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[WanderingWinder]

In my previous post, there's a link to the quicktopic with the actual conversation that went down.
If that is taken down, PM me, or e-mail me.

If this is taken down, there are people who know how to get a hold of me.

[Personman]

Yay! Serious discussion! Thanks WW, this is the level of discourse I've wished we were having all along.

And surely we don't have to repeat for the millionth time that while you have visions of how the game should be played, you can't implement them willy-nilly; you have to follows the rules of the competition you enter.

And I unquestionably did. I was 100% transparent about my actions, and the tournament organizer approved them as legal (or, in his words, non-DQ-worthy).

Legal is not the same thing as "I won't disqualify you for it". Come on now.

Anyway,, re-reading your posts, you are less agreeable than I had thought yesterday. So I'm going to lay out the argument, step by step, and you can tell me where you disagree with it, ok?

1. This was a tournament which qualified the winner for dominion nationals. (Ok, this isn't relevant, but I want to make sure you'll have something you absolutely can agree with).
2. The tournament was played on isotropic, on the internet.
3. There were rules to this tournament.
4. Special tournament rules were posted on the blog and in these forums.
5. Those rules include that the official point tracker was to be used, identical starting hands ensured.
6. Those rules do not state that the PCE can be used.

I'm with you this far.

7. Those rules say that modifications to the rules may be made with the agreement of ALL participants.

This is where you first lose me. The rules give defaults for a few variables in the case of disagreement on those variables. Those variables do not include the extension.

8. We got into a situation where some kinds of negotiations were going on for the finals.
9. There were several parties privy to these negotiations, including you, me, theory, jtl005, and ednever.
10. After understanding what PCE did, both jtl005 and ednever stated preference that you do not use the PCE.
11. I made my claim very clear that I consider the PCE to be in violation of the rules.
12. theory asked you not to use the PCE.

I agree with all these.

13. theory later told you not to use the PCE - still before he outright 'banned' it.
14. Throughout this period, you made your intentions to use the PCE quite clear.

These feel pretty wrong. The first one has some basis in fact, but the utterance of theory's you are referring to was actually much closer to telling me to use it, despite including the phrase "don't use the extension" (or very similar) because he went on to say "..but I won't DQ you for it", which, as I have said about fifty times, constitutes explicit legalization of the point counter. Theory and you both wish to maintain that there is some middle ground between "legal" and "illegal" (like "legal but I asked you not to") but that is so ridiculous.

The second one is also totally wrong. I never said that I would use it if it were ruled illegal, and it was, and I didn't. So I don't even know where you are coming from with that one.

15. There is no codification of rules written up to supersede, on general grounds, the dominion rules, despite being specific rule adaptions for specific events.

Sure, I guess.

16. Except insofar as expressly countermanded by specific tournament rules (including the mutual agreement clause), the rules of Dominion should remain in effect in this tournament, as there is no alternative objective baseline which is a rival to them AT THIS POINT IN TIME.

I disagree. The rules of online Dominion (which don't exist) should remain in effect, since that's what we were playing. It really bears little relation to paper Dominion, as I've been over in several other posts. Since those rules don't exist, we can only go by common sense and precedent. Precedent WITHIN THIS VERY TOURNAMENT was clear that the extension was legal, and that coincided with my common sense (that unenforceable rules shouldn't exist).

17. The rules of dominion do not explicitly allow for external memory aids.

True.

18. Actions pertinent to a game, which are not expressly allowed by the game's rules, are implicitly prohibited by the game's rules.

False! Nowhere does Dominion expressly allow you to try to sit there and remember what you bought last turn. Do you think that is implicitly prohibited too? Cheater! Surely you must agree that rules are never complete specifications one way or the other, and we must always fall back on common sense and social norms to determine the acceptableness of various actions.

19. PCE is relevant to the game.
20. PCE was not explicitly allowed.
21. PCE is ergo implicitly prohibited.

See above.

22. Rules are rules, regardless of whether or not they can be enforced. They may be stupid rules, or bad rules, but they are rules.
23. You agreed to the rules when signing up for the tournament.
24. The cooperation of all other involved parties clause cannot be invoked here, as there was at least one other involved party, namely myself, which did not agree with PCE use.
25. People ought to do what they agree to do, where possible.

