DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-12 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 8:56 PM Kerim Aydin via agora-business <
agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:

>
> On behalf of twg, I vote Endorse G. on the below decisions.
>
> I vote as follows:
>
> On 6/6/2020 10:01 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-official wrote:
> > 8409*  Aris 3.0   College of Letters, Arts, and
> Sciences
> FOR
>
> > 8410e  Aris 2.2   Promise Powers Patch
> AGAINST.  Wait, what?  I would likely have intended no chaining of
> promises when I voted for that text).


I can see where you're coming from on this. This isn't a patch in the sense
of patching a bug, it's just something that works differently from the way
I wanted it to work when I wrote it (and a good example of why we don't
just listen to authorial intent).

The previous rule that I based this on provided a way to make a promise not
get destroyed when it gets cached (or at least I think it did). I thought
that was somewhat confusing way to handle it, and that the promise could
just make a copy of itself. Or another contract.

But then when I was in the final phase of drafting, I realized my previous
text could be used to mousetrap zombies. I didn't want that, so I slapped
an "acting on eir own behalf" restriction on it. I forgot that that would
also prevent promise chaining too.

But even worse, it prevents a contract from creating promises. This is one
of the biggest use-cases for promises. As written, the restriction stops
you from doing all sorts of things that you should be able to do.

So, I sincerely apologize if calling this a "patch" was misbranding. It's
not a certifiable one. I called it that not in an attempt to mislead people
into passing a change, but because it seemed like a patch from my
perspective.

-Aris

>


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-08 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:07 AM Aris Merchant via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 3:34 AM Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via
> agora-business  wrote:
> >
> > FOR; Aris, I think there is an error here because the Adoption index
> > is listed differently below than here.
>
> I'm inclined to think this totally broke the distribution, but someone
> can let me know if they disagree. I'm going to adopt some boilerplate
> that makes it harder for this to happen again in the future.


Just to make it (probably unnecessarily) clear, I mean the distribution of
that proposal, not the whole set of them.

-Aris

>
>


DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-08 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 3:34 AM Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via
agora-business  wrote:
>
> FOR; Aris, I think there is an error here because the Adoption index
> is listed differently below than here.

I'm inclined to think this totally broke the distribution, but someone
can let me know if they disagree. I'm going to adopt some boilerplate
that makes it harder for this to happen again in the future.

-Aris


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:12 AM Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

>
> On 6/7/2020 8:55 AM, nch via agora-discussion wrote:
> > Just conceptually switches could be replaced with variables. Most of our
> > player-base probably has a passing understanding of computer variables,
> and
> > they fairly intuitively branch out into booleans, lists, integers and
> others.
> >
>
> Ok, just IMO, we have a tendency to go too algorithmic as it is.  I have
> enough in my RL to not want to take the programming route in our language,
> and I'll twist a lot of other metaphors to keep this out [Also feel this
> way, to a small extent, about the "promulgate regulations" language - if
> you combined promulgation of regulations with coding class descriptions,
> that's so close to my RL job I'll run away pretty fast ;) ]
>
> (totally agree on Ribbons though).
>

As someone that has never done a second of coding in my life, strongly
agree (for different reasons)
-- 
>From R. Lee


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread ATMunn via agora-discussion
Aris, I for one really appreciate what you've done for Agora. I admire 
the time and effort you have put into the game over the years. I, too, 
thought you were much older than you are just due to your maturity. I've 
thought of you as a staple of the community since I joined. Serious 
congrats on graduating high school. I know it can be really tough not 
getting to have all the things you expect upon graduation (though I'm 
still in high school, several of my real-life friends graduated this 
year). Life in general is really hard right now.


I'd like to step out of Agora for a second and let you know that I care 
about your mental and emotional health. I care about you as a person. If 
you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here for you. I'm willing to be a 
counselor, coach, or just a friend. Just email me privately if you want 
to talk.


In fact, I extend what I just said above to any member of Agora. I care 
about all of you and am here for you all. I just directed this message 
to Aris because e publicly expressed eir pain and frustration. It breaks 
my heart to see someone go through something like that, and I want to do 
whatever I can to help.


On 6/7/2020 4:14 AM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 1:06 AM Aris Merchant <
thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:




On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:12 PM Aris Merchant <
thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:




On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:24 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion <

agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:


I also encourage everyone to vote against as many of Aris's proposals

as

possible (i.e, the non-essential ones) because Aris has submitted 10
proposals or something, most of which are minor cosmetic changes, in a
blatant attempt to get heaps of money.



U... That isn't true at all. The only one that's actually

cosmetic is "Referenda", which results in significant increases in brevity
and comprehensibility. I think it's a big improvement, and several others
seem to agree. The closest other ones are probably "Ministerial
Reshuffling" and "Proposal Recycling Initiative". I certainly wouldn't be
particularly upset if "Proposal Recycling Initiative" doesn't pass, it just
fixes a few problems that I noticed when fiddling with other legislative
rules. "Ministerial Reshuffling" means that chambers, which currently have
to be stretched quite a bit to cover all proposals, would cover them more
comfortably. This is also a worthwhile improvement.


In general, money had relatively little to with my thinking. While I

can't say the thought of earning money isn't something I'm looking forward
to, I think I would have submitted all of my proposals even if there were
no financial reward for doing so. Now, clearly the impending economic
change is a major reason why I'm submitting all of these proposals. But
what actually happened was that while I was fixing things with the new
economic system, I saw other problems in the proposal rules. I decided to
propose ways to fix those too while pending was still free. I also
remembered a bunch of other things I didn't like in other rules, and
proposed fixes for those as well. I knew that in the future I'd be
financially punished for improving things, and so I decided to propose
improvements now rather than later.


I put significant time into these proposals (many many hours, at least

ten and probably a fair bit more than that), and I was responsive to
feedback on them. We've decided that proposal authors deserve to be
rewarded for their time and effort in coming up with good proposals, using
a financial incentive. If we didn't want people to get money for writing
good proposals, we wouldn't have come up with a financial incentive.
Likewise, we've decided as part of our current economic system that pending
should be free, and I am relying on that arraignment while it lasts, just
as many others are, including you. If it had been proposed at the drafting
stage that some of these proposals should be merged, I would have
considered it, but you didn't propose that then. As it is, these are
proposals that are intended to make the game better. I'm not saying that
everyone is required to vote for them. We have voting procedures so people
can say whether specific changes are positive or negative.  But if you
think my proposals are good, I'd ask you not to vote against them just
because I'll be receiving compensation from my work.


As a final point, if people think that some of my proposals were split

up and should have been merged, I'm prepared to consider pledging to give
away some of the money. I wrote proposals that I considered logically
cohesive and sensible units for voting, but I do agree that if proposals
have been divided to the point where it's abusive and just gets extra
money, that's unfair and could be a reason to vote against the proposals. I
don't think I did that sort of abuse, but if the public disagrees with me
I'll give up some of the money to ensure that 

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Reuben Staley via agora-discussion

On 2020-06-07 13:02, James Cook via agora-discussion wrote:

(1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;

(2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;

(3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
name if it functions just like switches?;

(4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
term that's more intuitive?)


I definitely prefer 1 or 4.

When I first read the ruleset, the word "switch" seemed strange to me
(maybe because there are usually more than two values). So maybe a
different word would make sense.

But it's a simple and broadly-applicable concept. We can provide one
common definition of what it means to track a switch, what happens
when a switch's value is indeterminate, what it means to secure a
switch, etc. If I get around to submitting my ratification of events
proto, I'll just have to adjust the rules on ratifying switches in
reports, instead of tracking down a bunch of different switch-like
things and explaining ratification for them all individually.

- Falsifian


I guess I'm out of the ordinary here, but the metaphor of a switch as an 
interrupter seemed perfectly logical to me for boolean values, numbers, 
and states, though now that I think about it, it doesn't really make 
sense for sets.


If we are to adopt option 4 here and switch up the terminology, what 
would we change it to? Maybe another metaphor? Is there a real-world 
object that encompasses all of these categories? Switch makes sense for 
booleans but not much else; dials would be fine for integers. Are there 
any recognizable input devices that take a state? How about a set?


If we decide to forego metaphors and just call them by their purpose, 
well, switches exist to give entities attributes and protect them, 
right? So maybe "protected attributes" could fit, though I suppose that 
that name isn't exactly transparent about its purpose since "protected" 
could mean lots of things here.


I'm honestly at a loss here.

--
Trigon


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread James Cook via agora-discussion
> (1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;
>
> (2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
> treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
> karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;
>
> (3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
> than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
> name if it functions just like switches?;
>
> (4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
> term that's more intuitive?)

I definitely prefer 1 or 4.

When I first read the ruleset, the word "switch" seemed strange to me
(maybe because there are usually more than two values). So maybe a
different word would make sense.

