I’d like to say a few words:
Nice spotting that leveling up loop with the trading!

However there’s a few problems with how you went about doing it and the Final Bowl.

First off your comment in the GNDT saying you traded those Bloggers with PSS, doesn’t mean you have done so. In fact you’d have to show that it’s been done each time in the Blogger Roster. Alternatively you could make a combo post doing it, however you’d have to wait 1.58984534×10²¹ years before it would finish, since each action in an atomic action takes one second and ExpressionEngine probably couldn’t handle a post that has 50000000000000000000000000000 lines with more than 40 characters in each line.

Values can’t be “About” or “At least” since that makes them a string of characters (numerals and letters) and by definition can’t be integers, violating the “Numbers and Variables” section of the Appendix where it clearly states “Invalid values for game variables can never be used”. You ran into this issue before during the most recent dynasty of Kevin with those buckets of water, please remember it in the future.

If you’ve traded Bloggers with someone 50000000000000000000000000000 times, and they both have the same highest stat, they’d gain 50000000000000000000000000000 levels (or 50000000000000000000000000000 - 1 levels if the tradee manager’s image wasn’t the same as the dominant stat at first), for some reason I see a different amount used on the Bloggers you leveled up.

Somehow you trained Bloggers without rolling any dice in the GNDT or making any declarations as to what you’re doing. You also didn’t seem to spend any money to do this vague action since you don’t have a definite amount of cash. This could have been done with a Combo, but you’d probably run into the same problem above of waiting years to be able to act upon the results.

You said you trained one of Sphinx’s Bloggers but that’s not reflected on the Blogger Roster, so that last match is invalid as are the others since the DICEX is nowhere near the correct or even a definite amount; in your matches it’s probably 100000000000000000000000000000 off since your Bloggers are incorrectly overleveled.

As a side note to that last sentence, it seems that the GNDT truncates the rolled dice if they’re larger than 14 digits., meaning that it won’t show the last digits and uses zeros instead because of scientific notation: That notation turns end digits for really big numbers that for scientific purposes don’t matter into 0s, the same can’t be said for the last three digits of these matches. That would mean the only result in any match played vs Cuddlebeam instead can only have one result, the highest side of the die, that confirms Cuddlebeam’s opponent won. Otherwise there are 15 digits of “something” which are zeros but in reality were truncated by the GNDTs scientific notation calculation. Probably something should be mentioned in the rules about this so that people are aware of it for the “fair play” rule. Perhaps Cuddlebeam knew this after the test roll, but that can’t be confirmed.

You didn’t post before the 15th in public what the starting date for the Final Bowl would be.

No matches were played versus pokes’ team.

I’ll write a few CfJ’s later.

That is a nice exploit, but I agree with card about most issues except the last two:

No matches should have been played vs pokes team (every non-commissioner manager plays in the final bowl)

And pokes did post the starting date, I don’t think the overseer has to as well.

Ah I made at least one spelling mistake, “atomic actions” should’ve been “combo actions”
[Sphinx] I did misread those rules.

Also, Cuddle traded “back and forth” 50…... Times, that explains the doubled level.

The only issue I see remaining from card’s post is the imprecise money and training, but if he could document that he could have done it, I see no problem.

Same.

For extra oomph:
We have a couple of precedents (in this dynasty) for doing several actions in one GNDT comment. Are all of those illegal now? I don’t believe so. It would be odd to suddenly switch and say that we can’t do it anymore right now.

11/05 14:33 (UTC) - Matt
  Matt’s Start = 9,795,711 (was 9,999,998)
(Training Evan Training Evan 5 times, Brawn then Brains for each session #3:  1DICE6:1 #4:  1DICE6:4 #5:  1DICE6:6 #6:  1DICE6:3 #7:  1DICE6:4 ))

About the imprecisions: Yeah. Intentional, as per the post. I agree there. Again, the CfJ for pedantry against that other match failed (it was deemed that it wouldn’t have mattered), so I don’t see why we should suddenly switch to pedantry now.

Doing a few actions in one comment (and actually rolling them) is not the same as saying “I train a player a crazy amount of times” without rolling a single time.

Maybe the ruleset needs to be cleaned up in regards to infinite combos.

I can roll them if you’d like but I don’t want to DoS the servers lol. So I just used the average expected amount for convenience.

I think this is fine. It’s clear Cuddlebeam could have pulled off a more mundane version of the scam with the same results by trading 100 times and documenting everything exactly, but that would have been worse for everyone.

Good catch with the infinite trade leveling. There are a lot of hypotheticals here that were not concretely or completely executed due to technical limitations (e.g., EE) or for brevity (e.g., the trades w/ PSS). It should work in theory, even with the invalid GNDT values.

PSS’s explicit approval of the trades holds no water. The rule indicates a single approval-per-trade with “a”. Each trade was never approved individually, as they were not performed. The latter would be tedious and tax the BN systems.

So, Cuddlebeam expressed a means of DoV without performing the tedium of performing the individual actions.

