Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

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millionwaves
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Re: Announcement: Social Science/Philosophy Subject Tournament

Post by millionwaves »

Hey, all,

Unless something changes, the format for this tournament is going to be a bracketed round robin among 2 brackets of 6, followed by a rebracketing and another round robin. The best record will win, and ties in record (including for first place) will be broken by points per game.

As Andrew pointed out, this is a better format because it allows everyone to play all of the packets, which I think is a more important goal for a subject side event than crowning an undisputed champion of social science/philosophy.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by millionwaves »

Hey,

It's not that were expecting more teams to sign up anyway, but I'm disinclined to change my format now, so I don't think we'll be accepting any further teams into the field unless one drops out.

The cost for this event will be $10/team. We'll be awarding prizes for the top two teams and also for the number of top scorers equal to how many books Chris and I can fit into our luggage for the weekend.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by grapesmoker »

I know that everyone who was at CO is already aware of this, but I figured I'd update for completeness' sake.

Unfortunately, this tournament did not take place, for reasons beyond our control. Sometime before lunch, Trygve's backpack, together with his laptop and the only copy of his 110 social science questions disappeared from the central corridor. It appears to have been stolen by someone who came in from the outside, although of course no one actually knows what happened. Since we couldn't find half of our set, we decided that it wouldn't make sense to have people play on the 90 philosophy tossups Chris Ray and I had written, so we called it off. In the end, I read the entire 90 tossups to a room consisting of Katy Peters, Bruce Arthur, Seth Samelson, and Andrew Yaphe (people who would not get to hear this set again or be playing it if it were an actual tournament anyway). No score was kept, but in my estimate Andrew answered the vast majority of the tossups.

I'm sure I speak for Trygve and Chris when I say that we deeply regret not being able to run this tournament. We wish it had been otherwise and the excellent field gathered at CO could have been able to compete on those questions. Hopefully, this tournament will be restored and held as a side event sometime in the future.
Jerry Vinokurov
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Oh wow. I'm sorry, Trygve - here's hoping it'll turn up somehow.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by Auroni »

I'm sorry man, you clearly spent an awful lot of time on the set; hope it turns up.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Well, I meant the laptop. But that too.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by fleurdelivre »

Well, a formal police report got filed, so the laptop will be at least partly covered by insurance. The questions, on the other hand, will probably require a significant labor of love once Trygve is ready to even think about reconstructing them.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by millionwaves »

Hey,

First, I'd like to apologize to everyone who was expecting us to put on a tournament Sunday night. I'm really sorry that that didn't happen. The circumstances that brought that about have been discussed already here, so I'll simply note that I'm sincerely sorry that I didn't do a better job of backing things up.

I'm pretty committed to making sure that this actually happens, and we still have enough philosophy questions to fill out that side of the distribution. However, this tournament is difficult enough that I really couldn't see it running anywhere other than at Chicago Open, given the field that usually shows up. I'm not sure who's going to be in charge of that next year, but I intend to rewrite my half of the questions over the course of the year between now and then. Unless there's no interest in having it at next year's Chicago Open, we'll do this next year, hopefully with 100% more backing questions up and 100% less having laptops stolen.

Again, I regret that this happened, and I hope to see everyone that signed up this year play it next year.
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Re: Chicago Open 2008 SS/Phil Doubles: "Walden Three"

Post by DumbJaques »

I'll echo Trygve and Jerry in saying that I'm incredibly disappointed and sorry that this tournament didn't happen. I was quite looking forward to watching this incredibly impressive field play on this set. I doubt anything quite like this has ever happened before - it's particularly a shame that something so random would derail a tournament that the three of us worked so hard to ensure wouldn't be derailed by lack of questions. It should definitely be added that nobody worked anywhere near as hard as on this set as Trygve did, and despite writing more questions than Jerry and I he was done before we were. I truly hope we're able to run this at CO 2009, or on the off chance some tournament produces an appropriate field, at some other open tournament.

I am glad that Seth S., Andrew, Bruce, etc. were able to hear the philosophy questions, as I know people like Seth in particular might not have gotten another chance to do so. Particularly since we are still planning to run this tournament, if any of you guys have some feedback for me, I'd more than appreciate it. I do not have a great background in philosophy and most of the things I've actually read were too easy for this event, so I was going way outside my comfort zone and would like to know what worked and what didn't. If you find the time, feel free to email me at [email protected].

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this is not the loss of a $1000 laptop or over 100 high-end questions, but the fact that nobody was able to receive the two neg prizes I brought to Chicago: An Old West-themed cookbook which specialized in baked goods using stale bread and recycled ingredients, and my Arizona State international politics textbook that teaches political theory by analyzing movies like Independence Day and Basic Instinct. You don't know what you're missing.
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