Saturday, June 16, 2012

Declaration of Victory: Teamwork is Magic

Failed 0-8. Would some smart person remove the Hiatus sigil from the right? Failed by Rodney.

Adminned at 17 Jun 2012 11:51:20 UTC

I have achieved victory because I am Enlightened.  Less ambiguously this time.

“Gamestate Mapping” states that the fields 1-10 “correspond to the GNDT fields of each Dynasty in the order that those GNDT fields are mentioned in the ruleset”; it doesn’t exclude the current Dynasty.  Though there is some ambiguity since the rule purports to map, say, field 1 to field 4, it’s unambiguous that the first three GNDT fields of Dynasty 100 are Dynasty, Chronotohms, and Chakras, because they are mentioned in that order in 2.2.1, “Dynastic Travel”.

Yesterday, ais523 randomly rolled Dynasty 46.  Today, coppro spent 2 Chronotohms to move to that Dynasty: as allowed by its ruleset, he added eir Wages (Dynasty) to eir Net Worth (Chronotohms), then transferred 20 Net Worth (Chronotohms) to me.  I then spent 5 Chronotohms to move to Dynasty 31.

In Dynasty 31 (ruleset), I changed my Incarnation (Chronotohms) to the name of the imaginary deity “42”, and my Pantheon (Chakras) to “Sahasrara (10), Ajna (11), Vishuddha (12), Anahata (13), Manipura (14), Swadhisthana (15), Muladhara (16)” [1].  (Since it was the first time I did so, I did not need to set my Quintessence to zero.)  So I have unblocked all seven Chakra, have become Enlightened, and have achieved victory.

[1] Once thought to be an aspect of Cthulhu, 42 once had a significant following but, after Cthulhu reportedly disclaimed any relationship to it (the deity was quoted as saying, “What kind of wimpy pantheon has a name full of numbers?”, though there was some controversy over the fact that the quoter did not outwardly seem to be dead or possessed), its worship has come to be seen as a cult.  Its most famous follower is Robert ‘); DROP TABLE Students;—.

Comments

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 01:09:19 UTC

against Under the impression that your attempt went through, I’ve been assuming that the dynastic rules were repelled and we are waiting on the CfJ to pass to fix that. And so I didn’t plot any scams today. You can’t just say “Oh wait, I want to plot more scams so I’m going to plot out one before the CfJ declaring my previous action was illegal passes” that’s just completely unfair.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 01:14:02 UTC

Also you didn’t unlock any Chakra, you just added their names to your Chakras field. Adding “XX Chakra (YY)” to your Chakras field does *not* unblock a Chakra. It just shows that you unblocked it.

omd:

16-06-2012 01:20:01 UTC

Er, sorry, but I don’t see how the presence of the CFJ affects anything.  If it passes, it merely clarifies that my purported win never happened in the first place; it wouldn’t affect any other scam attempts.

The ruleset clearly implies that Chakra are tracked in the GNDT.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 01:21:51 UTC

Right. The Presence of the CfJ doesn’t effect anything. The current game state is “OMD has declared himself emperor, resetting all dynastic rules”. There were no rules underwhich you won, and you cannot win because you are emperor. The CfJ undoes this so we can get back to playing nomic.

The ruleset implies no such thing. Please point out where it says “This string corresponds to Chakra unlocked” all it says is “When you unlock a Chakra, you have to update the string”. There is a big difference.

omd:

16-06-2012 01:25:17 UTC

Assuming that Kevan’s argument about Dynastic Rules is correct, nothing in the gamestate or ruleset changed when I said I won; I was just stuck on 2 and my GNDT entries were incorrect.

The ruleset says that when you unblock a dynasty, you may add a corresponding entry to the GNDT.  If doing so does not imply that you unblocked a chakra, it’s impossible to unblock chakras.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 01:32:44 UTC

A rule which says “when a monkey eats a banana they may increase their happiness by one” does not mean a monkey with 15 happiness has eaten fifteen bananas. You unlock a chakra, you add one to your list, but having seven on your list doesn’t mean you’ve unlocked seven

Also Kevans CfJ hasn’t passed so we can’t assume his interpretation is right. If we could we wouldn’t need the cfj

scshunt:

16-06-2012 01:44:58 UTC

So, let’s look at the rule in question:

Each Time Monk has a field in the GNDT entitled Chakras, defaulting to blank. Each Dynasty may or may not be Unblocked, and defaults to not being Unblocked.

If a Time Monk would be eligible to achieve Victory in the Dynasty that they currently occupy, were they Enlightened, and if that Dynasty has not yet been Unblocked, then they may Unblock that Dynasty by making a blog post with the Title “Unblocking a Chakra: Dynasty X”, where X is the Dynasty they occupy, and placing an asterisk beside that Dynasty in the Dynastic History list on the UTD. Upon doing so, the Monk who Unblocked the Dynasty gains 1 Chronotohm. They must then add ‘XX Chakra (YY)’ to their Chakra field, where YY is the number of the Dynasty that they have Unblocked, and XX is the Chakra that has been unlocked.

