From: Aron Wall (aron_at_wall.org)
Date: Sun Apr 10 2005 - 23:23:35 PDT
Ed Murphy wrote: > 234:14 "I have not posted any invalid rules this round." > 234:15 "Except that." > 234:16 "And that." > 234:17 "And that." > 234:18 "And that." > 234:19 "And that." > 234:20 "And that." Validity: 234:14 is INVALID because as the 11th rule it has to abide by a mess of restrictions and it doesn't. It is not invalid for the obvious reason, of its blatant falsehood. There is nothing automatically invalidating about falsehood. Rules are required to be consistent with past *valid* rules, not necessarily *invalid* rules. Since it only makes an untrue comment about invalid rules, it would pass if that were the only issue. 234:15's only content is that 234:14 is invalid. It has no restrictions on it. Thus it is VALID, the 9th of the round. 234:16-20 are all INVALID, because if any of them were valid, then the first such rule would be the TVRotR, which none of them can be. Eligibility: However, there are some counter-intuitive effects which arise from the fact that all of these rules were posted *simultaneously*. One is irrelevant but interesting: because valid rules only need to be consistent with "previously posted" valid rules (RO 6), none of these rules had any obligation to be consistent with one another. The second point of timing, one which is crucial in this case, has to do with RO 4 which says: "This eligibility period lasts for seven (7) days from the time of the rule's posting minus one (1) day for each invalid fantasy rule posted by the same person after the valid fantasy rule." Now note that invalid rules only deduct the day from eligibility if they were posted *after* the last valid fantasy rule. The use of the verb "posted" makes it clear that the relevant timing has nothing to do with index numbers on rules, but has to do with actual chronological time, based on submissions to the forum. Thus I can must interpret this text as indicating that the one valid rule in this bunch extends your eligibility for a week as usual, but the other invalid rules make no deduction from your eligibility at all. Thus your suicide attempt fails, though even apart from this issue the one valid rule would have left you a couple days. Style: You can't honestly have expected me to approve of this, can you? Were you jealous of the individual attention I was giving to Quazie's style point awards and wanted in on the perks? Perhaps you failed to read my style judgement of 234:11 or 234:13 and therefore do not know what I think about an attempt to avoid trying to *follow* rules by deliberately shirking them? (Of course, deliberately invalid rules CAN be stylish, but only if there is some *reason* for it--something that perhaps involves work or creativity or just a cool idea on the author's part). Since there are seven rules here, I can assign them up to 21 style points total. While I am seriously tempted to make -21 the style award here, I shall be more moderate and assign negative points for specific reasons. Below I generally judge the rules based on their intent, which was to be invalid, even though one of them wasn't. 1) You would have made fulfillment of the theme impossible, by ending the round before the TVRotR could appear. If not following the theme justifies a small style point penalty, completely sabotaging it justifies a large one, even the maximum. -3 Style. 2) I had just given Quazie a style point penalty with the proviso that he would be able to redeem himself by posting a rule of a certain kind. You could perfectly well have sat back doing nothing for the week and watched Quazie struggle to do so. Instead you chose to end the round prematurely and so give him no chance to redeem himself at all. All you would have had to read to know I wouldn't have liked that is my judgement of his rule. This also deserves -3 Style all by itself. 3) Despair. No one in this round has YET interestingly followed a restriction. Ending it before anyone can is stupid. I do not believe that the TVRotR is impossible, just nearly impossible. Any red-blooded Nomic player ought to take that as a challenge to try anyway, rather then prevent themselves or anyone else from trying. While somewhat more subtle, this issue seems to pervade the whole malaise I have detected this entire round. If this is the way the FRC has been during the time I haven't been following it, a succession of mostly rounds in which no one bothers to post more than a couple rules, with a few where everyone is too lazy to try to post rules that have to follow any serious restrictions--then I will agree that the round must end, but disagree on the method. If that's how things have been then you should instead make a proposal to end the game forever due to lack of interest. I think that this issue, which has been bothering me for several rules now, is worth -3 Style just like the others, especially since I have already expressed myself on the issue. 4) Your failed suicide attempt is uncool. While morally speaking :-) one must say that it's better for a suicide attempt to fail, I am here judging not morally but stylistically. In order to be stylish, a suicide attempt must involve a certain somber ritualism, be well-motivated, and also well-executed. It should not be boring, as these rules are. Your title of "seppuku" makes reference to the rituals of a culture that believed in stylish suicide, and yet you do not have even a death haiku to add to the style. Seppuku committed because of impatience is crass. For the absence of any elements of formal style that I can see, -2 Style. 5) Sheer repetitiveness. The last five rules are all alike. Each but the first gets -0.5 Style for wasting an opportunity to do something interesting. 6) The one redeeming feature of this rule is 234:15, which has the advantage of being (albeit unintentionally) VALID. I shall give it +1 Style for this. Total: -12 Style Aron Wall
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