Okay. Don't know how you really want to stand by this, guess I'll just let everyone else realize the flat absurdity that the POINT COUNTER extension is not covered in a rule about the POINT COUNTER.
If you think that is absurd, I don't know what else to say to you. I think this is a part of our disagreement where we've reached the bottom and we just differ on how language and implication work.
I actually am coming from the first one on the second one. I don't hold this middle ground. theory was holding that the thing was illegal (he would have done better to state it more bluntly), but that he would not disqualify you for it. Illegal with no consequences is, once again, not the same thing as legal.
This notion seems incoherent to me. I don't think an action (in a game) can be illegal without consequences. I'm not sure it can in real life, either, but I'm less sure of that, and I see the issues as separate. Again, this may be as far as we get on this, but I'll lay out my reasoning a bit further:
1. Competition should be fair.
2. If something is illegal without consequences, some people's morals will allow them to do that thing and others will not.
3. If the thing is advantageous, the people with the laxer morals will win more often.
4. That is unfair, and thus should not be a part of how competitions are run.
Okay, so we should magically obey rules that don't exist? Tell me how that one works? Because if that's the case, I win the game by claiming it - you can't show me where in the rules it says I can't do that, because the rules don't exist.
Furthermore, precedent in NO WAY showed that it was legal. Furthermore, here's a great example of duplicity. You have already admitted that you do believe that, at least for some things, unenforceable rules SHOULD exist. But going back to the precedent thing, that you did it before and no one complained is in no way a precedent that you're good to go. That is ridiculous.
We've already been over how it is reasonable from both of our perspectives to have seen precedent as on our side, and I wish you would admit. I saw other players use it without complaint, I used it without complaint, and I am not alone in believing that its use was legal and precedented. Your position on this is also understandable, given your differing starting assumptions and your differing experience during the tournament. Can we please agree that neither of us is being "ridiculous" on this bit?
I agree that it's tragic and difficult that the rules for the game we were playing aren't written down anywhere. Theory did his best to give us a tournament on short notice, and there were holes. Oh well. We have to do our best.
The first four words of page 2 of the dominion rulebook make it clear that thinking is allowed. I agree that there is some need for common sense, but clearly the sense that being able to take notes is allowed is not something which is not common, and certainly not self-evident.
On the contrary, it
is common in communities other than yours. People have such a hard time realizing that the internet is putting them in touch with people who come from very different places. In the competitive Magic community, for instance, it is taken for granted at this point that these kinds of in-game notes are perfectly permissible, and used by most players in most tournaments.
26. Integrity is more important than possessions.
Seems like a non-sequitur, but I do disagree rather strongly. Having enough possessions to keep you alive is a lot more important than having integrity. Well, actually, I kind of don't like the notion of ownership at all. But having access to enough objects to keep you alive is more important than having integrity.
I weep for humanity that it includes so many people who believe this.
This is at heart a religious argument, and I think we should stay away. From my perspective, if you are dead, nothing can possibly matter to you, so it is incoherent to suggest that something could matter more than survival.
There is one complication to this, which is that there are states of life that seem to be clearly worse than not existing. In those cases (such as when facing extreme torture, or when facing the guilt of not having sacrificed yourself to save 50 orphans) self-sacrifice can be reasonable.
29. The no memory aids rule is theoretically enforceable.
What? No, not even a little bit.
Sure is. Someone comes to wherever it is you are playing and watches you. This has been done for chess tournaments.[/quote]
Even given the resources to do that, no. What if I devise a system for encoding notes to myself in what look like friendly chat message to the other players? What if fiddling with the pencils on my desk is a code? No observer will ever be able to distinguish memory-aid from not-memory-aid.
30. The root of your arguments, ethically, lies in your own, personal, relatively short-term self-interest, as you see it.
Totally unrelated to all preceding points, even if I agreed with them, and also slanderous and false. I really wish you hadn't included this one. It makes me kind of angry.
Clearly not slanderous. Less clear that it's not false, but here we go then. You claim to be doing this because it allows you to do things you otherwise wouldn't. You claim unenforceable rules shouldn't exist, because if you were to follow them, it would put you at a disadvantage. You claim that you having something to gain is a significant difference from other things. I mean, you tell me why you are doing all this, if not from your self-interest. The entire ethical system you espouse smacks incredibly of ethical egoism.
I do it because it is what I believe strongly is fair and right. It's less about my own interest (you can easily see this from the fact that I volunteered to share my spreadsheet publicly with the other contestants) and more about the principle of the thing.
If I were self-interested, I would have dropped all discussion as soon as theory said he wouldn't DQ me for the point counter, I would have used it, and that would have been that. Instead, I pushed for a more rigorously fair ruleset, and as a result I got one that was much less to my liking and much less to my advantage.
If I were self-interested, I would not have started posting videos of my thought process right before the finals. If I were self-interested, I would not have mentioned publicly that I intended to use the extension. Your reading of the facts here is obnoxiously selective.
Well, I think it is likely the case that he doesn't trust you because you had stated your intentions to cheat quite clearly at that point. Perhaps you wouldn't have actually followed through on them, but you stated your intentions to do so. Furthermore, you have been extremely duplicitous at several steps along the way.
Please point to quotes from the conversation you posted where you think I declared my intention to cheat or exhibited duplicity. I soundly deny that I have done either.
Will do... in another post.
Can't wait.