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76

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 06, 2024, 07:40:01 am »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like AfD really has all that much power in Germany?

It's true, but they have been doing well in polls lately, and state elections are coming up in several states that are strongholds for them, meaning they will probably win first place there.

Also as far as I can judge from the Finn's party Wiki page, the AfD is significantly more extreme than them. There has been a recent scandal about a secret meeting in which they discussed the deportation of naturalized citizens (and even German-born ones that aren't white).

77

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 06, 2024, 05:49:38 am »

It's all connected in my mind, the lack of democracy and the support for the far-right.

The far-right benefits because it can put itself in a perceived opposition to a system that does not serve the interests of the average citizen. The system does not serve their interests because people in critical positions are reliant on the support of corporations. Corporate power stems from the undemocratic control that wealthy people have over the economy. If corporations were worker-controlled, we could significantly remove their influence over politics, and when they do lobby, it would be on behalf of the workers rather than their rich shareholders.

At the same time, a corporatized media landscape pushes the interests of the media owners, which align more with the far-right than the left. Here again worker democracy in journalism would allow them to set an agenda that is more closely aligned with the interests of the people.

The problems in the US and in Germany are systemic.

78

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 05, 2024, 02:22:25 pm »

You could just pick a parliament out of citizens via RNG. If anyone doesn't want to do it or doesn't show up, they can get replaced by a different random person. This would probably be better than representative democracy.

I have some affection for this model, but I would argue that it is still, in the broader sense of the word, democracy.

79

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 05, 2024, 02:21:33 pm »

But I feel like applying that to the system as-is is kind of missing the point. If politics were more of a niche thing that you have to study for, I'd hope it wouldn't get this polarized in the first place. Once it is this polarized, I think reason is basically lost

Again, this system pretty much exists in China. As a communist, I know that "look at China" is a really annoying argument, and I imagine that you don't want to use their model, but I do not understand how your proposal is meaningfully different.

80

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #210: Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot

« on: February 05, 2024, 07:29:28 am »

Mischievous Courtier - $4
Action/Attack

+1 Card
Reveal a non-Victory card from your hand. Choose one or all:
You gain a copy of it; each opponent gains a copy of it; +1 Action per type it has.

A Courtier that has some Jester in them.

81

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Return all copper to the supply

« on: February 05, 2024, 02:55:18 am »

Simply play with all the Heirlooms 

82

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 04, 2024, 01:50:10 pm »

No disagreements But I have no reply to the deontological point

I would agree for both Democracy and Capitalism. How do you justify that democracy is inherently the best option, rather than just the least bad one?

Because I believe that inherently every person should have a say in the organization of their own lives.

That is probably not going to satisfy a utilitarian mindset. But I feel like it's pretty hard to make utilitarian arguments on the organization of a state because it seems very hard to predict outcomes of unprecedented changes. But at the very least I think it's established that people having the feeling of agency over their own lives is correlated to happiness.

One thing is that I'm planning to vote for Die Grünen (Green Party) in 2025, but I don't feel like this gives me significant agency over my own life.

My vision of a healthy society is more that politics is boring and in the realm of nerdy intellectuals, whereas regular people get their agency in other ways.

Well, I guess, but someone has to decide who these nerdy individuals are. Democracy gives everyone a chance to be a nerdy intellectual. At the same time, nerdy intellectuals, if left to their own devices, will make policy decisions that appeal only to nerdy intellectuals.

Also stuff like workplace democracy has a much more immediate impact on your life.

I guess my main question would be, what's the alternative? You gesture vaguely at other options, but I'm not sure I can see what these are. What you said above sounds a lot like the system as it is in e.g. China.

83

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 04, 2024, 10:16:48 am »

I guess I have only myself to blame for derailing the conversation on democracy being the best governing system, which I think is much more interesting.

84

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 04, 2024, 06:21:46 am »

It's not elites running the world, but it's as much of an overlap with that hypothesis as we'll likely get

It's extremely funny to me that the author of this chose to lead with a random 4Chan post to introduce the idea of manufactured consent, rather than citing the leftist scholars who actually developed that theory.

And then the first paragraph is just "look at how much smarter I am than the unwashed masses". Oh my god. Why are all these libertarians such arrogant shitheads?

