Zouayne Shyce wrote:“So, for example, if the United States of America were to block its citizenry from the internet for one week, that's be a massive shift in its position on civil liberties. If China were to do the same, it'd be a notable but less dramatic shift. If North Korea were to do it, people would consider it business as usual.”I think you are confusing the liberties themselves with the reaction towards a policy affecting them. If they can’t use the internet, they can’t use the internet, wherever they are. It’s exactly the same restriction for Americans, Chinese or North Korean people, and it’s exactly the same “amount” of freedom taken away from them, no matter how free they are in other respects. Unlike North Koreans, Americans would probably be way more surprised, infuriated, ready to upheaval, you name it. But this is not to be confused with the right taken away itself. The civil rights of a nation are a set of things people are free or not free to do, not their opinion about it. It’s as simple as that.
You're confusing the wording of this for what it actually means - its not about the "people" in the sense of the citizens, but in the sense of external observers of civil rights in that country. North Korea banning its citizens from the internet for a week would be considered "business as usual" to use that phrase, and no one watching would consider that to represent a serious change of NK's civi rights, because they already do that. To continue that, China has significant regulation but still allows internet access generally and the US has very few regulations. Either of them banning internet access for a week would be considered more notable as a change in civil rights, but to different degrees because of their prior positions on internet freedom in general. And that is what matters, and what the bit you quote is talking about - the stat effects on a given nation vary based on its prior positions.
If you base a model on a serious thinking error, no wonder that it does odd things. It can do odd things for other reasons as well, but erroneous assumptions about the world modelled by the model are never a good start.
As others have noted, the model in NS is inherently satirical and extreme to a degree from the beginning, and that hasn't changed. The stats modeling will never be perfect, no more than NS will ever be an ideal political simulator - for reasons including but not limited to you as @@LEADER@@ never losing power and being able to make any change to your nation (subject only to the issues you receive) with no obstacles.
I think that in a better model every clearly defined policy (e.g. you may / may not do X) should always have exactly the same effect
Issue effects do generally have the same relative or absolute effects (you can see this with Trotterdam's data elsewhere), but as ever prior position matters. To use the prior example, the US/China/NK banning the internet for a week will result in all three having the same position on Internet freedom afterwards (in NS modeling, probably an actual ban on Internet usage) and thus the same relative effect (Internet banned), but much different absolute stat effects depending on how much internet there is to ban.
and only the sum or network of these effects should define the type of political system.
They do and don't already - political/economic/civil freedom stats are directly related to the category (Anarchy, Corporate Police State, etc), but those are only loosely related to your broader form of government.
“So long as you keep answering issues with a consistent style, and keep playing the game, your nation's simulation will grow more and more stable.
Don't worry about "buyer's regret" either. Early decisions in your nation's lifespan are no more inherently consequential than late ones: its the amalgamated effect of ALL your decisions that matters.”
AND
“If you go against what it thinks it knows about you, then you can see a sizeable change.”
These sentences are contradictory as such or at least can’t all be true at the same. If your system becomes more and more stable, later decisions cannot have a huge effect anymore, because this is the very definition of stability. So that’s contradictory. But okay, you are making a legitimate restriction to that statement: as long as your decisions are in accordance with the “nature” of your state, your effects will be small; when you contradict your system, the effects will be stronger.
Not contradictory, you're reading a general statement as an absolute one - in general, issue effects that are similar to prior ones will cause fewer/smaller changes than ones that aren't so similar. Early issue effects only tend to appear larger because all your stat positions are generally smaller to start - that is, stats on a new nation are smaller to start, so the absolute changes from one issue effect are relatively larger than the same absolute change later. Again, this is true when the issue answered is in line with prior positions, stats changes get much more dramatic the more dissimilar a choice is from prior choices (the other reason why new nations have more dramatic swings, greater likelihood of going against what the simulation thought, because it had no real data yet). For instance, a nation with little to no IT industry ever will have few effects from confirming their dislike of computers, whereas a nation with a large IT industry would have a large effect from anti-computer choices.
It strikes me this (probably) means that the “buyer’s regret” can’t be avoided anymore. It depends on whether the model “changes its opinion” about your state or not. If it doesn’t, a decision that it considers unusual will have a large effect, but everything you are trying to fix this decision won’t, because these decisions are considered as “nothing special” by the model. That leads to the paradox situation that you get stuck with a change, because the model doesn’t recognize your attempt to fix this as a mending, but as business as usual.
No change is impossible to remove, some may just be harder for various reasons - timing on issues you get that can undo/reverse a particular policy or how many issue do so in the first place for instance.
I think I ended up in this situation a few times with my states until an endless amount of small steps into the right direction finally fixed it. The best documented case is my last one, this nation I’m using right now.
It was a Corporate Police State for months, then just a few decisions made it a Compulsory Consumerist State. Lowering the civil rights again should have told a learning, intelligent system, that I am just reverting to the nature of my state. The “no buyers regret” should have applied.
There isn't a "no buyers regret" policy built in, that was indicating that no effect is truly permanent. Reversions of the effects of a particular issue option are only going to happen from specific options on other issues that directly do so (ie, allowing cannibalism and then re-banning it days later) or from the accumulated effects of other issues, depending on what kind of change it is.
But no, every decision on civil rights had no or an extremely tiny effect. So one “unusual” decision about civil rights got my state reclassified, while, up to now, 16 (!!!) decisions in the opposite direction couldn’t fix that until now (that was a mistake: actually the 16th fixed the civil rights and caused a reclassification from FKB state to IFC).
"unusual" for whichever particular hidden stat for civil rights, and you were probably close to the lind between categories anyways (since the classification categories are based solely on your stats in the civil/political/economics freedoms with no regard to why you have those particular numbers).
Since something similar happened to me concerning Economic Freedom, I have been jumping erratically between Father Knows Best State, Iron Fist Consumerists and Compulsory Consumerist State day by day.
Economic Freedom is much touchier than the other two, as the known "hidden" stats includes several that directly conflict with each other (because the game measures such things as the rights of large and small businesses, workers in several ways, consumers and so forth) and regularly cause odd movements when you're at the edges on those particular hidden stats.
However, it’s interesting to see how models behave, even bad ones.
It's more of a satirical model than anything else.