These are fine.

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.

27. Breaking one's agreements violates that person's integrity, without some kind of extenuating change of circumstance between the time of making the agreement and the time at which the agreed upon action is to be undertaken.
28. A rule which there are no consequences for violating is nevertheless a rule.

Yep.

29. The no memory aids rule is theoretically enforceable.

What? No, not even a little bit.

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.

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.

[RisingJaguar]

Now if the extension should be allowed or not in tournaments is completely irrelevant to most of this discussion, the point is that the extension wasn't allowed, and you shouldn't have forced the issue. IMO theory should have refused you using spreadsheets or pen&paper as well. What would you have done then?

Used them without telling him, obviously.

No, I actually wouldn't have. That would have been cheating, and I don't cheat. I would have been unhappy, since I would be playing a game whose rules put me at a disadvantage for not cheating in an undetectable way, and I would have complained loudly, but I wouldn't have broken the rules.

Of course, perhaps no one will believe me, because I have a reputation for standing up for the line of argument that people will cheat under those circumstances, so clearly I must be referring to myself, right? In fact, theory even said to me directly that he felt he could not trust me not to cheat if he ruled the counter illegal, which is sad for me on a personal level, but also the absolutely correct position for theory to take, and perfectly good grounds for him NOT to make spreadsheet use illegal. I only wish his distrust extended to everyone, rather than just me. It sucks to be thought of as a cheater just because you are aware of and concerned about the methods and motivations for cheating.

Could you reexplain the different methods people could be cheating again?  From what I remember it was only PCE and pen/paper.

Then, why/how does PCE cover the gap? I mean that is the reason you use PCE right? To combat those furious cheaters.

Edit: Maybe this wasn't clear the first time.  But the bolded looks like you are accusing those that use PCE and excel as cheaters. To combat this, you use PCE. 

[eHalcyon]

Or you could go with: "Ok, we can only do what is says here." But that leads to players using spreadsheets instead of the extension and doesn't really make the problem go away.

Uh, no?  If you only do what it says in the rules, then players using spreadsheets would be cheating.  That particular cheating would be undetectable (unless they were slow about it), but that's a completely different issue.

[eHalcyon]

Now if the extension should be allowed or not in tournaments is completely irrelevant to most of this discussion, the point is that the extension wasn't allowed, and you shouldn't have forced the issue. IMO theory should have refused you using spreadsheets or pen&paper as well. What would you have done then?

Used them without telling him, obviously.

No, I actually wouldn't have. That would have been cheating, and I don't cheat. I would have been unhappy, since I would be playing a game whose rules put me at a disadvantage for not cheating in an undetectable way, and I would have complained loudly, but I wouldn't have broken the rules.

It only puts you at a disadvantage if someone else cheats and you don't.  If you all follow the rules and do not cheat, you are on an EVEN PLAYING FIELD.  What you are saying implies that you expect your opponents to cheat, and that you feel you must do the same for it to be fair.  That is a ridiculous position to take.  Have some respect for your fellow players and trust that they will follow the rules just as you say you would.

[joel88s]

In summation, two words: Rationalization.

Damn, guess I need a word-counter extension.

[Personman]

In summation, two words: Rationalization.

Damn, guess I need a word-counter extension.

I lol'd.

But seriously, rationalization for which illegal action that I took? I don't believe I have anything to rationalize. I argued for the rules to be consistent and fair, and then when a ruling I didn't agree with was handed down, I abided by it.

eHalcyon, go read the thread. The point you are raising has been discussed many times.

[Powerman]

There are either 2 possibilities for PCE.

1)  It offers no competitive advantage to a player using it over a player not using it.
2)  It offers a competitive advantage (no matter how small) to a player using it over a player not using it.

Before I continue my argument, which is considered true?

[WanderingWinder]

Yay! Serious discussion! Thanks WW, this is the level of discourse I've wished we were having all along.

And surely we don't have to repeat for the millionth time that while you have visions of how the game should be played, you can't implement them willy-nilly; you have to follows the rules of the competition you enter.

And I unquestionably did. I was 100% transparent about my actions, and the tournament organizer approved them as legal (or, in his words, non-DQ-worthy).

Legal is not the same thing as "I won't disqualify you for it". Come on now.

