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Monday, August 01, 2005

Debate: Chaos in Nomic

Some Dynasties of BlogNomic are quite orderly; others are not. Take the Zombie dynasty, for example. When the loophole in the bombing rule was found, players were lobbing bombs at each other willy-nilly. Until recently, I'd have argued that this was a fairly orderly Dynasty. However, recent events (I'm sure Combustable would agree) seem to indicate that it is teetering on the brink of chaos. With this in mind, I've been trying to define what exactly makes a Dynasty of Blognomic chaotic. Here's what I've come up with.

A Nomic can be said to be Chaotic when the following conditions are met:

1) More than one, and often a majority or all, of the players are able to repeatedly take actions that affect what actions other players are able to take.

2) There is no way, or a very limited way, of protecting oneself from the actions of other players.

3) Taking an action that affects another player's action is preferable to not doing so.

4) There is no way to predict what actions one will be able to take after a given period of time has expired.

So, this is my Initial Argument; that, firstly, there exists a definite distinction between an Orderly Dynasty and a Chaotic Dynasty, and, secondly, this definition I have given adequately outlines what a Chaotic Dynasty is.

Also, I just wanted to start a Debate.