[DG2] - Judiciary Discussion

[DaveShack]

Sweet! All I need, then, is to get a majority that thinks anything, say, Black Hole, does is illegal, and he's gone!

After all, the majority counts. Only the minority would be angered, but who cares, they aren't the majority, right?

Right?

-- Ravensfire

Is this supposed to be an argument that the Democracy game shouldn't be run by majority decisions?

Or perhaps you didn't know what was meant by reasonable? I feel confident that a higher authority would intervene if someone attempted to use my proposed JR override mechanism to force an unreasonable interpretation, given that by being unreasonable it would probably involve "material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive ..." and thus violate forum rules.

 

[Nobody]

Sweet! All I need, then, is to get a majority that thinks anything, say, Black Hole, does is illegal, and he's gone!

You got my support

 

[ravensfire]

Is this supposed to be an argument that the Democracy game shouldn't be run by majority decisions?

Of course not - it was to show the absurdity in the majority is always right arguement.

Or perhaps you didn't know what was meant by reasonable? I feel confident that a higher authority would intervene if someone attempted to use my proposed JR override mechanism to force an unreasonable interpretation, given that by being unreasonable it would probably involve "material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive ..." and thus violate forum rules.

Define reasonable. That's not a simple thing as reasonable varies from person to person.

Look back at the past few games - there haven't been many decisions that anyone would disagree with. The VAST majority of cases that have resulted in argument, dismay and disgust were over serious actions (AW, a blown election), not over rulings.

If anything, people have been more disgusted over the lack of focus in GAME decisions, and at the usual back-and-forth and lack of planning that has resulted.

There IS a mechanism to correct a ruling that people don't like - the amendment. At a minimum, that is a week's worth of time. Usually, it's about a week and a half. And low and behold, the problem CAN get fixed without adding anything new.

That process IS harder than a simple poll, and it should be. You're talking about affecting the rules in a permanent manner. That should take a bit of effort to put through. If a decision is truly unreasonable, then getting an amendment through won't take any significant amount of time. That extra time might even get a few people to discover that they might agree with aspects of the ruling, and result in a better amendment than your override poll would.

DaveShack, I cannot agree that your idea would help the DemoGame. It will hurt the aspect of the game that I, and others, enjoy - the simulation of a government. It seems that you're wanting to turn this into nothing more than a giant Succession Game, and that's not what the DG should be.

-- Ravensfire

 

[DaveShack]

There IS a mechanism to correct a ruling that people don't like - the amendment. At a minimum, that is a week's worth of time. Usually, it's about a week and a half. And low and behold, the problem CAN get fixed without adding anything new.

Not if the judiciary won't "approve" the amendment. Then it will take up to 6 weeks to change, if it happens to be at the beginning of a term.

DaveShack, I cannot agree that your idea would help the DemoGame. It will hurt the aspect of the game that I, and others, enjoy - the simulation of a government. It seems that you're wanting to turn this into nothing more than a giant Succession Game, and that's not what the DG should be.

That is not what I want at all. I want a safety net that gets us by that 1 in 100, or 1 in 1000 ruling at the beginning of a term, that stops the game in its tracks but can't be fixed because the same judiciary that rules wrongly can also refuse to validate the amendment that can fix it. We can't have a branch of government which is totally unchecked by the other branches.

 

[donsig]

Not if the judiciary won't "approve" the amendment. Then it will take up to 6 weeks to change, if it happens to be at the beginning of a term.

That is not what I want at all. I want a safety net that gets us by that 1 in 100, or 1 in 1000 ruling at the beginning of a term, that stops the game in its tracks but can't be fixed because the same judiciary that rules wrongly can also refuse to validate the amendment that can fix it. We can't have a branch of government which is totally unchecked by the other branches.

I don't think it's worth our time and effort to try to make a rule that will cover a 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 problem. I'm with ravensfire on this one DaveShack. Not only is there an amendment process already in place, your objections about the judiciary are fixed by simply voting in a new judiciary next term. And on top of that (as I said many times last game) none of these things has to stop the game dead in its tracks. All you have to do is keep playing the save. A continuous play system would help aleviate this problem as well.

As for a higher power intervening, that's the worst thing we can ask for. Any time a mod interferes with the demogame we lose people. Also, the very essence of the government simulation is working out our disagreements ourselves.

