[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[Llu]

I just had what I would consider a very curious, and largely inappropriate, result from an issue.

In question is Issue #534, "Too Few Cooks in the Kitchen," which is about a shortage of candidates who want to run for election to office.

I selected option 3, which has text as follows:

3. "Nobody wants to run for office because nobody wants to be in the government," replies your mother as she tries to make dinner plans with you. "Think about it. When was the last time someone who actually presented a challenge ran against you? When I was raising you and your siblings, I'd settle who got to play with the toys by drawing straws, and I think we can use the same approach. People from all over @@NAME@@ could be chosen at random to fill a government office for a fixed term. As an added bonus, it would root out the corrupt career politicians and opportunists, since they couldn't run for office anymore. Sure, these new people aren't as qualified, but fair's fair, right?"

The result of this, among other things, was a massive drop in Political Freedoms (which seems odd - some drop yes, but this felt unreasonable), but more importantly, it installed both the Sortition and Autocracy policies, which are inherently contradictory. Sortition is 100% correct - that is what this is. Autocracy is completely inaccurate. Autocracy by definition means one person has absolute power, which is not in any way what Sortition allows. In fact, Sortition goes back to ancient Athens, where it was considered one of the most important keystones of democracy, since it meant office holders weren't beholden to political parties, or to campaign promises made for special interests. It does not remove power from the people - just randomizes the method by which it is distributed. Also, it doesn't have anything to do with removing peoples' right to vote on laws, budgets, or anything else. It just means that candidates for office are randomly distributed in to those offices.

My suggestion would be that the Autocracy flag ought to be removed from this. Sortition and Autocracy are inherently contradictory concepts.

[The Plutonian Empire]

Wtf happened to Hush hush Sweet Charlote? My favorite option outcome of being accompanied by a mistress was rewritten into something prudish! WHY?!

[The Free Joy State]

I just had what I would consider a very curious, and largely inappropriate, result from an issue.

In question is Issue #534, "Too Few Cooks in the Kitchen," which is about a shortage of candidates who want to run for election to office.

I selected option 3, which has text as follows:

3. "Nobody wants to run for office because nobody wants to be in the government," replies your mother as she tries to make dinner plans with you. "Think about it. When was the last time someone who actually presented a challenge ran against you? When I was raising you and your siblings, I'd settle who got to play with the toys by drawing straws, and I think we can use the same approach. People from all over @@NAME@@ could be chosen at random to fill a government office for a fixed term. As an added bonus, it would root out the corrupt career politicians and opportunists, since they couldn't run for office anymore. Sure, these new people aren't as qualified, but fair's fair, right?"

The result of this, among other things, was a massive drop in Political Freedoms (which seems odd - some drop yes, but this felt unreasonable), but more importantly, it installed both the Sortition and Autocracy policies, which are inherently contradictory. Sortition is 100% correct - that is what this is. Autocracy is completely inaccurate. Autocracy by definition means one person has absolute power, which is not in any way what Sortition allows. In fact, Sortition goes back to ancient Athens, where it was considered one of the most important keystones of democracy, since it meant office holders weren't beholden to political parties, or to campaign promises made for special interests. It does not remove power from the people - just randomizes the method by which it is distributed. Also, it doesn't have anything to do with removing peoples' right to vote on laws, budgets, or anything else. It just means that candidates for office are randomly distributed in to those offices.

My suggestion would be that the Autocracy flag ought to be removed from this. Sortition and Autocracy are inherently contradictory concepts.

Democracy/Autocracy in NS are currently coded on the following metric: you either have completely free voting (democracy) or you don't have voting (autocracy). As sortition involves your people having no say in the government they get by voting, that currently brings in autocracy.

That is planned for change at some future point. The technical team are busy, but it is on their list for the future. For now, that's just something we have to live with.

Wtf happened to Hush hush Sweet Charlote? My favorite option outcome of being accompanied by a mistress was rewritten into something prudish! WHY?!

The issue was changed for player autonomy. The former issue was too assumptive about the @@LEADER@@'s gender and/or sexuality and the @@LEADER@@'s private life.

Most players have a clear idea of that information about theit character, and don't like being told information that's completely different to the narrative they created.

[Llu]

Democracy/Autocracy in NS are currently coded on the following metric: you either have completely free voting (democracy) or you don't have voting (autocracy). As sortition involves your people having no say in the government they get by voting, that currently brings in autocracy.

That is planned for change at some future point. The technical team are busy, but it is on their list for the future. For now, that's just something we have to live with.

Thank you for the update. I'm glad to hear it is planned for a change! It definitely needs it, as the word "autocracy" has nothing to do with elections - you could have a democratically elected autocrat, for example. I look forward to the change, whenever it occurs!

[The Free Joy State]

I've raised this backstage.