Anyway,, re-reading your posts, you are less agreeable than I had thought yesterday. So I'm going to lay out the argument, step by step, and you can tell me where you disagree with it, ok?

1. This was a tournament which qualified the winner for dominion nationals. (Ok, this isn't relevant, but I want to make sure you'll have something you absolutely can agree with).
2. The tournament was played on isotropic, on the internet.
3. There were rules to this tournament.
4. Special tournament rules were posted on the blog and in these forums.
5. Those rules include that the official point tracker was to be used, identical starting hands ensured.
6. Those rules do not state that the PCE can be used.

I'm with you this far.

7. Those rules say that modifications to the rules may be made with the agreement of ALL participants.

This is where you first lose me. The rules give defaults for a few variables in the case of disagreement on those variables. Those variables do not include the extension.

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.

8. We got into a situation where some kinds of negotiations were going on for the finals.
9. There were several parties privy to these negotiations, including you, me, theory, jtl005, and ednever.
10. After understanding what PCE did, both jtl005 and ednever stated preference that you do not use the PCE.
11. I made my claim very clear that I consider the PCE to be in violation of the rules.
12. theory asked you not to use the PCE.

I agree with all these.

13. theory later told you not to use the PCE - still before he outright 'banned' it.
14. Throughout this period, you made your intentions to use the PCE quite clear.

These feel pretty wrong. The first one has some basis in fact, but the utterance of theory's you are referring to was actually much closer to telling me to use it, despite including the phrase "don't use the extension" (or very similar) because he went on to say "..but I won't DQ you for it", which, as I have said about fifty times, constitutes explicit legalization of the point counter. Theory and you both wish to maintain that there is some middle ground between "legal" and "illegal" (like "legal but I asked you not to") but that is so ridiculous.

The second one is also totally wrong. I never said that I would use it if it were ruled illegal, and it was, and I didn't. So I don't even know where you are coming from with that one.

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.

15. There is no codification of rules written up to supersede, on general grounds, the dominion rules, despite being specific rule adaptions for specific events.

Sure, I guess.

16. Except insofar as expressly countermanded by specific tournament rules (including the mutual agreement clause), the rules of Dominion should remain in effect in this tournament, as there is no alternative objective baseline which is a rival to them AT THIS POINT IN TIME.

I disagree. The rules of online Dominion (which don't exist) should remain in effect, since that's what we were playing. It really bears little relation to paper Dominion, as I've been over in several other posts. Since those rules don't exist, we can only go by common sense and precedent. Precedent WITHIN THIS VERY TOURNAMENT was clear that the extension was legal, and that coincided with my common sense (that unenforceable rules shouldn't exist).

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.

17. The rules of dominion do not explicitly allow for external memory aids.

True.

18. Actions pertinent to a game, which are not expressly allowed by the game's rules, are implicitly prohibited by the game's rules.

False! Nowhere does Dominion expressly allow you to try to sit there and remember what you bought last turn. Do you think that is implicitly prohibited too? Cheater! Surely you must agree that rules are never complete specifications one way or the other, and we must always fall back on common sense and social norms to determine the acceptableness of various actions.

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.

19. PCE is relevant to the game.
20. PCE was not explicitly allowed.
21. PCE is ergo implicitly prohibited.

See above.

22. Rules are rules, regardless of whether or not they can be enforced. They may be stupid rules, or bad rules, but they are rules.
23. You agreed to the rules when signing up for the tournament.
24. The cooperation of all other involved parties clause cannot be invoked here, as there was at least one other involved party, namely myself, which did not agree with PCE use.
25. People ought to do what they agree to do, where possible.

These are fine.

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.

27. Breaking one's agreements violates that person's integrity, without some kind of extenuating change of circumstance between the time of making the agreement and the time at which the agreed upon action is to be undertaken.
28. A rule which there are no consequences for violating is nevertheless a rule.

Yep.

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.

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.

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.

[WanderingWinder]

Okay, here we go.
"I don't see why we should change the rules at one player's request (and to his advantage - WanderingWinder is on record as saying that he is against the point counter largely because he enjoys and is very good at memorization)."
"Given that some of my opponents might want to win, I should assume that they will do so, and thus I should too if I don't want to be at a disadvantage, and to prevent all of that nonsense it should just be legal."
Furthermore, the other people make it clear that it is there request as well that you don't use it, and implicitly that by their interpretation, it's against the rules. So is one person's request, to their advantage, reason to change the rules, or not? You argue both sides.

