Systemic flaws in the stats system?

[The Church of Satan]

This is an almost perfect example of a completely arbitrary, overly idiosyncratic interpretation of the effects, as I mentioned above. Really exactly that. If you go about it this way, you can also interpret an elephant as a somewhat chubby, oversized horse. You can also take apologetics to the point of absurdity.

What you seem not to have considered is that, according to this logic, you can always, really always construct cases in which the effects of a measure always add up to zero in the balance sheet. Give me any measure and I will construct such a case for you. I prefer a game in which what I do has a visible effect - and not one in which it is always explained to me afterwards why this is not the case. And this is has actually always been a crucial point of my criticism: If the game works this way, it's simply too clever by half. Apart from the fact that this interpretation of yours is really really absurd and in many parts not even logical. This partly due to your confusion between the freedom to do just anything and civil rights. There are very important differences between the both, philosophically and politically.

Or perhaps civil rights are a deeply complex thing that encompass far more than you had previously considered. I maintain that you have simply misunderstood how it all works. This isn't meant to act as insult or anything. Misunderstanding something means you have an opportunity to learn again. Shouting that everyone is wrong except for you just makes you look like a crazy person, not to mention arrogant.

[SherpDaWerp]

How you modeled the model, if you will, is quite a good idea and comes closer to how I think the model should be.

I suggest then that any minor differences between what I said and a hypothetical "good solution" are due to the fact that I don't actually know what goes on back there.

I made my argumentation dependent on having such a high value of 35+ in the first place.

I didn't put too much time into my numbers because they're going to be inaccurate no matter what I do. But the same principle applies - imagine there's more backstage rights, and then your average is 30 (made up of 2 40s, 2 80s, and 6 10s). If you send one of the 40s up to an 80, then your "visible change" might be +4, putting your score at 34. And then you get N issues in a row that only deal with your already-low 10 stats.

Let's say the substat "bodily autonomy" was defined that way and at 0 now. Why do I get the issue then in the first place?

Maybe because your bodily autonomy was actually at 1, not 0, maybe because the editors don't like introducing unnecessary validities on things (with ~1500 issues, there's simply not enough of them to make it worth locking people out on small points like that), maybe because "bodily autonomy" isn't even a stat and my imagined picture of what it looks like is totally off base.

But I was explicitly told several times that the change a certain issue causes varies with the current value of the stat as such, not that it was due to additive, concrete measures.

I'm a bit confused what you mean here. I suspect the wording is confusing - sometimes when talking about "changes" the guides mean the in-text worded "change" that's being suggested, and sometimes they mean the actual numerical difference. In this case, the (numerical) change varies with the current (numerical) value of the stat (as described in my US -80 / NK -20 analogy) over different nations making the same (textual) change.

Anyway, I've explained it as best I know, and if that explanation isn't clicking, then I can't really help you, cause I don't know any more than that. I recommend you have some element of trust that the editors aren't just lying to your face when they say "it all makes sense backstage".

[The Church of Satan]

Yeah, there's nothing else that can be done to explain it. That's the way it is. We've done all we can for you. What you do with it is up to you. :-/

[Esternial]

I don't get what's so difficult to understand. This isn't that game. This game was never intended to be so.

The site is literally a place where Max Barry advertises his books, and the issues are fun clicky things that make folks chuckle at the absurd consequences they get.

The bloody site doesn't take itself as seriously as you're taking it.

You are taking this the wrong way. I got the impression that something is not quite right, wanted to know more about it, made a conclusion and posted it here. It's all of you who can't stop dicussing. If you took it as lightly as you say, you wouldn't even post here. So you seem to have a problem with someone pointing out the weaknesses of this toy here. I would already have moved on, I really don't mind what you make of my criticism of all that. I wanted to understand it and share my thoughts. Apart from that, I enjoy debating as long as you gyus want to, especially in a foreign language. It helps me brush up my English. I also like to see how people debate, it's sometimes really insightful. In the end I'll forget about the game again like I did two times before, while you are actually seeing so much in all this that you've spent a decade here. Maybe it's you who is taking this criticism too much to heart?

