Coopertition - Not As Easy As It Looks!

[Libby K]

No matter what you do strategically (and personally, I disagree with almost everything you posted, but people have already essentially said what I think)...

...you should never, EVER bully, manipulate, or slander another team for the sake of winning.

The issue here is bigger than just 'what is the intent of the co-opertition bridge'. When teams go around a regional talking trash about another team to get others to not cooperate with that other team? Disgusting. Keep it between your alliance. If you're not in the match, don't go telling the teams that ARE in it what to do.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Only you are responsible for your own honor and integrity. If you act without one or the other, word will get out and in the long run it will negatively affect your team -- but more importantly, it will define who you are.

Back to what Sean said...

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Would your grandmother be proud of you?

How would YOU explain that behavior to your grandmother? "Yes, we won, Nana! But in order to do it, we had to go around convincing all the other teams not to play with this one team that was ranked higher, so that they couldn't pick this other team, so that we had a better chance at winning...."

I know my grandmother would call me a bully for that. And she didn't raise a bully.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Libby K

...you should never, EVER bully, manipulate, or slander another team for the sake of winning.

I completely agree with this statement.

The logical follow up that is wrecking my brain a little bit is "at what point does persuasion become bullying / manipulation"?

I'm a person who has been an advocate for the "hostile 6v0" strategy in 2010. And no, I'm not "hanging my head in shame" like some posters want to allude to, because the 2010 ranking system was designed in such a way that it made zero strategic sense to score for yourself if you were all but going to lose a match. For one particular match, my team was partnered with a second year team with a kitbot and a very notable team in the region. Neither of which were willing to do 6v0, and we had a pretty intense 15 minute discussion about what our best moves would be. When does advocating an oddball strategy, morality aside, become harassment and bullying? I know for certain my team made some blacklists just because I suggested the strategy (and I personally regret doing anything to make 2791 look bad to anyone).

This all makes my brain hurt - and probably not in the way the GDC intended.

As for this year's game... I don't see actively stopping the use of the coopertition bridge as something I would personally do. I can't really justify it, and hey, it might be a complete reversal of the same logic I used to justify scoring on myself in 2010. It just seems wrong to take a strategy dispute and take it to the field. Maybe it's okay to try and talk teams on your alliance into not cooperating for a match, I don't know, but I certainly think ramming a balanced bridge and defending the coopertition bridge are both pretty clearly decisions I would never make.

[fox46]

the idea of inevitability starts taking hold in people's heads.

-agreed

Have you ever been to an Ontario regional? You can't experience this over a webcast but to be there in person all you need to do is listen to the crowd- the applause and cheering when 1114 and/or 2056 are walloping a team... the lack thereof. Everyone knows what the outcome will be. I remember being at the GTR regional last year and during one of the quarter finals it was so quiet you could hear the solenoid valves firing on the robots. I respect these teams immensely for their awesome achievments but the reality of the situation, like it or not is that there are many many teams out there who are becomming less and less hopeful toward winning a regional when they find themselves up against this alliance. That being said they are a huge driving force behind the Canadian robotics effort. As a kid on one of my teams said- "We don't have to win, we just have to beat 1114 or 2056!"

I know of several Ontario teams who steer clear of their local competitions simply because they don't feel they have a fighting chance at a win. It's rather sad IMO. So you can bet your pants that there are teams out there who will refuse to cooperate with them if only to try and split them up for eliminations.

I can't think of a better series of finals where 1114 and 2056 are forced to play against each other- THAT would be a serious fight which I very much hope to see this year!

[MisterG]

I see a lot of posts that say: I wouldn't do it but I am not going to judge other peoples actions.

I say that we need to judge each other, or at least judge each others actions. We just need to do it in a loving and respectful way.

Looking the other way can be another way to not live up to our full potential as humans.

Now, how to confront other people about things that we observe, that is a very delicate thing. Make sure that you are focused on the action and not on the actor, make sure that you are thinking about helping someone else get to a higher place and not about building yourself up. Make sure that you remember that you have made some pretty questionable calls more recently then you care to admit.


If all else fails listen to Lavery:

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Would your grandmother be proud of you?

