Subject: Re: [MacroNomic] Huh?

From: "Brian Campbell" <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Jul 98 22:20:49 -0400

On Wed, Jul 1, 1998 8:55 PM, JT <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I still don't like it.  In a proposal submitted for next week, I proposed
>a different reward (basically the SoT gets a free use of the state mines
>once a week in addition to any others allowed (so an SoT who was a member
>of the RP would effectively get 2 free uses))  I also proposed rewards for
>some of the other 'game management offices'.

Well, although I like your proposal on rewards for secretaries, I think it
would be quite hard for me to ignore the information I already know, as I
would have to do if your other prop passed. For example, I have made some
proposals that create sections that are the "lowest possible sibling" of
some other section. The reason I do this is because I know that there is
another proposal that has been created that also creates a section that
would go in the same place otherwise. If I pretended I didn't know about
this, my proposals might overwrite other people's. Other players could find
out about conflicts like this because Section 3-1 explicitly says that the
SoT can inform other players of conflicts in their preactive proposals;
however, because of your prop I would have to inform myself of the
conflicts by publicly sending myself a message, retracting a conflicting
proposal, resubmitting a non-conflicting proposal, which would just create
needless proposal clutter. I really don't get that much of an advantage
(after all, the two current props that were based on prior knowledge are
likely to fail anyways), so why bother? If you really don't want me to have
an advantage, proto-propose, and inform the public that you have made a
proposal similar to that proto-proposal. Then I really have no advantage.

--- Brian Campbell (AKA lambda)
Visit my webpage: http://world.std.com/~campbell/Brian/
Visit the Latin Club webpage: http://world.std.com/~lambda/
Visit the MacroNomic webpage: http://world.std.com/~lambda/macronomic/

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Nihil sub sole novum.

---

From: JT <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 21:55:45 -0700 (PDT)

>proposal similar to that proto-proposal. Then I really have no advantage.

Personally, I think it's akin to the seperation of player and character
knowledge in a role playing game.  The player might know it's a troll and
that trolls hate fire, but if the character hasn't encountered a troll
before, then the character should not act as if it knows this information.

Similarly here, you as a player need to be distinct (in some respect) from
you as a Secretary.  In the case of mentioning conflicts, that's part of
doing your job as secretary.  Submitting a proposal based on the fact that
you know I submitted a specific proposal, or changing your vote because
you know the voting results prior to them being revealed is crossing that
boundary.

Granted, this is personal opinion, but it makes for a more level playing
field (imho)

--JT

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