Just Me and the Captain

The two-party game

2016-10-01T14:40:06Z

So a lot of people wonder why the American political system is dominated by only two parties. I think I know the answer and it fundamentally comes down to game design. So, as a challenge to myself, I wondered if I could design a similar game where all the politics is abstracted and demonstrate that all first past the post systems would devolve into a two party situation. What follows is what I came up with.

First of all, this is primarily intended to be a simulation game, but I think it's possible for people to actually have fun playing it rather than just learning something. You'll need a large number of people: my guess is at least 20 for it be at all effective. I suppose the ideal setting would actually be a classroom or, perhaps, some sort of seminar. The game would take a little over an hour to play: six rounds of 10 minutes each plus some time for voter tabulation.

Each player is given a card with randomized issues on it. Each issue has a comment as to whether the player is for or against it, but no two players' cards are identical. The number of issues can be expanded to include as many players as decided simply by using the formula 2^x. For example, if there are 32 players, there would be 5 issues. The winner is the person who can elect leaders who most agree with his or her issues.

Each round starts with a 10 minute discussion period which can happen in any manner the players see fit. After the discussion period, the Game Master calls for nominations. Anyone can nominate anyone (including him or herself), but to be a valid candidate, they need a second. There is no limit to nominations (in theory, every player could be a candidate). When all nominations are gathered, everyone votes for one candidate to be president (ballots can be secret or public; I don't think it matters that much). The person with a plurality of votes becomes president (in case of a tie, the winner is decided randomly from the leading candidates). Each player then adds up their personal score based upon how many issues they agree with the president on. For instance, at the end of a round with 5 issues, each player has accumulated between 0-5 points, with the president being the only person to get the full 5 points.

A president can only be elected twice. The game is played in six rounds and the winner is the person who has accumulated the most points at the end of the final round.

I suspect that if this game were actually played, the first couple of rounds would be rather chaotic with a large number of candidates. Pretty soon, though, I'm guessing a few clever people will realize that by forming tight alliances, they can pass their personal agenda more effectively. Everyone else will then latch onto that strategy as well and soon only two broad coalitions will emerge by the end of the game. However, I don't know for sure and would love to see it played out.

Thoughts?

This week is fired!

2015-12-04T01:36:47Z

It's been nearly a year-and-a-half since I posted anything here. Part of that is because Facebook has taken up my posting (though I don't post much there either, any more) and part of that is because everyone seems to have migrated from Livejournal. I actually have a lot to write about right now, but, alas, time prohibits me from going into any detail. Still, there are a couple things I'd like to record for posterity and maybe I'll go into more detail at a later point. But this week...has been...one of the worst...weeks...of...my...LIFE!

It started with a horrific car accident. It ended (please let it end) with my roommate deciding to move out. In between, my Amazon account was hacked, my good shirts are lost somewhere on the Garden State Parkway, my contact lenses have disappeared to God knows where, and there's a possibility I have lymphoma. Yes, it's been a bad week.

But I'm going to Anonycon tomorrow and life will get better. I mean, it has to...right?

The Quest

2014-08-01T02:24:33Z

So I'm talking on my blog about a LARP called "The Quest" and, weirdly, I'm not talking about a game at Wesleyan, Pomfret, or one our other traditional sites with my friends. No, I'm talking about the latest reality television series on ABC...and it's terrible. Now, in my opinion, all reality shows are LARPs, but this one removes all doubt.

Full Disclosure: I tried out for "The Quest" when they had an open casting call a little over a year ago and even got a callback, but never heard anything since then. I'm actually rooting for it. I want it to succeed because 1) I think it might invigorate LARPing as a whole and 2) I want to get on the second season because it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I don't think it will finish its first season on broadcast television let alone get a second one (here's hoping I'm wrong).

Of course, the part that I enjoy about LARPing is that I'm, you know, doing it. Watching other people LARP can be fun...but usually isn't. And so now I'm stuck at home watching other people have an adventure I should be on and it's painful. Worse yet, it's boring. The whole thing is a mess from start to finish.

First, let's take the cast. The most important part of any reality show, whether it's the "Real Housewives," "Master Chefs," or anything else, is the cast and this one sucks. For some reason, the producers decided not to take any gamers. Or, if there are gamers on the cast, they sure don't talk about it. They also don't act like any of the gamers that I know (which, granted, is a very small segment of society, but still) so I'm going to out on a limb and say they didn't really cast any. So instead of taking people who spend their spare time creating and playing in imaginary worlds, they took a bunch of people who don't know the first thing about a dungeon crawl. Maybe the producers thought real LARPers (I know plenty tried out) might out-think them...frankly, a real possibility. But these guys are just way too passive to be interesting.

Next, let's talk about the structural problems the show has. For one thing, I don't know any of the rules. Now, it's not as important that I, the viewer, know the rules as it is for the contestants. Nevertheless, the viewers still should have a general idea of what's going on, otherwise they have no way of evaluating what the players are doing. This was the great failure of "The Million Second Quiz" last year and I think it'll be a contributing factor to my predicted downfall "The Quest."

As for the story...it's pretty blah. A big, evil, dark lord is threatening Ever Realm and it needs a brave hero to wield the magical sunspear or something. Not awful, but not very inspired either. I've been in worse games, but also many better ones. Still, staying true to the good ol' fashioned get the Maguffin to defeat the baddie isn't the worst idea they could have. The PCs are...themselves. Now I'll probably get disagreement from the Otherworlders, but I'm not a big fan of LARPs where there isn't any roleplaying per se. At least they have a sequence where they travel from this world to Ever Realm. A sequence with more exposition than anyone knows what to do with, but it's something, I guess.

