Invention Rules

Ok so are we going to talk about the board’s complete rewrite of the invention rules? What are people’s thoughts? My initial read is that I’m still really confused by what these mean but they seem like they are going to be way stricter and leave people a lot less leeway for creativity.

Yeah. I’m really confused by these too. I think from some things they said about the old rules that they were trying to clean things up so we don’t have so many sanctions every year (or god forbid another huge one). Kudos to them for that. But idk if these are any better. Take the new necessary standard. I think it’s supposed to be easier to figure out what is necessary than what is reasonable but their example in the comment just confuses the heck out of things. I would have assumed that necessary inference meant that it was literally 100% guaranteed based on the affidavit. But then they say you can assume college degree if someone has a Ph.D. which isn’t 100% guaranteed (there are rare cases). So like now I think it’s more like “is a near universal common sense assumption”?

Ben-Yay Sea wrote:But then they say you can assume college degree if someone has a Ph.D. which isn’t 100% guaranteed (there are rare cases). So like now I think it’s more like “is a near universal common sense assumption”?

I think this is just a bad example. It’s not like AMTA hasn’t produced those before. Does anyone here remember the old rainstorm example they used to use? My guess is whoever wrote it just didn’t know there are people with a Ph.D. and no college degree.

I think this is one of the big problems with the ways AMTA goes about defining their rules. They don’t write clear definitions. They write vague or misleading one-word descriptors like “necessary” or “reasonable” and then instead of defining them, they try to give examples and have everyone reason by example. That’s what they did in the last few guidance memos too. But they are notoriously and kind of hilariously bad at giving examples that convey what they actually want to convey, so everyone just gets confused. I don’t know why they keep on doing it this way given their general lack of success with it.

But I think this makes things even worse and highlights an issue they have here. There are plenty of things where a lot of people would just assume something is necessary when maybe it’s not. To take a non-controversial example the sun sets at different times in different places in the summer. For some people it would be a necessary assumption that at 10pm in the summer it was dark out. For others, that’s nowhere near necessary. What if you get a young team that isn’t thinking super hard that just reads an affidavit that says “it was 10pm on June 10” or something and has the witness say “it was dark” because they think that’s obviously true. But they play a team where 10pm isn’t dark in the summer who doesn’t think that’s a necessary inference and complains to the board. IDK how that comes out (and it probably depends on the make up of the new CIC). That’s kind of a dumb example where I think people might universally give each other a little grace (although from the number of times I’ve seen people accused of cheating over dumb stuff online, maybe not). But this country is learning pretty quick that there are lots of cultural assumptions each of us have that seem baffling to other people based on race, gender, where we grew up etc. and this rule seems primed to pit those against each other based on what people think is always true in the same way that the reasonable inference rules did.

If you told me that the rule was going to be a necessary inference rule, I would have assumed it meant you could only do stuff that the affidavit held your hand to like adding up time intervals or something. But in the new demo section, it says that that stuff is just….not an inference at all? And that’s just not even how English works. Math is a series of necessary inferences. So that makes the demo rule super confusing because I thought the problem was going to be understanding what “reasonable” and “necessary” mean. But now we have to fight over “inference” too.

I’m starting to think this rule has just as much grey area as the old “reasonable” rule. It’s just grey area that’s shifted closer to the affidavit.

Personally I freaking hate the new rule. I’ve seen the way law school uses necessary inference and it’s a complete shit show. Nobody actually follows that rule because it’s impossible to play the game well with only the literal words on the page. And it’s easy to argue that anything that’s not just a direct quote isn’t a necessary inference. Every paraphrase changes meaning just a little and you can always argue that the little bit was important. As the above poster said, everyone has different assumptions about what is obvious and it really comes down to what people’s instincts are. Everyone ends up feeling like everyone else cheated all the time even when both teams are genuinely trying to play the game in good faith. Then everyone ends up complaining about it in the protest committee and because what is necessary and obvious when it comes to real-world assumptions is so person specific, the decision-making process might as well just be a vibe check from whoever is sitting on the protest committee that tournament. And then it’s just random whether anything is done about the “cheating,” and you end up with people who are just unhappy and lacking a sense of community among the teams. So if they are trying to follow that system I think it’s just going to get worse.

I think the new rule teaches bad trial advocacy. I’ve been doing litigation stuff for a while since I graduated from AMTA (I know, I’m old) and witnesses don’t just say what they wrote before trial. They deviate a little and elaborate a little and you have to learn how to cope. And you have to learn how to gauge what deviation is important and worth nailing them on and which is not. I liked the reasonable inference rule because it gave people that experience while also stopping some of the shenanigans born of witnesses being your own teammates. But trying to be affidavit purists is a dumb set of training wheels.

Can someone explain what the new demo rules are going to mean? It says you can’t have any descriptions of a method that aren’t in the affidavit. Does this mean literally no paraphrasing? If I want to take something out of science talk and put it into real human speak is that not allowed any more? Or is there some other specific type of thing they are trying to ban? Why did they suddenly decide people can’t name their methods?

Also what’s up with the diagrams? Does this mean literally nothing can be on a diagram that isn’t on the diagram in the packet? If I want to have a witness mark where they were in a map, is that not allowed any more because the marking isn’t original to the map in the case packet even if it’s based on the description in the affidavit? I have to imagine they still want us to be able to do that but the way the rule is worded it doesn’t sound like it.