Finally, maybe I'm getting paranoid in my old age but it seems all your objections relate back to things I've done. You should start taking them in context. You talk about checks and balances and not taking extreme positions yet last game we had an unchecked office (the Censor) who unilaterally went around invalidating polls for political reasons. Last game my polls were trounced because I wanted them to be private. Let's not even talk about a CJ who validated his own appointment. Not only were there no checks and balances I couldn't even get a JR or a decent initiative polled to see if private polls were acceptable to a majority of the citizens. Doing a pocket veto (so to speak) of an amendment JR was a response to these things. I would not have minded the majority going against what I wanted as long as the issue got a fair hearing - which never happened in the last game.

The positions of DaveShack, ravensfire and myself are all valid. We do need to respect the majority's wishes but we also need ro remember the majority can ask for opposing things at times. We also need to ensure that citizens are given an equal chance to take part in a decison so that all sides are dealt with fairly. We need a way to balance all this. Perhaps that way is not to be found through the rules but through other means.

 

[DaveShack]

Finally, maybe I'm getting paranoid in my old age but it seems all your objections relate back to things I've done.

They're the ones I was involved in. Provolution had a serious problem with the Judicary in a previous game, and I'm not sure but think Tao did too before that. You don't have to listen to their complaints because they walked away instead of taking the abuse.

I also had disagreements with JR rulings in DG7, but the judiciary was ruling in favor of the majority by reading extra things into the law which weren't actually there in the words. A perfect example of how I want the judiciary to work BTW, even when the ruling goes against the position I'm taking. I take issue when the ruling is not what the majority intended when the law was created.

You are most certainly not the only one. I have also referred to incidents with Strider (the time when I wanted to repoll the decision on going straight to democracy vs. taking a side trip to economics so we could get Smith's -- I wanted Smith's and he made a big deal about only polls created by officials could be binding) and Cyc (the time I wanted his city to change its build queue to something we needed for a national project, and he got pig-headed about the governor being supreme ruler of the build queues and nobody gave them any respect).

And I'm not above taking friendly jabs at Chieftess either. Playing the game with untested beta code should result in a forced vacation. She voluntarily decided to step back anyway for fear of contaminating the save, and the actual in-game result wasn't all that bad, so we didn't get the chance to put up the gallows. And it's not really her fault that there was a 6 month or so period where all her political opponents got foot-in-mouth disease and got themselves banned. (note: not a comment on moderator actions )

You should start taking them in context. You talk about checks and balances and not taking extreme positions yet last game we had an unchecked office (the Censor) who unilaterally went around invalidating polls for political reasons. Last game my polls were trounced because I wanted them to be private. Let's not even talk about a CJ who validated his own appointment. Not only were there no checks and balances I couldn't even get a JR or a decent initiative polled to see if private polls were acceptable to a majority of the citizens. Doing a pocket veto (so to speak) of an amendment JR was a response to these things. I would not have minded the majority going against what I wanted as long as the issue got a fair hearing - which never happened in the last game.

Sorry, you had a very simple out and refused to take it. If you had merely made the first poll on whether polls should be allowed to be private a public poll, the rest would have fallen out without a problem. Either the people would have validated that private polls were OK, or they would have confirmed that they wanted them to remain public.

I'm not sure who was on the court for the failed JR (probably me if it's the case you're talking about but not 100% sure), but the approach you took (trying to say initiatives are not "official") was the wrong approach. If you had instead pointed out the "should" didn't say "must", it would have been a ruling of "you're exactly right, they don't need to be public, case closed."

As for Curu's appointment, he was ready to recuse from the case. Pressing too hard, and continuing to press after he said he'd consider it, is what forced him to take the harder line.

I did notice another extreme case, and tried to fix it on both sides of the dispute. Our friend Ravensfire's position that two (or was it three) polls were required to approve a war plan was completely over the top. The SoW's (Robi D's?) insistence that no discussion or approval was required was equally over the top in the opposite direction.

 

[donsig]

Sorry, you had a very simple out and refused to take it. If you had merely made the first poll on whether polls should be allowed to be private a public poll, the rest would have fallen out without a problem.

I did not need an out. The correct interpretation of our rules was that private polls were legal. Accepting the law as written was the easy out you (and our esteemed Censor) could have taken. Allowing my private poll to finish in a fair manner was another easy out for those opposed to private polls. If the vote went against private polls I would have had no recourse. If the poll ended up for private polls then my poll could have been challenged in the judiciary. It wasn't the laws, it was the politics that gave us the problems.