There's this gem from very early on: "I can't really believe that this has been blown so far out of proportion." Who is the one blowing it out of proportion, now, man?

"Given his definitions in a private correspondence, he is now accusing the tournament organizer of announcing his intention to cheat. I feel that this is a pretty clear objective indicator that it is his definitions that need adjustment, rather than mine."
theory later makes it clear that he considers PCE cheating, and you don't change definitions. So is this a clear objective indicator or not?

Finally, there's the innumerable places where you're all over the place on whether or not the thing gives you an advantage. It gives an advantage, it gives no advantage, it gives a small advantage, it doesn't really matter. And you keep arguing all over. So I am consistent here, I think it's a significant advantage, and if you didn't think it was, by your arguments, you should have no problem disabling it.

[Personman]

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.

[Personman]

Okay, here we go.
"I don't see why we should change the rules at one player's request (and to his advantage - WanderingWinder is on record as saying that he is against the point counter largely because he enjoys and is very good at memorization)."
"Given that some of my opponents might want to win, I should assume that they will do so, and thus I should too if I don't want to be at a disadvantage, and to prevent all of that nonsense it should just be legal."
Furthermore, the other people make it clear that it is there request as well that you don't use it, and implicitly that by their interpretation, it's against the rules. So is one person's request, to their advantage, reason to change the rules, or not? You argue both sides.

The issue here is that I didn't (and don't) believe I was advocating for a change in the rules. I was advocating against making the extension illegal when it had been legal all along. I know you disagree, but please remember my base assumptions before you accuse me of hypocrisy.

There's this gem from very early on: "I can't really believe that this has been blown so far out of proportion." Who is the one blowing it out of proportion, now, man?

Uh... you? You've left out the context of that quote, which if anyone cares to actually click on your link, they will see is a direct response to your spurious threat of legal action, which remains the high water mark of insanity in all this.

"Given his definitions in a private correspondence, he is now accusing the tournament organizer of announcing his intention to cheat. I feel that this is a pretty clear objective indicator that it is his definitions that need adjustment, rather than mine."
theory later makes it clear that he considers PCE cheating, and you don't change definitions. So is this a clear objective indicator or not?

Finally, there's the innumerable places where you're all over the place on whether or not the thing gives you an advantage. It gives an advantage, it gives no advantage, it gives a small advantage, it doesn't really matter. And you keep arguing all over. So I am consistent here, I think it's a significant advantage, and if you didn't think it was, by your arguments, you should have no problem disabling it.

What? It's definitely an advantage. I don't think I've said anything else. I certainly don't think it gives five isotropic levels worth of advantage, and the anecdotal evidence seems to support me strongly.

EDIT: Doing something else for 30-60 minutes, I'll be back.

[WanderingWinder]

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.

I fail to see how it is incoherent to have a rule that there are no consequences for, other than moral consequences. Indeed, the rules against hacking the server, etc. you seem to agree to this point on. "We need to have trust" in society at large, no?

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?

You are misrepresenting my position here. I don't believe either of us could have seen precedents on our side, as there were no precedents. There were in fact no rulings, it hadn't been brought up as a question. So no no, you clearly don't understand the meaning of precedent here, as I am using it.

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.

But there are rules. You just choose to ignore them because you don't like them. They CAN apply, you just don't think they should, or don't want them to, or something.

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.

Yeah, but the point is that makes it uncommon. It's not universally held. Allowing one to think is more or less universally held. Allowing someone to take notes is not. So I don't buy the common sense argument here, or that they are analogous. I think you can see the difference between the two. If you can't, there's not much point in arguing with you.

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.

Not at all on the religious front. My atheist friends agree with this statement as well. Of course, they view that it is possible to live in a state which is worse than nothingness, as you suggest, which I disagree with, but religion is not necessary to hold integrity above survival. Atheists have sacrificed their lives for others, as you say. And I am saying that the guilt that ought to be associated with loss of integrity outweighs necessity of survival, infinitely. Your argument is also largely dependent on accepting consequentialism, which I reject as a system of practical ethics, as it requires you to calculate the consequences of the action in question until the end of time (or in your case, the end of your lifetime, if you are certain that nothing after the end of your life will affect you within your life; of course, you would also have to know when your life will end), which is something you cannot do.
Instead, your argument is entirely self-centered, which I mean quite literally. You claim that nothing can matter to you after you are dead, which inherently implies that all that you value is related to your self.

