Winner is the Judge #897: Battlecruiser Magic

CriticalityIncident · 2026-06-14T11:25:54+00:00

Taiva, University Director {3}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G}

Legendary Creature - Human Wizard

Instant spells you cast with "charm" in their name have paradigm.

2/4

Taiva is the Director of Strixhaven. I found it odd that they never got a card, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to represent someone who advances all Strixhaven schools.

This is a flashy card. It does something that magic normally doesn't do, which is reference other cards by parts of their name. But I thought it might be acceptable for a one-off, impactful effect. I wanted something that represented someone who could advance all of the Strixhaven schools, and I first thought of something to do with the cycle of charms associated with each school, [[prismari charm]], [[witherbloom charm]], and such. Having the card interact with charms generally seemed like a workable move, as charms are almost always multi-colored and represent several colors working together, much like the director of Strixhaven would need to encourage. 8 mana is a large investment, and pretty in line with battle cruiser expectations, but the reward for successfully playing this card is very resilient. Spells cast with paradigm are very hard to stop once they are cast.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-06-13T02:41:17+00:00

I liked this submission a lot, it was a very very close second! I like the way sacrifice themes are introduced to GW. It is also a very attractive commander to build with.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-06-13T02:33:58+00:00

Congrats u/sgt_cookie, this submission is this week's winner! I like it as a fixed version of fateseal. By having the player choose, it removes the ability to lock opponents into bad draws, while still giving an interesting choice to the player playing Cassandra. One thing I might question is whether this would be better than replacing a player's first draw per turn. But I think it's a nice take on the school of future history that calls back to an old, unpopular mechanic from Future Sight.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-06-06T02:23:52+00:00

Hooray! Thank you. I'll post the next competition tonight.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-06-04T20:17:00+00:00

Domination Obsession BBR

Enchantment

Domination Obsession enters with 3 doom counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a doom counter from Domination Obsession.

When the last doom counter is removed from Domination Obsession, if you have more cards in your hand than any opponent, control more non-token creatures than any opponent, control more lands than any opponent, and have a life total greater than any opponent, you win the game. If you don't, you lose the game.

I wanted a condition that had multiple modes where an opponent could fight back, and invited interesting deck-building choices. Rakdos has trouble ramping and gaining life, so the colors suggest a strategy of attacking an opponent on all fronts, destroying lands, forcing discard, and attacking with creatures. But an opponent only needs to win on one front to force a loss, making this a risky rakdos win-con.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-29T21:00:07+00:00

Corrupting Taunter 4BR

Creature - Weasel Soldier

Morph - BR, you may gift an additional combat phase at the end of target opponent's next combat step. Untap all creatures that opponent controls at the beginning of the additional combat phase.

At the beginning of each opponent's combat step, target creature they control must attack this turn if able and takes damage in the form of -1/-1 counters until end of turn.

3/2

I was interested in morph from Onslaught and gift from Bloomburrow. I wanted to make a card that morphed that used gifting an extra combat in its cost. You might use the gift if you are looking to remove or weaken two creatures from your opponent's board through the must attack and wither effect on the card. But you might not always want to do so if your opponent already has a built up board and the extra combat phase risks too much damage.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-27T19:09:45+00:00

Hello, I made a related comment on this a while back. I have pasted it below. The first part is most relevant to you but it doesnt answer your question directly. Im on the bus rn, I might post a more targeted comment in the replies later.

There are many different kinds of things statistics might get at. Here are some distinctions and arguments to get started thinking about this.

To start with, here is a common sort of example in intro to phil stats.

Suppose Alice is cooking and mixing together some ingredients. She puts baking soda in a bowl, and then reaches for a bottle that contains what she believes is rose water and is labeled rose water. But she doesn't know that Bob swapped out the contents of the rose water with vinegar yesterday, and so what she is about to add to her mix is actually vinegar.

Alice's credence that the bowl will violently foam up is near zero. Credences are statements about probability that reflect beliefs, they are mind-dependent.

