Moved: http://v-mundi.com - VMundi
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.



 
HomeHome  V*Mundi Blog  Latest imagesLatest images  SearchSearch  RegisterRegister  Log inLog in  

 

 What is V-Mundi About?

Go down 
AuthorMessage
Alice
Admin
Alice



What is V-Mundi About? Empty
PostSubject: What is V-Mundi About?   What is V-Mundi About? Empty2013-01-12, 23:15

What is V-Mundi About? 4RUhj

"Think of V*Mundi as the rude, profane in-your-face personal trainer that proverbially ground pounds your asshole to get you to lose 30 pounds. But it's more than just to lose weight or to get in shape, it's to learn a set of skills that will overall make you a healthier, well rounded individual."
—Blatantly stolen from DuelistGroundz

If you've ever read the blog, you probably have some idea of what I and this community are about in a base, general way. But here I just wanted to outline the specifics so that people know a little bit more about V-Mundi and what it means to be a part of this community. Most communities are open and allow anyone to join and start posting. This is great for sites whose primary focus is socialization. I never had an intention of making a site dedicated to Vanguard socialization in the first place. The first reason is that bigger and more popular sites already exist for that purpose, and competing with that would simply be foolish and unnecessary. The only people who would want to move to a community based on a blog are those that have some connection to the blog or its ideas, not just Vanguard in general. The second main reason that I didn't want to create a purely social Vanguard community was that I simply do not enjoy being in those kinds of communities. I've long-since abandoned the forum format for socialization. It tends to come with drama, attention whoring, and far too much needless trolling and whatnot. Managing a community that I don't even like wouldn't have been an option for me.

But I felt that Vanguard still lacked something. A place where people could go and have academic discussion about the game as their primary focus. Sites like this exist all over the place. People discuss the sciences, history, or mathematics and their primary focus is not to simply be a community of socialites, but a community of academics or at least people who want serious discussion. And that's what V-Mundi's primary focus is; a community of people who need somewhere to discuss Cardfight Vanguard strategy in all its minutia. But a lot of people don't have this in mind, and that means V-Mundi's community isn't for everyone. I get that, and that's okay. I never set out to target 100% of the Vanguard demographic. This was a site that came together organically based on the principles of its founding members. And so I'm going to go over what we stand for and why, and what those values are.

We value intellectual honesty
An intellectually honest discussion is one where both parties are open to the facts and reason being presented. When attempting to solve a problem, two or more people should approach the problem in an unbiased, honest state of mind. This has a few semi-rigid criteria, and it's important to keep them in mind:
  1. When facts are presented, they are not twisted or warped to fit with someone's argument. A person does not present them in a deceptive or misleading way. The facts are simply the facts
  2. When someone has a position (or hypothesis), they don't deliberately omit facts that they know about when those facts conflict with their position
  3. Preconceptions, biases, and personal beliefs are left at the door. When taking up a position, you're merely arguing it rationally, and backing that up with facts, reason, evidence, or math. The end goal for both parties should be the truth, (or scientific equivalent), and not an agenda


This automatically excludes people who come in with a preconception which is not based on fact, and will argue that point using fallacious reasoning on purpose.

We value facts, evidence, reason, and mathematics
This may seem obvious and everyone wants to believe that they themselves are also reasonable. However, people are prone to spots of tunnel-vision or emotional reactions when they are challenged or when they think they might be wrong, but don't want to be. In this community, only the facts matter. When giving an argument, give either citations of facts, good sound reasoning behind your argument, or solid and check-able mathematics to your claims. I want to go into that last one in a bit more detail.

We value mathematics
If you have personal opinions about mathematics that do not hold up to scrutiny, keep them to yourself. There is an entire realm of academics devoted to discussing base concepts of mathematics and whether they are correct or not, this is not part of that realm. In V-Mundi, we don't question if Zero is a number because it is and there are proofs that show that it is. We don't question is Probability Theory is correct because there are proofs showing that it is correct, and scientific empirical evidence like computer simulations that also back this up. If you have some sort of personal opinion that goes against common knowledge or what is accepted to be true based on millions of hours of hard working professional mathematicians, then take your fight to them and not us. The fact of the matter is, we do accept real mathematics as a form of evidence. If you have a lack of understanding about a mathematical subject, then the best course of action is to either ask for help with it or simply not get involved in an argument that involves math. If you make a claim, such as "Some X doesn't occur frequently." and you don't back that up (well firstly, you're wrong for doing this), someone can come along, do the actual math and if X does in fact occur frequently, it's not for you to then start going nuclear and questioning the nature of math itself or its validity. That's simply dishonest.