The real issue I have is the method of elimination at the end. Going through your standard reality show challenge (firing ballistas at an army of straw men) wasn't so bad, but one member of the losing team is now in danger of being disintegrated or something. After discussing it, the other paladins (not the word I would have chosen, but it has some resonance with the twelve peers of Charlemagne so I won't give them too much grief for the nomenclature) then vote on who should stay. And this is the problem: the gaming incentives are directly opposed to the narrative. As a player, I want to eliminate my toughest competition, but that goes against the story where I want to keep the best paladin around to fight Mr. Evil Darklord. The result is that the show feels confused and it doesn't know what it wants to be: an epic battle where ordinary people face overwhelming odds or a more Survivoresque situation where alliances form to secure a contestant's position as winner. Either way is fine, but it can't be both.

Am I still going to watch it? You bet! Do I still want to be on it? Hell YEAH! The production values alone are nothing short of amazing! But I'm not looking forward to watching future episodes with any amount of excited anticipation.

An Open Letter to Speaker Boehner

2013-10-07T12:40:37Z

Open letters seem to be all the rage this week, so here's mine:

Dear Speaker Boehner,

On Friday, you mentioned that the current government shut-down is "not a damn game." This is where I must strongly disagree with you, Mr. Speaker. The fact is, it is a game, and if you honestly don't believe that, then we're all worse off. Perhaps you are under the wrong impression that games are light-hearted diversions meant only for children. While it's true that some are, this is not a good definition of a game. One of the best definitions of a game comes from Greg Costikyan who states: "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." If that doesn't describe the United States government, I don't know what does.

Perhaps you are confused as to the point of the game. While the point of many games is to "have fun," that does not apply to all games. Sometimes the point of a game is to learn something, make money, or merely be social with others. What's the point of the game you're playing? It's actually mentioned at the very beginning of the rules manual, but let me re-state it for you: it's "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...." In my opinion, it's a very noble game, but a game, nonetheless.

Perhaps you think a game is strictly competitive in nature. This also is a common misconception about games, but not all games operate like this. There are many types of cooperative games, like Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Dungeons & Dragons. All these examples give players an opportunity to work together to achieve a common goal. Believe it or not, politics works the same way. Yes, there is a zero-sum sub-game where only certain players have particular powers at any given time, but remember your ultimate goal: it's not to accumulate power, but to promote the general Welfare. If the American people are better off, even though you've personally lost prestige, influence, and power, then congratulations, you've won!

Of course, unlike many games, this particular game doesn't end. It will keep going long after you exit it, though how you play will certainly be talked about for some time. All games are about making decisions and the way I see it, you have a simple choice: stay the course, wrecking the economy and hurting millions of people, not to mention further damaging the reputation of the Republican Party OR allow a clean Continuing Resolution and convince your party to vote in favor of it to get the government operational again improving everyone's lives, including yours.

It's your turn: what's your move?

The Million Second Quiz

2013-09-12T03:06:42Z

So after watching three episodes on consecutive nights (Lord, help me), I think I finally managed to infer the rules for "The Million Second Quiz." If the show isn't renewed for a second season, I think this may be why. It's not that it's very complicated; it's just that they never bother to explain what's going on. Even extensive searching on their website failed to illuminate the basic structure of the game. If people tune out, it's because they're confused and, frankly, I don't blame them.

So basically, a contestant earns $1 per a tenth of a second sitting in the "money chair." This means that if someone stayed there for all one million seconds they'd earn $10,000,000 plus a $2,000,000 which goes to the ultimate winner. Is NBC giving away $12,000,000? Of course not. You've won absolutely nothing until the end of the game and if you lose before then, you've lost everything, so the actual prize money is a mere fraction of that. Like the contestants on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" who haven't been eliminated yet, people seem very excited over the fictitious dollars they're generating. Granted, they're probably being coached, but I'd actually find it refreshing as a viewer to see a stone-faced contestant not show any enthusiasm until the whole shebang is over.

So how do you get in the money chair? I have no idea. There's line-jumper status, which implies there's some sort of line and the website gives times for prospective contestants to show up. But how they determine who goes next is still a mystery no one has bothered explaining yet. But it's running 24/7 for a million seconds anyway, so someone is always competing for the duration. It's a cute conceit, but I'm not sure what value this adds.

Alright, so you're now a challenger, how do you get to winners' row? There seem to be two methods: incredible endurance (ugh!) or facing one of the winners (eek!). Not that you have a choice as it seems to be mostly a matter of pure luck if you're selected to go up near prime-time or not (once again, I don't know the details of how the line works). If I could choose, I'd go with the latter. You're going to have to be answering trivia for at least 6 straight hours just to get into fourth place on the winners' row which sounds exhausting. I don't see the make-up of it changing all that much over the course of 11+ days, at least not from people we didn't see rise through the ranks in a slow, but steady way. If faced with the first method, it's just a slow rise, battling person after person and only pure trivia knowledge can earn you there. But if you're lucky enough to get to be on prime-time, then strategy starts to enter play.