Thanks!

Yeah, it just seems quite odd for any nation -- democracy, psychotic dictatorship, or anything else -- to allow a non-citizen sentient to make official and legally binding judicial decisions over actual citizens. Or, if that is a thing, it's one of the more insane options, which #587.3 didn't really read as.

Following further discussion backstage, AI judges in #587 does not bring in AI citizenship as it is considered that a well-developed AI programme, capable of rendering legal judgments need not be sentient or treated as human, yet would probably be as consistent as a human judge.

Sorry about any disappointment. There are options that do bring in AI citizenship. Look out for options that specify granting robots equal rights with humans.

[La Badlandoj]

Is it intentional that option 1, issue 144 decreases intelligence? (It's a relatively sharp decrease, at 1.1%.) It's more amusing than anything, and I can trace it through knock-on effects, but it's a bit bigger than I would've expected and could be argued to violate the spirit of the ruling.

[The Free Joy State]

Is it intentional that option 1, issue 144 decreases intelligence? (It's a relatively sharp decrease, at 1.1%.) It's more amusing than anything, and I can trace it through knock-on effects, but it's a bit bigger than I would've expected and could be argued to violate the spirit of the ruling.

No. There is a rise programmed, and which works most of the time.

But intelligence is interesting. It's partly primary and partly secondary (meaning it interacts with a large number of other stats, many of which are present in that issue). Many of the stats it interacts with can make intelligence fall, and -- because your intelligence stat is comparatively high -- it's easier for the other effects where a larger change occurs to overpower that stat and cause a fall.

However, I agree that it would be confusing, and have done a patch to the stats so that it should happen less, and to a lesser degree in future.

[Tzarate]

This is just ridiculous. Dilemma 878, a dilemma revolving on the particular way you want to be like Oceania from 1984. I selected option 2, to enslave my entire country. This apparently means that my authoritarianism has gone down 15% and apparently is generally the anarcho-capitalist solution as wealth gaps skyrocketed as well as economic freedom.

Absolutely stellar dilemma making right there.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

This is covered tangentially in the opening FAQ, but the crux of it is that the right for employers to own slaves is considered to be an economic freedom of sorts. Likewise, if you have a portion of your workerbase being paid nothing, while another portion is paid something, then wealth gaps will exist.

[Four-seventh Restructurisation]

Could you add a warning to issue 470 option 4 in NSindex? I was expecting for it to kill a small country's economy, but the 12 year drop in life expectancy, as well as cancer taking up half of the death causes would have seemed more fitting for a Chernobyl scenario!

edit: Still, do admit that this effect is quite curious.

[Tzarate]

There are no employers except the state. Private business is outlawed, so that doesn't cut it.

[Lord Dominator]

Could you add a warning to issue 470 option 4 in NSindex? I was expecting for it to kill a small country's economy, but the 12 year drop in life expectancy, as well as cancer taking up half of the death causes would have seemed more fitting for a Chernobyl scenario!

NSindex is not covered, operated, or affiliated by the any staff of Nationstates, you'll need to ask the people running it.

[The Free Joy State]

There are no employers except the state. Private business is outlawed, so that doesn't cut it.

Nevertheless, CWA's explanation is the explanation for the effects: the state pays the slaves nothing; it pays its workers something. So there is income inequality. The rights of the managers of the state-owned factories to not pay all the workers -- the slaves -- rise, with the implementation of slavery.

Other nations would have seen their civil rights fall with the same answer. But your people were about as oppressed as they can get before you answered, so it takes a lot for anything to restrict your civil rights further at all, meaning the "right" of managers to enslave people actually overpowered the rights of the people that were being impinged in the system.

That is the answer. Please consider this query closed.

Could you add a warning to issue 470 option 4 in NSindex? I was expecting for it to kill a small country's economy, but the 12 year drop in life expectancy, as well as cancer taking up half of the death causes would have seemed more fitting for a Chernobyl scenario!

NSindex is not covered, operated, or affiliated by the any staff of Nationstates, you'll need to ask the people running it.

^ What LD said.

[Minoa]

Could you add a warning to issue 470 option 4 in NSindex? I was expecting for it to kill a small country's economy, but the 12 year drop in life expectancy, as well as cancer taking up half of the death causes would have seemed more fitting for a Chernobyl scenario!

edit: Still, do admit that this effect is quite curious.

NSindex stopped accepting user-contributed issues statistical effects, due to insufficient manpower to keep it up to date, given that there are nearly 1,100 issues now. Since then, Trotterdam has been working to fill the void more effectively. See viewtopic.php?t=440593

[The Super Knife]

#186: Carjacking Concerns

2. "More police isn't the answer," retorts @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of research at @@NAME@@'s largest car manufacturer. "This is a job for the private sector! We already have blueprints for cars with bullet-proof armour and mounted machine guns, and, if you'll pass appropriate legislation, we can have these things on sale in weeks. Let the people defend themselves!"