If you didn't understand the concept of probability to begin with, you need to be asking for resources to help learn about it. Probability is an extremely common tool in Vanguard due to its nature. Most of it is Dependent Probability. And people have a lot of misconceptions about it due to poor secondary schooling or simply lack of any schooling in this subject. To these people, I highly recommend Khan Academy.
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability

They have a lot of useful videos spoken in Layman's terms and a goal planner if you register to help you better manage your learning. As well as tests and exercises to keep you practiced. Also, you can try Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/ Which is an actual free college course listing online. Look for things related to math and expand your learning. You can enroll in the classes 100% for free and do the lectures/exercises at your leisure.

We value reason
More specifically, we value logical reasoning. An argument which is completely devoid of facts but at least is well-reasoned should be the bare minimum for any and all arguments in this community. Preferably with the facts/evidence/math backing it up, but at least with sound reason. The different types of logical reasoning are as follows:
  • Deductive reasoning - All conclusions follow necessarily from their premises. In other words, a conclusion must be true when its premises are true within deduction. The commonly used example is, 1: All humans are mortal; 2: Socrates is human; C: Therefore, Socrates is mortal. No other conclusion can be reached given those premises.
  • Inductive reasoning - Is technically a fallacy of logic, but is at least far stronger than most other fallacies. This is what Sherlock Holmes uses to "solve" murders. He calls it Deduction, but the character is incorrect. Induction is best described as pattern recognition and inference. Its primary use should be to give suspicion to a topic that warrants closer examination, not to simply proclaim that something is true. As an example, someone notices that his lawn is wet. Instead of researching further, he thinks of one instance in which lawns can be wet (that it rained previously) and simply proclaims that it is true that it has rained. This is fallacious reasoning. Instead, Induction should serve as a hypothesis. "It may have rained, therefore I will research this" is its purpose, and the man then goes to check the weather the previous day. He repeats this process until he acquires enough evidence to make a more confident claim. This is essentially what police work is all about.
  • Abductive reasoning - Is the way of reasoning by Science and evidence. While not a pure valid form of reasoning, it is a very high degree of certainty. If we take the previous example and found that the man researched many possibilities to find that, A. It had rained the previous day from a reputable weather source, B. no lawns had sprinkler systems, C. It had not frosted or snowed and then melted, and D. was reasonably certain the pattern wasn't indicative of someone or something else manually wetting his lawn; then by Abductive reasoning he would make the case that the rain from the previous day caused it. Even stronger is that for each other lawn he repeats this process for and finds the same results, his position becomes stronger. So while Abductive reasoning is a form of Induction, it is far stronger in that it attempts to favor one specific explanation over others that could also be likely. This is the entire basis of the Scientific Method and will be a majority of arguments that people must use in order to uncover truths about Vanguard. This method is one that takes a hypothesis (usually from using Induction), and attempts to falsify that hypothesis (prove it is false). If you repeatedly fail to falsify one particular hypothesis over others, then it's a strong indicator that it's either wholly or partially true. If something is true often enough that it becomes a useful predictor, then that is called Science. And Science uses the Abductive method.


So obviously not all reasoning are created equally and this is important to know not only in V-Mundi but in your every day life. I can recommend a Logic course to anyone who was interested by this or isn't familiar with the concepts presented. A lot of youtube and of Coursera will be dedicated to Logic courses. But it's very important to note when something is a fallacy.

We do not value logical fallacies
I won't even explain why. This should be obvious. What your saying may be true, but if you're using fallacious or invalid reasoning to assert your conclusion, then no one should believe it. It doesn't matter how right you think you are or want to be, fallacious reasoning is never a good excuse for someone to switch to your belief. Dr. Michael Labossiere has written 42 major fallacies and why they are wrong here:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

Wikipedia has a much more exhaustive list that you can find here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Complete with formal and Layman explanations of each one and why they are wrong.