But it's a simple and broadly-applicable concept. We can provide one
common definition of what it means to track a switch, what happens
when a switch's value is indeterminate, what it means to secure a
switch, etc. If I get around to submitting my ratification of events
proto, I'll just have to adjust the rules on ratifying switches in
reports, instead of tracking down a bunch of different switch-like
things and explaining ratification for them all individually.

- Falsifian


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 9:00 AM, Kerim Aydin wrote:> On 6/7/2020 8:45 AM, Rebecca via
agora-discussion wrote:>>> How about we just write it out? "Karma is an
integer value assigned to>> persons and Agora and tracked by the Herald in
eir weekly report, which>> self-ratifies. Karma defaults to zero."
Just one more thing on this:  this was a long time ago, but before
switches were defined we used terms more "naturally".  In particular, we
used "value" and "properties" a lot.  ("properties" in the sense of "One
of the properties of G. is that e has a karma of 4").  These terms ended
up very overloaded and confused ("value" and "property" both having lots
of common definitions and being used in multiple ways) so it was worth it
to have *some* kind of standout term of art that had some bit of meaning
but was wholly unused in the rules ("switches" at the time).

It's really tricky to get a term that has some natural meaning, but not so
natural/common that we'll be confused when it's used for its natural
meaning in other contexts...



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 11:05:54 AM CDT Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion 
wrote:
> On 6/7/2020 8:55 AM, nch via agora-discussion wrote:
> > Just conceptually switches could be replaced with variables. Most of our
> > player-base probably has a passing understanding of computer variables,
> > and
> > they fairly intuitively branch out into booleans, lists, integers and
> > others.
> Ok, just IMO, we have a tendency to go too algorithmic as it is.  I have
> enough in my RL to not want to take the programming route in our language,
> and I'll twist a lot of other metaphors to keep this out [Also feel this
> way, to a small extent, about the "promulgate regulations" language - if
> you combined promulgation of regulations with coding class descriptions,
> that's so close to my RL job I'll run away pretty fast ;) ]
> 
> (totally agree on Ribbons though).

Fair enough, and PSS makes a note-worthy point about Agoran culture. However, 
we do have to balance our culture with comprehensibility if we want to stay 
open and accessible to others.

In any case, it doesn't have to be big sweeping changes. Contracts are free to 
do it however they want, and I know I've been trying to experiment a little 
bit in how the NAX is written compared to Agoran rule norms. And we can always 
try new things out with a few less important rules (karma would actually be a 
good one to test since it's not that important if it breaks) and see what we 
think of it.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 8:55 AM, nch via agora-discussion wrote:
> Just conceptually switches could be replaced with variables. Most of our 
> player-base probably has a passing understanding of computer variables, and 
> they fairly intuitively branch out into booleans, lists, integers and others.
> 

Ok, just IMO, we have a tendency to go too algorithmic as it is.  I have
enough in my RL to not want to take the programming route in our language,
and I'll twist a lot of other metaphors to keep this out [Also feel this
way, to a small extent, about the "promulgate regulations" language - if
you combined promulgation of regulations with coding class descriptions,
that's so close to my RL job I'll run away pretty fast ;) ]

(totally agree on Ribbons though).


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 8:45 AM, Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
>> How about we just write it out? "Karma is an integer value assigned to
> persons and Agora and tracked by the Herald in eir weekly report, which
> self-ratifies. Karma defaults to zero."
> Compare to current rules text "Karma is a person switch tracked by the
> Herald in eir Weekly Report. Karma is an Integer switch. Agora also has an
> instance of the Karma switch."
> 
> the current text is almost exactly the same length
>

Need to add:

- don't need to report default values (otherwise the report would be
literally every person in existence);

- If a person's Karma would otherwise fail to have an integer
value...(paragraph)

- if an action or set of actions would cause a person's karma to become
indeterminate...(paragraph)

Then you realize that, once you've added those bits, it's useful text for
several different types of values, so you generalize it and give it a
generic name, and extend the class, and you end up with "voting strength
is karma for proposals" or some other twisted metaphor...

https://xkcd.com/927/



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 10:45:03 AM CDT Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 1:40 AM Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion <
> 
> agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> > On 6/7/2020 8:25 AM, nch wrote:
> > > On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca wrote:
> > >> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > >>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote:
> >  I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because
> >  it's
> >  intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms
> >  of
> > >>> 
> > >>> art
> > >>> 
> >  (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> > >>> 
> > >>> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive
> > 
> > to
> > 
> > >>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes
> > 
> > it's
> > 
> > >>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we
> > 
> > implemented
> > 
> > >>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping
> > 
> > switches
> > 
> > >>> always seemed pretty clear to me?
> > >>> 
> > >>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped"
> > 
> > to
> > 
> > >> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the
> > 
> > same
> > 
> > >> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an
> > >> integer
> > >> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
> > >> 
> > >> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally
> > 
> > made
> > 
> > >> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that
> > 
> > works
> > 
> > >> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which
> > >> means
> > >> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
> > >> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible
> > 
> > values
> > 
> > >> which could be flipped.
> > >> 
> > >> --
> > >> From R. Lee
> > > 
> > > I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because
> > > switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But
> > 
> > that
> > 
> > > doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at once
> > 
> > like a
> > 
> > > list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor. Things with
> > 
> > infinitely
> > 
> > > many values or values that aren't obviously opposed in some way are also
> > > really stretching the metaphor.
> > 
> > Ok, just to take the karma example.  The goal is to track an integer value
> > assigned to a person, that has certain behaviors (e.g. default values,
> > reports that are self ratifying.)
> > 
> > We can:
> > 
> > (1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;
> > 
> > (2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
> > treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
> > karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;
> > 
> > (3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
> > than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
> > name if it functions just like switches?;
> > 
> > (4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
> > term that's more intuitive?)
> > 
> > Don't know the answer...
> > 
> > -G.
> > 
> > How about we just write it out? "Karma is an integer value assigned to
> 
> persons and Agora and tracked by the Herald in eir weekly report, which
> self-ratifies. Karma defaults to zero."
> Compare to current rules text "Karma is a person switch tracked by the
> Herald in eir Weekly Report. Karma is an Integer switch. Agora also has an
> instance of the Karma switch."
> 
> the current text is almost exactly the same length
> --
> From R. Lee

I did exactly this in the NAX contract incidentally. There are no switches in 
it, and it seems fine to me.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 10:39:38 AM CDT you wrote:
> On 6/7/2020 8:25 AM, nch wrote:
> > On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
> >>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote:
>  I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
>  intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
> >>> 
> >>> art
> >>> 
>  (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> >>> 
> >>> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
> >>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes
> >>> it's
> >>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we
> >>> implemented
> >>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping
> >>> switches
> >>> always seemed pretty clear to me?
> >>> 
> >>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to
> >> 
> >> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the
> >> same
> >> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
> >> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
> >> 
> >> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally
> >> made
> >> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that
> >> works
> >> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
> >> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
> >> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible
> >> values
> >> which could be flipped.
> >> 
> >> --
> >> From R. Lee
> > 
> > I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because
> > switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But
> > that doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at
> > once like a list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor.
> > Things with infinitely many values or values that aren't obviously
> > opposed in some way are also really stretching the metaphor.
> 
> Ok, just to take the karma example.  The goal is to track an integer value
> assigned to a person, that has certain behaviors (e.g. default values,
> reports that are self ratifying.)
> 
> We can:
> 
> (1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;
> 
> (2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
> treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
> karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;
> 
> (3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
> than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
> name if it functions just like switches?;
> 
> (4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
> term that's more intuitive?)
> 
> Don't know the answer...
> 
> -G.

Karma isn't the worst offender by far, ribbons and interests are far more 
absurd. The ribbons rule adds a bunch of language to hide the switch language 
behind something more intuitive for ribbons, and even overrides a core 
mechanic of switches - defaulting when illegal or ambiguous.

