Subject: Ackanomic Research Digest V2 #99
From: [email-masked] (Ackanomic Research Digest)
To: acka-research-digest

Ackanomic Research Digest    Friday, June 27 1997    Volume 02 : Number 099

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Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:41:28 -0800
From: "Ross Morgan-Linial" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  P2125 accepted (Aleph Beth Gimel)

> NO votes:
> 	Mr. Lunatic Fringe
> 	Antimatter was here

You know, every time I check a proposal, I seem to have made the same vote as 
Mr. Lunatic Fringe. I would like to become Mr. Lunatic Fringe's Evil Twin, if 
he agrees.

Also, the 'bot still thinks my name is Antimatter was here, instead of 
Antimatter.
- -------------------------------
Antimatter * [email-masked]
You have the power of negation.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:56:12 -0900
From: Phil Ackley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  P2125 accepted (Aleph Beth Gimel) 

>> NO votes:
>> 	Mr. Lunatic Fringe
>> 	Antimatter was here
>
>You know, every time I check a proposal, I seem to have made the same vote as
>Mr. Lunatic Fringe. I would like to become Mr. Lunatic Fringe's Evil Twin, if
>he agrees.
>
>Also, the 'bot still thinks my name is Antimatter was here, instead of
>Antimatter.

Hmm.  I agree, so long as it doesn't upset my other Evil Twin, the original
evil twin, the esteemed praetor, ThinMan.

Mr. Lunatic Fringe

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:40:41 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2175

Acrobot distributed:
> Proposal 2175

I haven't seen P2173 or 2174.  Wilma's mail queue is empty.
Did acrobot throw them into a black hole like the voting results the
other day?

/dev/joe

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:33:44 -0600 (MDT)
From: Aaron Humphrey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2175

> Acrobot distributed:
> > Proposal 2175
> 
> I haven't seen P2173 or 2174.  Wilma's mail queue is empty.
> Did acrobot throw them into a black hole like the voting results the
> other day?

I got "bot results" for them, so I knew they were submitted--yes, they were
mine.  This also happened during a short period last night when wilma was
unreachable, though.  One would hope that they would get resent in that
case, by Mohammed's computer, but perhaps not.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.terranet.ab.ca/~aaron/)
Song In My Head--Kate Bush:The Saxophone Song
Current Book--Jean Lorrah:Ambrov Keon
Is that a helpful waffle, or what?

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 11:26:55 -0500
From: "Bollinger, John C." <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka:  P2125 accepted (Aleph Beth Gimel)

Mr. Lunatic Fringe wrote:

[Antimatter asked to be his Evil Twin]

> Hmm.  I agree, so long as it doesn't upset my other Evil Twin, the
> original
> evil twin, the esteemed praetor, ThinMan.
> 
I would not presume to try to dictate who my Evil Twin may find to
be suitable as an additional Evil Twin.  I will note, however, that
insomuchas Antimatter's votes tend to coincide with MLF's, more of
a good twin type of relationship appears to exist.  But that is for
MLF to decide.  I will not be upset by either decision that my
Evil Twin may make in regard to this matter.

ThinMan
Mr. Lunatic Fringe's Evil Twin

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:12:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: P2125 accepted (Aleph Beth Gimel)

> Also, the 'bot still thinks my name is Antimatter was here, instead of 
> Antimatter.
	I didn't know you'd changed it back.
	You commented on it before, something to the effect of
"Hrmmm."  :o)  Naturally I took that as some inside joke I wasn't
privy to.  :o)

- -- 
Mohammed

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:39:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: P2125 accepted (Aleph Beth Gimel)

> This proposal was retracted, and I had tried to submit the newer version of
> it, but apparently this fell into the black hole where Acrobot was not
> yesterday.
	The bot is back up.  I'll check on some things and see what
sorts of weird stuff occurred.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

- -- 
Mohammed

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 18:52:30 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Hidden Agendas, Again

> But who wants to try to evaluate twenty-three(or however many)
> proposed Agendas as soon as the system is in place?

My original idea on this was to have the adjendas, which would be a list
of things, randomly generated from a menu of adjenda parts.  I do not
know how the babbler works, but I imagine my idea would work very
similar to it, but the parts would be adjenda parts.  A syntax would
have to be developed, then semantic elements would be taken from those
lists alluded to in my Phoebe posts -- viola, a cross-product of
millions of possible adjendas.  Of course, the submission of adjendas
is also cool; you could submit an adjenda item, knowing that someone
else would get it.  Some mix of these two approaches appeals to me.
Perhaps a 3rd input would be a hard-coded list from which they are
randomly gotten from too.  I personally do *not* like submitting your
own adjenda items.  I hope the above makes sense, because explaining
it is difficult.

