an email at a specific time, if you know in advance
that you're going to have to.)

The *really* fun variant, which AFAIK has never been tested at Agora,
is to exploit the fact that the start of an email arrives before the
end of the email does – if the email is being sent over a sufficiently
slow connection, the end of the email can theoretically contain text
that was chosen based on reacting to things that have happened since
the email started to be received. In this case, I think the email
servers along the way might nonetheless use the timestamp of when the
email started to be sent, although I'm far from certain about this.
(Some of the modern anti-forgery features stop this working,
incidentally, because the proof that the email's body has not been
modified during transit appears in the email headers, which appear
before the body, so you have to have the whole thing written in advance
in order to be able to come up with a header and body that match each
other.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 2023-04-11 at 20:34 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote:
> How do you determine which action was made first on a certain Agoran day
> when multiple competing actions try to be the first message sent on that
> day?

Emails have timestamps in their email headers, added by the various
computers that the email goes through on its way to the recipient.

Email sending is pretty fast (meaning that all the timestamps on any
given email tend to be close to each other), so what normally happens
is that the last timestamp on one of the competing emails comes before
the first timestamp on the other, and so it's obvious which one came
first.

If two emails are sent at almost exactly the same time, then there can
be some controversy about which of the various timestamps to look at.
Normally this needs a CFJ to settle it, and although this sort of thing
has been through the Agoran courts several times, I'm not sure whether
we've reached a firm conclusion on the matter yet.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 8946-8951

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-04-10 at 09:11 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 4/10/23 07:40, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> > AGAINST - I agree with most of this, but halving stamps every month is
> > too frequent, and likely going to lead to very uninteresting gameplay
> > (I suspect there isn't enough time to accumulate enough stamps to make
> > trades worthwhile) - the 1/week restriction on cashing stamps also
> > means that there won't be enough time for players with existing stamp
> > holdings to spend them before they get halved
> Would quarterly be better?
> 
> Maybe the once a week limitation is unnecessary.

Quarterly would be fine, I think.

The once a week limitation feels unnecessary to me in the state where 
the new rules have been in place for a while, and haven't been changed
since. It might have to be kept to be more robust to future rule
changes occur and/or to short-term imbalances caused by rule changes.

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: stamps and radiance - discussion

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-04-02 at 11:27 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> So, by my count there's 3 people who could win via radiance pretty
> much at any time due to stamps.  I sure don't begrudge the wins at
> all, but it's extremely demotivtating to bother to get radiance, to
> know it could be reset at any time on a whim.  Really gives a "no
> point in trying" feeling to radiance right now except via stamps.
> 
> Holding onto a win for later can be fine - e.g. for Ribbons, because
> one person's ribbon win doesn't reset anybody else's progress.  But
> for radiance it seems that one method (stamps) can be banked
> indefinitely and reset everyone's progress whenever, while the other
> radiance methods time out, don't seem like the best game design
> overall? My own first thoughts on a fix would be to make stamps win on
> their own track (a separate win type from radiance), but curious what
> others think.
> 
> Maybe I'm thinking about the strategy wrong, it could be played
> "radiance is only about stamps and the other methods are just little
> get-aheads" but we haven't really made the game read that way?

Am I one of the people who could get a Radiance win immediately by
cashing in stamps? In my case, it isn't malice or anything like that –
it's a case of not being sufficiently tuned into the game to know what
the exchange rate is and whether it would be worth doing, so I mostly
just let things drift. (Part of the reason I haven't been bothering
with the stamp game much is that ais523 stamps are so common that I
can't easily trade for anything else, so I feel somewhat locked out of
the game at the moment. I have some Madrid stamps too: if people are
interested in trading for those, that might be a deal worth making.)

I think a worthwhile approach would be to make it so that, at a
minimum, the legacy stamps can be cashed in for a win without upsetting
the ongoing radiance competition (even if it's just via a proposal
along the lines of "if ais523 has at least N ais523 stamps, revoke N
ais523 stamps from em, and ais523 wins").