Why do we have to go to superlatives like "crime of the century"? How about climate change for the crime of the century?

I don't care much what the cause of COVID-19 was, and mostly the people interested in that stuff seem to look for a way to attach blame for the pandemic to the Biden administration somehow, which is also why Fauci is shoehorned into this post.

85

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 04, 2024, 06:09:10 am »

I would agree for both Democracy and Capitalism. How do you justify that democracy is inherently the best option, rather than just the least bad one?

Because I believe that inherently every person should have a say in the organization of their own lives.

That is probably not going to satisfy a utilitarian mindset. But I feel like it's pretty hard to make utilitarian arguments on the organization of a state because it seems very hard to predict outcomes of unprecedented changes. But at the very least I think it's established that people having the feeling of agency over their own lives is correlated to happiness.

86

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 03, 2024, 06:11:11 am »

Everyone seems to agree on paper that democracy is just the least bad of the options, but then turn around and treat it as some kind of intrinsic good.

Not everyone. I think democracy is inherently the best option, and many of the problems with the current system stem from a lack of democracy rather than too much of it. Particularly when it comes to the organization of corporations. But I can agree with your sentiment if we only replace a single word:

I mean the the truth is that only a handful of legitimate alternatives to DemocracyCapitalism have been attempted. It's the equivalent of standing in front of a million different slot machines, trying out five of them, and finding that among those, #4 works best. To extend the analogy further, we can assume that every other slot machine requires a trillion dollars up front to see how well it works. In this situation, it's one thing to conclude that trying out others isn't worth it and we should just stick with machine #4 (seems reasonable), but it makes no sense to assume that #4 is actually the best one, and it makes equally little sense to declare #4 infallible and oppose gambling restrictions that have been shown to work pretty well.

87

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How is Vassal (with suitable support) not overpowered/undercosted?

« on: February 02, 2024, 02:54:56 am »

It's also worth noting that a deck in which Vassal works well will probably be a deck that draws itself every turn. But Vassal does not work with an empty deck. Conspiator does.

88

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: February 01, 2024, 09:43:07 am »

- People argue that the court won't do it anyway, and the attempt will politically backfire. This makes more sense to me than the above, which is to say, very little. The judicial system seems way way less corrupt and partisan than the legislative system, so declining an opportunity to decide things there seems crazy. And I don't particularly buy the backlash either; why would a moderate be outraged that this argument was taken seriously? If they're actually a moderate, it shouldn't seem all that unreasonable. Moderates won't like January 6 at all.

I mean, in my understanding the political backfiring is more about the danger of mobilizing Trump's base further rather than about scaring off moderates.

It still should be done, I think, ultimately because even a failed case against Trump will put his behavior under scrutiny. Same reason the AfD should be banned in Germany, really (also that case is much more likely to succeed).

89

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest #210: Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot

« on: February 01, 2024, 03:56:12 am »

Repost is probably best. This part of the forum does not have dedicated moderators, so I'm not sure how quickly we could get this thread moved.

90

Dominion Articles / Re: The Clashes, a bit more in depth, with 6 extra months of play

« on: January 31, 2024, 02:43:40 am »

I don't think you can reliably prevent the opponent from getting Warlords, so the second option is not really an option. Until it is clear which way the Warlords split, you should always* build a deck that can handle a Warlord attack. In that sense, I find the article misleading.

Other comments:
- the strong synergistic relationship between Battle Plan and Warlord really wants to be emphasized. Warlord triggers Battle Plan and gives you a larger hand size so next turn it's easier to connect Battle Plans. This often means that even on boards where Warlord's attack isn't relevant, you want both cards.
- Archer's attack gets a lot less impressive once your opponent plays Warlords.

*unless you have access to the real second option: being unaffected by Attacks.

91

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 20, 2024, 03:06:33 pm »

One of the most irritating things about the Everett branch we're living in is how many assassination attempts Hitler survived. The first was in 1939, and according to GPT-4, it was nothing but dumb luck that it didn't work. Just think about how much mass of the wave function is concentrated in universes in which Hitler died early. Maybe the ones where he is assassinated later aren't too different, but in 1939? It was November 1939, but nonetheless, that's a long time from Hitler's eventual downfall; it would have changed world history substantially.