I think its clear that both judgement, spirit of the game, and a neutral
referee would be required.
 
> The Speaker is the obvious choice, as the most impartial, but I would
> not wish that kind of workload on Malenkai.

Well, I won't be Speaker forever, although it seems that I have been, I 
guess :).  Philosophically, I believe the implementation should be 
decoupled from who *currently* has particular offices.  IAC, I would
be willing to do it; my stance on work is that I don't mind it so long
as its *fun*, and some of my griping about it lately is that we seemed
to be going overboard on all these things that require yet something
else to be tracked, described, or rolled on some weird circumstance,
or remembered out of the blue.  My comments were insinuating that different
people find different stuff fun, and those that find X fun should 
volunteer to harf X sometimes, when the work is overloading those harfing
X + Y + Z.  That's the gist of it.  The response was less than constructive,
unfortunately :), so we'll just have to see what happens August first
if we do not want to discuss it now.  IAAC, since I find the hidden
adjenda idea fun,  I would harf it.  Now, back to the player-independent
issue, sorry for the digression ...

> Maybe there should be an office of Hidden Secretary, keeper of the
> Hidden Agendas?

I think there are two correct ways to do this.  One: have the Speaker do
it.  Two: Have the Right-Handed Grapefruit holder do it.  My rationale
is:  If its officer based, it should be an officer who is not gonna
quit, and who is active.  For example, the previous 2 Mad Scientists
both quit in the middle of building a monster.  Also, the Speaker fits
the referee/neutral mold better than other officers.  The rationale for
the RHG holder doing it should be apparent; the one drawback is less
of an assurance that that player will not go awol. 

> As to the Agendas themselves--they should obviously be set up so that the
> player cannot easily achieve the conditions on eir own. 

Sorry for a complete digression, but I have been meaning to ask this
for over a year, and since this is a wordy post, why not :)  It is my
understanding that the Spivak pronouns' purpose is to be used as 
gender-neutral forms.  Is there another purpose?  Why then, is 'eir'
so often used when 'their', also gender-neutral, is indicated?  I'm
really curious about this, that is all.  Also, why is 'eir' used when
the gender of the antecedent is known with finality?  Sorry about being
so ignorant about these sorts of things, and since I *so rarely* use the
Spivak pronouns anyway ...

> I also think that a player with a Hidden Agenda should not be allowed to
> win the Cycle by other means.

I disagree with this.  I imagined everyone having hidden adjendas, and
that they were destroyed either at the end of the cycle, or when one won
by hidden adjenda.  That was part of my rationale in bumping the MN up
to 541, to encourage this sort of thought.  For HA to work, the MN has 
to be jacked up again, IMO, or people won't bother.  I wouldn't.

> And now, just to list some possible conditions(I'm sure that people can be
> more creative than this, too):

Yes, this is like the Phoebe post somewhat.  I do not want to analyize
these now, although some of them were interesting.  The *structure* has
to be developed before the details.  I think the structure is difficult;
I at least do not have the whole thing in my mind anyway.
 
> I really should do this up in more Proposal-type form sometime...

That would be good, although it is my opinion that more philosophical
groundwork need be lain (layed? laid? worked out?).  That is why I did
it in the Phoebe post rather than just a normal RFC.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:11:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Hidden Agendas, Again

>> As to the Agendas themselves--they should obviously be set up so
>> that the player cannot easily achieve the conditions on eir own.
> 
> Sorry for a complete digression, but I have been meaning to ask this
> for over a year, and since this is a wordy post, why not :)  It is my
> understanding that the Spivak pronouns' purpose is to be used as 
> gender-neutral forms.  Is there another purpose?  Why then, is 'eir'
> so often used when 'their', also gender-neutral, is indicated?

their is plural. eir is singular (equivalent to his/her/its). In the
above quote, eir is technically more correct, since it refers to "the
player".

> Also, why is 'eir' used when the gender of the antecedent is known
> with finality?

Sometimes, for the sake of consistency. Other times, because it makes
no difference either way. If the gender of the antecedent is known but
immaterial to the topic at hand, then it doesn't really matter which
is used, does it?

b

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 20:14:31 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Hidden Agendas, Again

> their is plural. eir is singular (equivalent to his/her/its). In the
> above quote, eir is technically more correct, since it refers to "the
> player".

> Sometimes, for the sake of consistency. Other times, because it makes
> no difference either way. If the gender of the antecedent is known but
> immaterial to the topic at hand, then it doesn't really matter which
> is used, does it?

Thanks.  I guess 'their' was being used as a gender-neutral form before
the Spivak stuff became current, and that is where that comes from.  As
for the second case, using the gender specific form when the gender is
known sounds more natural.

