On Dec 15, 2013, at 5:21 PM, Aaron Goldfein wrote: > Why? Maybe the fact people have lost interest in Agora is because the core of > the game has hardly changed in years. It seems like we found > judicial/proposal/etc. systems that work, and so we don't want to change > them. But a working Nomic is a boring Nomic. We may need to consider > fundamentally changing the way we handle these issues so we can have > something that doesn't work again. That way, we'll get to have fun > fixing/scamming it.
What I'd really like (at least, what I think I'd really like) is a "subgame" that's fun and interesting, has an obvious goal to strive for, has clear ways to go about trying to achieve that goal, requires a bunch of Nomicky thought in order to do well in (by which I mean the sort of legal and philosophical thought that goes into writing proposals and judgements), has strong effects on every aspect of the nomic, and works well over a mailing list. The game ought to become one of Agora's institutions, like the judicial system, rather than coming and going, like the economic systems. Thing is, I have no idea what sort of game that would be. In particular, the mailing list format seems really restrictive, since doing anything in real time becomes quite difficult. I've always found economic systems pretty fascinating—I'd love it if we had a simulation of a region's economy, including industries and corporations—but Agora in general doesn't seem to agree with me. Perhaps some sort of role-playing game (not necessarily medieval fantasy, but perhaps a mock trial or sales pitch or something) requiring a bunch of thinking would be a good idea. I dunno. I've noticed that Agora's various systems are mostly based on pragmatism, and they're largely separate from each other. It would be interesting if we added a few arbitrary connections here and there, both to increase the opportunity for clever schemes and designs, and just to see what would happen. I don't think chess is a spectacularly well-designed game; it's interesting because of the way everything interacts with everything else. Another thing I've noticed is that if you want the game to have X, and you merely give the players a way to create X, they probably won't. Promises were a way players could create their own currencies, but almost nobody actually did that, and the one time someone did try to make a currency (with me and machs), nobody was really interested. If you create a platform where people can make interesting sub-nomics, few people will actually do so, and few people will be interested in the resulting sub-nomics. Besides, there's always a way players can create their own currencies, or whatever: they can submit a proposal, and if sufficiently many people are actually interested, then it'll happen. So if you want the game to have X, you're probably not going to have much luck allowing people to create their own X; you should just think of a proposal that gives the game X. That said, a really nice counterexample was (if I'm remembering the name right) the Agoran Agricultural Association. It was a contract, thus not created by proposal, and yet lots of people did end up participating and enjoying it. Oh, and put Ribbons back, and stop removing them. The presence of a diverse set of goals for people to strive for is a really valuable thing, don't you think? —Aru