-Thank you

-There is no “a” or I’m not catching something. It says:
“As an action (without limitation of time), a manager may trade a bloggsball player (from their team) with a bloggsball player (from another team), with the approval of the other manager.”

It just says “the approval”. I believe PSS’s explicit public consent is good enough prove that he approves of the operations I did.

-Yes. So it is.

A manager <u>a</u> player. The trades are synchronous. When Cuddlebeam trades player A to PSS for player B, Cuddlebeam then has player B and PSS has player A upon approval of PSS. Cuddlebeam cannot initiate a trade of player B (now on Cuddlebeam’s team) until 1. player B is on Cuddlebeam’s team. 2. PSS has approved of the initial trade.

-About the imprecisions: Yeah. Intentional, as per the post. I agree there. Again, the CfJ for pedantry against that other match failed (it was deemed that it wouldn’t have mattered), so I don’t see why we should suddenly switch to pedantry now.
I don’t see why imprecisions are intentional, it certainly matters for doing actions with large amount of steps as much if not more than actions which require only a few steps. You haven’t rolled a single die in the GNDT to train those players to an imprecise level ad for all we know the GNDT could have rolled all ones for the stats that you leveled up.

One more thing that I didn’t spot was that the base stats can’t go above 10. “Bloggers have stats. These stats can take an integer value between 1 (inclusive) and 10 (inclusive), and default to 5.” Those matches not against you are certainly very illegal now and the Final Bowl can’t be ready.

-Matt: I’m using the regular English use of the word “approval”, which is to give consent. We don’t have a formal definition of “acquire” either. So going with your line of reasoning we can equally say that I haven’t acquired anything either. But we seem to agree on that I have “acquired” a Blogger several times (which is the regular use of the word “acquire”, as “to gain”). So I believe we can agree on that “approval” is to simply grant consent as per the usual use of the word, which he has.

-Card: Incorrect, because you missed out on content. What you quoted: “These stats can take an integer value between 1 (inclusive) and 10 (inclusive), and default to 5” grants an ability. It grants no restriction (they CAN have such and such. Not, they ONLY CAN such and such). Then we ALSO have “Level and Stats” which says “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.”

So, redundant, yes, but Stats (and levels) can take on any decimal number value. AND they can take values between 1 and 10, which are integers.

So they can take enormously huge (decimal) values.

Per the Appendix—

CAN: are able to

This does not exclude them from taking other values strictly speaking but “are able to” seems to imply some restriction on valid values.

This may be moot, as it’s Cuddlebeam’s leveling procedure still has them dominating all other teams.

My opinion is that the leveling procedure was synchronous and not explicitly performed and thus invalid. Additionally, stats values range from 1-10.

These don’t really matter. If Cuddlebeam performed every step to accomplish DoV, it would be noisy and counter-productive.

There ought to be a core rule laying out these sort of hypothetical wins that would be verbose if explicitly performed.

I disagree that stats can be huge.

First, “Can take an integer value between 1 and 10” definitely constitutes a restriction - namely to the value between 1 and 10.

Second, “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.” does not say, “are arbitrarily large decimal numbers”, I don’t see why this grant any ability apart from the Stats being non-integer numbers between 1 and 10.

This isn’t moot at all, since I had a powerhouse of a team, and I only need 19 points total to win, even if Cuddlebeam wins every match with 13-0, which I think is definitely legit.

Hm, good catch card, I’m now on the side of stats can’t exceed 10.

@Sphinx: Glossary, “Can”: “is able to”.

Ability. Not restriction.

And we have “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.”

And Decimal numbers do indeed already have the ability to take “integers value between 1 (inclusive) and 10 (inclusive)”

And integer values between -10239 and 230. And integer values between anything and anything.

So it’s a redundant rule which doesn’t do anything but oh well, it’s there.

I will handsomely accept that “are” doesn’t grant capability though. For example, in:

“The names of rules are not themselves rule text and have no effect other than being rule names.”

We have “are” again. But since we apparently need “can” to grant actual capability/power, then while we have that “are”, we would still need something like:

“The names of rules CAN not themselves rule text and have no effect other than being rule names.”

To make it actually effective.

(I’d prefer to opt for that “are” does in fact grant capability though lol as per my original point.)

@Cuddlebeam: We have to have the assumption that the ruleset is complete though. So, “A can be between 1 and 5” implies “A can not be anything that is not between 1 and 5”. Therefore, it places a restriction on A, that “A is decimal” doesn’t change in any way.

It’s not even about the same attribute of the number, one is about the size and one is about the type.

We can assume that it’s complete, but even complete things can have redundancy.

It’s true that if we had “A can be between 1 and 5” ALONE, then we’d have that A can only be between 1 and 5, because that’s the only definition. But “A is a decimal number” is broader, and as I’ve explained earlier, is/are necessarily needs to grant capability just like “can” (otherwise we’d have a bunch of things with “are”, but can’t actually take on the values that they “are”, because there is no “can” to validate it).

So, from that, we’ve got that A can take on decimal values and can take on values between 1 and 5. Which is equal that A can take on decimal values.

