[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by IKE

Can you look yourself in the mirror and say with confidence that you have:
*accomplished much
*with the help of many
*at the expense of none

The last point of that quote is very difficult to achieve, but a great thing to strive for.

That last point raises an interesting philosophical point. Do you favour Pareto optimality (striving for net societal improvement, with nobody any worse off) over something a little more Rawlsian (striving for net societal improvement, with nobody unduly harmed), or even Benthamite (striving for net societal improvement, period)?

Personally, I tend toward Rawls most of the time, and I suspect that's part of the reason why we differ. (I'd avoid Pareto except in circumstances where there's not enough information to guess at what undue harm is. And Bentham is for cases where the impact on any individual is trivial enough to be neglected rather than analyzed.) I'm resigned to the idea that the most positive choice for society can sometimes involve negatives for some people, and yet may be justified if the negatives are modest.

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

I'm very happy that the GDC has given us more clarification on the coopertition bridge.

It think it goes a long way to avoiding any further incidents of robots trying to unbalance an already balanced coopertition bridge, or interfering with a balance in progress.

After reading the questions, I realized it would be near impossible to add specific rules to address the issues.

I would like to try and use this update to answer some of the specific questions raised.

Here are some questions that I think this update could address. I've removed the ones that I think are very clearly answered. I've simplified some others to make directly relevant to the new information from the update.

I would love it if everyone took a shot at answering these.

Explanations to your answers would be nice, but not necessary!

Firstly, there are two kinds of acceptability that need to be distinguished: acceptability due to legality (irrespective of whether legality is clear, or subject to disputable interpretation), and acceptability due to moral standards (which come in personal and societal flavours, as well as other permutations).

If we're talking legality, then I'd say this is pretty straightfoward:

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.

No rules prohibit these strategies.

As for moral standards, I disagree with many above that the "spirit of FIRST", "Gracious Professionalism" or any other similar concepts establish a sufficiently homogeneous moral standard for us to impose on the entire competition with the specificity needed to conclude that a particular on-field action is always immoral. Opinion is inherently diverse, and even if you see broad agreement about end goals, it hardly follows that you should expect agreement about the reasoning used to arrive at those opinions. We all want competitors to have fun (an uncontroversial end goal), but I think that there is no agreement on how that fun should be apportioned (in parallel to the Pareto/Rawls/Bentham example above). Consequently, it's not enough to say that because a certain strategic direction is the least offensive to the majority, that it is the only acceptable one.

Similarly, we can't ignore other examples from sports, politics and everyday life, because those also affect our assessment of fairness in different contexts. In short, my moral compass can be self-consistent and rational, and yet still conflict with someone else's.

So with that in mind, I find myself wondering whether these actions are truly so outrageous, and so offensive to the morals of enough people, that it's safe to pass judgment on the entire strategy. I don't think I can do that. There are enough ways to employ these strategies that (to me, at least) exemplify a command of the meta-game, and an effort to trade some short-term reprobation for an overall strategic victory. You can complain that the Yankees have too much money—but when it comes down to it, that's not unfair, it's just part of the game of baseball at the major league level. So too with these strategies. They're an example of playing to win the tournament, rather than necessarily maximize the match score. That offends a widespread expectation, but not a fundamental one.

Therefore, my answers don't really change:

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.

I recognize the influence of unwritten rules, but I think one of the great virtues of FRC is that it is to a large degree a fresh start every year. The GDC has the freedom to tailor the rules specifically to their vision every year, and this consequently removes a big reason to lean on tradition and precedent as additional ways of regulating our behaviour. As a result, I read the GDC's recent message as reinforcement of principles that are already clearly articulated in the rules, but not a clear statement that teams must change any particular strategic behaviour. It's a statement of what the GDC would like, rather than a statement of what we must do. And while it would be very nice to please them, I don't think the recent update should be read as a new moral imperative.

Despite the fact that I'm unwilling to condemn those strategic choices, no examination of the topic would be complete without asking 'what will other teams think of us?' In this case, perhaps perception trumps reality, and even in the presence of well-reasoned justifications about morality, the price your reputation will pay is simply too great. That's a decision for teams to make on their own, rather than something that should be taken out of their hands by dicta from the GDC or the FRC community.

Originally Posted by Shankar M

I think we as a community are all in agreement (even before this update) that egregious attempts to unbalance the Coopetition Bridge are wrong and should be unquestionably frowned upon.

I don't think I'm even willing to go that far. If you try to smash another robot off the bridge, that's one thing (and you'll be rightly penalized)...but inserting your robot in a way that removes the balancing points is perhaps rude, but not that much more so than blocking a series of shots, or pinning an opponent's robot to the wall. The fundamental difference is merely that one has a direct and disproportionate effect on the rankings, while the others are perceived as simple gameplay interactions.

Originally Posted by Shankar M

I worry a little about teams using this update as a basis to "bully" or "coerce" teams on an alliance that chooses, as they are perfectly entitled to do, not to balance the Coopetition Bridge. I certainly hope this is not the case, but I know that if a situation arises in the future where my alliance chooses not to balance the bridge, I will be at least a little bit on edge about how things will play out.

Good insight into the perils of reverse coercion. I don't want a situation where teams are unable to convince opponents/partners that acting primarily in self-interest is not inherently a bad thing. Managing other teams expectations and perceptions is very much part of the game, and I think this whole situation draws the meta-game to the forefront nicely, even if it does complicate the process somewhat.