[Mr. Lim]

Although I petitioned the mods to have Patrick and Tristan's posts moved to another thread, I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the posts.

In reference to "chill out, it's just a robotics competition," I'd have to say that I again disagree!

FRC is about so much more than just the robots.

I couldn't tell you how bored I was during our mandatory "philosophy for engineers" course during my undergrad. The significance of relativistic moralism never really rang through to me, until now.

Although at times painful, it was really neat to see a tangible example of these concepts intelligently dissected, debated, and applied right before my eyes... using robots.

Crazy.

For a topic I despised so much in undergrad, I still can't believe I got roped in to reading every.. single... word... intently.

Seriously though, having a good handle on Tristan's and Patrick's points WILL ACTUALLY HELP YOU AT COMPETITION THIS YEAR.

You could just say "yes" to every opportunity to coopertate, take the "moral high ground," and throw every team who doesn't want to coopertate under the bus for being "cretins."

At the end of the day, you might just be encouraging teams to take coopertition bridge defense underground.

It is far more effective, and less damaging to a team's "moral reputation" to promise the opponent they will coopertate, meet them at the bridge, and then have an "intentional accident" which causes the balance to fail.

Intent is impossible to judge. And no one would dare make any accusations, nor should they.

You could never "catch" anyone doing this, and they would come off smelling like roses. At least they TRIED to balance the coop bridge, right?

I need to make it absolutely clear that I would find the above scenario absolutely disgusting...

...exponentially worse than anything we saw at GTR-E.

Instead of building a "universal morality" where teams feel pressure to resort to underhanded means, I would much rather have a balanced approach that said:

"Okay, there are some valid reasons NOT to balance that coopertition bridge. If you choose not to, I won't bully, coerce, convince or hold it against you. If you're going to do it, at least do it the right way. Get to the bridge first, tip it towards you, and stay on it so no one else can get on. Not everyone will agree with what you're doing, but they will understand why you did it, and not throw hatred at you. I would much rather you do this, and be transparent about it, as opposed to the underhanded alternatives."