[pfreivald]

I'm glad to both see the update and to see the language expressed in the strongest of terms: "FIRST does not celebrate being an incompetent jerk."

[wilsonmw04]

One of my students showed me this and some how it seems fitting :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HFTP...feature=relmfu

[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.

Meta-Coopertition: Teams are cooperating as a group, yet competing against others, by selectively agreeing and refusing to balance.
1) Is “meta-coopertition” acceptable?

Coopertition Bridge Defense:
Some teams in the match want to balance on the coopertition bridge, but for some (let's assume, valid) reason your team doesn't want them to.
2) Is it acceptable to get to the coopertition bridge first, drive on to it, and leave it tipped to prevent others from getting on?
Or is the above scenario now not acceptable?

6v0
An alliance that believes they are going to lose is willing to score less points and instead work with the opposing alliance to guarantee a balanced coopertition bridge and a loss.
3) Are 6v0 arrangements acceptable?

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

[EricH]

For me, the "meta-coopertition" is something like the collusion debate from 2003. In that case, the agreement was to not play defense on your opponent's scoring stacks to boost both sides' ranking. A number of teams said publicly that they would not participate. Others said they would.

It's a bit tougher here, but for this case, I'd call it a team's call to make. It's a strategy. As a strategy, I don't see an issue with it. However, trying to force other teams to join in is an issue, as the GDC noted.

6v0: Again, it's a strategy. I don't see an issue with it, but I do note that it isn't to a team's advantage to go that way, except on the bridges.

With the intentional tipping of the coopertition bridge, I think that might be pretty close to the behavior the GDC commented on. It's not quite there, IMO, but it is saying that "I'm going to deny both of us any chance of the coopertition points." That's (almost) forcing teams to join in. Given that situation, I would expect that some teams would try to push that team up the bridge, taking advantage of the slightly-reduced traction on the bridge--a fair penalty for trying to force your view on someone is that they try and force their view on you, at least in this case.

[MisterG]

IMO:

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

6v0
An alliance that believes they are going to lose is willing to score less points and instead work with the opposing alliance to guarantee a balanced coopertition bridge and a loss.
3) Are 6v0 arrangements acceptable?

No.

While it is acceptable to predict defeat as a reasonable outcome and therefore place a higher priority on balancing than on scoring, it is NOT acceptable to make a deal with the other team that involves reducing your offense.

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Coopertition Bridge Defense:
Some teams in the match want to balance on the coopertition bridge, but for some (let's assume, valid) reason your team doesn't want them to.
2) Is it acceptable to get to the coopertition bridge first, drive on to it, and leave it tipped to prevent others from getting on?
Or is the above scenario now not acceptable?

No; you have some options available. You can choose not to attempt balance and you can choose to influence your alliance or the opposing alliance to not balance. Any passive or active blocking of balancing is over the line.

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Meta-Coopertition: Teams are cooperating as a group, yet competing against others, by selectively agreeing and refusing to balance.
1) Is “meta-coopertition” acceptable?

No.

You can't make cross alliance bargains; therefore M-C is unavailable to the teams that are on the opposing alliance. You can't compete against your alliance partner, therefore M-C is unavailable to teams on the 'friendly' alliance.

So, I guess its nos all around.

Blocking the bridge is the grayest one for me; the others that rely on making deals with the other alliance just seem like non-starters.

That's how it looks from where I am sitting.

p.s. hey Mr. Flowers: turns out GP doesn't mean what you thought. It means Grandma's Proud!

Alan Gilgenbach

[SamMullen]

Meta-Coopertition: Teams are cooperating as a group, yet competing against others, by selectively agreeing and refusing to balance.
1) Is “meta-coopertition” acceptable?
Yes, as long as you go about doing it in a gracious and professional manner. If you think this is a viable strategy for you, and you can get your alliances to agree with you, by all means go for it.

Coopertition Bridge Defense:
Some teams in the match want to balance on the coopertition bridge, but for some (let's assume, valid) reason your team doesn't want them to.
2) Is it acceptable to get to the coopertition bridge first, drive on to it, and leave it tipped to prevent others from getting on?
Or is the above scenario now not acceptable?