I'm really hoping some stodgy academic did a critical analysis of the children's show "Double-Dare," because mechanically this appears to be the same. The only difference is the lack of a physical challenge and Mark Summers which proves that Nickelodeon had better programming in the 80's than NBC does today, but that's neither here nor there. I'm still figuring out the optimal strategy regarding doubling, but I think a large part has to do with just reading your opponent. The simplest, and safest, strategy is to never double and just trust that you simply know more. The genius of the doubling mechanic, however, is that one could literally know nothing and win the game just by bluffing his or her way through. Aside from doing nothing, I think the best deployment of the doubling strategy is to use it only if you suspect your opponent knows more than you. If it's an easy question and you double, you just gave your opponent bonus points as they'll obviously accept it. If it's a hard question, you risk a doubling back giving you a 1 in 4 chance assuming you're just guessing. This doesn't give you any advantage compared to just answering it normally, but if you can eliminate 1 or 2 of the wrong answers, I think doubling does give you a distinct advantage hoping your opponent doubles back and doesn't just answer the question himself. In any case, if you're down by a lot, just double every single question hoping to get lucky. Conversely, if you're ahead, never double and certainly don't double back, even if you don't know the answer. Better to diminish your lead and still win than giving your opponent a chance to win; even if they get it wrong, you'll just crush them which constitutes no advantage (in fact, it might be a disadvantage as other players become more wary of you).

It gets a little complicated once you make it on winners' row too. If you become the power player, you get to select who gets a chance to go back to the money chair. If you lose, you're out, but if you win, you can accumulate a little more. Basically, as long as you're in 4th place, always choose yourself, but if you're in first, there's little incentive to lose it all so just choose someone else. As to who, that's kind of a tough call: choosing your highest scoring opponent might be the only chance to get rid of him, but choosing a low-scoring one ensures that you won't be displaced as top dog. Ultimately, I don't think it really matters.

I think I made this sound more complicated than it actually is. There is some interesting strategy regarding the doubling feature, but mostly this is just an exhaustive (in multiple senses of the word) trivia game where breadth of knowledge trumps. Probably not worth a trip to New York to audition in the next week; luck is just too big a factor when my accuracy rate is only about 70%, though still a little tempting.

This is the 3,691st top journal on LJ!

2013-08-24T17:00:57Z

Either I'm really popular or no one uses Livejournal anymore.

The geekiest, most subtle flirtatious sign-off I've ever written

2013-08-01T05:39:24Z

I just finished talking to a girl over IM with:
"'Til then. Saltpeter, John"
To her credit, she responded:
"Pins! Abigail"

Chaos Theory and Narrative

2013-07-31T02:00:00Z

I think everyone understands chaos theory at an intuitive level because everyone understands stories. Chaos theory is about systems that are sensitive to initial conditions. This isn't a new insight that was discovered only fifty years by Lorenz (though he applied a rigor that was previously lacking); it's been part of the human consciousness for eons. The poem "For Want of a Nail" goes back several centuries and is quite illustrative of the basic premise of Chaos theory. But most stories portray this theme on some level.

Most people almost take for granted that they're certain moments in life that seem small at first, but have huge ramifications later on. The insight that Lorenz had while studying the weather is that every moment is like this. The problem, I think, is that we're simply unable to connect the dots most of the time. When I say a butterfly flaps its wings causing a wildebeest in Africa to sneeze startling his neighbor who starts running causing the rest of the herd to follow suit kicking up a lot of dust in the atmosphere starting a circulation that gradually builds up speed as it crosses the Atlantic Ocean and develops from a tropical wave to a storm that eventually hits the east coast forcing you to open your umbrella, that's easy to follow because I just provided you with the chain of cause and effect. But as a practical matter, meteorologists are simply unable to foresee this very logical series of events because another butterfly in China just flapped its wings in the opposite direction counteracting the whole thing. The end result is nobody can predict the weather more than 10 days out and we throw our hands up in the air declaring the system inherently unpredictable and therefore chaotic.

But not every system is chaotic. A frictionless pendulum swinging in a vacuum in a universe devoid of all other material is very predictable. Yes, such a construct is a fiction, but the model works pretty well for simple pendulums in the real world too. The minor influences just don't have all that much of an effect. And I think that's how most of us live our lives: we're aware that they're inherently unpredictable, but for the most part the little things simply don't matter, or if they did, we can't see how they do.

And that's where stories come in. We seldom tell stories of the utterly predictable because they're boring. The art of the narrative is determining those moments that are truly chaotic where a minor action causes reverberations throughout existence. The thing is, we can usually only tell when those moments are in retrospect. It's nearly impossible to figure out which moments act as the butterfly and which act as the pendulum. Will picking up a penny on the sidewalk radically alter your life or make you exactly one cent richer in a moment that will be utterly forgotten in a week? If it's the latter the moment is stable. But if it's the former, this is the beginning of a great story. But then there's the third possibility where it's the former, but you're never able to trace the point of divergence to that particular moment. In any case, at the moment you pick up the penny, you don't know which it is.

I'm not sure I really have a point to all this, but hey, it's my blog and I can write pointless entries as it's my prerogative. But I see the tension between the psychological need craving stability yet also wanting to establish a pattern through narrative where none may actually exist. Did World War I happen because Franz Ferdinand's driver made a wrong turn or was it inevitable because political tensions in Europe had been mounting for decades? In an RPG, could a character unexpectedly discovering a magic item throw the whole plot in turmoil or will the GM ignore the potential ramifications and force things back on track by fiat? Will choosing between a pair of identical looking fortune cookies after a meal be a mundane experience or start a chain of events that will cause me to meet the love of my life which I would have missed had I chosen the other? Sometimes I think Ray Bradbury got it wrong in a "A Sound of Thunder" and the universe somehow heals itself of the minor alternatives as it heads toward some sort of convergence. But maybe that's just a defense mechanism to free myself from the terrifying responsibility that every moment is full of pregnant possibility.