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.[/quote]
If you want to go to extremes, nothing is enforceable. Great, we should have no laws!

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.

Not at all. There are other ways in which things affect your self-interest other than what you have posted here. You have some self-interest in believing you are being reasonable, some self-interest in believing you are acting ethically, some self-interest in APPEARING to be all of these things, etc. etc. Self-interest has a much greater scope than what you are saying.

[WanderingWinder]

Okay, here we go.
"I don't see why we should change the rules at one player's request (and to his advantage - WanderingWinder is on record as saying that he is against the point counter largely because he enjoys and is very good at memorization)."
"Given that some of my opponents might want to win, I should assume that they will do so, and thus I should too if I don't want to be at a disadvantage, and to prevent all of that nonsense it should just be legal."
Furthermore, the other people make it clear that it is there request as well that you don't use it, and implicitly that by their interpretation, it's against the rules. So is one person's request, to their advantage, reason to change the rules, or not? You argue both sides.

The issue here is that I didn't (and don't) believe I was advocating for a change in the rules. I was advocating against making the extension illegal when it had been legal all along. I know you disagree, but please remember my base assumptions before you accuse me of hypocrisy.

No, I am remembering that. See, that has nothing to do with your duplicity here. What you are saying in the first case, is that one player's request is insignificant, whereas later, when it is your own request, it is significant. Further, you can look at THIS as duplicitous, because you yourself made that original statement clearly knowing that I thought that this was NOT a change in the rules - in that instance, it is you who clearly were not talking into account my belief that asking for the prohibition was not a change in the rules.

There's this gem from very early on: "I can't really believe that this has been blown so far out of proportion." Who is the one blowing it out of proportion, now, man?

Uh... you? You've left out the context of that quote, which if anyone cares to actually click on your link, they will see is a direct response to your spurious threat of legal action, which remains the high water mark of insanity in all this.

Not more so than this is taken out of context. I never threatened legal action. I said that suing was an option open to me, which is clearly true, but at the same time, I clearly stated my lack of desire to actually do it.
Nevertheless, that context is irrelevant to your accusation that I am blowing things out of proportion, when you are the one envisioning some grand change to the way entire things are run, and making all kinds of other claims. Indeed, I don't feel you're being terribly more out there than I am. But you aren't being less so.

"Given his definitions in a private correspondence, he is now accusing the tournament organizer of announcing his intention to cheat. I feel that this is a pretty clear objective indicator that it is his definitions that need adjustment, rather than mine."
theory later makes it clear that he considers PCE cheating, and you don't change definitions. So is this a clear objective indicator or not?

You don't respond to this one, so I'm guessing you see this as really duplicitous. Glad you can see one of them, anyway.

Finally, there's the innumerable places where you're all over the place on whether or not the thing gives you an advantage. It gives an advantage, it gives no advantage, it gives a small advantage, it doesn't really matter. And you keep arguing all over. So I am consistent here, I think it's a significant advantage, and if you didn't think it was, by your arguments, you should have no problem disabling it.

What? It's definitely an advantage. I don't think I've said anything else. I certainly don't think it gives five isotropic levels worth of advantage, and the anecdotal evidence seems to support me strongly.

EDIT: Doing something else for 30-60 minutes, I'll be back.

Guess I'll give you this one, I'm sorry. Definitely seen a bunch of people saying this, but after carefully checking, I can't find a case where you did. I apologize.

[sjelkjd]

Personman, it's pretty clear to me that you are in the wrong.

>>On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 9:41 PM, Dominion Strategy
>>dominionstrategy wrote:
>>I would ask that you don't play with it.

Done.  End of topic.  The tournament organizer said don't use it.  The rest is your mental gymnastics to try to rationalize why you want to use the PCE despite being told not to.

[philosophyguy]

Quoting Personman:

I disagree. The rules of online Dominion (which don't exist) should remain in effect, since that's what we were playing. It really bears little relation to paper Dominion, as I've been over in several other posts. Since those rules don't exist…

I'm confused where the idea that there are no rules for online Dominion comes from. "Online Dominion" isn't some ontologically distinct game from Dominion; it is the game of Dominion, played online. Isotropic implements the rules of Dominion; it doesn't magically create new rules that accidentally coincide with the rules of paper Dominion. You start with a deck of 7 Coppers and 3 Estates because that's the rule for Dominion. There is a trash pile because that's the rule for Dominion. Just because the "cards" are represented digitally and the trash pile is a list on a computer screen rather than a physical pile doesn't mean that "online Dominion" is a different game. It's a different medium for playing the same game.

Once we drop the pretense that online Dominion is a separate game, then the ridiculousness of Personman's position becomes apparent. Donald X. has clarified numerous times (in the threads on shuffling, point counters, etc.) that the rules of the game tell you what is allowed. Anything not specified is not automatically allowed; he's been very emphatic in his examples of how it's not possible to explicitly prohibit everything else. The default assumption is: if the rules don't speak to that option, you can't use that option.

The use of the official point counter is a variant. The tournament rules specify that this particular variant is not only allowed but is the default choice unless everyone agrees otherwise.

The PCE is a variant. It is not specified in the rules of Dominion. It is not specified in the rules of the tournament. Thus, it is not explicitly prohibited, but there is also no official sanction for it. Donald X. has said that, if it's not explicitly prohibited, it's a variant. The tournament rules are clear that, without the consent of everyone, no variations from the official tournament defaults (official point counter, random kingdom cards, etc.) are permissible.

This is not hard. Attempts to obfuscate the issue by claiming that "online Dominion" is a different game that has no rules, or that anything not explicitly banned is permitted, or that a rule about what point counters are allowed without the consent of everyone (official point counter) doesn't prohibit someone from unilaterally deciding to use an unofficial point counter, are naked examples of self-interested sophistry.

[Personman]

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.

I fail to see how it is incoherent to have a rule that there are no consequences for, other than moral consequences. Indeed, the rules against hacking the server, etc. you seem to agree to this point on. "We need to have trust" in society at large, no?

You haven't addressed my logic at all. Yes, of course we need some trust in society at large (or at least, everyone's lives are much better since we do). We nevertheless have penalties for breaking that trust, whether they be legal or social, and if there are no such penalties for a thing, I think that's usually the same as that thing being okay.

In a tournament environment, especially one against strangers over the internet, you have to assume that social consequences go out the window, since the prize is likely all that matters to an unknown participant. Therefore, we need tournament regulations. To actually be regulations, they need to have consequences, or else they fail to regulate anything.

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?

You are misrepresenting my position here. I don't believe either of us could have seen precedents on our side, as there were no precedents. There were in fact no rulings, it hadn't been brought up as a question. So no no, you clearly don't understand the meaning of precedent here, as I am using it.

You're right, I'm not using precedent to mean "previously handed-down judicial decisions". I'm using it to mean "previously community-accepted behavior". I'm sorry I misunderstood your position; I continue to maintain that given our respective preconditions, we both came to reasonable, contradictory conclusions on this front.

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.

But there are rules. You just choose to ignore them because you don't like them. They CAN apply, you just don't think they should, or don't want them to, or something.

Stop repeating this without addressing my reasoning for why it is false. Online dominion is a very different beast from paper dominion, and has no particular reason to fall back on the rulebook AT ALL. If it did, the differences between isotropic and the real rules would result in people "cheating" all the time, e.g. by hiding the top card of their discard pile.

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.

Yeah, but the point is that makes it uncommon. It's not universally held. Allowing one to think is more or less universally held. Allowing someone to take notes is not. So I don't buy the common sense argument here, or that they are analogous. I think you can see the difference between the two. If you can't, there's not much point in arguing with you.

Notes being illegal is obviously not universally held either, as I've just demonstrated. So I don't really follow your logic here at all.

I'm going to pass on continuing the whole integrity debate. We obviously have some really fundamental differences there and I have no desire to try to resolve them further.

Ditto for the bit about how I'm self-interested in various ways. It's a long semantic argument that I don't really feel like having, and that most people reading probably aren't interested in. I think I've demonstrated beyond all doubt that I have acted in good faith within the scope of the tournament itself.

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.

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.

If you want to go to extremes, nothing is enforceable. Great, we should have no laws!

Stop switching between in-game and legal perspectives. Laws that are difficult to enforce are often a good idea because a) when they CAN be enforced you don't want to let the culprit off the hook because there is no law on the books and b) their mere existence is a strong moral deterrent for some people, and we should do whatever we can to stop people from doing things that are ACTUALLY BAD for society.

In-game, only enforcing things when you happen to be able to is terrible and unfair, and using the extension does not cause any real harm to society, so there are no justifications for avoidable unenforceable rules.

There's a really important point here that I'm surprised hasn't been brought up by more people, so I'm being liberal with my use of bold. I freely admit that there are unavoidable unenforceable rules in online Dominion. The obvious example is collusion/collaboration. Two players in a multiplayer game could be sitting next to each other, or use any communication device, to conspire against another. One "player" could in fact be a whole room full of Dominion experts conferring about what to do. These are obviously against the rules, and obviously unenforceable. This is an unsolvable structural flaw with all online competition, and it is a compelling reason not to use online competition for things that REALLY matter. I accept that we have to trust people not to do these things, because there is simply no alternative except not holding online competitions. However, this is not a good reason to add additional, unnecessary unenforceable rules. I agree that the line is blurry, and I don't think anyone can draw it. My opinion about where the extension falls in relation to that line is inevitably colored by the fact that I think it makes it a better game, or at least those who do not accept my arguments will always see it as so colored. I think this is the strongest argument against my position, and I'm really surprised that it has only come up once, in passing, near the beginning of the thread.

[methods of rationality]

Consider the following scenario:
There is  a monopoly tournament. A participant asks the organizer "can I steal money from the bank assuming that don't get caught"
The organizer says "you may not do so, but if you do so I will not disqualify you" (he won't, of course, since he wouldn't have caught him.)
I think in this case I think everyone will agree that stealing is still against the rules. Since it's very hard to imagine that the organizer can change the facts by saying a virtual tautology ('I will not disqualify those whom I don't catch').
Now what I don't understand is why is this case any different from the one we are discussing?
The obvious answer is that once the phrase "I Will not disqualify you for x" is no longer a tautology it has the extra implied meaning of "it is legal to do x"
But I guess my point is that obviously people can be disqualified without cheating (because they are not US residents, in this case) and they can cheat without being disqualified (if they don't get caught) so why would we think that when someone says the words "you will not be disqualified for x" he means anything other than what he said that you will not be disqualified for x? not because x is legal but because
a) the organizer is to lazy to disqualify you
b) the organizer just doesn't like disqualifying people
c) the organizer will assume you only did x by mistake
d) the organizer believes that the world will end tomorrow so he wont get around to disqualifying you.
And even if you think that the phrase "I will not disqualify you for x" does sometimes have certain implications other than what it literally means, if those implications are explicitly contradicted the one who uttered the phrase (as they were in this case) than clearly the phrase should not take on its implied meaning

[ftl]

the utterance of theory's you are referring to was actually much closer to telling me to use it, despite including the phrase "don't use the extension"

This is possibly the most hilarious thing to be said in this thread. It's like... politician-like in its levels of deceit.

The tournament organizer said "Don't do it". How can a ruling possibly be any clearer than that?

[eHalcyon]

the utterance of theory's you are referring to was actually much closer to telling me to use it, despite including the phrase "don't use the extension"

This is possibly the most hilarious thing to be said in this thread. It's like... politician-like in its levels of deceit.

The tournament organizer said "Don't do it". How can a ruling possibly be any clearer than that?

Obligatory blue dog joke.

[Personman]

Consider the following scenario:
There is  a monopoly tournament. A participant asks the organizer "can I steal money from the bank assuming that don't get caught"
The organizer says "you may not do so, but if you do so I will not disqualify you" (he won't, of course, since he wouldn't have caught him.)
I think in this case I think everyone will agree that stealing is still against the rules. Since it's very hard to imagine that the organizer can change the facts by saying a virtual tautology ('I will not disqualify those whom I don't catch').
Now what I don't understand is why is this case any different from the one we are discussing?