-- 
ais523

DIS: Horses

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-03-26 at 13:18 -0700, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-
discussion wrote:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023, Forest Sweeney via agora-business <
> agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> > (I remember joining in the middle of a race and decided not to
> > play for this race, which... is still the current race.
> > I also would like everyone to consider repealing racing in general,
> > as I don't see many players taking weekly race actions other
> > than ais523 and snail...
> > but that is a separate story.)
> > }
>
> I'd be in favor of repealing horses.

I've thought for a while (since it was originally being proposed!) that
the horse minigame doesn't really work. Hooves are more relevant now
than they were originally, but still don't have much effect in practice
– they serve as a limit on grinding dollaries but that's about it.
There aren't very many possible strategies and some are clearly better
than others. And when a player falls behind, it's fairly clear that
they have no chance to win and no real reason to continue competing
(dollaries, hooves, helmets, jerseys etc. are pretty much worthless if
you have no chance to win the current race).

The entire racing system seems to have originally been balanced around
the "increase or decrease a specified Running horse's Race Position by
2, by paying 3 hooves" action (in the original version of the rule,
this was the only time at which hooves became relevant at all).
However, players have been reluctant to take that action at all – a
major reason seems to be that the action is inefficient in terms of
benefiting the player performing it, so the only reason to take it is
if some other player is paying you to take it. And the problem with
*that* is that the reward for winning the horse minigame is small
enough that there's very little reason to spend assets, favours, etc.
that might be useful elsewhere in the game on winning the horse
minigame. (A horse race takes ages – several months – and the rewards
for winning it are pretty small.)

There are also several exploits. snail and I have both been exploiting
the race rules continuously for several weeks (interestingly, with very
little overlap in which exploits we're using). The fact that there's
been very little discussion about fixing them – or indeed, people even
acknowledging that that's what's happening – probably means that
there's little engagement with the horse minigame as a whole.

All that said, the current race is close to over, so I'd be in favour
of letting it end and then repealing it. (Admittedly, that's at least
partly because I suspect I'm the most likely player to win it.)

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor/Proposal) What does this button do?

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-03-20 at 15:18 -0700, Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote:
> Enact the following rule:
> {
> A device is an asset defined by the rules.
> Devices are tracked by the Mad Engineer's assistant.
> }
> 
> Grant each player a Reified Device.

I suspect the last part of that proposal will fail to do anything
unless you switch the Device on first. (While it's off, there are a
number of restrictions on how a Device can be created.)

I'm also somewhat intrigued as to what happens when you make something
that isn't an officer responsible for tracking an asset…

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Proposal Practice - Chicken Dinner

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-03-19 at 11:40 -0700, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-
discussion wrote:
> On Thursday, March 16, 2023, Janet Cobb wrote:
> > Don't use a "MUST" to impose effectiveness requirements upon an
> > action.
> - Unfortunately this isn't evident to me either. Why?

If the requirements aren't met, the message has broken the rules (as
opposed to the person who sent the message). It's hard to prosecute a
message for rule-breaking and it probably wouldn't do anything useful.

You want phrasing along the lines of "is INEFFECTIVE unless it" in
order to cause the message to do nothing, as opposed to causing the
message to break the rules.

See rule 2152 for definitions of the various capitalised terminology we
use in our rules.

-- 
ais523

DIS: (@Mad Engineer) Re: OFF: [Mad Engineer] Experiment 00075 - Intent to Invent

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 2023-03-05 at 16:50 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
> I intend, with Agoran consent, to cause Rule 2655 to amend the Rule "The
> Device" by appending the following a a list item to the "When the device
> is on:" list:
> 
> {
> 
>   The first Agoran week each year which falls entirely in February
>   is Read the device Week. Agorans are encouraged to read the
>   ruleset during Read the device Week.
> 
> }

This intent can't be resolved, and doesn't fulfil your Mad Engineer
duties, because it doesn't consistently replace any given word with
"device" – you missed one copy of "ruleset".

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: (@ais523) Re: [Arbitor] CFJ 4010 Assigned to ais523

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-02-27 at 07:36 -0800, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 5:05 PM Kerim Aydin  wrote:
> > 
> > The below CFJ is 4010.  I assign it to ais523.
> > 
> > status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4010
> > 
> > ===  CFJ 4010  ===
> > 
> >   The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
> >   applied.
> > 
> > ==
> 
> H. Judge ais523,
> 
> Friendly note:  this judgement is due in ~10 hours, and resolving this
> case is required to resolve uncertainty in the rules, a recent win,
> and points/scores, so is delaying resolving several pieces of game
> state.  Let me know if you plan to judge in the next 24 hours, if not
> I'll likely recuse and reassign right away (no worries if you're busy
> and need a recusal, let me know).