I hate insomnia

2013-07-23T08:03:59Z

For some reason, it's always the dead middle of the night when it becomes hardest to banish my darkest thoughts. I don't know if it's the stillness, the loneliness, the simple lack of light, or the powerful combination that causes my mind to turn to its deepest fears, but once started, it becomes nearly impossible to escape. On this night, I find myself preoccupied with death, which shouldn't be surprising considering it's the ninth anniversary of my father's death, I've just been to a wake, three of my good friends lost loved ones in the past couple of weeks, and even the cat I used to live with who is the closest thing I've ever had to a pet is dying.

Yet my brain is also in full narcissistic mode at this hour and I'm forced to consider my own eventual death. What if I have a heart attack right now and die during these contemplations? When would my fate be discovered? Max is away for the next few weeks, so I find myself utterly alone. No one would be overly surprised if they didn't see me in the next few days. The first test is a wedding this weekend and missing that would be a conspicuous absence to be sure, but would anyone really follow up on it? More days pass and my mother would surely be annoyed now that I haven't returned her phone calls, but how long would it be before she realizes something is amiss? My bedroom is far enough away that I doubt any odor would penetrate the neighbors' apartments. It could very well be up to three weeks before anyone finds my mortal remains. I suddenly become embarrassed for not having left my apartment in a better state of cleanliness for those who make the gruesome discovery.

I hear a slight, unidentifiable repeating noise and vaguely recall myths of deathwatch beetles who are harbingers of that undiscovered country and wonder if I am, in fact, listening to their mating call. I feel an odd pang on the left side of my chest and am unable to determine if it's psychosomatic or real, and if the latter, what it signifies. I make immediate resolutions to eat better and exercise more and curse myself for not already following a healthier regimen.

The rational part of me tries to assert itself that this is all in my head but I'm left with hollow comfort. An even darker part of my psyche reassures me that I can't die yet, for if I do, the universe will be unable to torture me anymore and somehow this twisted logic makes sense. Or perhaps, I am already dead, haunting my room with dread thoughts for an eternity. I get up and turn the air conditioner higher hoping that a cooler temperature will lure me back to sleep as I wait for morning which can't come fast enough.

The Rudest Awakening

2013-05-26T21:58:13Z

So I just got back from Reunion and, as usual, it was a great weekend all around. The commencement speaker was Joss Whedon '87 who was both witty and brilliant and I expected no less (I saw him at various points around campus during the weekend, but he always seemed engaged in conversation so I didn't bother speaking to him personally this time). However, it wasn't entirely without its share of misadventure and it is that story which I am about to relate for your pleasure and to record for posterity.

I didn't get much sleep this weekend (about 14 hours or so over four days), yet somehow I managed to get second, third, and fourth winds just as I needed them. I registered with the university and they put me up in Clark, and I actually had a roommate this time around in the form of Mike Miller (seven years I'd been staying in the dorms, but somehow I always got a single until now). We were both night owls so it actually worked out pretty well as he ended up going back to Clark around 4:15 AM and I was only about 10 minutes or so behind. He was barely in bed as I quickly prepared to hit the hay myself as I did my nightly routine of removing my contacts and shutting the door, which I assumed to be like the other dormitories and lock automatically upon closing. And off to the land of dreams I went.

Around 5:45 AM someone was shaking me awake. I didn't know it was so early and my first thought was that I actually overslept and it was Mike urging me to get up so that I didn't miss Joss' speech. But since it was dark, I was legally blind, and had just come from a relatively deep sleep, it took a few seconds to realize it wasn't Mike at all. In fact, I had no idea who it was. However, I quickly assessed one fact about him: he was incredibly inebriated.

He spoke some slurred words and it was difficult to make out what exactly it was he said, though when my brain processed them they were perhaps the most frightening thing I could have heard. My best interpretation was: "Ya gotta get up. I need to take a piss." I'm still trying to get my bearings and as I'm wondering "What in God's name is happening right now?" the intruder starts removing his pants. Fortunately, about that point Mike was starting to wake up and had more presence of mind to shout at the stranger "Dude, the bathroom is down the hall to the left. Please leave and use that." The guy responds rather drunkenly that he's fine and he just needs to take a dump on my bed as he starts to sit down. I'm still too confused to respond in any capacity, but Mike is up and escorts our new friend out into the hall explaining that this isn't his room and as soon as he closes it he quickly locks the door which I have now learned doesn't automatically lock itself.

Unfortunately, his pants are still in the room and he begins knocking and we eventually realize he's not going away so we re-open the door so he can get his pants, though he still seems to believe this is his room. He claims his shoes are also inside, but after a quick search of my belongings I believe they are not around. Mike somehow restrains from punching the guy in the face and escorts him out a second time explaining we have nothing more of his and now hope he goes away.

I never saw him in the morning and don't know if he ever found his shoes or even if he remembers anything at all, but I'm pretty sure this was just about the worst wake-up call I've ever received.

Because Life is an RPG

2013-04-25T15:05:44Z

I'm guessing this is third edition rules, but I'm not sure.