Just conceptually switches could be replaced with variables. Most of our 
player-base probably has a passing understanding of computer variables, and 
they fairly intuitively branch out into booleans, lists, integers and others.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:40 AM Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
>
> On 6/7/2020 8:25 AM, nch wrote:
> > On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
> >>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote:
>  I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
>  intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
> >>>
> >>> art
> >>>
>  (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> >>>
> >>> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
> >>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
> >>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
> >>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
> >>> always seemed pretty clear to me?
> >>>
> >>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to
> >>
> >> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the same
> >> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
> >> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
> >>
> >> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally made
> >> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that works
> >> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
> >> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
> >> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible values
> >> which could be flipped.
> >>
> >> --
> >> From R. Lee
> >
> > I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because
> > switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But that
> > doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at once like 
> > a
> > list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor. Things with 
> > infinitely
> > many values or values that aren't obviously opposed in some way are also
> > really stretching the metaphor.
>
> Ok, just to take the karma example.  The goal is to track an integer value
> assigned to a person, that has certain behaviors (e.g. default values,
> reports that are self ratifying.)
>
> We can:
>
> (1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;
>
> (2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
> treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
> karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;
>
> (3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
> than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
> name if it functions just like switches?;
>
> (4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
> term that's more intuitive?)
>
> Don't know the answer...
>
> -G.
>

To my mind, 2 seems like the worst option; 1 seems like the best and 3
and 4 are in between. 1 represents our history and has a lot of
context; if we were to change the name, it would make looking for
historical precedents more complicated, therefore I think we should
only take approach 4 if people find it significantly confusing.
Approach 3 seems like a potential compromise solution, where we could
just define a dial as being a synonym for certain sorts of switches;
over time, we can migrate all of those switches to use that language,
then switch the definition so that dials are a subset of switches.


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 1:40 AM Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

>
> On 6/7/2020 8:25 AM, nch wrote:
> > On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
> >>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote:
>  I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
>  intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
> >>>
> >>> art
> >>>
>  (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> >>>
> >>> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive
> to
> >>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes
> it's
> >>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we
> implemented
> >>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping
> switches
> >>> always seemed pretty clear to me?
> >>>
> >>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped"
> to
> >>
> >> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the
> same
> >> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
> >> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
> >>
> >> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally
> made
> >> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that
> works
> >> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
> >> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
> >> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible
> values
> >> which could be flipped.
> >>
> >> --
> >> From R. Lee
> >
> > I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because
> > switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But
> that
> > doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at once
> like a
> > list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor. Things with
> infinitely
> > many values or values that aren't obviously opposed in some way are also
> > really stretching the metaphor.
>
> Ok, just to take the karma example.  The goal is to track an integer value
> assigned to a person, that has certain behaviors (e.g. default values,
> reports that are self ratifying.)
>
> We can:
>
> (1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;
>
> (2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
> treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
> karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;
>
> (3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
> than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
> name if it functions just like switches?;
>
> (4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
> term that's more intuitive?)
>
> Don't know the answer...
>
> -G.
>
> How about we just write it out? "Karma is an integer value assigned to
persons and Agora and tracked by the Herald in eir weekly report, which
self-ratifies. Karma defaults to zero."
Compare to current rules text "Karma is a person switch tracked by the
Herald in eir Weekly Report. Karma is an Integer switch. Agora also has an
instance of the Karma switch."

the current text is almost exactly the same length
-- 
>From R. Lee


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 8:25 AM, nch wrote:
> On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
>>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote:
 I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
 intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
>>>
>>> art
>>>
 (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
>>>
>>> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
>>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
>>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
>>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
>>> always seemed pretty clear to me?
>>>
>>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to
>>
>> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the same
>> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
>> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
>>
>> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally made
>> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that works
>> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
>> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
>> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible values
>> which could be flipped.
>>
>> --
>> From R. Lee
> 
> I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because 
> switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But that 
> doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at once like a 
> list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor. Things with 
> infinitely 
> many values or values that aren't obviously opposed in some way are also 
> really stretching the metaphor.

Ok, just to take the karma example.  The goal is to track an integer value
assigned to a person, that has certain behaviors (e.g. default values,
reports that are self ratifying.)

We can:

(1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor;

(2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to
treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative
karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO;

(3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values
than a switch.  A dial can go to 11.)  Is it worth the verbiage of a new
name if it functions just like switches?;

(4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a
term that's more intuitive?)

Don't know the answer...

-G.



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:37 AM nch via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> On Sunday, June 7, 2020 10:24:20 AM CDT Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion
> wrote:
> > On 6/7/2020 8:05 AM, Jason Cobb via agora-discussion wrote:
> > > On 6/7/20 10:29 AM, Alex Smith via agora-discussion wrote:
> > >> One partial fix that can be implemented right now, without any ruleset
> > >> changes, would be a change in the standard method for AGAINST votes
> > >> aimed at denying side effects (without disagreeing with the proposal):
> > >> make them conditional votes that resolve to AGAINST by default, but FOR
> > >> if an AGAINST vote would cause the proposal to fail. This makes the
> > >> intent behind the vote clear, and looks less like a judgement on the
> > >> proposal or proposer (and also removes the risk of the proposal
> > >> accidentally failing despite everyone wanting it to pass, Prisoner's
> > >> Dilemma-style).>
> > > While you make a convincing case that there is a problem, please don't
> > > do this as a solution. If this becomes standard, every single assessment
> > > would be made so much harder.
> > >
> > > - The Assessor
> >
> > I think the way we dealt with this in the past was at the proposal level
> > not the vote level.  When Pending fees are a thing, make it so an author
> > can create a proposal with a new type of proposal switch set, that means
> > "this proposal is cheaper to pend, but the author gets no rewards from it".
> >
> > -G.
>
> Actually, if Aris' Certifiable Patches couldn't earn coins or win the Popular
> Proposal Pending Card, I'd be a lot more in favor of them.
>
> --
> nch
>
>
>

That change would make sense to me, but I don't think it's a reason to
vote AGAINST it.


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 10:24:20 AM CDT Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion 
wrote:
> On 6/7/2020 8:05 AM, Jason Cobb via agora-discussion wrote:
> > On 6/7/20 10:29 AM, Alex Smith via agora-discussion wrote:
> >> One partial fix that can be implemented right now, without any ruleset
> >> changes, would be a change in the standard method for AGAINST votes
> >> aimed at denying side effects (without disagreeing with the proposal):
> >> make them conditional votes that resolve to AGAINST by default, but FOR
> >> if an AGAINST vote would cause the proposal to fail. This makes the
> >> intent behind the vote clear, and looks less like a judgement on the
> >> proposal or proposer (and also removes the risk of the proposal
> >> accidentally failing despite everyone wanting it to pass, Prisoner's
> >> Dilemma-style).> 
> > While you make a convincing case that there is a problem, please don't
> > do this as a solution. If this becomes standard, every single assessment
> > would be made so much harder.
> > 
> > - The Assessor
> 
> I think the way we dealt with this in the past was at the proposal level
> not the vote level.  When Pending fees are a thing, make it so an author
> can create a proposal with a new type of proposal switch set, that means
> "this proposal is cheaper to pend, but the author gets no rewards from it".
> 
> -G.

Actually, if Aris' Certifiable Patches couldn't earn coins or win the Popular 
Proposal Pending Card, I'd be a lot more in favor of them.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 8:05 AM, Jason Cobb via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 6/7/20 10:29 AM, Alex Smith via agora-discussion wrote:
>> One partial fix that can be implemented right now, without any ruleset 
>> changes, would be a change in the standard method for AGAINST votes aimed at 
>> denying side effects (without disagreeing with the proposal): make them 
>> conditional votes that resolve to AGAINST by default, but FOR if an AGAINST 
>> vote would cause the proposal to fail. This makes the intent behind the vote 
>> clear, and looks less like a judgement on the proposal or proposer (and also 
>> removes the risk of the proposal accidentally failing despite everyone 
>> wanting it to pass, Prisoner's Dilemma-style).
> 
> 
> While you make a convincing case that there is a problem, please don't
> do this as a solution. If this becomes standard, every single assessment
> would be made so much harder.
> 
> - The Assessor
> 

I think the way we dealt with this in the past was at the proposal level
not the vote level.  When Pending fees are a thing, make it so an author
can create a proposal with a new type of proposal switch set, that means
"this proposal is cheaper to pend, but the author gets no rewards from it".

-G.



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion <
> 
> agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> > On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> > > I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
> > > intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
> > 
> > art
> > 
> > > (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> > 
> > Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
> > me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
> > odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
> > "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
> > always seemed pretty clear to me?
> > 
> > Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to
> 
> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the same
> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
> 
> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally made
> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that works
> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible values
> which could be flipped.
> 
> --
> From R. Lee

I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because 
switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But that 
doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at once like a 
list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor. Things with 
infinitely 
many values or values that aren't obviously opposed in some way are also 
really stretching the metaphor.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 1:22 AM nch via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> On Sunday, June 7, 2020 8:43:33 AM CDT Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion
> wrote:
> > On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> > > I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
> > > intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
> art
> > > (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> >
> > Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
> > me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes
> it's
> > odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
> > "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping
> switches
> > always seemed pretty clear to me?
>
> I do think the older members have a harder time telling what is and isn't
> intuitive. Once you've internalized it, or if you were there to hear the
> original arguments for it, it's difficult to think "what would this read
> like in
> a vacuum". So we should probably take note of things that multiple new
> players
> find confusing.
>
> --
> nch
>
>
>
>
Very much agreed, but don't lump me in with the totally new! I have been
here since 2017.
-- 
>From R. Lee


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 8:43:33 AM CDT Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> > I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
> > intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of art
> > (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
> 
> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
> always seemed pretty clear to me?

