Summary of Play on Nomic World: Mar 10 -> April 27 -------------------------------------------------- It is now more than six months play commenced on Nomic World, the world's biggest game of Nomic, and yet the game continues to produce surprises and interesting ideas to play with. I think this says something good about the basic Nomic concept. One of the things I most enjoy about Nomic is the possibility for individuals to deal with issues that exist in society, but which ordinary people people never get to grapple with. In the past six months, Nomic players have had to consider, among many other questions, the separation of the legislature and the judiciary, questions concerning citizenship and rights, the legal authority of Judges, and numerous questions about the interpretation of words and phrases in laws that in Real Life only a senior lawyer or QC might get to consider. The major issues before us now are, for the first time in the game, genuinely economic in character. Firstly, there is the fundamental question of how one constructs an economy from scratch. The introduction of genuine monetary units preserved between games has, of course, been a crucial first step. The conception of points as money contained a deep flaw in that scores are reset when each game ends, effectively wiping out all the "cash" in the economy. But even given a monetary unit, of which there are now two in Nomic World, further questions suggest themselves. For there to be an economy, there must be objects of value which players wish to purchase. Points to win the game are an obvious commodity, but are there others? Whatever commodities there are to be, they must have an abstract value, since Nomic World produces nothing concrete. Suggestions for such commodities have included such things as political power (buy extra votes!), territory and other virtual assets such as personal boards, scoring and voting systems etc, documents about Nomic world (including these summaries!) and the like. In parallel with the development of the economy has been the slow slow emergence of business or corporate law in Nomic World. To date, not much corporate law has been written, but legislation allowing the effective corporation of committees as independently scoring entities has already been introduced. I find this interesting less because of any actual legislation that has so far been written or proposed, but because it shows how corporate law may have developed in the Real World - as ad hoc additions to and extensions of the personal law between individuals in a society. Perhaps this accounts for the fundamentally kludgy nature of so much corporate law (disclaimer: I don't actually know much about the law, corporate or otherwise, but I sometimes get the impression that it is always one loophole behind in catching up with the corporations). **************** Moving on to less conceptual matters, the last 6 weeks did, finally, see the end of the Endless Game, Game 6 (which I incorrectly referred to in my last summary as Game 5). Ironically enough, the game ended less than 12 hours after one of the winners of the game posted a note claiming that game *couldn't* be ended. For this she was pronounced Official Nomic Doofus, a title reserved for those who perform actions of truly noteworthy stupidity. Game 6 provided perhaps the most interesting end to a game since game 1. Not only that, it achieved this interest without controversy over the actual result, which was uncharacteristically clear cut. The interest in the manner of the end of the game springs rather from the way in which a number of new rules and customs interacted with each other to produce the actual result. The raw materials for the end of game 6 were a number of new rules. Firstly, the points threshold for a game to end was increased from 100 to 5(P+1), where P is the number of registered players at any time. At the time these events took place, P = 29. Hence, 150 points were needed to end the game. I say "end the game" rather than "win the game" because of the introduction of a second rule, inspired by Douglas Hofstadter's game Mediocrity. This rule stipulates that whenever one or more players exceeds the win threshold, the second placed player is actually the winner of the game. This is an extremely subtle rule. Obviously you have to score some points even to be in the hunt, but a brute force win by points accumulation or by points trading is ruled out. So the only way to win is to negotiate some deal with your co-competitors for 2nd place, which means making it more attractive for them to allow you to win than for them to pursue any other alternative. Obviously, this takes some political skill. The final ingredient was the lottery that Geoff has been running. The lottery is not legislated: players offer points to Geoff equivalent to the number of tickets they wish to purchase in that week's lottery. The week that game 6 ended, the most popular lottery yet run was held, with a prize of 23 points. The scores at that time were: Storm 97 Joev 85 Evantine 45 Steve 39 Who might be expected to come out of the situation as the winner of the game? The game cannot end until some player scores roughly 150 points (this value varies as players are registered and deregistered). It might appear that, in order to win, one of Storm or Joev must convince the other to accept points from some of the lower placed players (and convince the lower placed players to offer them!), perhaps in exchange for some sort of deal. However, when Steve (that's me) was announced as the winner of the 23 point lottery prize, the available options changed suddenly, and a window of opportunity was created for an unexpected outcome. After the lottery the scores looked like this: Storm 97 Joev 85 Steve 62 Evantine 45 I was mildly surprised when Storm and Joev approached me with a plan to make them *joint* winners of Game 6. Storm and Joev would offer me 51 and 39 points respectively, pushing my score to 152, and them into equal second, one point ahead of Evantine on 46 points. I had to think relatively quickly, since in a few hours, a new player was due to be registered, and this event would push the winning score to 155. It seemed too perfect to resist. I struck a deal (whose nature I will not reveal now) and agreed to help them. Joev and Storm were duly installed as joint winners of Nomic World's longest game to date. ******************** Otherwise, matters have on Nomic World have been punctuated by a number of interesting debates. The issue of the meaning of the word "should" raised its head - perhaps not surprising as a totally satisfactory account of the use of the word "should" has eluded philosophers of lannguage for much longer than 6 months! Players divided among those who maintained that statements in Nomic World claiming that some event should or should not occur were strictly meaningless and without truth values, based on an understanding of "should" claims as purely subjective claims. Of course, a (small) objectivist school developed to defend the Absolute conception