I Am A: Lawful Neutral Human Wizard (5th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-11

Constitution-14

Intelligence-15

Wisdom-11

Charisma-11

Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Signs I'm Becoming an Adult Part 8

2013-04-10T16:30:06Z

Nearly 6 years ago (yikes!), Katie offered a strange observation on BATG: "You guys would make great second husbands." I don't think that ever aired, but to me it was one of the more memorable lines of the show. Frankly, I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or not. Ultimately, I decided to simply dismiss the comment as nonsense.

The thing is, as I gaze at my prospective dating pool in the present, I'm beginning to realize just how right she is. Of course, not everyone is a divorcée. One's a widow.

Compatibility

2013-04-09T15:43:49Z

I'm trying to develop a new (it may not be original, but I don't think I've heard of it) theory (metaphor, really) that romantic compatibility is a lot like red blood cell compatibility. There are the O- types, those universal lovers who everyone appreciates, but ironically can't really find someone to reciprocate that love. Then there are the AB+ types, those universal recipients who would be happy to settle down with just about anyone even though they can't really give back what their partner needs. But most of us are probably somewhere in the middle looking for someone mostly like us, though not necessarily a person who matches all of our own characteristics. I'm really not sure where I'm going with this and maybe I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, but I thought I'd put the idea out there in case if it strikes a chord with anyone.

And, for the record, yes, this concept was inspired by meeting someone recently who I think is a universal donor. Because that's what I do: put any emotions I have personally through an intellectual filter and try to construct a general theory for analysis.

A rose by any other name

2013-03-27T04:23:51Z

I've enjoyed seeing the overwhelming support for gay marriage today as the supreme court takes up the question, though it hasn't been entirely unanimous. One of the dissenters brought up an old Lincoln quote "If you call a tail a leg, a dog still has four legs," presumably referring to a redefinition of the word marriage as subtext. Like many of my "Ooh, shiny" moments in life, I quickly became distracted by the abstract concept while ignoring the instigating issue at hand.

Out of curiosity, I was interested if Lincoln actually said this, though this too was really a side issue for me. It appears he did, albeit not in any official speech, but more as an offhand comment to some folks who later reminisced about it before it was written down some 50 years after his death. He also was talking about a calf instead of a dog, but the rhetorical point remains the same. Unfortunately, the epistemological point isn't so clear to me.

It is clear that re-defining a tail to be leg, the tail still does not possess the properties under the previous definition of leg, but that point is moot. The confusing issue is whether the term "leg" is totally redefined or the properties of a tail are now incorporated with the old definition. If the former, the dog only has one "leg," in my opinion, but if the latter, the dog clearly has five "legs." I'm not sure why you would call a tail a leg, as it would harm communication, but as a theoretical exercise, I don't see anything wrong with it. If a foreigner called what I would call a tail a jambe and I agreed to his usage, then the dog would have 4 legs and one jambe and if one jambe equals one leg, then he'd have five legs. That's just the transitive property of mathematics.

Which brings me to the point that we can re-name things in math all the time. It's really easy: I erase the "ABC" on the three points of my triangle and rewrite it as DEF, thus re-naming it. Not that redefinition is purely in the realm of abstract thought. We re-named Pluto to be a dwarf planet instead of regular planet a few years back. Pluto still retained all of its characteristics it had before, we simply redefined the word "planet." If Lincoln's logic held, though, we'd still have nine planets, possibly more. Or maybe not. Ignoring the existence of Pluto for a moment, if you called Ceres a planet, how many planets would the solar system have? I'd have to say nine, but your definition would not comport with my understanding of the word, but I can suspend that for the sake of your argument. The sweet fragrance of roses would still be pleasing to me even if society chose to call them stink-blossoms. I'd be confused by its appellation, but I would call them stink-blossoms in order to communicate even if I didn't believe they stank. Greenland's lack of green hasn't stopped me from calling the region Greenland.

Now none of this speaks to the Orwellian nature of redefinition, which I think was what Lincoln was trying to get at. Language can be used for obfuscation as well for clarification as certain practitioners try to confuse the issue. Political orators have been doing this for as long as they've existed. But hard definitions are slippery things, especially when everyone knows what a word means without ever defining it. Often times, it's the most common of words that give us the most trouble, like the definition of "game," "geek," "reality show," or "time." The most famous example is when the supreme court had to deal with "pornography." Or, in the case that lead to this whole line of thought, "marriage." Opponents of gay marriage claim that the proponents are redefining marriage, but I think it's more complicated than that. I'm not sure the word ever was well-defined in the first place because everyone thought they knew what it meant, even though they didn't. Kind of like the word "planet" before the discovery of Eris. Thus all the definitions have been ad-hoc, created after a dispute began to reveal itself. It's happened before (e.g. inter-racial marriage) and I suspect it will happen again (e.g. polyamorous marriage).

It's easy to to know why Lincoln used such a clear example of a calf/dog, but I wonder how he would have handled a more ambiguous creature, like a baboon.

The Gygaxian style

2012-12-13T15:51:39Z

This past weekend, I went to Anonycon, played a lot of games, saw old friends, and had a great time (I even wrote about my LARPing experience in my larpingthoughts blog). One of the games I played was Original Dungeons & Dragons, i.e. the 1974 edition in all its glory. We went into the DM's homemade dungeon, which in our 4 hours play, covered about 10% of one level, fought some trolls, stirges, and snow apes, and went home with a whole lot of treasure with only one PC death (we were a conservative group for some reason, and the dead PC jumped in as a new character who slept in and just caught up with us after the battle). There's a surprising amount of downtime for PCs in OD&D battles, with rounds going by that a PC really doesn't have anything good to do and just kind of sits there watching the action. I didn't actually mind this so much, as it gave me an opportunity to read those ancient manuals while keeping an eye on the battle. In modern rulebooks, there's a sterility, a plain here's-the-facts presentation that just tells you what you need to know in a very direct way. But there's a weird playfulness in the otherwise badly written books of yesteryear that is a style I can only call Gygaxian as Gary inserts his own odd commentary. One of my favorites:

MINOTAURS: The Minotaur is classically a bull-headed man (and all of us who have debated rules are well acquainted with such).

