Summary of Play on Nomic World: Mar 10 -> April 27
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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
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* __ ___ ___ \ / ___ | *"If it's not worth doing, it's not worth *
*|__ | |__ \ / |__ | * doing well." *
*___| | |___ \/ |___ o * -- Donald Hebb -- *
*gardner@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au* *
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