What should you do if someone accuses you of using a fallacy in V-Mundi? The firs thing you need to do is immediately stop and don't reply. If you know what the fallacy they're accusing you of actually means, and you can show that it is not a fallacy, please be sure to detail to that person why it's not so. If you know what it is and you can see how maybe you got a bit carried away, then the best course of action is to concede that point and re-state your argument. If you cannot restate your argument without the fallacy, then it's time for your to concede the whole argument and stop replying to it. If you do not know what the fallacy means, I suggest you use Google to look up the exact name of the fallacy you're being accused of. Read and comprehend what it means, and then evaluate your argument again. Proceed by following the above steps as outlined to someone who knows what the fallacy is. The most important thing is to always keep in mind that you may be wrong and not freak out if someone catches you off guard while you have a bad argument.

Okay so here's a scenario between two fictitious people involving an argument. The scenario: Recently there have been a number of top tournament spots going to the Pale Moon clan. They take 5/10 top slots in almost every local or regional tournament report. John is making the case that Pale Moon aren't a problem but Mary believes Pale Moon are unfairly unbalanced against other clans and have a higher chance of winning a given game on average. She proposes that everyone switch to Pale Moon because she dug up the tournament reports available for the last three months and Pale Moon topped an average of 5/10 times per each tournament.

Wait, hold it, stop. What is Mary doing wrong? Mary has made a fallacy of induction. This may seem like real evidence, but it is not. Positions of the top ten in various tournaments is nice, but it's not conclusive. There are other factors to consider like: How many total decks played were Pale Moon? If they were 50% or more of decks on average, or even a number of PM decks that are higher than all others (20%-25%), then it should be expected for Pale Moon to top purely by chance. Mary hasn't considered that chance played a factor. She also hasn't considered that if PM is simply popular, that it might be due to personal preference, influence from the anime, introduction of a new trial deck, players getting bored of their old decks, pure coincidence, or that the misconception they are a "top" deck has spread to a large part of the community. Mary hasn't considered that Pale Moon players might simply have more skill even if there aren't a large majority of Pale Moon. Mary isn't even asserting what build of Pale Moon is the best; she is only confirming that the clan as a whole made a lot of top spots. There are other problems with Mary's argument, and I'm sure you could have fun figuring out all the possibilities here, but the important point is to get used to thinking critically and understanding what passes as evidence and what is simply fallacious. John's best course of action here is to simply tear her argument apart.

We value remaining detached from our positions
There's really no point in becoming emotionally involved or personally attached to what you posit. If your position is that "Tyrant Deathrex is the best vanguard unit in the game" then you have to still back that up with facts and evidence. So your love of Tyrant Deathrex doesn't really become involved in the argument in any way. It's okay to love the card, but being attached to the position that he's the best vanguard you can ride is simply absurd and only leads to problems. It can cause you to make fallacies or argue dishonestly on behalf of your own feelings toward that argument. Here's a newsflash: your feelings don't matter. Ever. In academic discussion, your feelings mean absolutely nothing. The only thing that matters is if what you posit has merit or not. If you suspect that something may have merit, then the best course of action is to post it and attempt to falsify/back it up. Someone will eventually challenge the idea and if you can't back it up, then it might not hold merit. That isn't to say that it definitely holds no merit, just that it might not and you probably aren't the best person to argue it. We can only collectively make a difference in the seeking of Vanguard knowledge if all of us remains honest about our positions. And that's most easily attained by people who don't let their feelings about a position get involved.

What is V-Mundi About? TKYJG
If you put your ego hopes and identities on a claim, then anything that attacks the claim you will see as a threat. That's not healthy behavior and not conducive to V-Mundi values. Always expect yourself to be completely wrong when going into an argument. If you do this, you will never be disappointed or angry when proven wrong and will be pleasantly surprised if you turn out right.

We value meeting the Burden of Proof
A person who makes a positive claim, posits a claim, or makes a positive claim (see the pattern?) in the affirmative is the one who needs to meet the Burden of Proof. What this means is that you need to back up shit you say when you make the positive claim. Here's an example;

Mike says "All players of Shadow Paladins are bad at Vanguard"
John says "No they aren't"

Who has the burden of proof? Mike. John is simply telling Mike to fuck off with his bullshit claims. Mike is the one asserting that Shadow players are bad, but not showing any evidence. Hell, even a show that a large number of Shadows players are bad would go a long way in making Mike look like less of a tool. Now try this one:

John says "Shadows players aren't all bad"
Mike says "Yes they are"

Who has burden of proof? Still Mike. Technically, John has made a position, but it's simply in the negative. He's prepared to show at least one person who is at least not "bad". Meaning even one mediocre Shadow player on youtube would prove John is correct. Mike is being a dick by stating the same thing he said before. That all Shadows players are bad. Do you get how this works? Burden of Proof applies to the person who made the positive claim. The default position for the belief in any idea should be that it is not true. You don't go around believing that invisible giant teapots orbit the earth or that magical fairies make cars move on the road. So naturally, any nutbar claiming that these two are true has to prove it, and they should be assumed false until proven otherwise.

