I love nomics, or at the very least I love the idea of nomics. Ever since i first read about them in Metamagical Themas (Hofstadter's collection of his columns from Scientific American) I've thought it was a fascinating concept - building a set of rules where the aim of the game is to modifying the rules.

I'm not terribly good at them, though. Although I was very involved in Mornington Nomic for a long time, the primary purpose of that game was not to act as a nomic so much as a framework for construction of a ruleset for Mornington Crescent. In that sense it was perhaps not strictly a nomic at all, but it was a lot of fun to participate in and was also pretty successful in its goals.

Which is why I keep on trying to think of a way to make a nomic based on crypto work. Partly it's just one of those pun names I tend to think of, based on Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon, so I'm not quite sure what the objective would be. But then that is one of the beautiful things about nomics - the objectives are never set down at the start, they evolve out of the interactions of the players.

I'm still curious whether or not it might work.

Posted by Dunx at May 24, 2004 02:57 PM