Proposal: Justified True Self-Knowledge
Timed out and passed, 4-2 with one unresolved DEF. Josh
Adminned at 16 May 2020 08:49:10 UTC
Add a new rule to the ruleset, entitled Epistemic Knowledge:
As a weekly action, an Amnesiac may Confront the Past Memory by sending them a Private Message, detailing the single Role that they think they have and the justification for that belief.
If the following are all true:
- The named Role is the Role held by that Amnesiac;
- The justification for their belief is internally logically consistent;
- The justification for their belief is entirely based on information given to that Amnesiac by the Past Memory, or given to that Amnesiac by another Amnesiac who was given it by the Past Memory;
- The justification for their belief leaves no possibility for their Role to be anything other than the Role named in the private message:
Then the Past Memory should change the Community page to note that that Amnesiac’s Role is Remembered, and set their Posture to match their correct Role.
An Amnesiac whose Role is Remembered may not change their Posture.
Kinda awkward? Basically, if you can prove that you know what your role is, then you have Remembered.
Kevan: he/him
I like this a lot, I’ve always been a big fan of the “prove your opponent can’t win this column” mechanic in Knizia’s Battle Line, and this is good for removing all possibility of a lucky guess.
It does leave some gaps, though: information passed privately between players can’t be verified by the Past Memory, and this proposal doesn’t consider deduction made from the nuts-and-bolts rules of the game (if a new Role is added today then we’ll all logically know that it can’t be our Role, since ours were assigned earlier, but this proposal won’t accept that) or from working out other player’s Roles (if I can prove that someone else is the Sheriff, it might follow that I can’t also be the Sheriff).