Who thinks this is a good draft tactic for this format? Is two Trials enough to go this deep? Am I not going deep enough? Do I need to cut Benefaction or add more of them?
In a deck with 15 creatures and 7 enchantments, like yours, the expected value of Benefaction of Rhonas is 1.55 non-land cards, with some selection, which seems quite reasonable relative to usually-playable Divination's expected value of 1.15 non-land cards/.85 lands. I don't know whether it would be wise, but if you replaced a creature with another Benefaction of Rhonas, the expected value drops to ~1.54 cards, so it would still make sense from a value perspective.
now you might ask couldn't big businesses ignore the private protection agencies? well the big businesses wouldn't be able to stay big for very long if they spent revenue on a private army instead of reinvesting it back into the business. now wouldn't the private protection agencies fight each other?, well the answer to that is that it is unlikely that two protection agencies would fight each other because it is expensive and would be bad press, instead they would negotiate the dispute or they would choose a mutually agreed upon arbitrator to decide on the case.
Why would the Mongols waste their lives mastering war? They wouldn't have enough time to plant their crops!
Why did you even bother to figure that out? Clearly the dragon ball z box isn't selling for $95 it's selling for $35. Just like when I go on tcgplayer I can get a booster box of mtg for $90 Which means I can get two booster boxes of DBZ for less than the price of 1 mtg box. The two DBZ boxes would have more cards cheaper than the mtg box. Here I'll throw out another example to show the cost of making cards. https://www.shopbicyclecards.com/ProductResponsive.aspx?ProductId=233&CategoryId=42
A deck of playing cards that they had to pay to some artists to make zombie art for sells as a single deck before discounts for $3.19 right now for 54 cards. That should show you the difference in cost of making cards right there. Also last time I checked there were 15 cards in a mtg booster pack.
550 cards for $25 a booster box of mtg is 540 for $90. There are many examples out there of the massive amount of over charging that wizards does. For them to be cheap in any way on the printing process is just wrong of them to do.
The real question is why you bothered comparing the price of Dragonball Z cards to Magic cards in the first place. DBZ is a dead game that you can no longer even buy at retail--why is its price relevant to the price of MTG cards? It's like arguing that, because some people give away Bibles, all books should be free, or because Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl LI apparel is getting sent to the developing world, the Patriots should give me a Tom Brady jersey. It's an absurd and irrelevant argument.
Your new examples are at least not being sold at clearance prices, but are still not analogous. How much art did CAH commission for those 550 cards? Apropos of this conversation, how good is the cardstock? How big was Bicycle's playtesting team for that deck of playing cards?
Yes, Wizards charges more for Magic cards than some other people charge for some other printed materials. If you want a bunch of cards, buy something else. If you want a bunch of Magic cards, well, maybe what you're paying for isn't really the cards at all, but the human talent and labor that went into making the game.
But mostly I just posted because comparing the price of DBZ cards to MTG cards is really silly.
Just for example how much they are over charging us. A similar booster box of dragon ball z cards. I can see that the booster boxes only have 24 booster packs but it only costs. $35 dollars to buy it. I'm seeing even cheaper booster boxes at $20. Force of will seems to cost $60 for a similar booster box to magic. http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/214327
Dragon Ball Z Box:
24 packs X 12 cards/pack = 288 cards
MSRP 95.76
95.76/288 = $0.3325/card
Black objects do not "emit heat very well". Color is an indicator of the energy an object absorbs and reflects, not the energy it radiates. A black object absorbs more energy and reflects less, and therefore gets hot faster than a white object. It does not "just get hotter and hotter until it melts", because there is a finite amount of energy in the system, and the hotter something is, the more energy it radiates back out. It gets hotter until it reaches an equilibrium with its surroundings. This is basic thermodynamics. And irrelevant anyway, because see points above.
This doesn't have any real bearing on the "white people are degenerate mutants" conversation, but black objects do emit heat very well, since emissivity and absorbtivity are equal. This is often only sort of true, due to human eyes only perceiving a limited slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, but it's why emergency blankets are silver, for instance.