There are gems like these all over if you have the patience to read through them.

I write like...me

2012-11-27T14:31:50Z

I just discovered a fun, new distraction: it's a website that does "statistical analysis" to see who you write like. After throwing in three more or less random blog entries, it has been revealed that I write like David Foster Wallace, Cory Doctorow, and Stephen King, depending on the entry used. Either I am a genius at mimicking the style of authors I barely read or there are limits to using mathematics to study artistic sensibility.

The next experiment, of course, is to see whom those writers write like.

Weird Anniversaries

2012-11-01T04:53:05Z

Exactly thirty-three years ago my old boss was the first person to the scene of an old Baptist church that had caught fire. Some suspected arson, but the cause of the conflagration was never really determined. What is certain is that on this night in the year I was born, flame was occupying the very space where I am typing this. The church was destroyed, but if such an incident didn't happen, I'd be living some place very different.

Happy Halloween!

Originality

2012-10-22T19:43:25Z

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9

I'm not sure I believe that. Where was the internet when Ecclesiastes was written? Or what about trains, planes, and automobiles? Gunpowder and guns was a long way off, that's for sure. Even the nascent Greek form of democracy was centuries in the future. On the other hand, perhaps these are simply improvements or variations on themes that are that old. Communication, transportation, weaponry, and government pre-date any historical records.

It seems to me that there is a strong neophilic tendency in our culture. Many of us pride ourselves in being first adapters as is strongly evidenced by the long lines whenever a Apple comes out with a new gadget, no matter how minute an improvement it is over its previous incarnation. Perhaps this is an evolutionary impetus as we feel an inherent need to change or die. But I doubt it. There have been just as many cultures that revere the old, tried and true methods of doing things as reliable. Though I'm not an expert, I believe even in academia, plagiarism was once lauded as copying the Greek and Roman masters was more credible than innovative thought.

Yet for as many "First" comments where that is the totality of the substance, there are even more "Likes." Memes pass from one person to the next often verbatim and without citation so it becomes difficult to trace the creator. We do it all the time and have for at least as long as there have been jokes. So many start off with "Have you heard the one about the [insert joke title here]?" that in itself the phrase has become part of a standard set-up. Political talking points are enshrined in memoranda that are memorized my pundits and candidates alike for fear of coming up with something original extemporaneously that hasn't been properly vetted. No actor would dare re-write Shakespeare while on the stage. So I suppose there is a real tension between originality and passing on knowledge.

There certainly is in science. Sure discovering new theories of how the world works is pretty sexy, but even more of science is the replication of the experiments one's forbears have already performed. Usually the results are duplicated, but no one faults those scientists for confirming what we already know as a waste of time. And occasionally, independent producers come up with the same thing in complete ignorance of each other.

It is said that "Good writers borrow, and great writers steal." But who said it? Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, or T.S. Eliot? Or maybe it was Aaron Sorkin? Or none of the above. The adage's mysterious origins endlessly repeated throughout history seems to emphasize the point it makes even more.

Some people are born authors, extremely creative individuals who don't know how not to create. And others of us are born editors who are unable to come up with a single original thought that is so highly cherished in our society, but are able to evaluate material and spot the good ideas when they see them. I believe most of us have a little bit of talent in both areas, seeing a good idea and, so inspired, fuse them with our own as it becomes transformed. Musicians do this all the time as covers of old songs are renewed; changed maybe, but certainly not original. Even pure carriers of information who simply hit CTRL-C and CTRL-V can create an audience that missed it the first time. And isn't that what creators ultimately want: to see their works appreciated?

Games as Food

2012-09-14T14:19:55Z

Maybe I'm crazy, but I always liked to compare games to food. The feeling I get from games is similar to the feeling I get to eating certain foods and if I'm giving a review, I find the experiential comparisons are apt. So here's a partial list that may only be relevant in my mind, but I'd thought I'd share:

Dominion-Dominion is like pizza. It has an enormous list of toppings and a nigh infinite list of combinations of those toppings. Sometimes those combinations turn out terrible, and some go surprisingly well together. In any case, I could almost always go for a slice or two.
Fluxx-Fluxx is shrimp cocktail. There's not much there and it's really only good for an appetizer for something better to come along. But it puts me in the mood for eating/gaming, so I can dig it.
Monopoly-Monopoly is a McDonald's cheeseburger. Purely American, not very good, but if there's no other choice (though I'd never seek it out), it'll do in a pinch. Yet whenever I bite down, it digs up a certain nostalgia that I used to like this as a kid, back before I knew any better. Similarly, Life is chicken McNuggets.
Settlers of Catan-Settlers is chicken noodle soup. It can be warm and comforting on a rainy day or if I want something not too stressful, but I usually seek something a little more interesting.
Apples to Apples-No, it's not like apples, more the opposite: it's like candy. It's easy to pick up and almost as easy to put down. It's a whole lot of fun, but if I have too much of it and nothing else, I sort of feel sick afterward.
Go- Go is goat livers with vegetables. It's Chinese, I don't get it, but there's no doubt in my mind it's good for you. Also, I've never really tried it.
Twilight Imperium-Twilight is lobster. It's big, expensive, and has a lot of useless parts and takes a whole lot of work to get to the really good bits. I really have to psych myself up for such a thing and can't do it very often. I appreciate that it can be a delicacy, but also why colonial prisoners complained when it was served it too frequently.
A Game of Thrones-This is a nice filet mignon. Easy to manage, but rich enough to leave me satisfied at the end.
Chess-A peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's a classic, easy to have almost anywhere at any time (whether you're in a park or at home), I always enjoy it, but don't do it too often.
Poker-Poker is apple pie. As American as McDonald's, but something we, as a culture, can actually be proud of. Also, when I'm done with it, I don't feel like I want any more.