I'm not sure who was on the court for the failed JR (probably me if it's the case you're talking about but not 100% sure), but the approach you took (trying to say initiatives are not "official") was the wrong approach. If you had instead pointed out the "should" didn't say "must", it would have been a ruling of "you're exactly right, they don't need to be public, case closed."

I don't get this one at all. When I read a rule should does equal must. May would indicate a choice is legally possible, should does not. This highlights the fact that you and I do not think alike and do not use words the same way. To you official means binding. To me it means an act by an official. You also tried to structure the decision making heirarchy to cover instances where a) one specific thing was covered and b) a rule was laid down to be followed until such time as another rule over-rode it. To me that distinction should (please read this as must) be included in the wording of the decision itself.

If you held the key to avoiding that whole mess (by having the question simply reworded) why the heck didn't you step forward and produce that key? Sounds like another political failure rather than a problem with our system

As for Curu's appointment, he was ready to recuse from the case. Pressing too hard, and continuing to press after he said he'd consider it, is what forced him to take the harder line.

Yet another political failure. If I had known all it would take was backing off I would have. No one PMed me to suggest that. Also, I don't recall many citizens stepping up and publicly calling for the CJ's recusal. A little bit of that might have swayed him as well.

As I hinted at in my last post in this thread, maybe it's not the rules we have to work on but something else.

 

[DaveShack]

When I read a rule should does equal must. May would indicate a choice is legally possible, should does not. This highlights the fact that you and I do not think alike and do not use words the same way. To you official means binding. To me it means an act by an official.

Must conveys an imperative, such as "you must stop at a stop sign". Such imperatives typically result in an automatic penalty if not followed (and observed by someone with the authority to invoke the penalty).
Should conveys a duty or obligation such as "you should pull off the road when an emergency vehicle passes" but does not imply an automatic penalty, for instance if it is not possible to move off the road.
May conveys a sense of an action being optional or permissable, exactly as you use it.

You also tried to structure the decision making heirarchy to cover instances where a) one specific thing was covered and b) a rule was laid down to be followed until such time as another rule over-rode it. To me that distinction should (please read this as must) be included in the wording of the decision itself.

My turn to not follow something, I'm not sure what a and b refer to.

If you held the key to avoiding that whole mess (by having the question simply reworded) why the heck didn't you step forward and produce that key? Sounds like another political failure rather than a problem with our system

In the first instance, I was following the majority's wishes as captured during the rulemaking phase, by trying to fix imperfections in the language. Later when I brought out the distinction between should and must and changed the Censor procedures to say that being private was not sufficient by itself to invalidate a poll, I was following the updated majority wish to allow private polls to be valid.

 

[donsig]

Should conveys a duty or obligation such as "you should pull off the road when an emergency vehicle passes" but does not imply an automatic penalty, for instance if it is not possible to move off the road.

I guess we're on different levels of moral developement. I if I should do something because it is right then I must do it.

My turn to not follow something, I'm not sure what a and b refer to.

Just goes to show I don't understand your distinction between initiative and referendum. All I know is (according to your definition) one covers the here and now while the other covers subsequent decisions as well (has the force of law as you put it). Understand now?

In the first instance, I was following the majority's wishes as captured during the rulemaking phase, by trying to fix imperfections in the language. Later when I brought out the distinction between should and must and changed the Censor procedures to say that being private was not sufficient by itself to invalidate a poll, I was following the updated majority wish to allow private polls to be valid.

Did it ever occur to you to just state what YOU want it to be so we can count your vote when we tally up the majority?

 

[DaveShack]

Just goes to show I don't understand your distinction between initiative and referendum. All I know is (according to your definition) one covers the here and now while the other covers subsequent decisions as well (has the force of law as you put it). Understand now?

It was a bad idea to have that distinction. You'll see in this game's proposal I eliminated the difference between referendum and initiative and said (or at least tried to say) that a later poll can reverse an earlier one.

A better idea on duration would be to include the intended duration in the poll itself. For example "Shall we stay at peace for the next 40 turns (yes/no/abstain)." Successful polls of this type can be recorded in a common place as currently active long-term decisions, and edited out when no longer in effect.

Did it ever occur to you to just state what YOU want it to be so we can count your vote when we tally up the majority?

I did say what I want -- all polls to be public except the ones about individuals which are required to be private. When making my decisions on who to vote for, I want to compare their past statements about what we should do with their corresponding past votes. If we're simulating a government, we're all members of the legislative body, and legislative body votes are on the record.

 

[DaveShack]

Please continue discussion of referendum / initiative in the Decisions and how to make them thread.