BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

To give some context for the voters, Josh had the following to say in the comments of Race 2:

To recap: I assert that this passage in Position:

A Snail in the Bucket or on the Bench does not count as a Snail for the purposes of dynastic rules other than this one (except where those rules refer specifically to Snails who are in the Bucket or on the Bench)

means that any rule which does refer specifically to a Bench or Bucket Snail applies to those Snails in totality.

Those rules are Races and Slugs.

As it doesn’t include Moving I cannot Move directly. However, it does mean that all Slugs, even the ones in the Bucket, can be moved by me, provided other criteria are met. Bucket Slugs have a position of Bucket, so they are not demonstrably behind the Slug of Death for the purposes of its criteria.

So I see no reason why I can’t invoke the movement rule of The Iron Slug.

I think this is faulty because he is ignoring the clear English meaning of the word “where”.

If you were to show me the rule Slugs and ask me “Where does that rule refer specifically to Snails who are in the Bucket or on the Bench?” and I pointed to the entire rule, then I’d be completely wrong. Sure I’ve pointed to something which contains a reference to Bucket Snails, but it’d be disingenuous if I claimed that that was “where” the rule Slugs referred to Bucket Snails because the “where” implies a narrowing to the particular location within Slugs that refers to Bucket Snails.

Similarly if you were to ask me the same question and I were to point to something more narrow like the description of Identity Crisis Ian, his Extra Effects bullet point, or even the clause “that Snail may help him find himself by choosing a Slug from the Bucket, swapping its Position with Identity Crisis Ian’s, and mentioning this in a comment in the Ongoing Race”, I would still be wrong in saying that this is where the rule Slugs refers to Bucket Snails! When we’re evaluating “where” something is, we naturally take the smallest scope needed to fulfill the conditions of the “where”.

I’d only think myself to be right in my answer to the question if I pointed to the exact referent “a Slug from the Bucket”. Thus I believe it’s wrong for a Snail in the Bucket to reverse the Iron Slug’s polarity as if they were not in the Bucket, since the Snails who are allowed to perform that action do not specifically include Snails in the Bucket.

It occasionally comes up in BlogNomic that incredibly heated arguments will spring up around very heated questions of what a very common word means.

In this situation it also occasionally happens that accusations of ‘fairies’ comes up. The idea beinig that, like the tricky fae, an individual may parse a word for thin slices of meaning to justify their stance.

I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I think you’d being sincere in your argument. But I do think that your argument is way too strong, in a way that suggests that perhaps you’ve convinced yourself of something that doesn’t completely stand up on its own. One interpretation of this common and widely-used word is unlikely to be the ‘correct’ one.

Saying that I am ‘ignoring the clear English meaning’, asserting without evidence or basis that ‘we naturally take the smallest scope’... This is all too hot for a word which has 31 separate definitions in the OED over multiple pages. You can argue that other interpretations exist but all you are doing is evidencing that the rule as written is sloppy in a way that allows for broad interpretation.

You have failed to demonstrate that my interpretation is categorically wrong, and in a dynasty that has been characterised by scams - some of which seem to have been carried out by yourself! - finding thin salami-slices of common words and insisting that those definitions are narrow and absolute feels a bit out of step. Live by the sword, yeah?

I don’t really have the energy to argue for much longer (it’s surprisingly exhausting to articulate things, my head hurts), but I’ll just quickly point out that my argument not attacking your interpretation doesn’t necessarily mean that your interpretation should hold true.

There is no such thing as a categorically wrong interpretation, nor is there such thing as a categorically correct one! We all just put forth our best arguments for why our own view of the ruleset is the most correct, and then when we disagree we post a CfJ to come to a completely subjective agreement on how we should follow the rules. You think the word ‘where’ should mean one thing in the context given, I think it should mean another thing, you’ve presented your reasoning why your interpretation is more correct, I’ve presented my reasoning why mine is more correct.

At the end of the day, the Snails *do* have to agree on a single definition out of 31 for the word “where” in this clause, and that’s what this CfJ is here for. As far as I’m concerned, presenting reasoning why my own interpretation of the word “where” is the best one by appealing to sentiments about the word “where” the voting Snails might share (e.g. ‘we naturally take the smallest scope when finding “where” something is’) is just as good as presenting reasoning why yours is bad. I don’t need to convince others that your position is incorrect, I just need to demonstrate that mine is more correct.

On an unrelated note, I’m sorry if I come off as too heated in my points. I don’t mean to attack you, and think civility is important, so I will try to tone it down a little.

Oh, no, please, don’t let me speak that into existence - nothing you have said has been inappropriate in tone or content, in my view! When I invoke “too strong”, “too hot” I am strictly addressing the delta between the strength of the argument and the rhetoric being used to promote it, not at all your approach or any emotional state in the text. We’re good, I promise.

On the merits: I don’t think you have demonstrated that your position is more correct (in fact I think you have built a too-restrictive machine to sidestep a plain English read - if I said “the car park where we parked the car is dirty” you would understand that to be a comment about the car park, not the floor or bay that we parked it on), but nor do I agree that we have to agree a single definition out of the 31; I think we have to chnage the language to make it more specific, which this makes an attempt at doing, but is also retroactively closing down the legit use of the scam in doing so, which strikes me as a little unreasonable.

For me, I agree with Habanero’s interpretation of the rule in question.

However, I do think that we can’t take away the benefits Josh earned by scamming that rule unless we can categorically state that his scam was illegal and thus _must_ be reverted. In other words, the statement “I don’t need to convince others that your position is incorrect”, is wrong in terms of reverting Josh’s gains.

Closing the scam and at the same time giving Josh a substitute benefit that he could agree to would probably be the better approach.

I think this highlights an interesting philosophical difference - I’m of the belief that the rules must mean exactly one thing at any given time, and so the interpretation the majority agrees (via CfJ) makes the most sense can be the only lens we view the legality of actions through, even if there are other interpretations which can also be argued to make ‘good enough’ sense. I might be in the minority on that one, with others taking the view that as long as an interpretation of the rules is ‘good enough’, it’s legal to take actions on it, even if there are other competing interpretations which are subjectively agreed to be better. Interesting to think about!

Either way, I’d be willing to support your CfJ as a compromise just to get the game going again. I’d like some others to weigh in on this, but realistically it’s probably just you, me, and Josh who are active to read and carefully consider the wall of text that is this comment section, so that’s probably not gonna happen.

Re: the car park, I’d think taking the word, entirely stripping it of its surrounding context, and then placing it in a different context isn’t a good argument supporting that the word means what you think it means. If I were to place it in a context closer to home and say “I’d park in car parks, except where those car parks are dirty” it’s no longer at all obvious that I’m referring to the entire car park.

Of course, my ‘machine’ also does this to an extent, but I’ve tried to keep the surrounding context as close to the ground truth as possible to support my point

Forgot to add my vote with my opinion piece.