It's different because he said he wouldn't DQ me even if he did "catch" me, ie, even if I used it openly and posted video of myself using it. He also gave his reasons for not DQing me, and they were on the grounds of fairness and unenforceability.

I wish I could post the conversation between theory and myself that WW does not have access to, but I will continue to respect theory's wishes on the matter. I believe that in that conversation, theory clearly demonstrated a full understanding of and agreement with my logic, but simply had different priorities, ie, he held his desire for the participants to play harmoniously, and his desire to trust them not to cheat, above his desire for everything to proceed in the most strictly, rigorously fair fashion.

That is a position I do not hold, but it is a reasonable one and one I respect him for.

the utterance of theory's you are referring to was actually much closer to telling me to use it, despite including the phrase "don't use the extension"

This is possibly the most hilarious thing to be said in this thread. It's like... politician-like in its levels of deceit.

The tournament organizer said "Don't do it". How can a ruling possibly be any clearer than that?

God this is frustrating. I understand the bind theory was in, but I do think he really messed up when he said that. Here's the whole quote (now that it's public, I hope theory forgives me for quoting him...):

Here's the ruling: don't use the point counter, because it screws up
the intended purpose (identify who is best equipped to compete at
nationals).  But if you do use it, there will be no penalty, because
your opponents could have likely been taking notes the whole time
anyway.

This is explicit permission to use the extension. There's no other sane way to read it. Yes, it is great fodder for making fun of me, since it contains a phrase but means its opposite. Other people might have different priorities, and might have decided to shut up and "be nice" to theory and trust their opponents. And quite honestly, I do think I trust the guys my opponents turned out to be. But I'll never know for sure. They will always just be guys on the other side of the internet. And since they too know that there will be no penalty for using the extension, I'm sure as hell going to use it too.

Again, I feel for him, but I think what theory did here was really wrong. It made politeness and certain kinds of morals into selected-against qualities, and that's not good for a community ever. It made me play, and WW quit. WW says he would have quit anyway if theory's ruling had been unambiguously in favor of the extension, but that's his own problem. Competitions should NEVER EVER have soft pressure like this. It can only make nice people less likely to win.

[ftl]

Side comment about enforceability - basically every sport and game has rules which are not enforceable UNLESS you have an umpire standing over every player's shoulder at all times.

At the highest levels of competition, that's what actually happens. You have umpires who stand there and make sure that no rules get broken.

Typically, at lower levels of competition, when having an umpire present in person within eyesight of each player isn't practical, the rules stay the same, but some of them end up being enforced only by the players themselves, or not enforced at all. But the rules don't change.

[methods of rationality]

Also, a rules question: often when playing on iso i count points or cards not on paper but verbally. Is this allowed? It is not explicitly permitted and is more than just using your mind. Though if this is illegal than ww has cheated since in all his videos he is talking about the game which I assume will sometimes help him remember stuff. Also this means that you rarely have a game of rl dominion without cheating since people are constantly talking about the game while playing it

[Personman]

Also, a rules question: often when playing on iso i count points or cards not on paper but verbally. Is this allowed? It is not explicitly permitted and is more than just using your mind. Though if this is illegal than ww has cheated since in all his videos he is talking about the game which I assume will sometimes help him remember stuff. Also this means that you rarely have a game of rl dominion without cheating since people are constantly talking about the game while playing it

To take this a little further: what if I keep notes on what cards people have bought/how many points they have by entering them in the chat box? Does it matter whether I hit send or not? The chat box is as much a part of isotropic dominion as the card icons are, so why shouldn't I be allowed to use it?

[RisingJaguar]

Also, a rules question: often when playing on iso i count points or cards not on paper but verbally. Is this allowed? It is not explicitly permitted and is more than just using your mind. Though if this is illegal than ww has cheated since in all his videos he is talking about the game which I assume will sometimes help him remember stuff. Also this means that you rarely have a game of rl dominion without cheating since people are constantly talking about the game while playing it

To take this a little further: what if I keep notes on what cards people have bought/how many points they have by entering them in the chat box? Does it matter whether I hit send or not? The chat box is as much a part of isotropic dominion as the card icons are, so why shouldn't I be allowed to use it?

Because a CHAT box, was intended to be used for CHATTING.  Anything else should be considered at the very least as devious.