[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Tristan, I apologize for the lengthy response. I appreciate the ability to engage in civil dialogue with someone who disagrees fundamentally with me on important issues. I tried to give each of your comments the time it deserves; I hope you receive my responses in the genuine, honest, non-confrontational spirit in which I intend them to be.

I'll note that for the most part, I was able to receive your comments as intended, though as you'll see, there was one in particular that I think was probably beyond the pale. Either way, there's certainly something fundamentally different about the ways in which we approach this issue.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I approve 100% of the moral standards of gracious professionalism and coopertition in their full spirit; you clearly do not.

You say that like it's a terrible thing. Am I insufficiently zealous for daring to approve only 90%?

(I can't really challenge your assertion in detail if I don't know to which definition of those terms you're referring. Gracious professionalism has been articulated many ways by many people, some of whom are senior enough at FIRST to be credible authorities on the matter. Co-opertition is typically defined as a combination of competition and co-operation, but it's clear that as embodied in this year's game, it is distinct from the oft-stated ideal of competing as hard as you can on the field, and co-operating as hard as you can off it.)

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Yes, it absolutely must. Changing the culture in a positive way is a fundamentally moral venture. If you think otherwise, I don't think you understand much of anything*** about the interrelationships between morals and culture.

You'll have to enlighten me why the trajectory of positive culture change must absolutely culminate in homogeneity of opinion.

Though Dean's vision for cultural change might be grand and sweeping, I think it's fair to represent the actual process as incremental. And not every increment of change is going to lead in exactly the same moral direction. Surely there are many solutions to the problem of increasing the recognition of science and technology in our culture. Why should every one be expected to eventually converge?

And as for the interrelationships between morals and culture, you're going to have to back that assertion up with something a little more concrete. Is there a relevant relationship that supports your assertion, and denies mine? (Or were you merely highlighting the uninteresting fact that to call something "positive" requires drawing a conclusion about the morality of the process that caused it?)

Originally Posted by pfreivald

In that you are flat wrong, and it leads me to believe that you haven't made an effort to understand a single thing I've said on this subject. I happen to approve of both the moral stance and the game design of FIRST leadership -- but the two are orthogonal.

While I sometimes talk about alleged flaws in the rules, this sentence wasn't an instance of that. I was merely stating the obvious: that there are important issues that the rules do not speak to. My assertion was that a strong moral position could be used to provide guidance where the rules do not—I don't think this is controversial. Furthermore, I think you're relying upon that process—and I said as much, without implying a value judgment.

Given that sentence in its proper context, I don't think you should draw the conclusion that I have not attempted to understand you. (Actually, I'm baffled by what led you to that conclusion, even in the absence of context.)

Originally Posted by pfreivald

On moral stance: I am advocating a strong moral position because moral relativism is a bankrupt philosophy espoused only by those too lazy to contemplate the ramifications of the fact that "there are no moral absolutes" is a moral absolute.

Are you counting me among them? Because that's not even remotely what I said or implied.

But digressing for a moment—because this is interesting—are you saying that it would be fine to say "I have insufficient evidence of the existence of moral absolutes"? It would seem to pass your stated test, but without repudiating moral relativism.

And incidentally, if you are advocating an absolutist position, how do you reconcile that with uncertainty or disagreement about what those absolutes are? (And if you're not advocating for absolutism, why bother lashing out against relativism?)

Originally Posted by pfreivald

On game design: I support the "reasonably astute observer" and "intent of the GDC" rulings because positivist game design, despite your expressed desires to the contrary earlier in the 118 thread, is not actually possible. Unpleasant truths are always preferable to pleasant fictions.

You're half right, in that I do not like the "reasonably astute observer" standard as applied this year (for reasons I explained in that thread).

But as for the other half, you seem to be recalling your own expressed opposition to positivist game design. I did not advocate for a completely positivist rule book, because I realize the inherent futility of expecting to write a truly universal set of definitions. (That means that at the extreme, while not a realistic situation, I agree with you, and never indicated otherwise.) To quote myself:

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

I concur and am at peace with the fact that every word can be dissected...but that's not to imply that every such dissection is the same. When interpreting a rule, some ambiguities are more ambiguous than others. The aim is hopefully to provide a document that replaces big ambiguities with small ones, whenever possible—and does so in a way that's also reasonable to understand, follow and enforce.