Still planning to judge – was unexpectedly busy over the weekend so
delayed to today intentionally.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: BUS: [DoV] (@Collector, @Herald, @Stonemason) Score shenanigans

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-02-20 at 00:48 +, nix via agora-business wrote:
> On 2/19/23 18:03, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote:
> > If i have at least 94 points and less than 100 points, I increase
> > my score
> > by 6 by paying a fee of 1 snail stamp, 1 madrid stamp, and 1 aspen
> > stamp.
> > (I believe this one goes through, and not the next one.)
> 
> If the above changes snail's score, I consent to and join a contract
> called "Condition A Worked" with the following text:

For the record, I still really hate this sort of conditional action,
and am not convinced it should be allowed – it can sometimes be used to
reduce uncertainty about the gamestate, but it has a tendency to make
it expand instead.

It is often (usually?) possible to get the same effect by taking an
action unconditionally in such a way that it will fail if the relevant
conditions aren't met (although it wouldn't have been possible for the
above score win attempt), with a Truthiness disclaimer explaining that
it will fail if you're wrong about the gamestate. I've been using that
technique in preference to conditional actions, where possible.

-- 
ais523

DIS: Re: ALT: Some Words From Our Sponsors

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Wed, 2023-02-15 at 11:38 -0800, nix wrote:
> I was testing keyword matches, but mostly I was also testing an
> unrelated thing and needed a message to go to list.

I think you normally get messages along the lines of "this is a test"
for this, to which the customary answer nonetheless seems to be "I
object." (Strangely, I vaguely remember that that custom *predated*
Apathy being added to the rules.)

More recently, I've taken to using normal game actions for this sort of
test, e.g. voting, to reduce the risk that people suspect that I'm up
to something. (When I am up to something, I typically prefer other
people to not realise it, in case they work out what I'm up to and stop
it somehow. When I'm not up to something, I again don't want to raise
suspicions about what I might be up to, in case people end up making
life difficult for me trying to stop the nonexistent scam.)

-- 
ais523

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Distributor/Proposal) Player-Defined Nonsense

[ais523 via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 2023-02-13 at 10:37 -0800, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 9:53 AM Forest Sweeney via agora-business
>  wrote:
> > Do you want to be able to just send "ANGER" to a-b, and for it to mean "I
> > object to every intent to declare apathy."?
> > Or "I floop" to motivate the horses, or "Ohgodnotanother" to mean "I submit
> > the following proposal:"?
> 
> I think it would be useful to have a fairly flexible Agoran lexicon
> that changes rapidly-enough to be easy to add for current gameplay,
> but is stable enough to have reference value for everyone.  It would
> be great to say "I QWANG these items" to mean "I take these 5 steps
> with them" at times when those 5 steps are a common sequence that
> people use regularly (QWANG is a reference to when we talked about
> doing this a few years ago).  But I think this version of making it
> personal like this is too obfuscatory for me, as an officer, it seems
> a better approach would be - sure not so colorful, but more useful -
> "The Definitional Regulations are tracked by (Notary?) and can be
> added/amended/removed with some level of Consent".

At one point, we had "zoop" which (due to the way a contract was set
up) would automatically take actions on behalf of a number of different
players in order to achieve a given result, and I *think* it worked
without explicitly needing to say whay would happen as a consequence?
(I can't remember for certain at this point, it was a while ago.)

On another note, it's also worth considering adding things like ISIDTID
to a lexicon like that, even though they aren't actions and thus having
the meaning rules-defined isn't required to be able to interpret game
actions. It'd be helpful for new players in interpreting things like
CFJ arguments. (IIRC there's a list like this already somewhere, not
sure whether new players find it easily or not.)

(Also, nkep feels like it fits into this sort of framework somehow, but
I'm not sure how.)

-- 
ais523