There's a lot more food and games out there, so if you actually think like me and this list inspires you, feel free to tell me what you think are good food-game comparisons.

Remembering

2012-09-12T02:56:09Z

I wasn't going to post anything today, but for some reason others' words inspired me to dig up an old entry, which in turn is mostly an even older sermon that not everyone who reads this now may have seen. It remains the best reaction I've seen regarding the tragedy.

Why are banks so dumb?

2012-05-30T16:48:09Z

I have a new theory: if banks are people, then they're socially retarded people. And I say this as someone who is famous for being socially retarded.

Since I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, I figure today is as good a day for a laundry day as any, but sadly, I was about 5 quarters short of a full load. Well, that's no problem, thinks I, for a new bank just opened literally a 30 second walk from the very laundry room I'm standing in. I exchange a $20 bill for 2 rolls of quarters and all is well with the world.

So I walk into EastBoston Savings Bank (I have no interest in protecting the guilty), make my simple request expecting the transaction to take all of 10 seconds and I'll be on my way with barely a minute wasted. Instead, the teller (who seemed very nice and willing to put up with my ridiculous questions) asked me if I was a customer. Now having done similar exchanges in the past with my own bank (which I didn't want to go to since it was 8 minutes away instead of 30 seconds), I was surprised this was even an issue. Our back and forth informed me that I could easily exchange my paper money for cold hard cash IFF I opened a checking account with no annual fee and just a $50 minimum. I asked if I could then immediately withdraw that money, but the answer was an obvious, of course not, due to various corporate nonsense. I did actually have $50 (in addition to the original $20) and considered it, but I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of having gotten another customer by playing hardball. I appealed to their sense of decency, but this line of thought seemed confusing to them even when the manager came out to see "if there was a problem." Apparently, even exchanges of money are severe losses for this branch but reputational costs have no impact on their bottom line. I miss the good old days when that space was something infinitely more useful: a vacant lot.

Defeated, I made my way to my primary banking institution who happily exchanged my money no questions asked. I then made the mistake of complimenting them on their egalitarian standards at which point they made a sales pitch at me! In a period of 10 minutes two banks failed to read the room and dug themselves deeper into the already lowered cultural standing in my eyes. It's not like banks are currently beloved institutions in our country; how do they calculate that they can afford further hits do their reputation? Thus my conclusion: banks are socially retarded.

A Dollar and a Dream

2012-04-01T17:21:23Z

Well, I've spoken to my lawyer, accountant, financial planner, and broker, so I feel it is safe to finally announce that I am one of the three winners for the Mega Millions jackpot. This means that I split around $640 million (pre-taxes), but my lump sum should come out to around $130 million or so. This may seem like a lot, but remember it's less than 5% of Bill Gates' wealth, but with some wise investments I think I can crank it up to about $1 billion or so in time. And if I use the extremely conservative pulling of 1% of the principle per annum, that still gives me over a million dollars in annual income which should keep me comfortable.

So I guess the first order of business is to ask: where does one buy a solid gold tuxedo?

Survivor: One World

2012-03-15T15:35:43Z

I'm not sure if anyone who reads this even watches Survivor any more, but this current season has made me frustrated and this seemed to be as good a place to vent as any.

In case you don't know this season's premise and you feel like reading my rant anyway, here it is: the tribes are divided along gender lines with the twist being that they make camp at the same place. All I can say is, if I were among the castaways, the dynamic would be very different. The early episodes featured some low-level squabbles between the tribes, which makes me think that no one is really willing to commit. In my mind, either there should full peace and cooperation between the two or all-out war. Now, granted would I be there, I would strongly prefer the former to the latter, but if the rest of my tribe deemed it so, there would never be a fire, shelter, food, and everyone would be quite miserable as destruction and its retaliation would be necessary to level the playing field. On the other hand, if cooler heads prevailed, the Reward Challenges would be nearly meaningless as whichever tribe won should share the spoils of victory ensuring a less interesting competition until the Immunity Challenges. If I were a producer, I probably would have avoided the whole premise to begin with.

As it turns out, the tribes were randomly switched up in last night's episode with one tribe forced to relocate sort of invalidating everything that came before. So part of my beef is with the producers for not having the sense of creating an interesting game and negating the subtitle so early. But a larger part of my frustration is reserved for the contestants themselves. As Television Without Pity called last week's episode and the official title of last night's episode, they are all "A Bunch of Idiots." They're either hateful people or non-entities. There's a decent chance that I'll run into these people someday and I simply won't have anything to say to them. Few people are more aware than I am that what I see on television can give a very different sense than what actually happens out there, but the camera isn't so powerful that it actually makes the bad decisions. I'm beginning to understand why people prefer to watch professional sports than the amateur variety: professionals are less prone to really mind-boggingly stupid mistakes (probably also why bringing back the "all-stars" hold appeal).