We value thick skins
No one cares if you're offended or how you feel. Here's a short video to make you fuck off if you have a chip on your shoulder about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSByCb8lqY

Your opinion should not be valued simply because you espoused it or because you're a human being. It should be respected on its own merit, the merit of the idea itself. You need to be able to distinguish between a discussion of subjective opinions and objective opinions. V-Mundi is not a hugbox and won't mollycoddle you if you state something subjective in an objective argument. We're here to sort out real problems.

We value open mindedness
Open mindedness means that you are a critical thinker. You're open enough to what someone says to attempt to refute it logically or concede it if it's right. It doesn't mean that you allow people to go around spouting bullshit without being challenged. Ever heard the phrase "keep an open mind but not so much that your brain falls out"? That's what I mean. There's a video that can explain this subject in 9 minutes better than text can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

Sometimes being a critical thinker means that a valid idea that someone poorly backs up is rejected. But being open minded means that you're able to reconsider those ideas later once evidence accrues.

We value using proper terminology
It's conducive to communication when everyone uses the same language. The language that is used should be valid language. If someone corrects you, then what you should do is look up what word they used or ask what nuanced meaning their correction uses. Instead of just defaulting to offense and using some useless statement like "It doesn't matter what I call it" or "But lots of people say this" because those are fallacies and are just a way of avoiding the issue. Here are some examples:

Gloria says "Vanguard has elements of Luck which makes it inherently random"
Good ol' correcting John says "Luck is a supernatural term, I think you meant chance"
Gloria says "Yeah, thanks John. I misspoke"

Because Luck is a supernatural term which means some unseen force or deity that interacts with your life and shapes events in or against your favor. If you don't believe in such supernatural nonsense, then you wouldn't use the word "luck", you would use the word "chance" because it is scientifically measurable and explained by Probability Theory. Here's another example of the same situation:

Gloria says "That guy just got lucky when he pulled two criticals at the end of the game!"
John says "Gloria, I think you mean 'it was unlikely when he pulled those two criticals', not lucky. Since luck supernatural"
Gloria says "Fuck you John, I'm sick of you always correcting people. This is how most people call unlikely events!"

In this instance, Gloria is a complete tool and needs to shut her pie hole. Her lack of understanding about statistics and probability is greatly showing. In actuality, unlikely events will happen with their calculated frequency given large sample sizes. Meaning unlikely events have to happen at some time. Commenting about them and mislabeling it with some other word doesn't help anyone and isn't good for discussion. Falling back on ridicule or fallacies to defend your misuse of a word doesn't help anyone either, and drags everyone else down. In actuality, Gloria was describing something called standard deviation, but instead of ask John what she should use instead, she got defensive. Don't do that. You wouldn't say "I sporg my vanguard" instead of "ride my vanguard" because it's wrong. So keep to the proper terminology.

One other important point. The word "Theory" means that something is a framework of facts, reason, and evidence that explains the "how" and "why" of a phenomenon. Be it probability theory, game theory, the theory of gravity, the theory of special relativity, inflation theory, whatever. These are things that are proven to be true. They're not things that are being debated, that are up in the air, that are possibilities or that are guesses. They are true. A body of evidence shows these things to be, as reasonably certain as we can be, true. Under no circumstances should you use the word "Theory" in a negative connotation. It is not permitted to use this word as a synonym for "guess", "something unproven", or "Theory-Guard" as though in a negative way. Do use this word to describe a body of facts, evidence, and reason that forms the framework to describe how something works and why it works.

These are just examples of course. I've provided them just to show how it is important for everyone to be on the same page when discussing things with each other.