I do think the older members have a harder time telling what is and isn't 
intuitive. Once you've internalized it, or if you were there to hear the 
original arguments for it, it's difficult to think "what would this read like 
in 
a vacuum". So we should probably take note of things that multiple new players 
find confusing.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread nch via agora-discussion
On Sunday, June 7, 2020 2:08:44 AM CDT Reuben Staley via agora-discussion 
wrote:
> On 2020-06-07 00:20, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:43 PM Reuben Staley via agora-business
> > 
> >  wrote:
> >>> 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> >> 
> >> AGAINST; inventing Unnecessary Terms of Art for Things that don't
> >> Require them decreases the Readability of the Ruleset.
> > 
> > I question whether writing out the extremely long-phrase "the Agoran
> > Decision on whether to adopt a proposal" is really any more readable?
> 
> For me, "Referendum" is just another term I have to commit to memory.
> I'm going to have to remember "Agoran Decision" anyway. But if I'm
> reading along and I see the term "Referendum", I'm going to have to do a
> search in the ruleset to see what that means, then somehow find my place
> again to be able to continue reading.
> 
> If I am a new player reading some rules and I come across the term
> "statute", then I'm going to have to figure out what that means. I read
> up on that, see that a statute is a subtype of "instrument". Then I have
> to read up on instruments to see that an instrument is a type of
> "document". So I will have to read up on that, too. I might even get
> sidetracked on any of those steps reading through rules about each of
> these terms' special attributes just to figure out how one thing works.
> 
> Recursive subtyping that spans the entire ruleset, especially when the
> supertype is more explicit in its purpose, just leads to frustration.
> For some it might work. For me, it's usually confusing and it causes me
> to become apathetic about actually learning the rules.
> 
> --
> Trigon

There's always a balance between using specialized language and using plain 
language, and it's not always easy for us to see when we've swung too far one 
way. Plain language prevents the problems you mentioned, but it introduces 
more room for error. If there's a phrase or concept used frequently, 
introducing a keyword for it means there's a single definition for it across 
the rules. If there's no keyword it's easy for several slightly different 
concepts and systems to be introduced across the rules and cause mechanical 
confusion.

When I evaluate new terms of art, I always judge them on "intuitiveness", but 
I recognize that's a English-native and perhaps even cultural standard. 
Personally the way that "statute" and "referendum" are defined match with what 
I would expect them to mean if I wasn't given a definition, but that may not be 
the case for everyone.

-- 
nch





Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 7:29 AM, Alex Smith via agora-discussion wrote:
> In terms of ruleset changes to fix the problem, moving towards more 
> subjective proposal rewards would help, rather than having them as something 
> automatic; perhaps Agora should have a purse for proposal rewards, and some 
> fair (or interestingly unfair) way of distributing it based on people's 
> impressions of how helpful the proposals were / how much they would have 
> wanted to encourage proposals like that being made, before they were made. A 
> fix that has frequently been attempted at BlogNomic (although with only 
> partial success; it ended up becoming gamified in its own rights) has been a 
> "FOR but deny the rewards" vote, used in cases where the voters thought the 
> proposal was an improvement, but that a greater amount of effort should be 
> required to gain the proposal rewards from it.

Just like our discussion on whether it's "ok" to take on blots to gain an
advantage, it's very unclear to me whether we're "allowed" to game voting
right now.  If I say to myself "that proposal is passing, I've looked at
the votes, but for game reason I want to limit the number of coins the
author gets" I still feel bad (and anger people) when casting such a vote.

The original Suber nomic contains explicit Prisoner's Dilemma voting:
("If and when rule-changes can be adopted without unanimity, the players
who vote against winning proposals shall receive 10 points each.") and
we've played with explicit PD voting dynamics many times.  So I do think
like that, sometimes.  But we were more explicit about it in the Rules
those other times.  So like blots, it's a gray area in terms of social
acceptability that definitely leads to bad feelings and misunderstanding.

The compounding factor is that automatic proposal rewards are out of wack
right now compared to everything else.  When a single short AI-3
noncontroversial bugfix that get a unanimous vote earns more than a month
of even the hardest-working officer's salary/rewards, it's out of
proportion enough that it encourages tension - and it's the only way to
really earn right now, so people who are less proposal-keen are left out.
(Given that there's a big economic change upcoming, I was kind of waiting
to see where that landed before suggesting fixes).


> As a side note, one of the reasons I quit playing BlogNomic for several
years is that the players there had correctly surmised that most of my
proposals were self-interested in some way, and started voting them down
just in case, even if they couldn't see the loophole; this is despite the
fact that for most of those proposals, I didn't care much about whether
they passed or failed for scamming purposes, just about side effects of
the proposal itself existing.

Well, in an iterative game, reputation *is* a currency and *does* matter.
I remember I was scrutinizing your proposals pretty closely over here for
a while, too. :)

-G.



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:53 PM Tyler M via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> >
> > I vote as follows:
> >
>
>  > ID Author(s)AITitle
> >
> ---
> > 8409*  Aris 3.0   College of Letters, Arts, and
> Sciences
> FOR
> > 8410e  Aris 2.2   Promise Powers Patch
> PRESENT
> > 8411p  R. Lee   1.0   Contract Lawyers
> PRESENT
> > 8412j  R. Lee   1.7   Small Pledge Amendments
> PRESENT
> > 8413l  Aris 1.0   Why Track Pendency?
> PRESENT
> > 8414l  Aris 2.0   Ministerial Reshuffling
> PRESENT
> > 8415*  Aris 3.0   Proposal Recycling Initiative
> PRESENT
> > 8416*  Falsifian, G., P.S.S.3.1   Identity theft protection act v1.1
> FOR
> > 8417l  Aris, G. 1.0   PP [1]
> PRESENT
> > 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> PRESENT
> > 8419f  Aris 2.0   Executive Expansion
> PRESENT
> > 8420f  G.   2.0   Checks and balances
> PRESENT
> > 8421e  nch, Trigon  1.0   Transmutation
>   PRESENT
> > 8422*  P.S.S., [2]  3.0   No More Numbers!
> FOR
> > 8423f  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Removing Repetition
> PRESENT
> > 8424l  Aris, nch, P.S.S.1.0   Certifiable Patches
> PRESENT
> > 8425j  Aris 2.0   Impossibility Defense
> PRESENT
> > 8426j  Aris 2.0   Impracticability Defense
> PRESENT
> > 8427j  R. Lee   2.0   Slap on the wrist
> PRESENT
> > 8428*  Aris 3.0   Pending Pends
> PRESENT
> > 8429j  Aris 1.7   Why Limit Clemency?
> PRESENT
> > 8430p  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Silver Quill 2016
> PRESENT
>
Tyler: this is a specific and odd rule but you have to send to the business
forum for votes and other actions to count

-- 
>From R. Lee


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Jason Cobb via agora-discussion
On 6/7/20 10:29 AM, Alex Smith via agora-discussion wrote:
> One partial fix that can be implemented right now, without any ruleset 
> changes, would be a change in the standard method for AGAINST votes aimed at 
> denying side effects (without disagreeing with the proposal): make them 
> conditional votes that resolve to AGAINST by default, but FOR if an AGAINST 
> vote would cause the proposal to fail. This makes the intent behind the vote 
> clear, and looks less like a judgement on the proposal or proposer (and also 
> removes the risk of the proposal accidentally failing despite everyone 
> wanting it to pass, Prisoner's Dilemma-style).


While you make a convincing case that there is a problem, please don't
do this as a solution. If this becomes standard, every single assessment
would be made so much harder.

- The Assessor



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 7:03 AM, Rebecca wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote:
>>> I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
>>> intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
>> art
>>> (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
>>
>> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
>> always seemed pretty clear to me?
>>
>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to
> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the same
> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.
> 
> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally made
> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that works
> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible values
> which could be flipped.

Using computer programming terms, it's useful to have a base class such
that instances of that class (1) can take on a specified range of values
and no others; (2) have sensible default behavior and/or error-trapping
built in; (3) have a set of methods useful to everything in that class
(e.g. "is self-ratifying").  Is there a better word/set of metaphors to
use for that?

The ancient version used "properties" e.g. "one of the properties of G. is
that eir karma is 3" but that was pretty darn ugly.

I agree, however you slice it, many of the use-case extensions do end up
being unintuitive (the way the Ribbon switch is structured stands out for
me as not what you'd expect).  Regardless of the metaphor used, it's
always challenging to figure out when to extend the base class versus
creating an entirely new class (along with all the rules language overhead
that requires).

-G.