There are seven Chakra, and whenever a Time Monk unlocks a Chakra they may select which Chakra they have unblocked. Each Time Monk may only open each Chakra only once. Each Chakra, once unlocked, confers an effect upon the Time Monk, which takes effect immediately and permanently. Once a Time Monk has unblocked all seven Chakra, they may not unblock any further Chakra and have become Enlightened. The seven Chakra are as follows:

I’m going to post this comment to make sure it formatted correctly, then post my analysis of the rule.

scshunt:

16-06-2012 02:01:24 UTC

Okay, so sentence-by-sentence.

Each Time Monk has a field in the GNDT entitled Chakras, defaulting to blank.</blockquotes>

Okay, so everyone has a string field. That’s fairly straightforward.

<blockquote>Each Dynasty may or may not be Unblocked, and defaults to not being Unblocked.

Every dynasty is Unblocked or not, but that’s it. This is global state.

If a Time Monk would be eligible to achieve Victory in the Dynasty that they currently occupy, were they Enlightened, and if that Dynasty has not yet been Unblocked, then they may Unblock that Dynasty by making a blog post with the Title “Unblocking a Chakra: Dynasty X”, where X is the Dynasty they occupy, and placing an asterisk beside that Dynasty in the Dynastic History list on the UTD. Upon doing so, the Monk who Unblocked the Dynasty gains 1 Chronotohm.

This is fairly straightforward and should need no more eplanation. Note, however, that no where in these two sentences are Chakras mentioned, except in the title of the post. This means that, following the instructions so far, nothing has affected Chakras.

They must then add ‘XX Chakra (YY)’ to their Chakra field, where YY is the number of the Dynasty that they have Unblocked, and XX is the Chakra that has been unlocked.

Okay, suddenly we have a Chakra unlocked. Why has a Chakra been unlocked? Nothing explicitly says a Chakra has been unlocked, only that the Chakra that was unlocked needs to be added to the GNDT field. But the unlocking of a Chakra is presumed; it’s not “if a Chakra was unlocked”, it was “the Chakra that was unlocked”.

There are seven Chakra, and whenever a Time Monk unlocks a Chakra they may select which Chakra they have unblocked.

Okay, interesting. There are exactly seven Chakra. This doesn’t actually seem to be specific to individuals. Note the random switch from “unlocked” to “unblocked”. This seems like a typo and should be disregarded.

Each Time Monk may only open each Chakra only once.

Ok. “open” is close enough to “unlock”.

Each Chakra, once unlocked, confers an effect upon the Time Monk, which takes effect immediately and permanently.

This seems to refer to the Time Monk who opened (or unlocked) the Chakra. Straightforward enough.

Oh, incidentally, we should de-permanentize the effects at some point. They don’t seem to end at the end of the dynasty.

Once a Time Monk has unblocked all seven Chakra, they may not unblock any further Chakra and have become Enlightened.

Okay, there is some redundancy here, but it’s clear that a Time Monk becomes Enlightened once they have unblocked (or unlocked) all seven Chakras.

So, it appears that a Chakra can be unblocked more than once by different Time Monks. However, it’s not at all clear what causes a Chakra to be unblocked. Before I vote, I’ll let others weigh in since I’m not really sure about the correct outcome here.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 02:15:51 UTC

I agree its unclear. Which is why I’m fighting on the side of “Prevent the victory attempt” because trying to win one way, and then pretending that attempt didn’t happen before the CfJ that nullifies your first attempt actually passes so that you can win a second way is sleazy.

scshunt:

16-06-2012 02:35:45 UTC

Huh? If the first attempt failed, the CFJ is technically pointless. Moreover, if the CFJ passes, then we’re back to square one, so the scam succeeds. If he did win the other way, then the scam fails the second time, so either way we’re good. And the rules are more important than what is “sleazy”. Either this win succeeded or it didn’t, and I think it’s totally irresponsible to say “Yeah you did win but I’m voting against you because I don’t like it.”

Rodney:

16-06-2012 02:36:41 UTC

Suppose, through some bizarre scam, I was legally allowed to set the EE status of a proposal to ENACTED, would that make the proposal enacted? Furthermore, would it mean that the other effects of enactment, such as updating the gamestate and ruleset, would happen? What if the proposal would otherwise have failed?

Honestly, this has been the main question of the Dynasty: Whether Page or GNDT thingy X saying that “Gostaks Distim the Doshes” means that Gostaks are Distimming Doshes, or whether the Doshes and Distimming thereof are a matter of pure gamestate and the X is simply wrong, and should be corrected.

We have essentially the same thing here as with the whether or not the Dynastic/Core rule distinction exists because the Time Buddha says it does, or whether it simply exists and the Time Buddha says things to clarify it.

If nothing else, this Dynasty might be an opportunity to get this settled one way or the other, because we keep running into it.