Each member only represents themselves
Members or readers of my blog do not represent the V-Mundi community as a whole. If you have had a bad interaction with someone before that happened to name-drop V-Mundi; or someone who simply accepted what we espouse here without questioning it or having anything to back it up, that's not on us. That behavior is on the individual themselves. This is a note to everyone wishing to be a part of this community: you only represent yourself. It's not for you to go on other sites attempting to act as an envoy of this community or acting with misconduct in a way that paints us all in a certain light. You're not better than everyone else just because you belong to this community. You just belong to a different community and that is all. This is a fair warning to anyone who thinks they can get away with this kind of behavior. If this continues to be a problem, I won't ban you or restrict your access. I'll just put up a wall of shame with your name and all of your aliases with an express declaration that we rebuke you. Acting like a smug tart is not an accepted form of conduct here and pretending as though you represent hundreds of other individuals who are not yourself is arrogant.

If you have a problem with the way another community acts, at least vent your frustrations inside of V-Mundi itself and don't take that attitude outside of these walls. If you feel like arguing a point expressed in the community or on my blog to someone else, approach it honestly and have ways to back up your claims.

This community is not a fit for everyone
I don't mean this in some asshole tyrannical way. I just mean that some people don't share our values and they'd have a much better time discussing Vanguard somewhere else. Anyone can join regardless of how smart they are or how good they are at the game. That's not what I mean by "fit". What I mean is that we don't value having a high quantity of members. We want a quality community that has a willingness to learn and discover without being closed minded, overly emotional, or fallacious.

The V-Mundi custom Format is not for everyone
Which is why it's not forced on anyone. Some of you may be aware that this site has its own custom format of allowed/disallowed cards or quantities of cards. All this means is that when we hold our community tournaments, this is the format we use because we've arrived at the conclusion that it's the best fit for us. No one is obligated to take part in those tournaments. When fighting other members, the default position is assumed to be the VMF or V-Mundi Format, but this is just a default. Any player can bust out restricted cards or set up their own restrictions with their opponent so long as their opponent is in agreement with that. The reason this defaults even in casual non-tournament matches is that V-Mundi, in addition to being a Think Tank, also acts as a respite for people who have a problem with the current state of the game. Any one who shares that problem (and there are a lot in this community) can simply come in, have a game, and not have to worry about problems.

Doing this is not inherently bad. This is no different than all of those custom Cardfight Capital tournaments you see everywhere that have special rules such as "Dragon Empire Only" or "Team fights, all must be the same nation, and X Y and Z are banned" etc. This is for the enjoyment of our members just like those tournaments are for their members. At the same time, I mean exactly that: our members. The VMF is not to me enforced on anyone outside of this community (not by name at least). If you want to play someone outside of this community using our rules, please only detail your desires to your opponent normally and don't try to label it as V-Mundi Format. This is not a format that needs to propagate outside of V-Mundi in some sort of viral way. Even if we believe it's the best format, we would rather see these same rule sets being applied to other communities on the whole because those communities independently and organically decided they wanted a similar or identical format. Not because someone told them to. So in short, we keep it to ourselves.

We are primarily an English-based site
This means two things. One: we all speak English on the forums. That's a given and not really a problem for anyone. Two: All default discussion and deck lists posted have to do with a relation to the English library of cards. The cards available for English is what we discuss here. By default anyway. So when you're having a discussion with someone, don't correct them if they make a statement that's true for the English library but not the Japanese library. As an example: If I say "Dimension Police are pretty hard to win with right now and don't have a lot of options", don't say "But they have Rain, Storm, Zeal, and Great Daiyusha!". Two of those aren't even in English yet (at the time of writing this post). When posting a Japanese decklist, please tag it as [JPN]. This is re-stated in the Decklist forum but it bears noting just so you know where we're coming from.

Japanese card and deck discussion is by no means off-limits. In fact, it's sometimes required to explain points or discover things about Vanguard. Just make sure you're clear that the topic you're in is already about Japanese cards, or plainly label your reply/topic as such so people don't get confused. Vanguard is a unique game in that most of the English players are at least aware of the Japanese cards intimately, but don't take that for granted. Most other TCG players do ignore the OCG, so lets give the TCG some room to breathe please.

All of the links in this thread are required reading/viewing. It will help you understand what's being talked about so there's no confusion.
Back to top Go down
 
What is V-Mundi About?
Back to top 
Page 1 of 1
 Similar topics
-
» Welcome to V-Mundi!
» V*Mundi Anniversary!
» V-Mundi Format
» V-Mundi General
» V-Mundi Custom Tournament start!

Permissions in this forum:You cannot reply to topics in this forum
Moved: http://v-mundi.com - VMundi :: V-Mundi Announcements-
Jump to: