The recent rule says, "provided said point transfer would not leave the receiving player within 51 or fewer points from the victory condition"
If the result of a transfer is that the recipient wins, the transfer has obviously obviously left that recipient within 51 points of a victory condition, having surpassed it.
By analogy, the prison guard says, "Do not come within 10 feet of the south fence."
Burrowing down 30 feet then south 30 feet then up 30 feet does not bring the prisoner within 10 feet of the south fence, but the directions have certainly been violated.
(unless you take the left at Alberquerque)
Are these recent point transfers legal?
Your reputation is on the line here .. remember, you'll be on archive.org FOREVER.
It is possible to win at the victory condition, at 49 points beyond the victory condition, and at 158 points beyond the victory condition. If the rules were to mean "you cannot win solely by the transfer of points," well I guess they should have said that eh? The use of a specific mathematical formula was too clever by half, and now I guess gerryblog will just have to suffer the consequences of his poorly worded rule. :)
I want you to know I'm thinking seriously about this. I'll rule on this later today after I've had more time to think, as well as made heard from a few other players. My inclination is to rule with AAA on the language grounds -- in writing the bill I did think you could win by transfer of points, though my thinking was that one would be able to do so through conditional transfers that took effect at the same moment and together pushed a player over the top that way. Let me think. I certainly don't want to run afoul of the judgment of history...
A box of dynamite has a warning label, "Do not light fuse within 1 inch of the safe evacuation minimum fuse length of 10 inches."
Aaron proceeds to light the fuse at the 3 inch mark.
Does he survive?
Since you are actually considering ruling against your victory, gerryblog, I submit to you the following:
The total number of points required to win the game will be 300.
There are two possible interpretations of this: a) the victory condition is having exactly 300 points or b) the victory condition is having 300 or more points.
The question is about the legality of 1's transfer of points to gerryblog, giving him 458 points.
provided said point transfer would not leave the receiving player within 51 or fewer points from the victory condition
If we hold that b) is true, then clearly 458 points qualifies as the victory condition and is within 51 or fewer points from the victory condition (in fact, 458 is 0 points from the victory condition. Thus the transfer was illegal.
If we hold that a) is true, then you have indeed won (following your transfer of points to leave yourself with 300).
Common sense, however, leads to the conclusion that b) is correct. If we say that the "total number of points required to win" a game is 300, surely we mean that a player wins by scoring 300 or more points. I know that you've held that a) is true before, gerryblog, but I urge you to consider common sense in this case and reverse your earlier decision. Recall that in that case, you were ruling so to quash a claimed victory not all that different than the one you are claiming here.
Oops, that link should go here.
Also, gerryblog consider the different wording of the former rule 208, which you ruled on previously:
208. The winner is the first player to achieve 200 (positive) points.
to the current wording. Your wording is far less specific and thus lends itself much less to interpretation a).
Don't be coy, gerryblog. Read the rule as written, put some effort into writing another one of your famously detailed and well-reasoned judgments, and we can call it a wrap.
To stretch the rules all out of place in order to deny your team the carefully engineered victory we built together would be insane, and would be seen as such not just by your people but your competitors as well. If you are keen to keep playing I am certain we can have another go.
I'll add that, given the previous victory claim by AAA that 1 had won the game, it is clear that both 1 and AAA are subscribers to option b) and don't think one needs exactly 300 points to win. Surely, gerryblog, you'd rely on the wisdom of your peers in the super cool fellowship to guide your judgement.
So we're just ignoring people transferring other people's points? I didn't see any ruling that it was illegal so it can't just be ignored.
Okay, I'm back, and I've given this much thought as promised. Perhaps not unexpectedly, I must rule that the victory is legitimate and stands. I deeply regret that this responsibility falls to me, but such is the system Suber crafted.