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Alex Smith via agora-discussion
 On Sunday, 7 June 2020, 09:07:13 GMT+1, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion 
 wrote:
> I don't expect everyone to vote for my proposals just because my personal
> life is a mess right now. However, I would appreciate not being accused of
> coming up with cosmetic proposals just to get rich. I realize that you
> couldn't have known all of this, and for all that matter I realize that you
> probably said what you said at least half as a joke or part of gameplay,
> but assuming you know what someone else's motivations are is a dangerous
> thing to get into (I do it too, it's very human). This is, as I said, an
> overreaction, and it's in large part due to stuff that isn't really your
> fault. That being said, I nearly cried, and I don't think I've ever been so
> close to filing a Cantus Cygneus. I would really appreciate an apology.

This has empirically got to be one of the largest problems with Agora at the 
moment, given that it's already caused one deregistration and has been very 
close to causing another. (Specifically, players making proposals for personal 
reasons, expecting to improve Agora, and other people assuming that the 
proposal has been made for its side effects rather than for the proposal itself 
and voting AGAINST / persuading others to vote AGAINST.) It isn't an obvious 
problem, or the sort of thing that you'd expect when looking at the rules, and 
I guess it isn't even a ruleset bug but a bug in the society, but it's 
demonstrably caused more damage to Agora than anything else in the past few 
years.

I think one problem is a sort of perverse incentive: we want people to make 
proposals to improve Agora, so we give benefits for doing so, which in turn 
makes people less inclined to vote proposals through because they think the 
disbenefit they get (relative to other players) from the proposal rewards will 
be larger than the benefit they get from Agora improving. So the more we try to 
encourage something, the more we can end up accidentally discouraging that 
thing, or of suspecting people's motives when they try to make that thing 
happen.

One partial fix that can be implemented right now, without any ruleset changes, 
would be a change in the standard method for AGAINST votes aimed at denying 
side effects (without disagreeing with the proposal): make them conditional 
votes that resolve to AGAINST by default, but FOR if an AGAINST vote would 
cause the proposal to fail. This makes the intent behind the vote clear, and 
looks less like a judgement on the proposal or proposer (and also removes the 
risk of the proposal accidentally failing despite everyone wanting it to pass, 
Prisoner's Dilemma-style).

In terms of ruleset changes to fix the problem, moving towards more subjective 
proposal rewards would help, rather than having them as something automatic; 
perhaps Agora should have a purse for proposal rewards, and some fair (or 
interestingly unfair) way of distributing it based on people's impressions of 
how helpful the proposals were / how much they would have wanted to encourage 
proposals like that being made, before they were made. A fix that has 
frequently been attempted at BlogNomic (although with only partial success; it 
ended up becoming gamified in its own rights) has been a "FOR but deny the 
rewards" vote, used in cases where the voters thought the proposal was an 
improvement, but that a greater amount of effort should be required to gain the 
proposal rewards from it.

(As a side note, one of the reasons I quit playing BlogNomic for several years 
is that the players there had correctly surmised that most of my proposals were 
self-interested in some way, and started voting them down just in case, even if 
they couldn't see the loophole; this is despite the fact that for most of those 
proposals, I didn't care much about whether they passed or failed for scamming 
purposes, just about side effects of the proposal itself existing. In most 
cases, the proposal was genuinely intended to improve BlogNomic; the side 
effects of submitting were self-interested, but the effect of the proposal if 
it passed wasn't, yet I nonetheless wanted it to pass to improve the nomic. 
After many such improvement attempts failed, I got fed up and quit. So this 
issue does not seem to be unique to Agora; I don't think it's inherent in 
nomic, but it may be inherent in any nomic where it's standard to be able to 
use the proposal process as part of gameplay.)

Anyway, there are probably much better fixes than the ones I've suggested 
above, so feel free to come up with your own fixes; but fixing the problem 
itself seems vitally important given what the consequences seem to be.

-- 
ais523  


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

>
> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> > I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
> > intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of
> art
> > (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
>
> Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
> always seemed pretty clear to me?
>
> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to
any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the same
ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer
number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason.

The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally made
up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that works
similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means
that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch
would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible values
which could be flipped.

-- 
>From R. Lee


DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Tyler M via agora-discussion
>
> I vote as follows:
>

 > ID Author(s)AITitle
>
---
> 8409*  Aris 3.0   College of Letters, Arts, and
Sciences
FOR
> 8410e  Aris 2.2   Promise Powers Patch
PRESENT
> 8411p  R. Lee   1.0   Contract Lawyers
PRESENT
> 8412j  R. Lee   1.7   Small Pledge Amendments
PRESENT
> 8413l  Aris 1.0   Why Track Pendency?
PRESENT
> 8414l  Aris 2.0   Ministerial Reshuffling
PRESENT
> 8415*  Aris 3.0   Proposal Recycling Initiative
PRESENT
> 8416*  Falsifian, G., P.S.S.3.1   Identity theft protection act v1.1
FOR
> 8417l  Aris, G. 1.0   PP [1]
PRESENT
> 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
PRESENT
> 8419f  Aris 2.0   Executive Expansion
PRESENT
> 8420f  G.   2.0   Checks and balances
PRESENT
> 8421e  nch, Trigon  1.0   Transmutation
  PRESENT
> 8422*  P.S.S., [2]  3.0   No More Numbers!
FOR
> 8423f  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Removing Repetition
PRESENT
> 8424l  Aris, nch, P.S.S.1.0   Certifiable Patches
PRESENT
> 8425j  Aris 2.0   Impossibility Defense
PRESENT
> 8426j  Aris 2.0   Impracticability Defense
PRESENT
> 8427j  R. Lee   2.0   Slap on the wrist
PRESENT
> 8428*  Aris 3.0   Pending Pends
PRESENT
> 8429j  Aris 1.7   Why Limit Clemency?
PRESENT
> 8430p  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Silver Quill 2016
PRESENT


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca via agora-discussion wrote:
> I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
> intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of art
> (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.

Huh, interesting.  The switch language always seemed really intuitive to
me (and was a great improvement on what was there before).  Sometimes it's
odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we implemented
"currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping switches
always seemed pretty clear to me?



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Jason Cobb via agora-discussion
On 6/7/20 9:04 AM, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> Seriously, thanks for the things you do here.  The bombardment of
> proposals has been a bit overwhelming this week but I didn't think
> anything bad of it at any point.  Just a lot of enthusiasm to get ideas
> out before it becomes more difficult to do so.  If anything, the
> transition between systems (with people rushing to get things done or
> position themselves before the big changeover) can be as fun/interesting
> as any of the systems themselves.  In a week or so we'll probably be
> staring at the ruleset with a voting hangover thinking "what the heck did
> we just do."  All good.


*realizes that I'm going to have to apply all of those changes to the
ruleset*

In all seriousness: Aris, it's been wonderful to play this game with
you, and it would be a terrible thing to lose you. Congrats on graduating?

-- 
Jason Cobb



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion


On 6/7/2020 1:06 AM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> As a final point, if people think that some of my proposals were split up
> and should have been merged, I'm prepared to consider pledging to give away
> some of the money. I wrote proposals that I considered logically cohesive
> and sensible units for voting, but I do agree that if proposals have been
> divided to the point where it's abusive and just gets extra money, that's
> unfair and could be a reason to vote against the proposals. 

Well for one I appreciate it, because when I looked at the proposal
distribution I thought, "hey, maybe it's lime ribbon for me!"  :)

Seriously, thanks for the things you do here.  The bombardment of
proposals has been a bit overwhelming this week but I didn't think
anything bad of it at any point.  Just a lot of enthusiasm to get ideas
out before it becomes more difficult to do so.  If anything, the
transition between systems (with people rushing to get things done or
position themselves before the big changeover) can be as fun/interesting
as any of the systems themselves.  In a week or so we'll probably be
staring at the ruleset with a voting hangover thinking "what the heck did
we just do."  All good.

Congratulations on graduation!  And take care.

-G.



Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 6:15 PM Aris Merchant via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 1:06 AM Aris Merchant <
> thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:12 PM Aris Merchant <
> > thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:24 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion <
> > agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I also encourage everyone to vote against as many of Aris's proposals
> > as
> > > > possible (i.e, the non-essential ones) because Aris has submitted 10
> > > > proposals or something, most of which are minor cosmetic changes, in
> a
> > > > blatant attempt to get heaps of money.
> > > >
> > >
> > > U... That isn't true at all. The only one that's actually
> > cosmetic is "Referenda", which results in significant increases in
> brevity
> > and comprehensibility. I think it's a big improvement, and several others
> > seem to agree. The closest other ones are probably "Ministerial
> > Reshuffling" and "Proposal Recycling Initiative". I certainly wouldn't be
> > particularly upset if "Proposal Recycling Initiative" doesn't pass, it
> just
> > fixes a few problems that I noticed when fiddling with other legislative
> > rules. "Ministerial Reshuffling" means that chambers, which currently
> have
> > to be stretched quite a bit to cover all proposals, would cover them more
> > comfortably. This is also a worthwhile improvement.
> > >
> > > In general, money had relatively little to with my thinking. While I
> > can't say the thought of earning money isn't something I'm looking
> forward
> > to, I think I would have submitted all of my proposals even if there were
> > no financial reward for doing so. Now, clearly the impending economic
> > change is a major reason why I'm submitting all of these proposals. But
> > what actually happened was that while I was fixing things with the new
> > economic system, I saw other problems in the proposal rules. I decided to
> > propose ways to fix those too while pending was still free. I also
> > remembered a bunch of other things I didn't like in other rules, and
> > proposed fixes for those as well. I knew that in the future I'd be
> > financially punished for improving things, and so I decided to propose
> > improvements now rather than later.
> > >
> > > I put significant time into these proposals (many many hours, at least
> > ten and probably a fair bit more than that), and I was responsive to
> > feedback on them. We've decided that proposal authors deserve to be
> > rewarded for their time and effort in coming up with good proposals,
> using
> > a financial incentive. If we didn't want people to get money for writing
> > good proposals, we wouldn't have come up with a financial incentive.
> > Likewise, we've decided as part of our current economic system that
> pending
> > should be free, and I am relying on that arraignment while it lasts, just
> > as many others are, including you. If it had been proposed at the
> drafting
> > stage that some of these proposals should be merged, I would have
> > considered it, but you didn't propose that then. As it is, these are
> > proposals that are intended to make the game better. I'm not saying that
> > everyone is required to vote for them. We have voting procedures so
> people
> > can say whether specific changes are positive or negative.  But if you
> > think my proposals are good, I'd ask you not to vote against them just
> > because I'll be receiving compensation from my work.
> > >
> > > As a final point, if people think that some of my proposals were split
> > up and should have been merged, I'm prepared to consider pledging to give
> > away some of the money. I wrote proposals that I considered logically
> > cohesive and sensible units for voting, but I do agree that if proposals
> > have been divided to the point where it's abusive and just gets extra
> > money, that's unfair and could be a reason to vote against the
> proposals. I
> > don't think I did that sort of abuse, but if the public disagrees with me
> > I'll give up some of the money to ensure that changes that I think are
> good
> > get considered on their merits. What I won't do is categorically agree to
> > give away compensation for the effort I put into writing proposals. I
> hope
> > people won't take my unwillingness to do that as a reason to vote down
> > proposals they otherwise approve of.
> >
> > Okay, I feel like I need to respond to this on a level that's more
> > personal and not just logical argumentation and justification. I realize
> > it's not your fault and I realize you couldn't have known any of this,
> but
> > I'm having a *really* strong emotional reaction right now, and I feel
> like
> > I need to explain why.
> >
> > I "graduated" from high school this week. It was... a hell of a time to
> > graduate. There was no real ceremony, just a social distanced filming of
> me
> > 

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 1:06 AM Aris Merchant <
thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:12 PM Aris Merchant <
> thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:24 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion <
> agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > I also encourage everyone to vote against as many of Aris's proposals
> as
> > > possible (i.e, the non-essential ones) because Aris has submitted 10
> > > proposals or something, most of which are minor cosmetic changes, in a
> > > blatant attempt to get heaps of money.
> > >
> >
> > U... That isn't true at all. The only one that's actually
> cosmetic is "Referenda", which results in significant increases in brevity
> and comprehensibility. I think it's a big improvement, and several others
> seem to agree. The closest other ones are probably "Ministerial
> Reshuffling" and "Proposal Recycling Initiative". I certainly wouldn't be
> particularly upset if "Proposal Recycling Initiative" doesn't pass, it just
> fixes a few problems that I noticed when fiddling with other legislative
> rules. "Ministerial Reshuffling" means that chambers, which currently have
> to be stretched quite a bit to cover all proposals, would cover them more
> comfortably. This is also a worthwhile improvement.
> >
> > In general, money had relatively little to with my thinking. While I
> can't say the thought of earning money isn't something I'm looking forward
> to, I think I would have submitted all of my proposals even if there were
> no financial reward for doing so. Now, clearly the impending economic
> change is a major reason why I'm submitting all of these proposals. But
> what actually happened was that while I was fixing things with the new
> economic system, I saw other problems in the proposal rules. I decided to
> propose ways to fix those too while pending was still free. I also
> remembered a bunch of other things I didn't like in other rules, and
> proposed fixes for those as well. I knew that in the future I'd be
> financially punished for improving things, and so I decided to propose
> improvements now rather than later.
> >
> > I put significant time into these proposals (many many hours, at least
> ten and probably a fair bit more than that), and I was responsive to
> feedback on them. We've decided that proposal authors deserve to be
> rewarded for their time and effort in coming up with good proposals, using
> a financial incentive. If we didn't want people to get money for writing
> good proposals, we wouldn't have come up with a financial incentive.
> Likewise, we've decided as part of our current economic system that pending
> should be free, and I am relying on that arraignment while it lasts, just
> as many others are, including you. If it had been proposed at the drafting
> stage that some of these proposals should be merged, I would have
> considered it, but you didn't propose that then. As it is, these are
> proposals that are intended to make the game better. I'm not saying that
> everyone is required to vote for them. We have voting procedures so people
> can say whether specific changes are positive or negative.  But if you
> think my proposals are good, I'd ask you not to vote against them just
> because I'll be receiving compensation from my work.
> >
> > As a final point, if people think that some of my proposals were split
> up and should have been merged, I'm prepared to consider pledging to give
> away some of the money. I wrote proposals that I considered logically
> cohesive and sensible units for voting, but I do agree that if proposals
> have been divided to the point where it's abusive and just gets extra
> money, that's unfair and could be a reason to vote against the proposals. I
> don't think I did that sort of abuse, but if the public disagrees with me
> I'll give up some of the money to ensure that changes that I think are good
> get considered on their merits. What I won't do is categorically agree to
> give away compensation for the effort I put into writing proposals. I hope
> people won't take my unwillingness to do that as a reason to vote down
> proposals they otherwise approve of.
>
> Okay, I feel like I need to respond to this on a level that's more
> personal and not just logical argumentation and justification. I realize
> it's not your fault and I realize you couldn't have known any of this, but
> I'm having a *really* strong emotional reaction right now, and I feel like
> I need to explain why.
>
> I "graduated" from high school this week. It was... a hell of a time to
> graduate. There was no real ceremony, just a social distanced filming of me
> receiving a diploma case that didn't even contain a diploma. I didn't get
> to go through any of the normal parts of graduating. Some of it I'll get to
> do later. Some of it, like seeing all my friends at school again, I'll
> simply never get to experience. I know life sucks for everyone right now,
> 

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:12 PM Aris Merchant <
thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:24 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> >
> > I also encourage everyone to vote against as many of Aris's proposals as
> > possible (i.e, the non-essential ones) because Aris has submitted 10
> > proposals or something, most of which are minor cosmetic changes, in a
> > blatant attempt to get heaps of money.
> >
>
> U... That isn't true at all. The only one that's actually
cosmetic is "Referenda", which results in significant increases in brevity
and comprehensibility. I think it's a big improvement, and several others
seem to agree. The closest other ones are probably "Ministerial
Reshuffling" and "Proposal Recycling Initiative". I certainly wouldn't be
particularly upset if "Proposal Recycling Initiative" doesn't pass, it just
fixes a few problems that I noticed when fiddling with other legislative
rules. "Ministerial Reshuffling" means that chambers, which currently have
to be stretched quite a bit to cover all proposals, would cover them more
comfortably. This is also a worthwhile improvement.
>
> In general, money had relatively little to with my thinking. While I
can't say the thought of earning money isn't something I'm looking forward
to, I think I would have submitted all of my proposals even if there were
no financial reward for doing so. Now, clearly the impending economic
change is a major reason why I'm submitting all of these proposals. But
what actually happened was that while I was fixing things with the new
economic system, I saw other problems in the proposal rules. I decided to
propose ways to fix those too while pending was still free. I also
remembered a bunch of other things I didn't like in other rules, and
proposed fixes for those as well. I knew that in the future I'd be
financially punished for improving things, and so I decided to propose
improvements now rather than later.
>
> I put significant time into these proposals (many many hours, at least
ten and probably a fair bit more than that), and I was responsive to
feedback on them. We've decided that proposal authors deserve to be
rewarded for their time and effort in coming up with good proposals, using
a financial incentive. If we didn't want people to get money for writing
good proposals, we wouldn't have come up with a financial incentive.
Likewise, we've decided as part of our current economic system that pending
should be free, and I am relying on that arraignment while it lasts, just
as many others are, including you. If it had been proposed at the drafting
stage that some of these proposals should be merged, I would have
considered it, but you didn't propose that then. As it is, these are
proposals that are intended to make the game better. I'm not saying that
everyone is required to vote for them. We have voting procedures so people
can say whether specific changes are positive or negative.  But if you
think my proposals are good, I'd ask you not to vote against them just
because I'll be receiving compensation from my work.
>
> As a final point, if people think that some of my proposals were split up
and should have been merged, I'm prepared to consider pledging to give away
some of the money. I wrote proposals that I considered logically cohesive
and sensible units for voting, but I do agree that if proposals have been
divided to the point where it's abusive and just gets extra money, that's
unfair and could be a reason to vote against the proposals. I don't think I
did that sort of abuse, but if the public disagrees with me I'll give up
some of the money to ensure that changes that I think are good get
considered on their merits. What I won't do is categorically agree to give
away compensation for the effort I put into writing proposals. I hope
people won't take my unwillingness to do that as a reason to vote down
proposals they otherwise approve of.

Okay, I feel like I need to respond to this on a level that's more personal
and not just logical argumentation and justification. I realize it's not
your fault and I realize you couldn't have known any of this, but I'm
having a *really* strong emotional reaction right now, and I feel like I
need to explain why.

I "graduated" from high school this week. It was... a hell of a time to
graduate. There was no real ceremony, just a social distanced filming of me
receiving a diploma case that didn't even contain a diploma. I didn't get
to go through any of the normal parts of graduating. Some of it I'll get to
do later. Some of it, like seeing all my friends at school again, I'll
simply never get to experience. I know life sucks for everyone right now,
but even so, things are... not great for me at the moment.

Everything I said in my previous message was true. Those were all reasons I
did what I did. But more than that, I needed an escape from real life,
because real life just kind of sucks right now. So 

Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 5:16 PM Aris Merchant via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 12:09 AM Reuben Staley via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
> >
> > On 2020-06-07 00:20, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> > > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:43 PM Reuben Staley via agora-business
> > >  wrote:
> > >
> > >>> 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> > >> AGAINST; inventing Unnecessary Terms of Art for Things that don't
> > >> Require them decreases the Readability of the Ruleset.
> > >
> > > I question whether writing out the extremely long-phrase "the Agoran
> > > Decision on whether to adopt a proposal" is really any more readable?
> >
> > For me, "Referendum" is just another term I have to commit to memory.
> > I'm going to have to remember "Agoran Decision" anyway. But if I'm
> > reading along and I see the term "Referendum", I'm going to have to do a
> > search in the ruleset to see what that means, then somehow find my place
> > again to be able to continue reading.
> >
> > If I am a new player reading some rules and I come across the term
> > "statute", then I'm going to have to figure out what that means. I read
> > up on that, see that a statute is a subtype of "instrument". Then I have
> > to read up on instruments to see that an instrument is a type of
> > "document". So I will have to read up on that, too. I might even get
> > sidetracked on any of those steps reading through rules about each of
> > these terms' special attributes just to figure out how one thing works.
> >
> > Recursive subtyping that spans the entire ruleset, especially when the
> > supertype is more explicit in its purpose, just leads to frustration.
> > For some it might work. For me, it's usually confusing and it causes me
> > to become apathetic about actually learning the rules.
>
> Okay. It's different for me, but I understand and respect your
> position. Thank you for explaining.
>
> -Aris
>
I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's
intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of art
(like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho.
-- 
>From R. Lee


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 12:09 AM Reuben Staley via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> On 2020-06-07 00:20, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:43 PM Reuben Staley via agora-business
> >  wrote:
> >
> >>> 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> >> AGAINST; inventing Unnecessary Terms of Art for Things that don't
> >> Require them decreases the Readability of the Ruleset.
> >
> > I question whether writing out the extremely long-phrase "the Agoran
> > Decision on whether to adopt a proposal" is really any more readable?
>
> For me, "Referendum" is just another term I have to commit to memory.
> I'm going to have to remember "Agoran Decision" anyway. But if I'm
> reading along and I see the term "Referendum", I'm going to have to do a
> search in the ruleset to see what that means, then somehow find my place
> again to be able to continue reading.
>
> If I am a new player reading some rules and I come across the term
> "statute", then I'm going to have to figure out what that means. I read
> up on that, see that a statute is a subtype of "instrument". Then I have
> to read up on instruments to see that an instrument is a type of
> "document". So I will have to read up on that, too. I might even get
> sidetracked on any of those steps reading through rules about each of
> these terms' special attributes just to figure out how one thing works.
>
> Recursive subtyping that spans the entire ruleset, especially when the
> supertype is more explicit in its purpose, just leads to frustration.
> For some it might work. For me, it's usually confusing and it causes me
> to become apathetic about actually learning the rules.

Okay. It's different for me, but I understand and respect your
position. Thank you for explaining.

-Aris


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Reuben Staley via agora-discussion

On 2020-06-07 00:20, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:

On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:43 PM Reuben Staley via agora-business
 wrote:


8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda

AGAINST; inventing Unnecessary Terms of Art for Things that don't
Require them decreases the Readability of the Ruleset.


I question whether writing out the extremely long-phrase "the Agoran
Decision on whether to adopt a proposal" is really any more readable?


For me, "Referendum" is just another term I have to commit to memory. 
I'm going to have to remember "Agoran Decision" anyway. But if I'm 
reading along and I see the term "Referendum", I'm going to have to do a 
search in the ruleset to see what that means, then somehow find my place 
again to be able to continue reading.


If I am a new player reading some rules and I come across the term 
"statute", then I'm going to have to figure out what that means. I read 
up on that, see that a statute is a subtype of "instrument". Then I have 
to read up on instruments to see that an instrument is a type of 
"document". So I will have to read up on that, too. I might even get 
sidetracked on any of those steps reading through rules about each of 
these terms' special attributes just to figure out how one thing works.


Recursive subtyping that spans the entire ruleset, especially when the 
supertype is more explicit in its purpose, just leads to frustration. 
For some it might work. For me, it's usually confusing and it causes me 
to become apathetic about actually learning the rules.


--
Trigon


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:24 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> I also encourage everyone to vote against as many of Aris's proposals as
> possible (i.e, the non-essential ones) because Aris has submitted 10
> proposals or something, most of which are minor cosmetic changes, in a
> blatant attempt to get heaps of money.
>

U... That isn't true at all. The only one that's actually cosmetic
is "Referenda", which results in significant increases in brevity and
comprehensibility. I think it's a big improvement, and several others seem
to agree. The closest other ones are probably "Ministerial Reshuffling" and
"Proposal Recycling Initiative". I certainly wouldn't be particularly upset
if "Proposal Recycling Initiative" doesn't pass, it just fixes a few
problems that I noticed when fiddling with other legislative rules.
"Ministerial Reshuffling" means that chambers, which currently have to be
stretched quite a bit to cover all proposals, would cover them more
comfortably. This is also a worthwhile improvement.

In general, money had relatively little to with my thinking. While I can't
say the thought of earning money isn't something I'm looking forward to, I
think I would have submitted all of my proposals even if there were no
financial reward for doing so. Now, clearly the impending economic change
is a major reason why I'm submitting all of these proposals. But what
actually happened was that while I was fixing things with the new economic
system, I saw other problems in the proposal rules. I decided to propose
ways to fix those too while pending was still free. I also remembered a
bunch of other things I didn't like in other rules, and proposed fixes for
those as well. I knew that in the future I'd be financially punished for
improving things, and so I decided to propose improvements now rather than
later.

I put significant time into these proposals (many many hours, at least ten
and probably a fair bit more than that), and I was responsive to feedback
on them. We've decided that proposal authors deserve to be rewarded for
their time and effort in coming up with good proposals, using a financial
incentive. If we didn't want people to get money for writing good
proposals, we wouldn't have come up with a financial incentive. Likewise,
we've decided as part of our current economic system that pending should be
free, and I am relying on that arraignment while it lasts, just as many
others are, including you. If it had been proposed at the drafting stage
that some of these proposals should be merged, I would have considered it,
but you didn't propose that then. As it is, these are proposals that are
intended to make the game better. I'm not saying that everyone is required
to vote for them. We have voting procedures so people can say whether
specific changes are positive or negative.  But if you think my proposals
are good, I'd ask you not to vote against them just because I'll be
receiving compensation from my work.

As a final point, if people think that some of my proposals were split up
and should have been merged, I'm prepared to consider pledging to give away
some of the money. I wrote proposals that I considered logically cohesive
and sensible units for voting, but I do agree that if proposals have been
divided to the point where it's abusive and just gets extra money, that's
unfair and could be a reason to vote against the proposals. I don't think I
did that sort of abuse, but if the public disagrees with me I'll give up
some of the money to ensure that changes that I think are good get
considered on their merits. What I won't do is categorically agree to give
away compensation for the effort I put into writing proposals. I hope
people won't take my unwillingness to do that as a reason to vote down
proposals they otherwise approve of.

-Aris


DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-07 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:43 PM Reuben Staley via agora-business
 wrote:

> > 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> AGAINST; inventing Unnecessary Terms of Art for Things that don't
> Require them decreases the Readability of the Ruleset.

I question whether writing out the extremely long-phrase "the Agoran
Decision on whether to adopt a proposal" is really any more readable?
To me, that seems verbose and hard to parse. Like, when I was writing
this, I was imagining telling future generations of Agorans "we used
to call a referendum 'an Agoran Decision on whether to adopt a
proposal'" and having them gasp in astonishment at the absurdity of
using a phrase that long to refer to something that's so fundamental
to gameplay.

-Aris


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-06 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
I also encourage everyone to vote against as many of Aris's proposals as
possible (i.e, the non-essential ones) because Aris has submitted 10
proposals or something, most of which are minor cosmetic changes, in a
blatant attempt to get heaps of money.

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 3:23 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> "slap on the wrist" does the same thing as "Why Limit Clemency" but better
> - and removing clemency on crimes with 3 blots above would remove the
> distinction between okay and bad crimes, a distinction which everybody was
> just talking about reinforcing.
>
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 3:20 PM Aris Merchant via agora-business <
> agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> > I vote as follows:
> > > 8409*  Aris 3.0   College of Letters, Arts, and
> > Sciences
> > FOR. This is one of the proposals I'm most proud of, and hopefully,
> > it'll stay that way (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but I
> > think it will this time)
> >
> > > 8410e  Aris 2.2   Promise Powers Patch
> > FOR
> > > 8411p  R. Lee   1.0   Contract Lawyers
> > FOR
> > > 8412j  R. Lee   1.7   Small Pledge Amendments
> > FOR
> > > 8413l  Aris 1.0   Why Track Pendency?
> > FOR
> > > 8414l  Aris 2.0   Ministerial Reshuffling
> > FOR; this makes the Ministerial goals broad enough to actually use to
> > assign all proposals
> >
> > > 8415*  Aris 3.0   Proposal Recycling Initiative
> > FOR
> > > 8416*  Falsifian, G., P.S.S.3.1   Identity theft protection act
> v1.1
> > FOR
> > > 8417l  Aris, G. 1.0   PP [1]
> > FOR
> > > 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> > FOR
> > > 8419f  Aris 2.0   Executive Expansion
> > FOR
> > > 8420f  G.   2.0   Checks and balances
> > AGAINST; I'd prefer just to have the PM always be removable with Agoran
> > consent.
> >
> > > 8421e  nch, Trigon  1.0   Transmutation
> > FOR
> > > 8422*  P.S.S., [2]  3.0   No More Numbers!
> > FOR
> > > 8423f  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Removing Repetition
> > AGAINST; this sort of cross referencing can be helpful.
> > > 8424l  Aris, nch, P.S.S.1.0   Certifiable Patches
> > FOR; who objects to bug fixes? This reserves a disincentive to fix
> > obvious problems and is sufficiently narrow not to break the economy.
> >
> > > 8425j  Aris 2.0   Impossibility Defense
> > FOR
> > > 8426j  Aris 2.0   Impracticability Defense
> > FOR
> > > 8427j  R. Lee   2.0   Slap on the wrist
> > FOR
> > > 8428*  Aris 3.0   Pending Pends
> > FOR
> > > 8429j  Aris 1.7   Why Limit Clemency?
> > FOR
> > > 8430p  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Silver Quill 2016
> > FOR
> >
> > -Aris
> >
>
>
> --
> From R. Lee
>


-- 
>From R. Lee


Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-06 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:23 PM Rebecca via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> "slap on the wrist" does the same thing as "Why Limit Clemency" but better
> - and removing clemency on crimes with 3 blots above would remove the
> distinction between okay and bad crimes, a distinction which everybody was
> just talking about reinforcing.
>

I disagree. I'd say it just gives the Referee more discretion in the
penalties e awards, by taking away a limit on eir power to allow for
clemency. Would you prefer it if the Referee could specify the number
of blots?

-Aris


DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-06 Thread Rebecca via agora-discussion
"slap on the wrist" does the same thing as "Why Limit Clemency" but better
- and removing clemency on crimes with 3 blots above would remove the
distinction between okay and bad crimes, a distinction which everybody was
just talking about reinforcing.

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 3:20 PM Aris Merchant via agora-business <
agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> I vote as follows:
> > 8409*  Aris 3.0   College of Letters, Arts, and
> Sciences
> FOR. This is one of the proposals I'm most proud of, and hopefully,
> it'll stay that way (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but I
> think it will this time)
>
> > 8410e  Aris 2.2   Promise Powers Patch
> FOR
> > 8411p  R. Lee   1.0   Contract Lawyers
> FOR
> > 8412j  R. Lee   1.7   Small Pledge Amendments
> FOR
> > 8413l  Aris 1.0   Why Track Pendency?
> FOR
> > 8414l  Aris 2.0   Ministerial Reshuffling
> FOR; this makes the Ministerial goals broad enough to actually use to
> assign all proposals
>
> > 8415*  Aris 3.0   Proposal Recycling Initiative
> FOR
> > 8416*  Falsifian, G., P.S.S.3.1   Identity theft protection act v1.1
> FOR
> > 8417l  Aris, G. 1.0   PP [1]
> FOR
> > 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
> FOR
> > 8419f  Aris 2.0   Executive Expansion
> FOR
> > 8420f  G.   2.0   Checks and balances
> AGAINST; I'd prefer just to have the PM always be removable with Agoran
> consent.
>
> > 8421e  nch, Trigon  1.0   Transmutation
> FOR
> > 8422*  P.S.S., [2]  3.0   No More Numbers!
> FOR
> > 8423f  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Removing Repetition
> AGAINST; this sort of cross referencing can be helpful.
> > 8424l  Aris, nch, P.S.S.1.0   Certifiable Patches
> FOR; who objects to bug fixes? This reserves a disincentive to fix
> obvious problems and is sufficiently narrow not to break the economy.
>
> > 8425j  Aris 2.0   Impossibility Defense
> FOR
> > 8426j  Aris 2.0   Impracticability Defense
> FOR
> > 8427j  R. Lee   2.0   Slap on the wrist
> FOR
> > 8428*  Aris 3.0   Pending Pends
> FOR
> > 8429j  Aris 1.7   Why Limit Clemency?
> FOR
> > 8430p  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Silver Quill 2016
> FOR
>
> -Aris
>


-- 
>From R. Lee


DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8409-8430

2020-06-06 Thread Aris Merchant via agora-discussion
I vote as follows:
> 8409*  Aris 3.0   College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences
FOR. This is one of the proposals I'm most proud of, and hopefully,
it'll stay that way (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but I
think it will this time)

> 8410e  Aris 2.2   Promise Powers Patch
FOR
> 8411p  R. Lee   1.0   Contract Lawyers
FOR
> 8412j  R. Lee   1.7   Small Pledge Amendments
FOR
> 8413l  Aris 1.0   Why Track Pendency?
FOR
> 8414l  Aris 2.0   Ministerial Reshuffling
FOR; this makes the Ministerial goals broad enough to actually use to
assign all proposals

> 8415*  Aris 3.0   Proposal Recycling Initiative
FOR
> 8416*  Falsifian, G., P.S.S.3.1   Identity theft protection act v1.1
FOR
> 8417l  Aris, G. 1.0   PP [1]
FOR
> 8418*  Aris 3.0   Referenda
FOR
> 8419f  Aris 2.0   Executive Expansion
FOR
> 8420f  G.   2.0   Checks and balances
AGAINST; I'd prefer just to have the PM always be removable with Agoran consent.

> 8421e  nch, Trigon  1.0   Transmutation
FOR
> 8422*  P.S.S., [2]  3.0   No More Numbers!
FOR
> 8423f  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Removing Repetition
AGAINST; this sort of cross referencing can be helpful.
> 8424l  Aris, nch, P.S.S.1.0   Certifiable Patches
FOR; who objects to bug fixes? This reserves a disincentive to fix
obvious problems and is sufficiently narrow not to break the economy.

> 8425j  Aris 2.0   Impossibility Defense
FOR
> 8426j  Aris 2.0   Impracticability Defense
FOR
> 8427j  R. Lee   2.0   Slap on the wrist
FOR
> 8428*  Aris 3.0   Pending Pends
FOR
> 8429j  Aris 1.7   Why Limit Clemency?
FOR
> 8430p  P.S.S., G.   2.0   Silver Quill 2016
FOR