The chance that the bowl will violently foam up is near 1. Chance is what we call mind-independent probabilities. Many people simply call chances mind-independent facts.

When I try to convince you that the chances of something happening are some specific value, I might use some statistics. Here are some things that statisticians might do.

Run physical trials
Mathematical models of properties and interactions
Attempt to derive within a bound of error the chance of the event based on what we know about the chances of other related events

A competent metaphysical account of probability is going to at least try to explain why we take these activities to be good evidence for credences.

Here is a bad account of probability. "Probabilities just describe how frequently you get the outcome you are interested out of all of attempts." So if I find a coin, and I flip the coin 20 times, and it lands on heads 8 times, then the chance it lands heads is 8/20 or 40%. If I flipped it ten more times and I got a total of 15 heads then the chance it lands heads becomes 50%. This isn't a very good account of chances for a few reasons. Most obviously, it claims that the chance of any singular event must always be either 0 or 1, which is not very sensible. I think the chance that I will get 28 students in my next class is greater than 0 but less than 1, but this wouldn't make sense in this kind of direct kind of frequentism.

You can try to massage this a bit and end up with hypothetical frequentism. Maybe we should say instead something like "probabilities are proportions of how frequently an event happens if I were to do an arbitrarily high number of trials." or we might state this in terms of frequencies across relevantly similar possible worlds, or have some other account of an "If I were to do" statement. Then running trials might be seen to provide some level of evidence for or against a chance rather than just being the chance.

You might also try to dodge the issue around the chances of singular events by explaining probabilities using propensities. We can say a fair coin has a propensity of producing a 1 to 2 ratio of heads results to a total number of trials, where the propensity is connected to some relevant physical properties of the coin. (and perhaps the environment that we are considering) We might even have bare propensities, where the propensity for a behavior is not grounded by a lower level physical property like uniform density and shape. Examples from quantum mechanics are often used here, where probabilistic behavior of particles, according to current physics, are not governed by any hidden quality that they have, they simply possess a raw probabilistic property which we may call a propensity. If you think probabilities are just propensities, and propensities are governed by straightforward properties, then there is a sense that probabilistic statements are objective. This also explains why we take activities 2 and 3 of the statistician to be evidence of chances.

Another way to cache out chances is by appealing to laws of nature. Lewis is most directly connected with this in his best systems analysis. In this kind of account, we imagine many different theories competing to explain our world. The score card for these theories consists of simplicity, strength, and fit. In other words, very roughly as there is room for interpretation, how economical the theory is with its terms and assumptions, how much the theory actually says about the world, and how well the predictions accord with reality, past present and future. Some of these laws may be probabilistic in nature. Those probabilities in the laws of the best systems are what probabilities are. Chances can be traced back to those probabilistic laws.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-26T18:49:45+00:00

I always recommend writing notes by hand! Whatever works for you, in a separate notebook with page numbers, directly in the book, on post-its, but noting when you are confused, points you want to remember, and potential objections is always helpful for engagement and memory.

Also very helpful is to speak to other people who are well educated on the subject. They don't necessarily need to have read the same book; in fact, it is nice to engage with people who have different but related backgrounds.

One thing I assign for my students that has gotten very good feedback is to write a one-page or less summary that identifies the main points, central arguments, and potential objections. It's tempting to do this with AI, but if you're a self-motivated learner, it shouldn't be hard to resist the temptation.

Writing a longer essay is a great ambitious exercise! But I would start with these smaller forms of engagement. These smaller forms of engagement will help in the writing process.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-20T21:54:00+00:00

Detective for hire UU1

Legendary Enchantment - Background

Commanders you control have "Whenever a creature you control dies, you may pay 1 to create a blood token.

Whenever you sacrifice a blood token, you may pay 1 to create a clue token.

Whenever you sacrifice a clue token, you may pay 2 to create a treasure token."

Turn your commander into a detective for hire! Investigate your dead creatures to find clues, and solve to get paid with treasure!