JUDGMENT: The rule in question states:
As AAA notes upthread, we must first recognize what the rule does not say, namely "A player may not win by point transfer." In the absence of specific language prohibiting it, and taking into proper account the stated intentions of the player writing the legislation, I must conclude that it *is* possible to win by point transfer.
This bolsters what is already the commonsense understanding of this rather convoluted statement that a point transfer must not leave the receiving player within 51 or fewer points of the victory condition: namely that a point transfer is prohibited if it leaves a player within 51 points or fewer of 300. 249 or less on the low end is therefore a legal result, as well as 351 or more on the high end.
Since the points transfers never placed me within the forbidden range, they were legal, and I am the winner, a bittersweet distinction which I proudly accept on behalf of the entire SCVF.
By analogy, the prison guard says, "Do not come within 10 feet of the south fence."
Burrowing down 30 feet then south 30 feet then up 30 feet does not bring the prisoner within 10 feet of the south fence, but the directions have certainly been violated.
The prison guard should have been more specific: the directive she issued was respected in all its particulars, though unfortunately with results she did not expect.
It is so ordered. [bangs gavel]
So we're just ignoring people transferring other people's points? I didn't see any ruling that it was illegal so it can't just be ignored.
Those transfers were prima facie illegitimate. If you want to invoke judgment on the question, I'll say it officially, but the rules clearly define points as property. Even this rule, which defines points as "fully transferable," implies personal ownership; otherwise to what can "transferable" refer? Transferability necessarily implies an exclusive right; it can only mean that the points are given to another person to do with as they will. If you retain the right to take the points back without the recipients' consent, or to take points from others without their consent, what then can be said to have been transferred?
So, gerryblog, do you believe that you won when you had 458 points or only after you transferred away your points until you only had 300?
A box of dynamite has a warning label, "Do not light fuse within 1 inch of the safe evacuation minimum fuse length of 10 inches."
Aaron proceeds to light the fuse at the 3 inch mark.
Does he survive?
Wouldn't the better analogy be a blast radius, which extends in a circle around all sides? If told not to stand within 51 feet of an explosive device, it doesn't matter whether you're in front of it or in back of it, as long as you're more than 51 feet away.
So, gerryblog, do you believe that you won when you had 458 points or only after you transferred away your points until you only had 300?
Contrary to what you wrote above, I'm actually persuaded of the opposite: that, regardless of the merits of flatluigi's extralegal attempt to claim 1337 points and thus the victory, the shift in language from "achieve" to "victory condition" and the accordant decline in specificity regarding "300" indicates that I *probably* won when I had 458.
The change to 300 was simply a prophylactic measure to head off any additional legal challenge; if asked to rule on it I would likely rule that the change to 300 occurred after the game had already ended. (Though I'm not sure of this, as I haven't thought that closely about it, and I'm inclined in both directions.)
However, before I ruled on that I would rule that the invocation itself was invalid, as it doesn't affect the completion of the current turn: at this point I've won on-behalf-of-the-SCVF regardless of which interpretation one holds.
Barring an attempt to overrule me, which I think ssg has demonstrated is mathematically doomed, the question is do we want to play again, and how we get started doing that. I think I'd actually like to give the Total Free-For-All Constitutional Convention approach a try, if others are up for it.
I'm truly disappointed that we wound up with a judge handing himself a win through semantics after all.
A valuable lesson in democratic processes, with direct analogy to the world's larger plights of our time.
Because no actions other than rule-making were spelled out, there were also no conventions for freezing those player actions. If the game really did end, subsequent point transfers were moot. But there are open disputes, and game actions are still taking place -- gerryblog's response to the judgment invocation proves the game is still running. Point transfers would also still be legal.
I transfer all my points to shelleycat. She should probably transfer some back to go back down to 300.
In such case, since the legality of these transfers is under question, both 300-point wins take effect at the same time in the event gerryblog's decision is not vacated.