And why would you say that unless you had reason to believe that it might be the case?
Well, I'd say I do have cause to believe it might be the case: any list that included this story was obviously not chosen for merit. There might be good work on the Rabid Puppies slate, but that's incidental to its purpose. There are categories where this slate was extremely influential--every novella nominee, for example, is either a Rabid Puppies nominee, written by Wright, or both. I think worrying a little about quality is justified.
EDIT: This comes off as more negative to the other nominees than I intended. I genuinely think it's possible that there are award-quality nominees on the RP slate. I just also think it's possible there aren't, based on one of the worst stories I've ever read.
Yeah, Wright's stuff is awful (as is Wright). But be careful: isn't making generalizations about works without having read them sort of exactly what the Puppies are complaining about?
Sure, and I don't mean to blindly besmirch the pieces I haven't read. I meant literally what I said. This piece does not deserve to win what is/was arguably the most prestigious SF award in the English-speaking world. If the other pieces are at this level of quality, they also do not deserve to win.
The only one of the R/SP-nominated stories I've read thus far is Wright's "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus", which is awful, boring, and cliche (and was subsequently disqualified from the ballot, since it was first published in 2013). I remember liking The Golden Age--what the hell happened? If this piece is indicative of the general quality of the nominations, I expect a lot of completely earned No Awards.
I don't think what the Sad Puppies did was wrong, but I think it may have permanently rendered the Hugo irrelevant, which is kind of sad. (Sure, you could say that the award was always meaningless because it was determined in such an exploitable way, but it had (to my mind) a pretty good track record.)
It's interesting that you bring up homicide. Intent certainly plays a part in the severity of a crime, but if you shoot a bullet at the moon and it kills someone on the way down, you are guilty of negligent homicide. If you instead kill someone while shooting at their house, even without intending to kill them, you are guilty of a greater crime. Killing someone is obviously more severe than terrifying them, but the same principle applies--if you take an action likely to harm someone, and it does, you're culpable whether you meant it to harm them or not. Intent may dampen the severity of your guilt, but it doesn't erase it.
You seem to contend that I've claimed that all individuals' fears are equally legitimate. This is not the case. I've proposed that we view threats through the lens of the reasonable person standard of common law--how would a person of average judgment, skill, and care respond to this situation? I'm not saying all fears are equally legitimate. I'm saying that if an act would harm a reasonable person, we should consider that act harmful.
You claim that I'm asking society to restructure itself to my whims, but I'm very glad to report that this isn't true--this common law standard is exactly the one used in many jurisdictions for the laws that concern threats and intimidation. (In your teenagers example, if they're yelling threatening things, yeah, they probably are committing a crime and doing something morally wrong. If they're just yelling boisterous drunk stuff, I would probably also be scared, but they're not doing anything wrong.)
I know it doesn't, which is why I was pretty confused by your last response--I asked the exact same question in post #714, and you replied with some other thing. Maybe I was unclear.
Anyway, this is the danger inherent in this reasoning that I first alluded to. You've many times acknowledged that death threats can make people's lives substantially worse, but you say they're harmless; this position allows for people to send them with no moral culpability, and provides a perfect screen for people who do want to send them to intimidate others.
I reject this position in part because it grants the people sending death threats a privileged position over those receiving them: the recipient has to consider the statistical likelihood of actually being murdered and conclude that it is minuscule, which is why you say the act is harmless, but the death threat author doesn't have to consider the statistical likelihood that they'll ruin someone's life for days (they were just having fun/venting/being hyperbolic to make a point). Why should the probability of not being murdered trump the probability of getting scared *****less?
This is what I was getting at with the "reasonable person" standard--if a threat would damage the quality of life of most recipients, why isn't it harmful per se? Does it actually matter if the response is 'irrational' if most or all people would have it? Why should we determine whether an action is harmful by the effects it should have on people instead of the effects it does have on them?