It's unclear to me though whether this would have lead to better outcomes. Maybe in that timeline, someone more competent takes power, does not invade Russia, and Europe remains under Nazi control for longer.

92

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #209: Next Time, Last Time

« on: January 16, 2024, 05:53:15 pm »

^ The design is quite strange to me. Why interact with the Exile mat when it cannot put anything there? The card is of course perfectly playable if no cards do any Exiling, but it's a strange choice. And as you yourself mention, when there are cards that Exile, Vallary is extremely strong. So I don't see any benefit in having that choice. It's either useless or overpowered.

93

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 13, 2024, 04:36:59 am »

So why do Joscha and Ezra not sound female? Is it entirely cultural, or is there a phonetic reason? The answer of course is that I have no clue. But my blind guess is that it's cultural. If I try to forget that I've heard them, I feel like they wouldn't stick out as girls names.

Of course, the entire 'a' thing could itself just be cultural.

I think both of these are Hebrew in origin.

And it seems obvious to me that the 'a' thing is cultural; I mean, what's the alternative?

94

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 10, 2024, 08:31:34 am »

It is however not bijective because no sequence maps to 0 

95

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #208: Back to the Dark Ages

« on: January 10, 2024, 07:27:40 am »

^ I would be worried that this breaks the set's theme. For the other Looters, it is kind of important that the Ruins really are junk, and if these cards are in the same set, they will appear together frequently.

96

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 08, 2024, 04:47:41 am »

Yeah, once upon a time, before I cared about AI, some people seemed to have thought AI systems would be like little agents solving theorems in their own formal systems. But that's so far away from what anyone does right now that I don't see it coming back

We'll see. The neural network hype is beginning to die down. I am of course biased since I am indirectly associated with several people working in the field of automated proof systems.

97

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 08, 2024, 02:23:02 am »

The Incompleteness Theorem is a boring result about the capabilities for formal proof systems with zero philosophical implications.

I resent the implication that results about capabilities of formal proof systems are boring.

And it's a weird take for someone interested in AI too. Formal logic is an important piece of the puzzle in developing systems beyond the truly boring neural network stuff.

98

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #208: Back to the Dark Ages

« on: January 05, 2024, 12:59:29 pm »

Squatter - $2
Action/Looter

This turn, directly after you finish playing an Action costing $2 or less, +1 Action.
-
In games using this, when you gain a card costing $0 from the Supply, exchange it for a Ruins.

Dark Ages does not do enough with the Ruins pile, and a second edition would certainly need to change that. Here's a card that essentially turns any Curses into a Looter (at least until the Ruinses run out). It does other things too, and has a strange relationship with cost-reducers.

The restriction to "in the Supply" is necessary in the current format so that this does not mess with the Dark Ages non-Supply cards, but in an ideal world a second edition would give those cards non-zero costs analogous to what we have seen from non-Supply cards in later sets. In this case, the restriction could be dropped.

99

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 02, 2024, 05:57:20 am »

This is true, but I guess I figured in this particular case (lying about one's personal beliefs), the dangers are not that hard to estimate. It's going to be pretty hard for anyone to catch you in that lie, and even if they do, you could just say you changed your mind.

When you go into politics, I don't think you can be successful by always being completely honest, so these sorts of considerations should come naturally. I was recently at a local party meeting and even then I had to tackle the question in my mind of whether I should be honest about a topic that I knew wouldn't go over well with that particular crowd.

100

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars

« on: January 02, 2024, 05:16:19 am »

Andrew of course has a personal interest in saying Biden has no chance since he now has a third party, but I legit thought that he'd be a sufficiently rational guy as to not let that influence him

What does rationality have to do with it? If it is to his personal advantage to say it, then the "rational" thing is to do so regardless of whether he believes it.

If he's deliberately lying, then yeah. But I don't think that's likely.

I'm just a bit confused on the consequentalist take on this. In terms of outcomes, the best thing (from Andrew Yang's perspective at least, and from yours if you prefer him over Biden) would be to lie, right? (Assuming that you don't believe that Biden can't win)

So then, if you think he's a candidate that follows your ethics, you should want him to say that Biden can't win in either case, right? Either he believes and says it, or he doesn't believe it and still follows consequentalist logic and says it.

Then how can you be disappointed if he says it? What am I missing here?