Citizens drive tank-like vehicles with mounted machine guns

I chose option #2 for this issue. I was surprised that Defense Forces went down by 0.62%. I thought with citizens using machine-gun cars would increase the Defense Forces of the nation, considering the stat is measured as the "Total War Preparedness Rating".

Maybe the military is less prepared for an uprising now?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

#186: Carjacking Concerns

2. "More police isn't the answer," retorts @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of research at @@NAME@@'s largest car manufacturer. "This is a job for the private sector! We already have blueprints for cars with bullet-proof armour and mounted machine guns, and, if you'll pass appropriate legislation, we can have these things on sale in weeks. Let the people defend themselves!"

Citizens drive tank-like vehicles with mounted machine guns

I chose option #2 for this issue. I was surprised that Defense Forces went down by 0.62%. I thought with citizens using machine-gun cars would increase the Defense Forces of the nation, considering the stat is measured as the "Total War Preparedness Rating".

Maybe the military is less prepared for an uprising now?

Defense Forces is a stat that mostly reflects government military spending.

Actually ALL your government departments took a 0.62% hit to spending. That's a knock-on emergent effect from shifts in your overall economy, and shifting overall societal priorities (which broadly moved away from big government, and towards laissez-faire capitalism).

The simulation is complex with many moving parts - small changes like this should be considered to be part of the simulation being complex, rather than intentional stat movements.

[Trotterdam]

Maybe the military is less prepared for an uprising now?

Regardless of the real machanical reason, I like this as a narrative explanation.

[The Super Knife]

I chose option #2 for this issue. I was surprised that Defense Forces went down by 0.62%. I thought with citizens using machine-gun cars would increase the Defense Forces of the nation, considering the stat is measured as the "Total War Preparedness Rating".

Maybe the military is less prepared for an uprising now?

Defense Forces is a stat that mostly reflects government military spending.

Actually ALL your government departments took a 0.62% hit to spending. That's a knock-on emergent effect from shifts in your overall economy, and shifting overall societal priorities (which broadly moved away from big government, and towards laissez-faire capitalism).

The simulation is complex with many moving parts - small changes like this should be considered to be part of the simulation being complex, rather than intentional stat movements.

Ah, that makes sense. There were a lot of other stats that went down the same percentage.
Correct me if I'm wrong, when you answer an issue, does the "detail" tab adds the smaller changes to the government spending and the "overview" just shows the direct effects of the response you chose?

[Trotterdam]

Correct me if I'm wrong, when you answer an issue, does the "detail" tab adds the smaller changes to the government spending and the "overview" just shows the direct effects of the response you chose?

"Detail" shows smaller changes (but still not really small ones) while "overview" only shows larger ones. This is independent of whether the change is coded as "direct" or "indirect" - indirect changes will often be smaller than direct changes, but not always.

[Phydios]

Correct me if I'm wrong, when you answer an issue, does the "detail" tab adds the smaller changes to the government spending and the "overview" just shows the direct effects of the response you chose?

"Detail" shows smaller changes (but still not really small ones) while "overview" only shows larger ones. This is independent of whether the change is coded as "direct" or "indirect" - indirect changes will often be smaller than direct changes, but not always.

I remember hearing the opposite. "Overview" shows directly coded changes, and "Detail" adds the indirect effects. Clearly one of us is wrong.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Trotterdam is correct.

For one thing, all changes are coded, just some of them are emergent from complex interactions with a lot of moving parts, while some of them are wholly predictable. Trotterdam's stat thing, while not an official doodad, is good at showing how different nations can see a range of effects to different stats with the same coding inputs.

[The Super Spoon]

Issue 36, my friend (nation Qourang), chose option 4. Qourang's major industry is arms manufacturing. My friend expected his arms manufacturing to go up, but nothing happened to it. Defense forces even went down. (because Qourang is sending foreign aid?)

Is this because the other nation's (nation you are sending foreign aid to) arms manufacturing market is not considered your arms manufacturing industry?

Issue 36

Issue: #36: International Community Comes Doorknocking

The Issue
The international community has appealed to @@NAME@@ to increase humanitarian aid to the world's poorer nations.

The Debate
1. "We must increase foreign aid," says beaded local peace activist @@RANDOMNAME@@. "Compared to some of these nations, @@NAME@@ is swimming in @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@. Let's face it, not every nation in the world is lucky enough to have a government like ours. Let's show some compassion to our less economically gifted neighbors."