I’m worried that they cut the egregious language. I went back and read the last thread on this stuff and everyone used to justify the rules by saying that if you just messed up a little nothing bad would ever happen because AMTA only sanctioned at all for egregious stuff. But technically by their new rules, they should just be handing out point penalties for every single little invention that happens now. No more egregious buffer. That makes me really worried because little fuck ups have happened in every trial I’ve ever seen. If every single one went to tab like this rule allows At NCT, AMTA will have to hand out penalties like Halloween candy. And that’s gonna result in chaos and probably a lot of rushed decisions. Also you can bet there will be claims in two years that the board was inconsistent in exactly how many points they took off from one team vs. another for a similar level invention. And sometimes little discrepancies of a few points matter for who wins/advances/etc.

The_Quibbler wrote: If every single one went to tab like this rule allows At NCT, AMTA will have to hand out penalties like Halloween candy. And that’s gonna result in chaos and probably a lot of rushed decisions. Also you can bet there will be claims in two years that the board was inconsistent in exactly how many points they took off from one team vs. another for a similar level invention. And sometimes little discrepancies of a few points matter for who wins/advances/etc.

Building off of this, I think the biggest things that worry me here are the process issues in the new rules. Having live sanctions is a disaster in law school. These issues are complicated, and forcing them into the gap between two trials on the same day guarantees that the decision-making will have to be rushed and basically based on vibes. A lot of bad and inconsistent decisions end up getting made. The teams getting dragged in front of the protest committees have no rights because any type of rights for the accused usually take time to implement.

On the old AMTA system, teams had a right to appeal to the full board but these rules seem designed to fuck that over. They took away the full appeal process with even the pathetic protections it used to have and just added a vague appeal to the executive committee. I don’t believe for a moment that the executive committee which is notorious for just being all the people in the inner circle of the president will overturn the decisions of the CIC which will probably also be made up of inner circle people. Like hell are they going to say that their best friends on the board abused their discretion.”

And that’s not even getting started on what this does to remedies on appeal when you try and overturn a shit show in-tournament decision (also a problem in law school). Because by that point, even if the decision was wrong, the board can’t do anything about it without a major embarrassment we know they will never put themselves through even if it is the right thing to do. If the CIC took points or ballots away from one team and as a result gave a trophy to a different team or sent the wrong team to the final I don’t see a world in which they go back and replay the final or reshuffle the trophies. That would be horrible for their reputation. Instead, they will just waffle and say that the decision was wrong but not an abuse of discretion (which is really easy to do when the rules are vague) and leave the team screwed over.

I think this got mentioned on a different forum, but foundation is about to be a big problem. AMTA doesn’t include foundation for half the documents in the case because it’s obvious. Obviously receipts are kept in the course of regularly conducted business for example, so they don't have the witnesses say it. Then people just say it on the stand even if it’s not explicitly stated in the case. But I guess it’s not necessary (you could keep a business that didn't keep receipts) so not sure the document can come in anymore. And that’s a real shame because now AMTA has to write really stupidly obvious foundation into the case which will mean teams no longer have to think through the evidence issues on their own because the case will make it obvious or just have inadmissible documents.

The_Quibbler wrote:I’m worried that they cut the egregious language. I went back and read the last thread on this stuff and everyone used to justify the rules by saying that if you just messed up a little nothing bad would ever happen because AMTA only sanctioned at all for egregious stuff. But technically by their new rules, they should just be handing out point penalties for every single little invention that happens now. No more egregious buffer. That makes me really worried because little fuck ups have happened in every trial I’ve ever seen. If every single one went to tab like this rule allows At NCT, AMTA will have to hand out penalties like Halloween candy. And that’s gonna result in chaos and probably a lot of rushed decisions. Also you can bet there will be claims in two years that the board was inconsistent in exactly how many points they took off from one team vs. another for a similar level invention. And sometimes little discrepancies of a few points matter for who wins/advances/etc.

I think it's rephrased in INV-11, which states that the CIC "should consider the extent and seriousness of the improper invention, its importance to the offending team's case theory, the impact on the aggrieved team, the aggrieved team's ability to remedy the invention in trial, and whether or not the offending team has engaged in repeated violations of this rule."

IMO I cannot imagine an AMTA Rep or CIC issuing sanctions for small slip ups or even minor inventions. Even major inventions can be attacked in trial.  When I first read the rule, I assumed it was for the big ticket inventions that leave teams without sufficient recourse in trial.

DoYouRemember wrote:
IMO I cannot imagine an AMTA Rep or CIC issuing sanctions for small slip ups or even minor inventions. Even major inventions can be attacked in trial.  When I first read the rule, I assumed it was for the big ticket inventions that leave teams without sufficient recourse in trial.

What worries me is that is exactly how Law School works. Even little things that could have just been dealt with with an impeachment end up in protest committees after trial and get like 4-5 point penalties which often change the out come of rounds. Half of the invention committee comes from that world and about half of the rules they proposed are just copied from law school so I would not be so sure the CIC won't be making decisions on much smaller stuff than they have been in the past. And there isn't anything in the rule stopping them from just making it basically a post-trial appeals process. I think that's a terrible way to do things. The language you quoted about seriousness is actually copied from law school and is what they use to decide whether they will dock 1-2 points or more like 5 or 6. So I would read that as a clear indication that they will not just be looking at big ticket items.