BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

@Kevan Where is your conveniently deeply-held conviction that CfJs be urgent or reflect a genuine disagreement in the rules now? Or do you think that Fixing the Broken Stage’s “Set Dread to 0” was ambiguous?

Don’t care on the merits.

I hadn’t really thought about it, I was just deferring to the Emperor if they considered it urgent.

I don’t know if the “conveniently deeply-held” jibe is accusing me of lying about that earlier conviction or being a hypocrite, but neither is very courteous and respectful.

I apologise if you find it discourteous or disrespectful, but in a game where flexibility orienting your arguments to maximise your advantage and minimise that of your opponents is a valid play, I do not find it to be wildly outside of the magic circle to allege that, yes, sometimes, you, Kevan, flexibly orient your arguments to maximise your advantage at the expense of your opponents.

Perhaps this comes on the back of the Golden Rule discussion generated by your essay, but when you vote against your rival’s votable matters on what appears to be opportunistic grounds it may sometimes engender a response. Sometimes that approach will involve drawing out what appears to be a hypocrisy; and when that gets pointed out then I’m afraid that’s just part of the fun of the fair. When your primary game objective is to get your proposals passed and those of your rivals failed, then said rivals pointing out the small pockets of inconsistency that your arguments create in order to highlight their motivated nature is a necessary, natural and - in my opinion - defensible rhetorical response.

I acknowledge that your invocation of the community guidelines is intended to take us out of the magic circle, and constitutes a warning that - in your eyes - I am approaching a line of over-personalisation that bothers you outside of a game context. I understand and am grateful for that warning, and will try to moderate my tone, although I will offer the mild rebuttal that I have called no names nor, in my view, crafted any overly-personalised responses in the context of a social deduction game, although I’ll cop to “robust”. But I do think that you have to expect and accept some scrutiny, especially in cases like this one, where there is an identifiable inconsistency at play.

To me, accusing another player of lying to the group is implied as a bright red line in the Community Guidelines. (“It is important to separate the player from the play. [...] Above all, it’s important to operate on the assumption of good faith.”) You can’t characterise someone as a liar or a hypocrite while also assuming that they have been acting honestly throughout.

It does get a little cloudy when we are, as is the case right now, playing a dynasty that has deception written into it as a mechanic, but I’d expect even that to play out respectfully, for any mistrust to be worded playfully and directed at the spirit of Katastrophe rather than the human player behind the screen.

I think that there is a distinction between lying and drawing out a contradiction - you did assert something in the other thread that is flatly contradicted in this one, but the characterisation of that as a ‘lie’ is yours rather than mine.

In any case, we’ve hit quorum on this, so I’d suggest that any further discussion on the matter shift to DMs if needed.

Your question of “Where is your conveniently deeply-held conviction [...] now?” suggests that I was falsely claiming to hold a particular conviction for the sake of convenience.