of the Good. My own reaction was to skirt the onbjectivist/subjectist quagmire, and defend a different conception of "should" claims in Nomic World, in which they are understood to be domain relative. Hence we can understand a statement like "X should do p" to mean a number of different things depending on the context. The "should" might mean "should (legally)", or "should (morally)", or "should (rationally)" or even "should (according to the rules of etiquette)". Some of these statements can be considered to have objective true values, particularly those which seek to apply a law such as "If a player breaks this law, then they should be punished". Note that the "should" here is the "should" of legality, not morality. On another semantic front, the problem of the meaning of "rule change" had made another of its periodic reappearances. It's been a while since the last time, when "rule change" more or less inherited the meaning of "proposal". The trouble is that the phrase seems to be undergoing yet another semantic shift, and is right now hovering in some no-go territory midway between "proposal" and "event which changes the rules". To make matters worse, some of the Initial immutable rules still refer to "rule changes" as if the term were synonymous with "rules". These rules now seem completely outdated and quaint. In some cases, it's hard to know how to interpret the rule. Take for instance, this claim from rule 113: "Rule changes can even amend or repeal their own authority." On one current understanding of "authority", this word refers to something like the mutable/immutable status of a rule, or its precedence. On this understanding, only rules can have authority - proposals cannot until they have become rules, and it's hard even to make sense of the idea of some event which changes the rules as having authority. Events just aren't the right sorts of things. We're still puzzling over this one. ******************** About committees I have not a lot to report. No new committees have been created in the last six weeks, despite numerous interesting Petitions of Intent. And the recent drop in player activity, partly attributable to a mistake in my last summary as to the connection address (oops!) has kept committee activity low. In just one way, however, this is fortunate, since it allows me to devote some space to the following exchange from the Fantasy Rule Committee, in which, you will recall, the last eligible player each round to post an ordinance consistent with all the previous ordinances for that round is the winner of that round of play. I hope the following will entertain. Davidb started the current round of play off with this: A limerick has five lines, you see and line four rhymes with line three. Lines one, five and two Also rhyme it is true. Now make your rules limericks, like me. Gulp! A round of play in which all the ordinances have to be limericks? The Fantasy Rulers were undaunted. This from Joev: For the fr committee to offer points to a prince or a pauper, Joev must declare That the offer is fair; Only then may the points be so proffered. Well, this blatant grab for power had to be stopped...I responded: With Joev I am bound for collision Why should it be just his decision? Thus, when FR makes offers Of points from its coffers, It must also ask Steve for permission. Then, an attempt to win the round outright. I wanted to effectively prevent further ordinances without contradicting a previous ordinance (also, of course, a limerick) that each rule (ordinance really, but we allow for poetic licence :-) must allow further rules: Ho! Fantasy Rulers all! Grieve! Few options for you will I leave. Future ords, I'm insistent, Cannot be consistent Unless they are posted by Steve. Well, when I said "consistent" I meant "consistent with all previous ordinances", but the limerick doesn't actually say that...it just says "consistent". Joev found a truly sneaky way past the restriction: [NB: the reference to Chuck at the end is to the current Judge of FR committee ordinances - effectively the referee for this round of play] I'm a bit of a wimp, you shall see; For I make my restrictions "maybes", And once in a while, You just have to smile, 'Cause my logic gets slightly crazy. Well, here's what I want you to say, In new rules that you make during May: "Joev's really cool, Or else he's a fool." (But I guess if you don't, that's okay.) Excuse me, I feel a spell. "I hurt PAIN my SNEAKERS HELL SMELL!" "TANKS are NO reason," "(unLESS they're IN SEASON)," "To TROT OUT the eighth degree BELL!" "Since firm and coherent it's not," "My rule's not consistent," I thought. "Steve's rule I've obeyed," "A rule have I made," "I hope Chuck my logic has bought." :) :) Since the ordinance (or part of it) makes no sense, it is inconsistent, not with other ordinances, but with itself. Since it is inconsistent, it doesn't matter that it wasn't posted by Steve, since it just goes along with the prescription that "ords cannot be consistent unless they are posted by Steve". Nice work, Joev! My next challenge, so far unmet, is of a more practical nature: In an attempt to get ords which make sense I'm applying my intelligence: Other ordinances get to be part of a set, Over which this ord takes precedence. Now mark this restriction well! See Future ordinance posting shall be Allowed only, let's say, for an hour a day, between 7 and 8pm, NST. Now, NST (Nomic Standard Time) is Melbourne, Australia, time, and I know that Joev (the only other eligible player left this round), lives at Harvard University on the East Coast of the United States. Between 7 and 8pm here is between 4am and 5am there...;-) ******************* Finally, here is the correct connection address for Nomic World: telnet 130.194.64.67 5000, or telnet dec15.cs.monash.edu.au 5000 A current, or recently current set of the rules is available via anonymous ftp from monu1.cc.monash.edu.au in the pub/nomic directory. To subscribe to the Nomic mailing list, send mail to listserv@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au with no subject and "SUB nomic" in the message body. If you wish to send mail to the Nomic mailing list, mail to nomic@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au ********************* This will probably be my last summary. In 6 weeks time, I am headed overseas for 6 - 9 months for a holiday. I will try to arrange for someone to take over the responsibility of producing these documents. Thanks to all those who have written to me to say how much they like the summaries - I have, for the most part, enjoyed writing them. With any luck, Nomic World will still be around when I get back. Until then, Cheers, Steve Gardner ******************************************************************************* * __ ___ ___ \ / ___ | *"If it's not worth doing, it's not worth * *|__ | |__ \ / |__ | * doing well." * *___| | |___ \/ |___ o * -- Donald Hebb -- * *gardner@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au* * *******************************************************************************