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[michaeljb]

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.

QFT

For the life of me, I can't figure out how Personman got past #2 in the timeline, both in the version posted by him and by theory.

[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?

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

o_O so I have to use every part of the game in accordance with its designers intentions, or I'm being "devious"? So if I ironworks a Cutpurse when my opponent has no coppers, because I know I can draw my whole deck anyway and I need to be able to see what's in eir hand right now before I decide whether to buy the second to last province, that's "devious"? If Donald wants to step in and claim that he foresaw that potential use when he designed the card, I'll gladly think of another example...

[Captain_Frisk]

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.

If you wouldn't respect his wishes in the tournament - why would you respect them here?

[Personman]

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.

QFT

For the life of me, I can't figure out how Personman got past #2 in the timeline, both in the version posted by him and by theory.

That's strange, since I explained it in detail on the very same page of this thread that you have quoted. Here, I will make it easy for you:

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.

You are free to take issue with some part of my argument and tell me why you think it is wrong, but repeating your opinion with exaggerated claims of its obviousness is not very productive.

I have done my best to back up my opinions thoroughly and consistently, and have been met with a barrage of utterly unprincipled proclamations and insults, and it is really not very kind. I am pretty good at not getting mad about words on the internet, but it does hurt a little. Please be more considerate.

WanderingWinder has been quite good about this, despite a few things that felt to me like personal attacks (his initial reaction email aside, I still can't quite get over how overboard that was). He has laid out his arguments plainly and explicitly, and I have generally enjoyed communicating with him about this issue, and I hope he feels the same for me, despite our large disagreements. I think that over the course of this thread we have come to understand each other a little better, though I am sure we will never see eye to eye.

That's what I'm here for. The kind of oblivious yelling on display in some other people's posts is just sad.

[Personman]

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.

If you wouldn't respect his wishes in the tournament - why would you respect them here?

This is pure, unadulterated trolling. I hope that it makes you laugh!

[michaeljb]

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.

If you wouldn't respect his wishes in the tournament - why would you respect them here?

So he looks better than WW since WW put emails in a quicktopic and linked there.

[sjelkjd]

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, there is.  The sane way to read it is "don't use the point counter."  What part about don't use the point counter don't you understand?

[Personman]

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.

If you wouldn't respect his wishes in the tournament - why would you respect them here?

So he looks better than WW since WW put emails in a quicktopic and linked there.

I asked permission to post the thread before WW mentioned a desire to do so, and I still wish it had been granted. I understand WW's position that all communications to him can be fairly made public by him, but I also understand theory's position that what was said in private has a reasonable expectation of remaining private. If this were some sort of government conspiracy, I might act differently, and play the whistleblower, but since it was a request from someone I like and respect, I made the simple human decision to honor it. WW has chosen differently, and, well, I can't stop him, and I find some parts of what he has done useful. It's not a black and white issue, and I'm not posturing.

[czechvarmander]

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.

If you wouldn't respect his wishes in the tournament - why would you respect them here?

So he looks better than WW since WW put emails in a quicktopic and linked there.

I asked permission to post the thread before WW mentioned a desire to do so, and I still wish it had been granted. I understand WW's position that all communications to him can be fairly made public by him, but I also understand theory's position that what was said in private has a reasonable expectation of remaining private. If this were some sort of government conspiracy, I might act differently, and play the whistleblower, but since it was a request from someone I like and respect, I made the simple human decision to honor it. WW has chosen differently, and, well, I can't stop him, and I find some parts of what he has done useful. It's not a black and white issue, and I'm not posturing.

But if there was a prize for releasing the conversation or if it had been part of a "game" then it would have been alright to go against the request from someone you like and respect?

[michaeljb]

repeating your opinion with exaggerated claims of its obviousness is not very productive.

Well the post you were referring to was my first one here, so I was hardly repeating anything yet.

Unless quoting a post I had already +1'd containing an opinion I agreed with counts as repeating, which I guess could be the case, but calling that repeating definitely doesn't come to my mind right away, hence my immediate reaction in the last sentence about not repeating

since it was a request from someone I like and respect, I made the simple human decision to honor it.

But it was too much to honor theory's explicit "don't use the point counter"? I haz a confused. Just seems like at that point the sportsmanlike thing to do there would have been to drop the issue and not play with the point counter, rather than take advantage of theory's admittance that there was not realistically much that could be done to enforce it.

Anyway I knew I shouldn't post in this train wreck, but for some reason couldn't resist, and now of course regret getting myself involved since no good will come of it.

[eHalcyon]

You're buying groceries and have 12 items to check out.  Now, there are several lines you could join, but you decide to line up in the shortest one -- the Express checkout.  The Express checkout is only for people with 10 items or less.

Read: "Please do not come to this till with more than 10 items."

You get to the cashier.  You have more than 10 items.  What is the cashier going to do?  Make a big fuss, call security and get you to leave?  No.  The cashier is going to check out your 12 items.  In fact, other people have probably gone through with even more items than you.