Spice:

16-06-2012 02:43:35 UTC

against My take is that the GNDT data is a consequence of unblocking a chakra, but doesn’t actually imply that a chakra has been unblocked. Unblocking is done through making a blog post, not by changing the value tracked in the GNDT.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 02:48:07 UTC

> Huh? If the first attempt failed, the CFJ is technically pointless. Moreover, if the CFJ passes, then we’re back to square one, so the scam succeeds. If he did win the other way, then the scam fails the second time, so either way we’re good. And the rules are more important than what is “sleazy”. Either this win succeeded or it didn’t, and I think it’s totally irresponsible to say “Yeah you did win but I’m voting against you because I don’t like it.”

No, the issue is that there were no dynastic rules, because everyone respected the whole “Okay find OMD instead of getting into an edit war we’ll just wait for the CfJ to revert all this”. But the important thing is that we did *NOT* try and win ourselfs because all the dynastic rules were repelled. So setting up a scenario where either a) you win or b) you are the only one who can say “nevermind, I’ll unlock the gamestate so I can win this way” is certainly sleazy.

scshunt:

16-06-2012 05:18:46 UTC

I don’t follow.

And in any case, that should be orthogonal to whether or not omd has won.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 05:49:59 UTC

When it became apparent that we were not just resetting dynasties, I could’ve tried to find a way to win using OMD’s “Dynasty goes in field 3” loophole. I did not to this because I were no dynastic rules due to OMD’s move last night. OMD then decided his move last night doesn’t count, and there are in fact, dynastic rules. That is unfair.

scshunt:

16-06-2012 06:13:43 UTC

But then by your own admission, omd did win last night. In which case, while none of this works, your CFJ is attempting to deny him a legitimate win.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 06:23:42 UTC

No. That is not what I admitted. Omd *claimed* to have won last night. We have a CfJ in place to revert that win. The “win” currently stands, but will be reverted by the CfJ.

scshunt:

16-06-2012 06:43:52 UTC

No, either he won or he didn’t. If he did, the CFJ will revert it. If he did not, the CFJ will not.

But more importantly, omd forgot to use the word ‘chakra’ in his Chakras field, so the scam obviously fails due to this triviality. against

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 07:40:25 UTC

that’s trivial to the point of not really being a valid reason to be against

omd:

16-06-2012 07:48:46 UTC

Sigh. against

Now I’m not quite sure what to do.  Without the Hiatus I would just try again, since it wouldn’t really hurt anything; now that I’m delaying everyone for 12 hours with the second failed scam in a row, maybe I should just give up and let this end with a Metadynasty, but I don’t really want Clucky to copy my bug and win right afterward.

So either a) I get behind coppro and we actually go ahead and fix the dynastic rules (all of the bugs - dynasty 71, the gamestate mapping, etc.), b) we agree to start a Metadynasty, or c) unless someone convinces me otherwise, I will re-do the scam as soon as the Hiatus ends.

As for the success of the scam:

I’d like to call attention to the difference between Unblocking a Dynasty, which the rules state is performed by making a blog post, and unblocking/unlocking a Chakra, which they don’t explicitly define.  Even though they both use the word “unblock” and are obviously related, we would not assume that unblocking a dynasty and unblocking a chakra occur at the same time without a rule saying so.  In fact, the rules only state that the Monk must add certain text to their Chakra field, so again, either ‘adding text with a certain format to a specific, gamestate-regulated field’ implicitly counts as ‘unblocking a Chakra’, or it is impossible to unblock a Chakra.

Clucky: again, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but:
- the gamestate was already fairly ambiguous when I performed the original scam (specifically, whether or not we were in Dynasty 101); it doesn’t make sense to assume that I would wait for unambiguity before pulling a scam when I had just failed to do so;
- as far as I knew, I didn’t have the option of waiting, because the proposal to repeal all dynastic rules was going to pass: Kevan did post his objection a bit before I finished up the scam, but I wasn’t sure it would actually block the proposal and I had already spent hours on the scam by that point.  And this dynasty is generally so unstable that I didn’t trust it to last for 24 more hours or so.
- there was no chance of a edit war; I did not attempt to edit the ruleset to comply with my attempted repeal, and made explicit in the corresponding post that it was only “reasonably likely” it would succeed.  (Kevan somewhat changed my mind about likelihood.)

Kevan: City he/him

16-06-2012 08:27:56 UTC

against Bumping this along.

Kevan: City he/him

16-06-2012 09:18:57 UTC

Coincidentally, given that omd is referring to scshunt as “coppro” here, I added an unfinished list of historical player names to the wiki yesterday.

ais523:

16-06-2012 16:08:03 UTC

against Spice’s argument is correct. (Unlike Bucky, I don’t think repelling dynastic rules has any noticeable gamestate effect.)

Bucky:

16-06-2012 22:07:15 UTC

Deliberately-not-voting to make it less likely that someone will try another scam between this failing and the repeal-all-rules proposal passing.

Clucky: he/him

16-06-2012 23:06:41 UTC

The repeal all rules proposal now can pass as soon as proposals can pass again. This still needs a couple more against votes.

Bucky:

17-06-2012 03:04:13 UTC

against

quirck: he/him

17-06-2012 17:07:41 UTC

against

Kevan: City he/him

17-06-2012 18:30:14 UTC

Still one short of quorum with Ais having idled.

Rodney:

17-06-2012 18:48:13 UTC

against Forgot to vote on this.