I know the chance that death threats will result in physical violence is very low, but that's not the damage that they do. Humans are animals, and death threats are an effort to exploit their animal fears and deprive them of their sense of security; as you say, they often work. If an action that makes most of its targets' lives worse isn't harmful, what is it?
I have read your post. Could you please point out where it addresses whether a death threat sent with no intent to scare or harm the recipient is despicable? I am genuinely curious about your answer, and to my knowledge you have not provided it--if I'm missing it somewhere, I apologize.
In that response, you assume an intent on the part of the author ("the intent is still to scare people, the intent is still to make them feel bad") that does not follow from the premises. If I believe that death threats are harmless, and that people shouldn't be scared by them, I could easily send a death threat with a different motive--to get their attention, for instance, or to blow off steam by venting my frustrations. Is this still despicable?
To clarify, you propose that there is a harmless action (sending death threats) which a person believes is harmless (by your own rationale), but when they perform this action it's 'despicable'? On what grounds can such an act be considered wrong?
Certainly, but they all involve tangible things - finances, having a roof over your head, having a job. People being mean online (Again, yes, no matter how mean they are) does not constitute danger. Words on a screen cannot actually harm you in any way unless you let them. If you choose to be upset at someone saying something patently ridiculous to try and threaten you, then I'd say I'm fully within my right to say that you've made your bed and leaving you to lie in it.
I don't have much interest in getting bogged down in a semantic argument about the definition of the word 'danger'. If you have a problem with this use of the word, we can drop it and start using the word 'risk'--I don't care what particular word is used to express this idea. The risk of your position is that you foster an environment where death threats are seen as no big deal, and thus run rampant, which I contend results in harm to their recipients. (If you have a problem with the word 'risk', substitute "the possiblity of a bad result.")
If I subscribe to your rationale, how are any death threats I send 'despicable'? I know that only fools would fear for their life or be otherwise harmed by my words, so how can you condemn my intent? If the idiot on the other end happens to get scared for some stupid reason, that's on them; I'm merely expressing myself. You can't blame me for putting on a dolphin show. Under your reasoning, why shouldn't people send death threats?
You deny the possibility of harm of any non-material kind, which rejects the reality of human experience--as does your claim that you 'choose' to be frightened. Perhaps you personally are an ultra-rational ubermensch capable of calculating the exact, true risk of a situation and then choosing the proper emotional response, but cursory examination of how people behave shows that this is not the case for the vast majority of people. I have rarely felt like I chose to be scared. Why would you apply an inhuman standard to human behavior?
I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that most laws against intimidation, assault, or menacing rely on the reactions of a hypothetical "reasonable person"--a hypothetical person who exhibits average judgment--and this seems an appropriate standard here. Would a reasonable person be scared by the tweet "I'm going to carve you to ribbons with a bowie knife"? No; obviously, I believe in overreaction, and this would be an example. Would a reasonable person by scared by an email containing the addresses of all their family members' homes and detailed descriptions of violent acts being visited upon them? I would say yes, and this fear is the harm--a person's sense of security is enormously valuable, and losing it would make their life much worse. The threat does not need to be acted upon for someone to suffer from it.
It seems extremely suspect to me when someone essentially keeps going "Oh, look at all these people being mean to me. By the way, here's my donation link." Look at the talk that Sarkeesian canceled. Campus security even confirmed that they did not see it as a threat. And yet people flocked to Sarkeesian's defense for canceling it. These people, whether you like it or not, know exactly what they are doing. They know that they aren't in any sort of danger. They aren't actually afraid. They don't need to be. They're making a big show out of something that's statistically nothing in order to get people to pay them money. And guess what? It works. And not only that, but after they scam you, you defend them. I don't feel sorry for any of these "victims", because quite frankly, there is nothing to feel sorry for. I think it's absolutely despicable that people would send stuff like that, but that's based on intent, not consequences. Because there are none. There are far worse things in the world than having people say mean things to you online, regardless of exactly how mean those things were. Like, say, things that actually affect you in real life. And the fact that some people have massive overreactions to things that are never going to actually affect them, fleeing their houses and canceling talks over it makes me think that, yes, they are indeed just in it for the money. And clearly, it's working, because there are people out there who are willing to claim that even though no harm has or will come to any of them, they're still the poor, helpless victims. Because Jesus Christ.