In other words, I was advocating for more specificity in certain areas. The lack of a positivist solution to the rulebook in no way precludes the possibility of improvement of the document as it stands. It is entirely possible, and arguably desirable, to achieve greater specificity without running afoul of philosophical impossibilities.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

...and of course neither of those matter one whit, because I'm neither part of the GDC nor of FIRST leadership. That means that even if I agreed with you about everything, that wouldn't make our interpretations or our arguments hold even the slightest bit more water -- all it would do is make us both wrong when interpreting what the GDC means.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Not that either of our opinions really matter, mind -- when it comes down to it, it isn't either of our call.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

It's critically important to note that both of our opinions are quite irrelevant when it comes to communicating with and interpreting the pronouncements of the GDC; they mean what they mean, and it's up to us to determine what that is as opposed to what we want it to be.

In other words, the truth doesn't care what you think. If you want to be an effective communicator (listener) in this case, then you must try to ascertain what it is the GDC actually meant, and that means using the moral standard under which they are operating to interpret their pronouncements even if you don't agree with those standards. To do otherwise is to apply willful ignorance as a shield against effective communication of intent.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

You're free to disagree, and you're free to express that disagreement, but you do not have the prerogative to impose your views of what FIRST should be upon FIRST (and neither do I. For the record, there are a variety of things I would change were I in charge... But I'm not, and I don't want to be, even if that means that the things I disagree with continue in perpetuity. It is sufficient for me to see that FIRST does a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people, and as far as I can see does no harm).

FRC is not a cult or a religion, where the doctrinal interpretation is the only valid interpretation. Instead, it is a community, with a competition at its centre. It is absolutely my call, to a very limited extent. Indeed, to an extent, it's every participant's call. FRC is about what we collectively make of it. The FIRST leadership and FRC GDC clearly drive the community's standards, but they do so in a manner akin to the leader of a political party: through manifestos, exhortations and examples. If the party disagrees with the leader's position, it pushes back, and change tends to occur. (We saw this with the request for transparency in FIRST's operations a couple years ago. It also happens behind the scenes, when FRC volunteers and staff lobby headquarters for improvements.)

So, no, I don't single-handedly set policy for FIRST—and obviously, I wasn't under that illusion. But discussions here, like conflicts and controversies at events, help advance the conversation, which in turn affects FIRST's policies.

As for your suggestion that one must interpret the rules by applying the GDC's moral standards, I find that highly suspect. Given that the GDC members' positions are not homogeneous (or even necessarily self-consistent), and only a few collective pronouncements of moral fibre are provided, one can hardly ever expect to be right (in the sense of understanding the rules in the manner intended). But more importantly, I don't see any indication that FIRST actually expects this of its participants. Sure, they make statements telling us what type of reasoning to employ when interpreting the rules—but that's not a moral standard, it's merely a vague suggestion about reading comprehension, and frankly, an eminently practical attempt at avoiding argumentation.

Also, adoption of FIRST's moral outlook is simply not the standard that many (perhaps most) officials apply in practice. First of all, most officials don't address the problem with anything approaching that level of philosophical depth. They just read the rulebook, and enforce their understanding of it. They're not actively considering whether their moral compass is aligned with that of the GDC.

Furthermore—at least according to my own moral outlook—officials aren't supposed to have the luxury of choosing the interpretation that is most comfortable for them or for the GDC. Instead, they're burdened with the entire set of interpretations that satisfy the written rules in the book. When it comes to enforcing the rules, simple equity dictates that (subject to other important considerations), a solution that satisfies the letter of the rulebook is right enough, whether or not it strictly follows from the GDC's intent. (The GDC doesn't always like this—but as a matter of principle, equity is usually more important than keeping them 100% happy.)

That must be kind of infuriating, because it suggests that multiple contradictory opinions can be simultaneously right, despite the existence of what's supposed to be an objective standard. But there's no objective way to enforce unstated intent, and trying to give it the veneer of objectivity by claiming that the GDC's intent trumps all only serves to make teams mad at the officials and the competition.

Worse, it implies that it might be acceptable to allow a team's innocent misunderstanding of an ambiguous rule to ruin their experience—that would be unconscionable. (Note that if the rule is not sufficiently ambiguous in the eyes of the official, then unfortunately, the team's experience will have to suffer. But that's a last resort, not an automatic response to a team's failure to understand the GDC's intent. Officials mustn't—and don't usually—make things up or overstate the ambiguity to placate teams.) In other words, for an official, the morally superior choice is to give less (but rarely zero) weight to the GDC's own moral stance, and instead to ascertain whether the team's interpretation of the rules reasonably follows from the book, and strictly judge their compliance with the actual specifications.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I believe that the moral standard set by FIRSTs leaders do indeed limit a team's options when considering choices in competitive play. Removing the value judgements of "perceived" and "unnecessarily" from your statement, I think we're in agreement on the facts, if not opinion of those facts. The moral strictures make FIRST what it is, in all of it's awesome thank-God-it's-not-basketball glory.

I think that's a statement of fact, but not an axiom.