If I were to see a silver-lining in all this, it's that I'm getting some insight into human behavior instead of strategic mastery. Take last week's episode, for example, where the men voluntarily gave up immunity to vote out one of their own. Keep in mind for this to happen, absolutely everyone has to be on board. Tribes have thrown challenges before (with usually a couple dissenters), but never has a tribe that was completely safe unanimously decided it was preferable to evict a tribemate than maintain the status quo. Who in their right mind would put themselves in danger to gain only the slightest bit of an edge? No one seemed to step back and do a cost-benefit analysis and if any did, it was over-ridden by the desire to go along to get along and just fit in. It was fascinating to see how peer pressure totally vanquished anything resembling common sense as nobody (including those who knew they were most likely to voted out) wanted to be the tall blade of grass to get cut down. It was a psychological experiment at its finest.

And sure enough, this idiotic behavior continued in last night's episode, even after the tribal swap. One team was noticeably stronger than the other (which is why tribal swaps shouldn't be random, but that's another discussion) and Team Misfit predictably lost the Immunity Challenge. And for some reason, the two most spiteful people of the misfits controlled the show. It wasn't due to any real cleverness on their part (granted one of them did have a hidden immunity idol, which helps, but isn't omnipotent), but mostly because the other five forgot the simple arithmetical fact that 5>2. When any one of them could have realized they were being dictated to, instead of turning things around and voting one of them off (3 flush the idol; if it's played the 2 vs. 2 votes hit a run-off where the majority are easily victorious), they play along, with one of them outright saying he'd prefer to be their "bitch" as long as he's not the one voted out. Way to take control of the game there, buddy.

Yes, I know it's easier to play the game from my couch than from the beach, and a lot more happens which clouds the simple solution to the problem, but still. Nevertheless, I've been put into a situation where I'm rooting for all of them to lose and it's difficult to be excited to watch the show as a viewer.

What I'm watching on Youtube

2012-03-12T17:26:51Z

C.G.P. Grey is now my favorite Youtube Channel. He elucidates on topics I'm already familiar with, but he does in it a very entertaining, though incredibly fast, way. Seriously, if I didn't already know about these subjects, I'd be forced to pause and backtrack periodically to allow time for it all to sink in. Just thought I'd share if you wanted to take a break from forays into random Wikipedia articles.

Professional Jurors

2012-02-28T16:08:54Z

So I realize that the only reason I'm writing about this is because I have jury duty later this week, but now that the thought has occurred to me, I might as well write about it. So my question upon receiving the summons was: why don't we have professional jurors? Don't worry; I have no intention of shirking my duty as a citizen. In fact, I'm actually quite curious about the process. Nevertheless, I'm not being rhetorical in my question, but sincerely want to know. Perhaps it's a failure of our education system that I don't automatically know the answer, but I have a lot of smart friends who read this, many of whom have even been to law school so I hope to be enlightened.

The way I see it, a jury of peers may have once made sense. If a cleric committed an ecclesiastical crime, there is a logic to having fellow clergymen determine the seriousness of the infraction since they would know best what circumstances the cleric faces. But something got lost in the egalitarianism of America where suddenly everyone was your peer. The purpose of a court of law is to render justice and the jury is simply considered an instrument to do that effectively, but I'm not sure I trace the logic. Why should twelve randomly selected people be able to dispense justice better than twelve people who have dedicated their lives to the same? Juror training could simply be a matter of attending the same law schools as judges and lawyers do. Obviously, the legal process would become slightly more expensive, but don't we want the best system we can afford, especially if life and livelihood are on the line?

Whether I'm the prosecution, the defense, or a neutral observer, I would want the best minds available to evaluate any given case. People who are familiar with the intricacies of the law, both through training and experience, should be a reliable group to consistently mete out justice. The judge can refrain from lengthy explanations and there's less of a chance individual jurors would misunderstand instructions. Even assuming a jury has the top-notch brains from a given population, random jury duty often forces inconvenience on people, making the populace as a whole resentful for leaving their jobs and creating a distracted jury more interested in getting back to their lives than carefully determining what is right. Dedicated experts would provide more trustworthy and fairer verdicts.

But let's assume I'm wrong, for a moment. Maybe jury duty provides society with other advantages that aren't immediately obvious. Let's say it gives ordinary citizens a chance to participate and prevents a certain coziness between judges, jurors, and attorneys creating a byzantine legal system the common person has no chance to successfully navigate. Then, if random citizens are so highly valued when it comes to matters of law, we clearly don't go far enough. Elections should be disposed of and random citizens should become our politicians. Our legislatures are large enough a random sample would reflect society as a whole, statistically speaking, especially over time. All campaign finance arguments are rendered moot since no one is campaigning which has the additional bonus of allowing politicians to actually work instead of spending their valuable time on re-election efforts. Power bases are weakened since the people in power will be out of power very soon invalidating the professional politicians we currently have. Our system of laws would be vastly simplified so that everyone could understand it.

I'm not saying this hypothetical political framework is preferable to what we have, but it is consistent with our philosophy that random jurors make the best jurors. I would like to think that our legal system is a product of logic and reason, not mere historical accident. Either we should be governed by the elite or the commoner with justice determined by the same. Otherwise our society is schizophrenic.