Malenkai
bwg

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 18:25:35 -0600 (MDT)
From: Aaron Humphrey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Hidden Agendas, Again

> > But who wants to try to evaluate twenty-three(or however many)
> > proposed Agendas as soon as the system is in place?

> My original idea on this was to have the adjendas, which would be a list
> of things, randomly generated from a menu of adjenda parts.  I do not
> know how the babbler works, but I imagine my idea would work very
> similar to it, but the parts would be adjenda parts.  A syntax would
> have to be developed, then semantic elements would be taken from those
> lists alluded to in my Phoebe posts -- viola, a cross-product of
> millions of possible adjendas.  Of course, the submission of adjendas
> is also cool; you could submit an adjenda item, knowing that someone
> else would get it.  Some mix of these two approaches appeals to me.
> Perhaps a 3rd input would be a hard-coded list from which they are
> randomly gotten from too.  I personally do *not* like submitting your
> own adjenda items.  I hope the above makes sense, because explaining
> it is difficult.

Yeah, I think I know what you mean.  Sort of like if some YORL Story
Elements were taken from players' submissions, some were taken from the
Official Dictionary, and some were coined randomly.  :-)

> > The Speaker is the obvious choice, as the most impartial, but I would
> > not wish that kind of workload on Malenkai.
> 
> Well, I won't be Speaker forever, although it seems that I have been, I 
> guess :).

I suppose ThinMan was for a month or so there...but you do seem to have
been running things(:-) as far back as I've been in the email logs(which
is, admittedly, only November).

> Philosophically, I believe the implementation should be 
> decoupled from who *currently* has particular offices.  IAC, I would
> be willing to do it; my stance on work is that I don't mind it so long
> as its *fun*, and some of my griping about it lately is that we seemed
> to be going overboard on all these things that require yet something
> else to be tracked, described, or rolled on some weird circumstance,
> or remembered out of the blue.  My comments were insinuating that different
> people find different stuff fun, and those that find X fun should 
> volunteer to harf X sometimes, when the work is overloading those harfing
> X + Y + Z.  That's the gist of it.  The response was less than constructive,
> unfortunately :), so we'll just have to see what happens August first
> if we do not want to discuss it now.  IAAC, since I find the hidden
> adjenda idea fun,  I would harf it.  Now, back to the player-independent
> issue, sorry for the digression ...

No, I'm glad to have that clarified.  The one thing I've figured out is
that people don't necessarily appreciate having work dumped on them; any
specific statements to the contrary are helpful.  But I'd rather err on the
side of being too considerate than not enough...most of the time, at
least.

> > Maybe there should be an office of Hidden Secretary, keeper of the
> > Hidden Agendas?
> 
> I think there are two correct ways to do this.  One: have the Speaker do
> it.  Two: Have the Right-Handed Grapefruit holder do it.  My rationale
> is:  If its officer based, it should be an officer who is not gonna
> quit, and who is active.  For example, the previous 2 Mad Scientists
> both quit in the middle of building a monster.  Also, the Speaker fits
> the referee/neutral mold better than other officers.  The rationale for
> the RHG holder doing it should be apparent; the one drawback is less
> of an assurance that that player will not go awol. 

Well, IIRC all the Cycle-Winners are currently players, though not all
active non-vacationing players.  But Speaker might work the best.

> > As to the Agendas themselves--they should obviously be set up so that the
> > player cannot easily achieve the conditions on eir own. 
> 
> Sorry for a complete digression, but I have been meaning to ask this
> for over a year, and since this is a wordy post, why not :)  It is my
> understanding that the Spivak pronouns' purpose is to be used as 
> gender-neutral forms.  Is there another purpose?  Why then, is 'eir'
> so often used when 'their', also gender-neutral, is indicated?  I'm
> really curious about this, that is all.  Also, why is 'eir' used when
> the gender of the antecedent is known with finality?  Sorry about being
> so ignorant about these sorts of things, and since I *so rarely* use the
> Spivak pronouns anyway ...

I dunno.  I'm a proponent of "they" and "their" in singular usage anyway,
but this is apparently disparaged by some...  I don't think I've
examined the Spivak pronouns' origin anywhere(should there be some kind of
explicatory page, or link thereto, on the web site?).  But yeah, Spivak
pronouns may have the advantage of being unambiguous, but I like "they"
because it's something you actually hear in speech, and I don't believe it
sounds uneducated or anything.  But as a dabbler in linguistics I'm in
favour of descriptive over prescriptive grammar anyway.

> > I also think that a player with a Hidden Agenda should not be allowed to
> > win the Cycle by other means.
> 
> I disagree with this.  I imagined everyone having hidden adjendas, and
> that they were destroyed either at the end of the cycle, or when one won
> by hidden adjenda.  That was part of my rationale in bumping the MN up
> to 541, to encourage this sort of thought.  For HA to work, the MN has 
> to be jacked up again, IMO, or people won't bother.  I wouldn't.