Congrats, shelleycat!
gerryblog, if you argue that you won the game with 458 points, then clearly 458 points is the victory condition just as much as 300 points is. More specifically, the victory condition is having any number of points greater than 300. The transfer took place leaving you within 51 or fewer points of the victory condition (in this case zero points from the victory condition) and was illegal. I've written the same above and you clearly haven't considered it. I guess you are just using judgement to win the game no matter what the rules say.
ssg: this situation is more analagous to a race, or to setting a record. You have to run 500 metres, you have to eat 48 hot dogs in a minute. It's OK to run 520 metres before stopping, but you win because you ran 500. If you eat 53 hot dogs hey, great, but you broke the record because you ate 49.
The problem with the prison analogy is that there isn't just a rule "don't go within 10 metres of the fence," but there's also a rule "don't escape". I am really hoping there isn't an analogous unwritten rule here "you aren't ever allowed to win".
I heartily endorse both of those analogies -- I think the race thing is right, as well as the unwritten "Don't ever win" rule. Thinking of the metagame for a moment, it seems to me the best thing that could happen right now would be for us to either start over or keep going with someone having already won once, so we know that it's possible, and it's not the end of the world.
Yeah, esp. given as Jay has already made it clear that his challenges have nothing to do with a good faith interpretation of the law, but rather with an attempt to always keep things going (ie, not let anyone else win).
Even if somehow this gets overturned, next time someone wins it's just going to get challenged again and yadda yadda.
That's pretty much the way it's supposed to work, no?
This was my (our?) last line of defense against gerryblog's win.
I fought against sock puppetry, and I think I waged the good fight here too, boiling down to the fact we voted for a rule we thought meant "you can't win via transfers." If I can't muster the voting base, though, it's a solid win.
gerryblog: Would you want it any other way?
The race analogy doesn't work at all, AAA. If we have a 300m race, the runners have to pass through every metre on their way to the finish line. If gerryblog ran 458m, he won when he passed the 300m mark, not when he arrived at 458m. Here the situation is not at all the same. gerryblog was standing at the 249m and then all of a sudden teleported to the 458m. Now, we can either accept that to win you have to have any number of points equal to or greater than 300 or we can try some sort of convoluted argument that the game is won only when one has exactly 300 points.
I think gerryblog should just answer the question of what he thinks the victory condition is, instead of mucking about with this flawed analogy. gerryblog, is it achieving exactly 300 points or achieving any number of points equal to or greater than 300? Your refusal to even answer this question speaks volumes about the legitimacy of the win.
the legitimacy of the win
Do you honestly feel this win was not legitimate? I would have voted to uphold this ruling even if I wasn't in the SCVF. The victory condition is 300, and basic math tells me that 458 means you win, too.
Absolutely agree with you, AAA. If you have 458 points, you win. In other words, 458 points satisfies the victory condition.
Do you honestly feel this win was not legitimate?
Yes, quite honestly.
In any case, I'm going to invoke on this question.
Because the victory condition is 300, and 458 is larger than that, if you have that many points you have met the victory condition. In fact, you have exceeded the victory condition by 158 points. Gerryblog has won by more than 150% of the required victory condition.
This is just like in Starcraft when the victory condition is to destroy ten of the enemy's SCV's, but you drop a nuke and wipe out twelve of them. Victory condition met AND EXCEEDED. You know what I'm saying, ssg?
1, I totally agree with you. 458 points fully satisfies the victory condition. I guess you didn't get the SCVF memo because gerryblog holds a rather different opinion.
gerryblog does indeed have certain unorthodox views.
The victory condition (300) can be satisfied by 300 or any number greater. That doesn't not mean that the victory condition IS 300 or any number greater. Didn't you read my STARCRAFT analogy?
Anyway, this is (clearly) (OBVIOUSLY) a point on which reasonable people can differ, which is why we have a judge, which makes all this nonsense all the more nonsensical. I can so picture you on the Supreme Court demanding endless revotes because OBVIOUSLY there's no penumbra to be found in the Constitution!!! etc
(there is so a penumbra)