You're certainly free to give your opinion. I think what's rubbing people the wrong way is that, quite early out of the gates, you came with statements of absolute certainty (e.g. The answers given aren't "correct"). I suspect this may be a consequence of English not being your primary language. It may be interesting to read up on hedging to communicate your point.

[Zouayne Shyce]

I won't make this too long anymore, i'll just make a few points:

1. Phrasing things as if there is some deficit on my side that you could "help" with is getting ridiculous. Just to give a few examples: I understand the system as well or as poorly as anyone who doesn't know the background; to imply that I don't is simply a lifeline for people like "Church of Satan" who barely understood anything about this discussion to begin with anyway. My English is better than that of maybe 60-70% of native speakers (and certainly better than 90% when things get more "intellectual") and I don't see any difference to anyone else here either, apart from a bit of slang. But who the hell needs slang? I'm guessing that 90-95% of the people reading here didn't even begin to suspect that I wasn't a native speaker before I said it openly. Apart from perhaps those who have taken a closer look at our region, which allows a few conclusions to be drawn about our origins. It was you who misread parts of my posts here, so maybe you need a little help in English (see below). At the risk of repeating myself, only stupid people fall for this false condescension. To me, it looks like helplessness on a substantial level, and that's exactly what it is.

2. Get over the fact that I think the game is badly done. Don't get me wrong, that's understandable - after all, it's not very complex and they only had 20 years to develop it. Thus certain weaknesses in the basics are inevitable. But the fact that someone finds something bad for good reasons doesn't mean that they don't "understand" it. You would like it to be that way, but sorry, nope.

3. Those who invest as much time as many of you do are more likely to have a problem with cognitive dissonance. You don't want to easily admit that something you have spent so much time with has obvious weaknesses, especially not if you didn't see them so clearly before. Because that makes you feel a little stupid and a bit like you've wasted your time. So you defend what you love and what you've been used to tooth and nail in order to avoid a few simple, perhaps painful insights. that's just what always happens to old-timers when someone from the outside comes along and speaks a few "painful" truths. Here it makes for such completely absurd interpretations of issue effects.

4. None of us knows exactly how the system works, so no one knows which interpretation is correct and which is not. This is exactly what I mentioned from the very beginning, already in my opening post. If you don't know that, you either haven't read correctly, have a bad memory or are deliberately misinterpreting me. In the end, it doesn't matter how it works exactly. I have explained in great detail why I think it doesn't work well on the surface, the game level. I don't need to do successful backward engineering to realise that a machine is not doing its job. It's just interesting to know why it doesn't do its job as well. So I did all the speculation more out of interest. On the level of the game itself, I just find it rather lousy. And here I come back to your absurd interpretations of some issue effects: the very fact that it needs them shows that something is wrong. If you find it interesting and entertaining to arbitrarily interpret abstruse effects so that they somehow make sense, that's up to you. I'm certainly feeling different about that and wanted to share my thoughts. While I can't improve the game, my perspective may be interesting to some others who hate the "stats" as well and wonder why.

5. There is only one thing that has annoyed me here from the beginning and perhaps incited me a little. And that is the apparent request for feedback, criticism and suggestions, for which there are certain threads and megathreads, but which are then only used as an opportunity for a few old-timers to polish up their egos with pompous smart-ass bullshit sugarcoated as "help" or to make a few brusque announcements. I mean, you turn down any suggestion to improve the game anyway. You never admit there is something wrong anyway. You do the same fallacy of refuting criticism of how the model works by pointing to how it is, time and again. It's tiring. All this even has kind of nerd, basement kid, maybe even incel vibes.

[Zouayne Shyce]

I rest my case here. It has come to a point where I myself no longer derive any benefit from the fact that this discussion is going round in circles for the umpteenth time, what it would do if we proceeded.

[Esternial]

Thanks for all your feedback.