I really feel that if any part of the alliance wants to get the coopertition points, than you shouldn't prevent them from attempting to get them. You should always respect the opinions and wants of your alliance, even if that makes things a little bit worse for you.

6v0
An alliance that believes they are going to lose is willing to score less points and instead work with the opposing alliance to guarantee a balanced coopertition bridge and a loss.
3) Are 6v0 arrangements acceptable?
I kinda lean towards no I guess. I don't understand why you would ever need to formally declare that you are doing this. Before every match you should be meeting up with your opponents to figure out the logistics/the timeline of balancing the center bridge. That should, if not guaranteeing you the coopertition bridge, make it at the very least highly likely, because if they can beat you handily, you both should have plenty of time to get on the bridge. And if you lose, well, these things happen. Planning before hand to throw the match though, just sounds, well, weird to me. Basically though, I just don't like this on a gut feeling kind of level.

[Gray Adams]

The GDC ruling still leaves some questions remaining. If You have 2 teams on an alliance agree the bridge should not be balanced but the third disagrees, must the alliance allow the third team to balance the bridge? If a team is breaking strategy or refusing to cooperate with their alliance, is the alliance not playing fair by unbalancing the bridge?

The idea that the alliance takes precedence over the team seems to be floating around, hence the attitude that unbalancing the bridge is selfish and should not be condoned. But does this apply when the alliance decides not to balance? You could even have 4 robots on the field who all don't want the bridge balanced, but it only takes 2 to balance.

Thoughts?

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Gray Adams

The GDC ruling still leaves some questions remaining. If You have 2 teams on an alliance agree the bridge should not be balanced but the third disagrees, must the alliance allow the third team to balance the bridge? If a team is breaking strategy or refusing to cooperate with their alliance, is the alliance not playing fair by unbalancing the bridge?

The idea that the alliance takes precedence over the team seems to be floating around, hence the attitude that unbalancing the bridge is selfish and should not be condoned. But does this apply when the alliance decides not to balance? You could even have 4 robots on the field who all don't want the bridge balanced, but it only takes 2 to balance.

Thoughts?

I would go so far as to say that even agreeing with your alliance to not balance the bridge (in order to influence the seed of the other alliance) is not a celebration of excellence, and thus not in the spirit of FIRST. It's not a collectivist "alliance > team" quandary, it's a simple "robots showing off > robots not showing off".

I'm comfortable interpreting the GDC's statement on the matter as this: Refusing to engage in an aspect of the game in order to deliberately hurt the seeding of your opponents is not acceptable.

[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.

However, even after this update from FIRST, I continue to stand by the strategy of choosing, as an alliance, not to balance the Coopetition Bridge in certain situations. There are, of course, several conditions that MUST be met to make this strategy acceptable. These have been captured in in any number of preceding posts - the entire alliance agreeing to do so without any coercion or bullying on the part of any member(s) of the alliance being the dominant one.

It seems that there is some "contentious" strategy that arises each year which causes people to cry foul citing it as an affront Gracious Professionalism. As has been said so many times before: let's not forget that we are all competing in a competition. We all want to have fun and enjoy ourselves. We all want to cooperate and help each other out. We all want to win. Often, that means finding strategies to accomplish certain tasks that help us to achieve this goal - choosing not to balance the Coopetition Bridge in certain situations is just such an example.

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.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I would go so far as to say that even agreeing with your alliance to not balance the bridge (in order to influence the seed of the other alliance) is not a celebration of excellence, and thus not in the spirit of FIRST. It's not a collectivist "alliance > team" quandary, it's a simple "robots showing off > robots not showing off".

I don't know if I agree with this. If I am scoring in the last thirty seconds, am I not showing my robot off? If I am balancing the alliance bridge, am I not showing my robot off? In both instances, I am exhibiting plenty of excellence (arguably, in certain situations, with the added element of strategic excellence).

I know that everyone may not see eye-to-eye with me on this. If that is the case, let's agree to disagree and play the game in the manner which we think is in each of our best interests?

[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.

[pfreivald]

Tristan, you might want to consider that your views seem to be diametrically opposed to those of the GDC and to the founders of FIRST.