Yes, but not decimal values larger than 5. Also, the ruleset says that the rule with more limited scope takes precedence in a contradiction.

Yes, but how does granting an ability limit anything?

For example,

A: “You can be anywhere on the soccer field”
plus
B: “You can be on your side of the soccer field.”

How is B a limitation? Plus, there is no contradiction, because having B doesn’t mean that A has to necessarily be false, so it wouldn’t apply anyway.

(“How is B a limitation” in the context of having A)

B is a limitation, since in the context of a complete ruleset the implication is that “not B” is forbidden.

Also this analogy does not hold, since being decimal has nothing to do with the size of a number.

* Bloggers have stats. These stats can take an integer value between 1 (inclusive) and 10 (inclusive), and default to 5.
* Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.

I think the latter describes the type, not the range. Consider:

* Bloggers have foo. These foo can take a char between a (inclusive) and w (inclusive), and default to k.
* Bar and Foo are chars.

If I give you a ticket which allows you to go to the spooky house, and then a ticket which allows you to go to all of the rides in the theme park, which rides are you allowed to go to?

And “Integers 1-10” and “Decimal Numbers” are your fields, kind of like this:

@Matt: True, but level and stats also being able to take on the values of its “type” is a necessity, as per the “are” needing to grant capability as I’ve explained earlier. A simpler example is, if we had just “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.”, what values could Levels and Stats take?

None?

Ok, so we need a “can”, don’t we?

Then if we have this:

“The oldest pending Proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true”

We need those conditions to have the ability to actually be “true”, right, via a “can”? Like, “these conditions can be true or false”?

Same with all “are”/“is” in the ruleset.

That seems ridiculous to me. Things that are defined to “be”, “are” or “is” things, necessarily have the capability to “be”/“are”/“is” those things. Huge numbers are is just part of what decimal numbers are, which Levels and stats necessarily have as capability, because “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers”.

A better example for “are”/“is”, is: “The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play”

If they are defined that they “are” such, they necessarily “can” be those things. Else we can say “yeah, but it doesn’t say that these CAN be BlogNomic’s rules of fair play too, so they don’t apply or do anything”

So if something is defined to be/is/are something, it necessarily can those things.

Additional, separate thing:

Why would “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.” mean different things for “Levels” and “Stats”?

I believe we can agree that Levels, via that, gain the capability to have decimal numbers as values it can take (and decimal numbers go from aprox. -infinity to infinity). Doesn’t it grant Stats the same capability?

Levels does not have a rule pertaining the bounds. Stats do:

These stats can take an integer value between 1 (inclusive) and 10 (inclusive)

Yes, and that is, in “BlogNomicese” as per the Glossary (Can: “is able to”):

“These stats are able to take an integer value between 1 (inclusive) and 10 (inclusive)”

Not “only able”. So just it grants ability for something it could already do, as like getting an additional ticket to visit the spooky house when you already have a ticket for visiting all rides.

‘can’ can mean only able. As long as we’re already in analogy territory: a parent might tell their kid “you can go to bed anytime between 9 and 10”, implying midnight is out of the question.

Ok, so what about “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.” meaning different things for “Levels” and “Stats”?

Granting the ability to hold decimal numbers (and -infinity to infinity) to Levels, yet not granting that same ability to Stats?

pokes, but we have a specific definition.

But the specific definition doesn’t exclude the implicit “only” in my opinion.

The ruleset says: “If a set of valid values is not specified in their definition, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers”

Now, I’d argue that “Levels are decimal” has nothing to do with the size of the number, so Levels can still be only non-negative, but also fractional.

All this doesn’t even touch on the point that the dictionary definition of decimal doesn’t even mean anything except for “in base 10”. We may or may not want to include that in the Appendix.

The specific definition is still ambiguous about only able vs. not. “You are able to go to bed between 9 and 10” sounds stilted but has the same implication.

To me, “Managers’ favorite things are fruits. Favorite things can be lemons or cherries.” reads like lemons and cherries are the only legal favorite things.

Whether this issue a problem or not is no longer a problem, new CfJ up

this issue is a*

[Cuddlebeam]
“Ok, so what about “Levels and Stats are decimal numbers.” meaning different things for “Levels” and “Stats”?”
That’s because it doesn’t mean different things for Levels or Stats. Since the type of number Levels had was unspecified it defaulted to non-negative integers. So before that passed Levels couldn’t be negative. When Stats were introduced, by you I might add, they had a restriction on the values they can take on, one to ten inclusive.

“Granting the ability to hold decimal numbers (and -infinity to infinity) to Levels, yet not granting that same ability to Stats?”
It simply changes the type of values that they can take on. In fact since the restriction “These stats can take an integer value” is more narrow in scope, Levels can’t be anything but the integers from one to ten. Since Levels have no restriction on them, they can cover the whole range of decimal values since their type was set to decimals. The difference that you perceived arose because the type of number Levels was went unstated, so the restriction of being a not non-negative integer number was removed once the type of number that Levels could take on was introduced.