You didn't get penalized.  You were allowed to check out more than 10 items in the "10 items or less" line. 

You still broke the rules.

[Insomniac]

Guys the thread is devolving into personal attacks instead of a DEBATE like mentioned in the topic title, can we try and get back to debating instead of arguing and making personal attacks

[timchen]

Personman, you are getting crazy.

Originally I was (sort of) on your side. I do like games with PCE better, and I honestly cannot think of any real world reason why someone would generally prefer otherwise, except that he is really good at memorizing stuff and can get some real advantage from that department.

If theory had not told you explicitly that he would not like you to use the PCE, I would say you are okay. Rules can have different interpretations. Enable the official one but not the unofficial one does make things muddy.

But here you are just twisting his logic. His logic is pretty clear to me. He said:
0. I would not like you to use the PCE.
1. this is qualification for the nationals.
2. In the nationals you cannot use any point counter.
3. For the purpose of the tournament (that is to find the best player) it is thus best not to use a point counter.

And you simply ignores this. You only read this part:
4. I won't disqualify you if you are using PCE, just as I cannot disqualify someone using pen and paper.

This part is he sympathizing you. If you are really not self-interested (I mean not necessarily only interested in winning the tournament, but also maybe winning the argument with WW) and have a common interest with the rest of us trying to find the best player for the nationals, the only reasonable thing I can see is to not use PCE (and maybe suggest to turn off the official one as well.) It seems to me keeping things fair has become your dominant interest (which is coming from the fact that your original justifying reason for using the point counter is to keep things fair). But if you are that interested in fairness to the extent that you don't care about what this tournament is about and what the tournament director says, you may as well just play paper, scissors, stone.

[Powerman]

Using the PCE in dominion is like the little brother of using a dictionary in Scrabble.  I don't think either is strictly prohibited in the rules (Correct me if I'm wrong on Scrabble, I might have missed it), but both go against the rules none-the-less.

[ftl]

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. ... Competitions should NEVER EVER have soft pressure like this. It can only make nice people less likely to win.

Competitions of all kinds HAVE to have soft pressure like this at all levels below the level where it becomes practical to have umpires standing around each player. Don't forget that.

[Personman]

Personman, you are getting crazy.

Originally I was (sort of) on your side. I do like games with PCE better, and I honestly cannot think of any real world reason why someone would generally prefer otherwise, except that he is really good at memorizing stuff and can get some real advantage from that department.

If theory had not told you explicitly that he would not like you to use the PCE, I would say you are okay. Rules can have different interpretations. Enable the official one but not the unofficial one does make things muddy.

But here you are just twisting his logic. His logic is pretty clear to me. He said:
0. I would not like you to use the PCE.
1. this is qualification for the nationals.
2. In the nationals you cannot use any point counter.
3. For the purpose of the tournament (that is to find the best player) it is thus best not to use a point counter.

And you simply ignores this. You only read this part:
4. I won't disqualify you if you are using PCE, just as I cannot disqualify someone using pen and paper.

This part is he sympathizing you. If you are really not self-interested (I mean not necessarily only interested in winning the tournament, but also maybe winning the argument with WW) and have a common interest with the rest of us trying to find the best player for the nationals, the only reasonable thing I can see is to not use PCE (and maybe suggest to turn off the official one as well.) It seems to me keeping things fair has become your dominant interest (which is coming from the fact that your original justifying reason for using the point counter is to keep things fair). But if you are that interested in fairness to the extent that you don't care about what this tournament is about and what the tournament director says, you may as well just play paper, scissors, stone.

You have called me crazy, and repeated other people's arguments without responding to any of mine. This is apparently hard for everyone (I really don't know why) but for me THE TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR SAYING HE WON'T DQ YOU IS THE SAME AS IT BEING LEGAL.

Other people have presented rebuttals, and I have responded to them. To further the discussion, you must respond to those responses, not make the original statement more forecefully. Please? I would really appreciate it.

[eHalcyon]

This is apparently hard for everyone (I really don't know why) but for me THE TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR SAYING HE WON'T DQ YOU IS THE SAME AS IT BEING LEGAL.

Is this the crux of the issue then?  Everyone else (even those who originally sided with you) seems to agree that the first part of theory's statement, where he asks you not to use the extension, is the more important part.  So I'm not sure why you are making it sound like you are in the right and it's weird that everyone else doesn't agree with your position.

[sjelkjd]

This is apparently hard for everyone (I really don't know why) but for me THE TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR SAYING HE WON'T DQ YOU IS THE SAME AS IT BEING LEGAL.

That is what we are pointing out.  You may think that it is legal based on what he said; no one else does.  If theory meant to allow using the PCE, then why wouldn't he just say it is allowed?  He said explicitly not to use it.  You may think you are some sort of clever rules lawyer, but "don't use the point counter" means exactly that.

[Donald X.]

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?

And hey, what about writing notes on your belly in your own blood at a tournament in real life? It's your blood.

