Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Zendo rules

  • FromChristopher Hickman <tophu@xxxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 10 Mar 2009 08:17:38 -0400
On Mar 10, 2009, at 7:22 AM, Roger Burton West wrote:

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 07:16:50AM -0400, Christopher Hickman wrote:
Could somebody explain the ambiguity of this rule in relation to the
null koan?  Clearly the null koan doesn't contain any pyramids, let
alone only grounded ones. How could anyone think this could be marked
anything but no?

Consider it as boolean logic: "contains only grounded pyramids" can be
transformed into "contains no non-grounded pyramids", which clearly _is_
satisfied by the null koan. It is precisely because some players think
in boolean terms and others don't that this could be considered
ambiguous.

So the real problem is the lack of the assumption that every koan contains pyramids. I see now. Those two rules are identical if the null koan is disallowed, and the null koan is the only koan that could disprove the other.

I guess my programming experience makes me weary of not checking for null. ;)

(Also, as Daniel pointed out, it makes it easy to lose track of just
what's going on on the table.)

That's what the null coaster is for...

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