[SherpDaWerp]

There is only one thing that has annoyed me here from the beginning and perhaps incited me a little. And that is the apparent request for feedback, criticism and suggestions, for which there are certain threads and megathreads, but which are then only used as an opportunity for a few old-timers to polish up their egos with pompous smart-ass bullshit sugarcoated as "help" or to make a few brusque announcements.

Posts in the megathread where someone points out a specific, single instance of weird stat behaviour (i.e. not "civil rights is weird", but "X issue's effects are weird") regularly result in model changes.

However, the ratio of these changes to misunderstandings is pretty low.

[Zouayne Shyce]

There is only one thing that has annoyed me here from the beginning and perhaps incited me a little. And that is the apparent request for feedback, criticism and suggestions, for which there are certain threads and megathreads, but which are then only used as an opportunity for a few old-timers to polish up their egos with pompous smart-ass bullshit sugarcoated as "help" or to make a few brusque announcements.

Posts in the megathread where someone points out a specific, single instance of weird stat behaviour (i.e. not "civil rights is weird", but "X issue's effects are weird") regularly result in model changes.

However, the ratio of these changes to misunderstandings is pretty low.

When you apply such a broad definition of "misunderstanding" to defend a pretty bad model, as those responsible here do, it's no wonder. Fortunately, they don't build cars, because that would probably lead to "misunderstandings" among customers when the fuel nozzle is inserted, causing the car to explode. But well, here we will no longer agree. That's enough for good, I have to work.

[The Church of Satan]

My apologies if I insulted you. That wasn't my intention. I'm not an academic (nor have I ever claimed to be) but one doesn't need to be get a grasp of the basics for NS stats. Civil rights are directly tied to freedoms, statistically, in this game. It says as much if you check the civil rights stat:

The citizens of nations ranked highly enjoy a great amount of civil rights, or freedoms to go about their personal business without interference or regulation from government.

NationStates doesn't really make the distinction between them. They are inextricably linked. It's not meant to be a real world imitation. It's satirical. If you want to increase your civil rights stat, you'll have to get rid of government regulations, and/or grant more freedoms to your citizens. You probably won't see a giant leap from just one issue, and that's okay. If it were that easy, there'd be less incentive to answer issues. You'd get your nation just the way you want it in a matter of days, and then it'd be over for you. You'd cease to do it, grow bored, and leave inside of a week or two.

[Zouayne Shyce]

No worries, you didn't insult me at all. You personally are rather funny in a probably rather involuntary way

[Racoda]

1. Phrasing things as if there is some deficit on my side that you could "help" with is getting ridiculous. Just to give a few examples: I understand the system as well or as poorly as anyone who doesn't know the background; to imply that I don't is simply a lifeline for people like "Church of Satan" who barely understood anything about this discussion to begin with anyway. My English is better than that of maybe 60-70% of native speakers (and certainly better than 90% when things get more "intellectual") and I don't see any difference to anyone else here either, apart from a bit of slang. But who the hell needs slang? I'm guessing that 90-95% of the people reading here didn't even begin to suspect that I wasn't a native speaker before I said it openly. Apart from perhaps those who have taken a closer look at our region, which allows a few conclusions to be drawn about our origins. It was you who misread parts of my posts here, so maybe you need a little help in English (see below). At the risk of repeating myself, only stupid people fall for this false condescension. To me, it looks like helplessness on a substantial level, and that's exactly what it is.
[...]
5. There is only one thing that has annoyed me here from the beginning and perhaps incited me a little. And that is the apparent request for feedback, criticism and suggestions, for which there are certain threads and megathreads, but which are then only used as an opportunity for a few old-timers to polish up their egos with pompous smart-ass bullshit sugarcoated as "help" or to make a few brusque announcements. I mean, you turn down any suggestion to improve the game anyway. You never admit there is something wrong anyway. You do the same fallacy of refuting criticism of how the model works by pointing to how it is, time and again. It's tiring. All this even has kind of nerd, basement kid, maybe even incel vibes.