FIRST is what it is, in large part because people choose to consider moral strictures that go above and beyond the rules. But it is illogical to imply that because many (or most) obey that moral code, that everyone should or must comply. We can't be penalizing teams for following the rules, but not the spirit. Feel free to castigate them after the fact for their moral weakness, but in terms of the game itself, they've acted acceptably.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I think we might be in agreement on pragmatic disincentive -- indeed, I think several people interpreted my earlier comments regarding long-term team impact to be judgmental as opposed to pragmatic in nature. (A reputation of dishonest jerkism -- thank you Woodie for the alternative to 'cretin' -- is hard to shed, and has the potential to negatively impact teams and team members for the rest of their existence. This makes it a decision bigger than "do I care what this does to our reputation", because it can tarnish the brand in its entirety.)

Pragmatic consequence of certain strategies *is* different from those strategies being inherently wrong -- but that doesn't mean those strategies are thus not inherently wrong. Don't fall for the false dichotomy: they can be both pragmatically unwise as well as inherently wrong.

I would posit that all inherently wrong strategies are pragmatically unwise, though pragmatically unwise strategies are not necessarily inherently wrong... that said, I'm not interested in the thought experiment involved with teasing out the wrongness matrix of any given action in Rebound Rumble.

We agree that the pragmatic disincentive is real. Perhaps we disagree on the details of how much and for how long it will tarnish the brand under a particular set of circumstances. I can live with that state of affairs.

(And incidentally, I don't think I was in any danger of falling for the false dichotomy. My statement was intended to distinguish between those properties, not claim that they cannot simultaneously be true.)

Originally Posted by pfreivald

FIRST is inherently judgmental. Dean Kamen looked out at the glorification of sports and entertainers and cutthroat business and he said, "this is wrong". He set out to right that wrong, and to transform the culture into one that celebrates not only science and engineering, but also gracious professionalism and coopertition -- and he did so because these things are "right" and should be encouraged and celebrated. You're of course free to disagree, but when it comes to what FIRST is all about, it's not your call, it's theirs.

I find it amusing the degree to which Dean has backtracked on this outlook (at least publicly), to secure the participation of one particular popular entertainer. I offer that observation as evidence that perhaps it's not so simple as a bright line between right and wrong.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

The problem with your statement is that it seems to be entirely ignorant of the fact that in FIRST the competition is entirely subservient to the moral goals. (Don't take my word for it. Listen to 20 years of "it's not about the robots"). So your statement is correct, but entirely moot.

Complementary, not subservient. Without the competition, the moral goals lack currency—why would the average FRC student care about what Dean Kamen had to say, if it weren't for the cool robots? For that matter, many sponsors wouldn't care about Dean's morals, if it weren't for the robots. It's inescapably about the robots, because without the robots, nobody would listen to the valuable moral lessons.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I highly doubt it's inadvertent. Year after year after year, the message from the GDC has been "do the right thing, even if it's to your competitive disadvantage". Not all teams live up to this ideal, and not all team members live up to this ideal -- but it is indeed this ideal that makes FIRST fundamentally better than most (if not all) sports. (Yes, that's a judgmental statement on my part. Yes, I'm comfortable making it. Yes, I wish everyone in FIRST would just either buy into it, suck it up, or find a program they can stomach. No, I don't expect them all to do so.)

That's not the message I get at all. It's much more subtle than that. There are definitely undertones of "do the right thing" and "play nicely". But it's still clearly a competition, and you should feel free to do things that partners/opponents may not agree with, as long as you're willing to accept that there may be consequences to those decisions.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I would agree in principle that a clear regulatory standard allows permissivity in varying moral positions -- although we've already established that your vision of a clear regulatory standard has no basis in the real world vis-a-vis either game design or engineering specifications. (I suppose you can scoff or disagree if you desire, but my impression from our earlier exchange in the other thread is that when it comes to game design you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Without further evidence to the contrary, that's the impression I'm working with going forward).

Though I probably shouldn't dignify your repetition of baseless attacks with a response, I'll simply point out that I'm pretty sure I have an adequate academic background to make reasonably strong statements about engineering, law and policy. What's more, I suspect I have as much FRC experience as you do—as a team member, mentor and lead official. There's a traceable lineage between rules I co-developed and the past and present FVC, FTC and VRC competitions. I've built a big flying robot, consulted on a solar car, and worked in enough actual engineering positions to know my way around a production line or design shop in a few different industries—and there's stuff I directly developed in thousands of vehicles and several factories. Moreover, I've worked for governments on actual technical codes and policies—and am reputedly quite good at it, at least according to real-world experts. While I'm impressed by the fact that games you designed are played on tabletops all over Western New York, I didn't dismiss your expertise as a substitute for a cogent argument.

So let's not make this about us as individuals, and agree to avoid the personal attacks in future.