On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 at 06:57, Aris Merchant <thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote: > First off, I’m very happy you published this. It’s very interesting and it > adds a lot to the discourse. I will now proceed to state why I think it’s a > bad idea. (Upon retreading your post, these amount to explanations of why > concerns c and a are perhaps more serious than you think.)
Thanks for writing this. I will respond to your points in more detail below, but a summary: * You're right, this would make the rules more complicated. However, it can be separated into a small change that changes the way we think about timelines, but doesn't remove the references to "gamestate", and a follow-up change that may get less support that would indeed make the rules somewhat longer. * I disagree that this creates multiple timelines. * I don't understand why you think this needs a high-power rule, and propose that we test it by creating a mini-game with power-0.5 rules. > You haven’t actually solved the gamestate problem, just moved it back a > layer. The problem is that a report is fundamentally a declarative > statement of how things are, and you’re changing that to make it > imperative. This removes the generality of reports, since we have to define > exactly what each report is changing. Switch reports are easy. What about > asset reports? Do they “create, destroy, and transfer assets such that they > are in the manner described”? At that point, you may as well be saying “set > the assets so they are in the manner described”, which doesn’t seem like > much of an improvement over “set the gamestate such that it is in the > matter described”. I really fail to see how this is a particular > simplification? It seems like you’ve made things more complicated, not less > so. Yes, now that you mention it, my preferred way of implementing this idea for reports about assets would be to explicitly say that the assets are changed to be as reflected. Rule 2034 would also need to be changed, and every time we add another kind of things to ratify, the rules would get longer. So, I would like to separate this into two parts. 1. A smaller change to the way we deal with time: AI: 3.1 Text: In R1551, replace the first sentence of the second paragraph with: "If a public document is ratified within 14 days after it is published, then at the time it is published, it is Implemented. When a document is Implemented, the gamestate is minimally modified to make the ratified document as true and as accurate as possible." 2. Remove all references to "gamestate", and talk about actions rather than documents being ratified. As you say, this would make the rules somewhat longer. We could do 1 and not 2. > Also, you’re still doing timeline manipulation. Specifically, if I’m > understanding you correctly, you’re causing a timeline divergence. There’s > the timeline where the action is ratified in the future and the timeline > where it isn’t ratified in the future. Worse, no one knows which timeline > we’re on until 4 days after the ratifiable action happens. That means that > any actions that depend on whether the ratifiable action succeeded or not > have indeterminate success. This means that any CFJs about those options > are indeterminate. At any given time, there will be no current summation of > what the game is. Instead, it will be in a superposition of multiple > possible states. This is, frankly, very hard to reason about. While you may > technically be right that it isn’t strictly any more complicated than the > current state of affairs, it would mean that there’s never a right answer > about how the game is at the current moment. It removes our ability to have > a shared idea of how things are now. Is this kind of uncertainty fundamentally different from any other? If a player posts a hash of a pledge, then later reveals the text of the pledge, there is similarly a period of time during which the Agoran public does not know what the content of the pledge was. CFJs about such a pledge have the same trouble in that unless the player is motivated to reveal their pledge to the Judge, the content cannot be known. It would be unconventional to say the game is in a "superposition of multiple states" during that period of uncertainty. Under the current rules, it may always be possible for a diligent Judge to give a complete description of all aspects of the gamestate as it is now. I admit that the proposal would create situations where that's not strictly true, but I think the uncertainty will be quite manageable, and this theoretical diligent Judge could still fully reason about the gamestate 14 days ago. I'd like to use an example. Consider this timeline: 1. Alice tries to pull of a scam (unrelated to time travel) and it's legally unclear whether eir Coin balance is 0 or 1000. 2. The Treasuror publishes another report saying Alice's Coin balance is 1000. 3. A CFJ is called: Alice has 1000 Coins. The Judge may not know whether the report is ratified. However, there are a few remedies to this: a. When calling the CFJ, make it clear that it is a doubt. Then we know the report cannot be ratified. b. CoE the report, and call the CFJ again. The judge of the second CFJ can use the fact that it was CoE-ed. It may be unclear whether the first CFJ's judgement can use the CoE, since it may or may not not be part of the "facts and legal situation at the time the inquiry case was initiated"; just judge it DISMISS or IRRELEVANT. > Now, onto your advantages. > > A) How is “gamestate” poorly defined? I can define it right now. “The > summation of the states of all entities and attributes defined by the > rules.” That definition may have a bug in it, but if so it’s probably > something trivial. Also, how is this a rules simplification? You end up > replacing the ratification mechanics with a separate definition of how each > kind of report can be ratified, which makes things *more* complicated. > Currently, we ratify switches, assets, and the ruleset. I see no reason why > we might not add more classes of ratifiable things; I could certainly see > regulations being ratified. Also, you’re introducing a fiction that a > report is about setting things, when the primary purpose of a report is > description. That’s more confusing, not less so. I should think more on this. Perhaps my main worry is that I'm not fully convinced that a minimal modification isn't clear as often as we like to think. It also bugs me that, for example, there was debate about whether something as significant as the past sequence of events is part of the Gamestate. Personally, I still would prefer to replace all gamestate changes with precise descriptions of exactly how things are changed, but I may change my mind after thinking more, and anyway, perhaps this debate should be had after the debate about timelines. For now, I'd like to focus on the first part of my proposal, which does not try to do away with the concept of gamestate. I do think it is a nicer way to think about the sequence of events, since it does not create multiple timelines to reason about, and replaces the "modified to what it would be if, at the time..." language with something simpler. Well, at least I think so --- I'm curious to hear your thoughts on my response about timeline manipulation. > B) As explained above, you’re still dealing with multiple timelines. You’ve > just made it so we don’t even know which of those timelines we’re on at any > given time. To my mind, that makes the problem worse, not better. See above. > C) I remain thoroughly unconvinced that this would not, at the very least, > require a high powered enabling rule to define how true future conditionals > work. I don't see why. How about this: AI: 1 Text: Enact a new power-0.5 rule titled "Clairvoyant Roshambo", with the following text. The Roshambo Wheel is a singleton switch with possible values Rock, Paper and Scissors. Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, and Paper beats Rock. Whenever a player has not done so in the past 4 days, e CAN Spin the Wheel by announcement, specifying Rock, Paper or Scissors. A player CAN Change eir Mind about spinning by announcement at any time. If a player Spins the Wheel at a time T, and does not Change eir Mind in the four days following T, then at time T the Roshambo Wheel is flipped to the value e specified. Roshambo Score is a player switch with possible values all integers. To increase it is to flip it to a value one greater than it was, and to decrease it is to flip it to a value one less than it was. Once per Agoran week, each player CAN Play Roshambo by announcement, specifying Rock, Paper or Scissors. When e does so: * If e specifies a value that beats the current value of the Roshambo Wheel, eir Roshambo Score is increased. * If e specifies a value that is beaten by the current value of the Roshambo Wheel, eir Roshambo Score is decreased. A player with a Roshambo Score of at least 10 CAN, with Notice, Transcend Time. When e does so, e wins the game, and all instances of the Roshambo Score switch are flipped to 0. > -Aris - Falsifian