*2. "Talk about a way to flush @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@ straight down the toilet," argues Think Tank member @@RANDOMNAME@@. "What I've noticed is that whenever we do give something, it's never enough: a few years later they're back asking for more. The best way to help these poor nations is to stop shielding them from the logical consequences of their idiotic, long-debunked socialist economic policies." [Must have private industry]

*3. "Talk about a way to flush @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@ straight down the toilet," argues Think Tank member @@RANDOMNAME@@. "What I've noticed is that whenever we do give something, it's never enough: a few years later they're back asking for more. The best way to help these poor nations is to stop shielding them from the logical consequences of their idiotic, unstable capitalist boom-bust economic cycles." [Must not have private industry]

4. "Relief wouldn't hurt us... if we 'relieved' the right countries," suggests government advisor @@RANDOMNAME@@. "We give them a little humanitarian aid, they give us access to their @@MAJORINDUSTRY@@ markets... it's win-win. Nothing wrong with a little quid pro quo, especially for a good cause."

[The Free Joy State]

Issue 36, my friend (nation Qourang), chose option 4. Qourang's major industry is arms manufacturing. My friend expected his arms manufacturing to go up, but nothing happened to it. Defense forces even went down. (because Qourang is sending foreign aid?)

Is this because the other nation's (nation you are sending foreign aid to) arms manufacturing market is not considered your arms manufacturing industry?

Issue 36

Issue: #36: International Community Comes Doorknocking

The Issue
The international community has appealed to @@NAME@@ to increase humanitarian aid to the world's poorer nations.

The Debate
1. "We must increase foreign aid," says beaded local peace activist @@RANDOMNAME@@. "Compared to some of these nations, @@NAME@@ is swimming in @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@. Let's face it, not every nation in the world is lucky enough to have a government like ours. Let's show some compassion to our less economically gifted neighbors."

*2. "Talk about a way to flush @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@ straight down the toilet," argues Think Tank member @@RANDOMNAME@@. "What I've noticed is that whenever we do give something, it's never enough: a few years later they're back asking for more. The best way to help these poor nations is to stop shielding them from the logical consequences of their idiotic, long-debunked socialist economic policies." [Must have private industry]

*3. "Talk about a way to flush @@CURRENCYPLURAL@@ straight down the toilet," argues Think Tank member @@RANDOMNAME@@. "What I've noticed is that whenever we do give something, it's never enough: a few years later they're back asking for more. The best way to help these poor nations is to stop shielding them from the logical consequences of their idiotic, unstable capitalist boom-bust economic cycles." [Must not have private industry]

4. "Relief wouldn't hurt us... if we 'relieved' the right countries," suggests government advisor @@RANDOMNAME@@. "We give them a little humanitarian aid, they give us access to their @@MAJORINDUSTRY@@ markets... it's win-win. Nothing wrong with a little quid pro quo, especially for a good cause."

There are general industry rises with this option, and you received substantial increases to many industries (including mining -- which rose from 229.82 to 518.53, insurance -- which rose from 1,792.56 to 2,118.56, book publishing -- which rose from -2.62 to +1.71, and cheese exports -- which rose from 367.71 to 533.34). However, your arms manufacturing industry is already really well developed, meaning it's hard to push it further.

Also, as industries are partly secondary -- interacting with backstage code and your own stats -- it is possible for the stat to not move or even fall a little, which is what happened with your arms manufacturing industry (with a small 0.42% dip from 12,869.70 to 12,815.04). It's not a bug; it's just the stats all playing off each other for your unique nation.

Defence forces don't really come into this option. International aid is separate to the armed forces. No rise or fall can be expected, but either or no move at all may occur due to the same interaction of stats.

[Trotterdam]

Issue 36, my friend (nation Qourang), chose option 4. Qourang's major industry is arms manufacturing. My friend expected his arms manufacturing to go up, but nothing happened to it. Defense forces even went down. (because Qourang is sending foreign aid?)

Is this because the other nation's (nation you are sending foreign aid to) arms manufacturing market is not considered your arms manufacturing industry?

4. "Relief wouldn't hurt us... if we 'relieved' the right countries," suggests government advisor @@RANDOMNAME@@. "We give them a little humanitarian aid, they give us access to their @@MAJORINDUSTRY@@ markets... it's win-win. Nothing wrong with a little quid pro quo, especially for a good cause."

That's your explanation there. The issue isn't coded to use any industry in particular, it just plugs in the name of whatever's your biggest industry for flavor. However, the option is really intended as a generic pro-business option, not one specifically favoring one industry in particular. So while Arms Manufacturing is likely to see a small increase (possibly too small to be visible on the result page, depending on how large it was before), it's not guaranteed any more than it is for other industries, which are similarly likely to see a small increase.

[Lamaredia]

Issue #555, It’s an Honor Just to Be Nominated!

I chose option 1, meaning that parties have open primaries that are transparent and democratic, yet my political freedoms went down? Did I misunderstand something with the issue?