How are these people's actions relevant to the question of whether death threats are harmful per se? And who is 'you'? I've never given any of them money, and I'm not currently defending them--I mentioned them only to clarify that the death threats we were discussing included addresses. I am contending that death threats hurt their recipients whether they are carried out or not. I make no claims about these peoples actions, so I don't know why you keep bringing them up.
In a deck with 15 creatures and 7 enchantments, like yours, the expected value of Benefaction of Rhonas is 1.55 non-land cards, with some selection, which seems quite reasonable relative to usually-playable Divination's expected value of 1.15 non-land cards/.85 lands. I don't know whether it would be wise, but if you replaced a creature with another Benefaction of Rhonas, the expected value drops to ~1.54 cards, so it would still make sense from a value perspective.
Why would the Mongols waste their lives mastering war? They wouldn't have enough time to plant their crops!
Then why don't you stop complaining about the price of Magic cards and buy those cards instead?
The real question is why you bothered comparing the price of Dragonball Z cards to Magic cards in the first place. DBZ is a dead game that you can no longer even buy at retail--why is its price relevant to the price of MTG cards? It's like arguing that, because some people give away Bibles, all books should be free, or because Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl LI apparel is getting sent to the developing world, the Patriots should give me a Tom Brady jersey. It's an absurd and irrelevant argument.
Your new examples are at least not being sold at clearance prices, but are still not analogous. How much art did CAH commission for those 550 cards? Apropos of this conversation, how good is the cardstock? How big was Bicycle's playtesting team for that deck of playing cards?
Yes, Wizards charges more for Magic cards than some other people charge for some other printed materials. If you want a bunch of cards, buy something else. If you want a bunch of Magic cards, well, maybe what you're paying for isn't really the cards at all, but the human talent and labor that went into making the game.
But mostly I just posted because comparing the price of DBZ cards to MTG cards is really silly.
Dragon Ball Z Box:
24 packs X 12 cards/pack = 288 cards
MSRP 95.76
95.76/288 = $0.3325/card
Aether Revolt Box:
36 packs X 14 cards/pack = 504 cards
MSRP 143.64
143.64/504 = $0.285/card
This doesn't have any real bearing on the "white people are degenerate mutants" conversation, but black objects do emit heat very well, since emissivity and absorbtivity are equal. This is often only sort of true, due to human eyes only perceiving a limited slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, but it's why emergency blankets are silver, for instance.
Well, I'd say I do have cause to believe it might be the case: any list that included this story was obviously not chosen for merit. There might be good work on the Rabid Puppies slate, but that's incidental to its purpose. There are categories where this slate was extremely influential--every novella nominee, for example, is either a Rabid Puppies nominee, written by Wright, or both. I think worrying a little about quality is justified.
EDIT: This comes off as more negative to the other nominees than I intended. I genuinely think it's possible that there are award-quality nominees on the RP slate. I just also think it's possible there aren't, based on one of the worst stories I've ever read.
Sure, and I don't mean to blindly besmirch the pieces I haven't read. I meant literally what I said. This piece does not deserve to win what is/was arguably the most prestigious SF award in the English-speaking world. If the other pieces are at this level of quality, they also do not deserve to win.
I don't think what the Sad Puppies did was wrong, but I think it may have permanently rendered the Hugo irrelevant, which is kind of sad. (Sure, you could say that the award was always meaningless because it was determined in such an exploitable way, but it had (to my mind) a pretty good track record.)