I dunno.  I think it would work either way--either a person could _choose_
not to have a Hidden Agenda and use the normal cycle win techniques, or
they could _only_ win by the Hidden Agenda.

Also, this would mean I should retract that proposal about changing the Magic
Number depending on the type of recent wins...

> > I really should do this up in more Proposal-type form sometime...

> That would be good, although it is my opinion that more philosophical
> groundwork need be lain (layed? laid? worked out?).  That is why I did
> it in the Phoebe post rather than just a normal RFC.

Well, to me the groundwork seems to be: a) Hidden Agendas are determined
for people(I think we're probably agreed now it would be foolish for them
to choose their own)by a neutral officer, b) they win if the Hidden
Agenda's conditions are fulfilled.  I suppose there's the question of when
you get a new Hidden Agenda; I think it should happen when you win by it,
not necessarily at the end of a Cycle, though perhaps one could opt to
replace it then.  I guess I just don't see much more to it than that, for
basic mechanics...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.terranet.ab.ca/~aaron/)
Current Album--The Stranglers:Aural Sculpture
Current Book--Jean Lorrah:Ambrov Keon
If love is blind, lingerie makes great Braille.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 20:58:18 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Hidden Agendas, Again

> I dunno.  I think it would work either way--either a person could _choose_
> not to have a Hidden Agenda and use the normal cycle win techniques, or
> they could _only_ win by the Hidden Agenda.

I think having both available is more fun.  Also, my original idea
had elements of the HA *tradeable*.  If only 3 people chose it, it
would be lame, OTOH, making elements tradeable would lead to team 
winning, and I'm sort of mixed on this.
 
> Also, this would mean I should retract that proposal about changing
> the Magic Number depending on the type of recent wins...

I don't remember such a proposal, which doesn't suprise me.  Was it 
one the bot lost?

> Well, to me the groundwork seems to be: a) Hidden Agendas are determined
> for people(I think we're probably agreed now it would be foolish for them
> to choose their own)by a neutral officer, b) they win if the Hidden
> Agenda's conditions are fulfilled.  I suppose there's the question of when
> you get a new Hidden Agenda; I think it should happen when you win by it,
> not necessarily at the end of a Cycle, though perhaps one could opt to
> replace it then. 

Ok, then the whole composition of HA is a project.  We have 1) babbler
style, 2) player submission, 3) hardcoded list.  I liked the idea that
you at least got something in each category, such as proposals etc.  I
do not like things like 'have a prime number of A$'.  Things that seemed
the most fun: 'player X submits a proposal containing xyzzy', and you're
not player X.  'or a member of the church of the markovian dream does
Y'.  You can see where the babbler idea comes in, if a reasonable base
syntax can be developed.  I like what I call 'interactive/competetive'
game design, as opposed to what I call 'silmultaneous solitare' game
design, if that makes sense.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 18:06:03 -0700
From: Alexandre Muniz <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Hidden Agendas, Again

Aaron Humphrey wrote: (except for the stuff Malenkai wrote.)

> > > I really should do this up in more Proposal-type form sometime...
> 
> > That would be good, although it is my opinion that more philosophical
> > groundwork need be lain (layed? laid? worked out?).  That is why I did
> > it in the Phoebe post rather than just a normal RFC.
> 
> Well, to me the groundwork seems to be: a) Hidden Agendas are determined
> for people(I think we're probably agreed now it would be foolish for them
> to choose their own)by a neutral officer, b) they win if the Hidden
> Agenda's conditions are fulfilled.  I suppose there's the question of when
> you get a new Hidden Agenda; I think it should happen when you win by it,
> not necessarily at the end of a Cycle, though perhaps one could opt to
> replace it then.  I guess I just don't see much more to it than that, for
> basic mechanics...

I think a problem with this, (a rather non-trivial one, really,)
is that it is difficult to ensure that the hidden agenda winning
conditions are anywhere near each other in their level of difficulty.
perhaps one solution would be to allow players to bid on the minimum
score that they must acheive in addition to acheiving the hidden agenda
condition. I'm not sure how to do this without allowing people to choose
their own agenda, while still giving them incentive to bid the number of
points that they believe a winning condition is worth. Another problem
is that this would require a fair amount of thought for all players
involved. but it could be fun. The normal magic number winning condition
then could become a subset of this. I think the most interesting winning
conditions would be the ones wthat get bids in the middle of the range,
which should not be trivially easy (excepting the point requirement,) or
virtually impossible; perhaps the player who submits the "most mediocre"
winning condition should get a reward. :)

**two-star

------------------------------

End of Ackanomic Research Digest V2 #99
***************************************