People are great believers in false things; interested parties can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_biases. Part of believing a false thing is thinking it's not false! So it's no surprise that this is going nowhere.

It's nice that Personman is so good-natured as he pats himself on the back for promoting cheating as a way to defend justice. I am ruder about these things, I don't know what to tell you. To me the important things are 1) to have it always be clear to casual readers that some people do not believe a word of Personman's nonsense, wow harsh, and 2) that people using the online program have a way to block people. And then, guys, you can just block Personman and never play him. That might keep you out of large tournaments, but well there are probably more Personmen in them anyway.

[ftl]

I honestly cannot think of any real world reason why someone would generally prefer otherwise, except that he is really good at memorizing stuff and can get some real advantage from that department.

BTW, I can answer this one; I enjoy playing without any counters. It's just one more skill to add on. I definitely worked on learning to remember what's left; it's a pretty nice feeling to be able to end the game by three-piling with a tied score and winning on turns, and knowing that that's a skill that I learned and acquired, a win possibility that I caught but my opponent didn't. It certainly wouldn't be as exciting to do that if I could just look at the point counter and see the score and be like "okay, well, I guess I end the game with a win now."

It's like playing with a simulator. If I can run a some sims at the beginning of the game and check the speed of a few available strategies, that takes some of the fun and skill out of picking a strategy. I mean, you can argue that that still leaves the skill remaining in, say, duchy-dancing, or in executing the strategy precisely - and it does, a simulator available wouldn't help that much. And of course there's lots and lots of boards where a sim doesn't help at all. But there's  some boards where it does, and there's no sense of accomplishment in that, so might as well keep that out, especially since it's not available in IRL dominion games.

So I prefer the rules as they are, with no point counters. It's not a big hurdle to jump through, it's not like it's locking people out of playing this game until they learn lots of memorization techniques, it's one more thing that you can learn to do to give you a slight advantage and feel good about when you get it to work.

[popsofctown]

If theory told me not to open Sea Hag because it would accentuate first player advantage and thus decrease the accuracy of the tournament in predicting who will do best in nationals, but said, "but if you do it, I won't disqualify you for it, even if I know you did it." then I totally agree with his sentiment.  But I'm going to open Sea Hag because I'm trying to win, even though I know I'm damaging the accuracy of the competition itself.  Because that's what a player does by definition, he takes any legal action available that increases his probability of winning.  If Sea Hag happened to somehow do little or nothing at all to my probability of winning - unlikely, for my example, but maybe if it was Young Witch with a good bane, eh - then I would indulge theory and not take the opening.  The only value in theory's statement is that that might be the case.  If Personman did not gain much benefit from the extension and was not very good at utilizing it, he might have just turned it off.  But since he actually is very good at utilizing it, he shouldn't be expected to turn it off any more than he should be expected to open copper/copper because he's trying to win.


As an example of an actual case where something could increase the accuracy of a competition in producing proper finalists, but have little impact on one's chance of winning, I offer this - In one of the Isodoms, against opponents whose relative skills I didn't know much about, I offered to ban Familiar by mutual agreement.  According to councilroom I'm sorta somewhat maybe good with the card, but the loss of advantage is very small, while the increased chance of an appropriate finalist for isodom which probably will be decided by skill more so than 2p seemed worth it to me.

Against Young Nick, who I had an 0-2 record against on councilroom, I didn't ban Familiar.  I purposely subverted the accuracy of the tournament in order to win.  As a player that's what I should be expected to do.

[Personman]

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?

And hey, what about writing notes on your belly in your own blood at a tournament in real life? It's your blood.

People are great believers in false things; interested parties can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_biases. Part of believing a false thing is thinking it's not false! So it's no surprise that this is going nowhere.

It's nice that Personman is so good-natured as he pats himself on the back for promoting cheating as a way to defend justice. I am ruder about these things, I don't know what to tell you. To me the important things are 1) to have it always be clear to casual readers that some people do not believe a word of Personman's nonsense, wow harsh, and 2) that people using the online program have a way to block people. And then, guys, you can just block Personman and never play him. That might keep you out of large tournaments, but well there are probably more Personmen in them anyway.

What you quote was not a legitimate belief that people who think note taking is illegal ought to think that using the chat box is legal. I'm just trying to generally problematize the notion that you can enforce or even define what "note taking" is - what about your own blood on your belly? If there were a lot at stake and it weren't outlawed, perhaps someone would try it! And that, I'm sure we all agree, would be horrible. This is a big part of the reason why I think note taking should be legal: it just dodges all of this reductive nonsense, and you never have to argue with anyone about whether what they are doing is note taking.

[methods of rationality]

Why would you refuse to play with someone just because they have nonstandard beliefs about language?

[timchen]

Yeah, Sorry. Was talking to Personman, so that part was probably a bit exaggerated. I do admit personally I have no interest in the memory department though. Certainly I can only speak for myself.

[methods of rationality]

Also, Donald, as long as your posting here, I was actually asking a serious rules question before which has so far not been answered. Are you allowed to verbally count points while playing?