You seem to contend that I've claimed that all individuals' fears are equally legitimate. This is not the case. I've proposed that we view threats through the lens of the reasonable person standard of common law--how would a person of average judgment, skill, and care respond to this situation? I'm not saying all fears are equally legitimate. I'm saying that if an act would harm a reasonable person, we should consider that act harmful.
You claim that I'm asking society to restructure itself to my whims, but I'm very glad to report that this isn't true--this common law standard is exactly the one used in many jurisdictions for the laws that concern threats and intimidation. (In your teenagers example, if they're yelling threatening things, yeah, they probably are committing a crime and doing something morally wrong. If they're just yelling boisterous drunk stuff, I would probably also be scared, but they're not doing anything wrong.)
Anyway, this is the danger inherent in this reasoning that I first alluded to. You've many times acknowledged that death threats can make people's lives substantially worse, but you say they're harmless; this position allows for people to send them with no moral culpability, and provides a perfect screen for people who do want to send them to intimidate others.
I reject this position in part because it grants the people sending death threats a privileged position over those receiving them: the recipient has to consider the statistical likelihood of actually being murdered and conclude that it is minuscule, which is why you say the act is harmless, but the death threat author doesn't have to consider the statistical likelihood that they'll ruin someone's life for days (they were just having fun/venting/being hyperbolic to make a point). Why should the probability of not being murdered trump the probability of getting scared *****less?
This is what I was getting at with the "reasonable person" standard--if a threat would damage the quality of life of most recipients, why isn't it harmful per se? Does it actually matter if the response is 'irrational' if most or all people would have it? Why should we determine whether an action is harmful by the effects it should have on people instead of the effects it does have on them?
I know the chance that death threats will result in physical violence is very low, but that's not the damage that they do. Humans are animals, and death threats are an effort to exploit their animal fears and deprive them of their sense of security; as you say, they often work. If an action that makes most of its targets' lives worse isn't harmful, what is it?
I don't have much interest in getting bogged down in a semantic argument about the definition of the word 'danger'. If you have a problem with this use of the word, we can drop it and start using the word 'risk'--I don't care what particular word is used to express this idea. The risk of your position is that you foster an environment where death threats are seen as no big deal, and thus run rampant, which I contend results in harm to their recipients. (If you have a problem with the word 'risk', substitute "the possiblity of a bad result.")
If I subscribe to your rationale, how are any death threats I send 'despicable'? I know that only fools would fear for their life or be otherwise harmed by my words, so how can you condemn my intent? If the idiot on the other end happens to get scared for some stupid reason, that's on them; I'm merely expressing myself. You can't blame me for putting on a dolphin show. Under your reasoning, why shouldn't people send death threats?
You deny the possibility of harm of any non-material kind, which rejects the reality of human experience--as does your claim that you 'choose' to be frightened. Perhaps you personally are an ultra-rational ubermensch capable of calculating the exact, true risk of a situation and then choosing the proper emotional response, but cursory examination of how people behave shows that this is not the case for the vast majority of people. I have rarely felt like I chose to be scared. Why would you apply an inhuman standard to human behavior?
I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that most laws against intimidation, assault, or menacing rely on the reactions of a hypothetical "reasonable person"--a hypothetical person who exhibits average judgment--and this seems an appropriate standard here. Would a reasonable person be scared by the tweet "I'm going to carve you to ribbons with a bowie knife"? No; obviously, I believe in overreaction, and this would be an example. Would a reasonable person by scared by an email containing the addresses of all their family members' homes and detailed descriptions of violent acts being visited upon them? I would say yes, and this fear is the harm--a person's sense of security is enormously valuable, and losing it would make their life much worse. The threat does not need to be acted upon for someone to suffer from it.
How are these people's actions relevant to the question of whether death threats are harmful per se? And who is 'you'? I've never given any of them money, and I'm not currently defending them--I mentioned them only to clarify that the death threats we were discussing included addresses. I am contending that death threats hurt their recipients whether they are carried out or not. I make no claims about these peoples actions, so I don't know why you keep bringing them up.