Fortunately, they don't build cars, because that would probably lead to "misunderstandings" among customers when the fuel nozzle is inserted, causing the car to explode.

No worries, you didn't insult me at all. You personally are rather funny in a probably rather involuntary way

There's arguing your point in a sassy way and there's being deliberately abrasive. *** Warned for flamebaiting ***

[Lord Dominator]

“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.

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

I answer a lot of issues across multiple nations. Most of the effects make sense, and those that don't become more clear the more you realise how the game engine works. It's very rare that you can't come up with an intuitive narrative as to why a stat has moved in a certain way.

[Zouayne Shyce]

I won't discuss this topic anymore, because I did so ad nauseam, have heard all the apologetics and I'm still not convinced. Even chances that I read further postings here are close to zero. So as a last thing: I just banned cars, before I had two or three issues more that normally should affect civil rights and would likely do so as long as you can trust Trotterdam's statistics. Still no effect. If you still think I don't have a point here, I really can't help you, because you definitely must be susceptible to confirmation bias in a deeply concerning way.

I don't even mind which category my state is in in the end, so it's fine either way. But this is so odd that if it is no bad coding in the first place, it must be a new bug - or someone did something on purpose. I'm not saying that I even think this is likely, but at this point I'm not ruling it out completely anymore.

[Twilight Imperium]

I won't discuss this topic anymore, because I did so ad nauseam, have heard all the apologetics and I'm still not convinced. Even chances that I read further postings here are close to zero. So as a last thing: I just banned cars, before I had two or three issues more that normally should affect civil rights and would likely do so as long as you can trust Trotterdam's statistics. Still no effect. If you still think I don't have a point here, I really can't help you, because you definitely must be susceptible to confirmation bias in a deeply concerning way.

Yes, 'tis the natives who are wrong. I think we'll muddle through fine though Thanks for your insight and entertainment.

[Zouayne Shyce]

And now, all of a sudden, two of our nations were deleted because after three months of existence and having grown to more than 500 million, someone wanted to find something offensive in their names. If at all, the names were only slightly offensive, not to others, but referred to the people themselves or weren't really words at all.

This has probably nothing to do with my criticism here. This is no revenge. Somebody totally objective just happened to find out that these names could, maybe, considered as offensive in Spanish to... myself and my girlfriend, maybe. And you just had to protect me from insulting myself.

Just another help from my side: If a country is called "Republic of Xs", it means that there are Xs living in the country, that Xs are ruling the country. The name, then, refers to the player of this nation, not to others. So if X is an offensive term, the player is actually insulting himself. Just helping, since this happens to be a very helpful community. Apart from that, it was a rather old-fashioned word nobody would really use anymore anyway, at least not in Spain.

[The Blaatschapen]

And now, all of a sudden, two of our nations were deleted because after three months of existence and having grown to more than 500 million, someone wanted to find something offensive in their names. If at all, the names were only slightly offensive, not to others, but referred to the people themselves or weren't really words at all.

This has probably nothing to do with my criticism here. This is no revenge. Somebody totally objective just happened to find out that these names could, maybe, considered as offensive in Spanish to... myself and my girlfriend, maybe. And you just had to protect me from insulting myself.

Just another help from my side: If a country is called "Republic of Xs", it means that there are Xs living in the country, that Xs are ruling the country. The name, then, refers to the player of this nation, not to others. So if X is an offensive term, the player is actually insulting himself. Just helping, since this happens to be a very helpful community. Apart from that, it was a rather old-fashioned word nobody would really use anymore anyway, at least not in Spain.

File a ghr if you want to appeal those Moderator decisions. This is not the thread for it.

Continuing to discuss this here will result in action taken on your nation.

[Zouayne Shyce]

Did that already, But it doesn't matter anyway, really.


"Continuing to discuss this here will result in action taken on your nation."

[The Blaatschapen]

And I lock the thread since it has gone offtopic.