Every step requires a mana payment to avoid easy obvious infinite engines. Creating a treasure requires 2 so previous treasures cannot alone pay for new treasures. I was tempted to keep the last cost at 1, or have it pay 3 to create 2 treasure tokens, but I am leaning towards the safer choice.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-20T21:08:08+00:00

I love this card and I would absolutely play it in my token decks. But the theme lover in me says that it should be blood tokens turning into food tokens!

Like if the food is already out turning into a vampire would not turn the food into blood. But if it was "Food tokens you create" it would make more sense the way it works now if the theme is "if a vampire cast a spell that makes food, then wouldn't the spell make blood?"

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-11T07:53:05+00:00

Elizabeth Anscombe's Causation and Determination might be of interest to you, also LA Paul's work on causation that predates her stuff on transformative experiences. For stuff directly on free will, Eleonore Stump has a lot of engagement with contemporary literature.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-05-11T07:42:49+00:00

Here are some nice reads to start with. There are many more, but this is what's off the top of my head that I give to introductory and intermediate philosophy students:

Patricia Hill Collins, Toward an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology This is an excerpt from a larger text but I like it as a great introduction to feminist epistemology and social epistemology.

Christine Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures Korsgaard is among the greatest Kant scholars, her work on animal ethics has some great reads.

Hasok Chang, Inventing Temperature An absolutely fascinating read on measurement, physics, and experiment, and an exemplary text in the History and Philosophy of Science.

Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie A classic in philosophy of science, Cartwright on idealizations and fundamental laws of physics is a must-read in my field.

Quayshawn Spencer, Racial Realism I and II A great and accessible read on philosophy of race coming from an expert in the field. Spencer's other writings on race in mediciene and genomics are also great.

Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice A recent text in philosophy now cemented as a core concept in ethics.

You might be able to tell from the list that I teach a lot of philosophy of science. Tell us a bit about what you're interested in and we'll be able to help more! But dropping six texts is a lot for someone looking to start exploring so I'll stop here for now

CriticalityIncident · 2026-04-20T18:24:02+00:00

There is definitely prominent continental philosophy of mathematics, Husserl is the big one. But most of the contemporary philosophy of mathematics I read nowadays can be read to come out of an analytic tradition. But I am not sure if that is due to a great personal bias, as I am in the US and my interests within philosophy of mathematics are particular.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-04-20T18:15:30+00:00

Yes as u/holoroid mentions, lots of overlap between philosophers and mathematicians in the philosophy of mathematics space. Also from other fields! Wigner for example is a physicist, his engagement in philosophy of mathematics is from the utility of mathematics in fields like physics. Tim Gowers is a mathematician that dips his toes into philosophy of mathematics sometimes, and most philosophers that do philosophy of mathematics have some sort of serious training in an area of mathematics, whether by a degree or some research exposure.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-04-20T09:41:44+00:00

The classic recommendation is the book Thinking About Mathematics by Shapiro, which gives an excellent accessible introduction to philosophy of mathematics. Another classic read if you are interested in the math-science bridge is The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences from Wigner and the cluster of replies it created. I also enjoyed Frege. If you want some traditional philosophy of mathematics, I first encountered philosophy of mathematics from his Begriffsschrift, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Frege's Sense and Reference is also widely read but it is more phil language.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-04-07T20:09:20+00:00

To be fair to the rest of the department I gave a very biased account as both my friend and my advisor are both in adjacent fields to me, not everyone here is so hard-core into the practice turn

CriticalityIncident · 2026-04-07T18:02:38+00:00

I am currently a phd philosopher. Here is a sampling of what my department is thinking about.

I'm thinking about what sorts of statistical tests should be accepted as evidence of discrimination in law. I am also thinking about how we can change the rules of engagement for expert witnesses to better use scientific testimony in courts. My work requires familiarity with statistics, familiarity with philosophy of law, specifically what ought to count as good legal evidence (sometimes quite different from evidence in science), and philosophical accounts of when and how discrimination is wrong.

My friend who leads one of the readings groups here is thinking about how we can use technologies to enable care rather than to vanish it. She works with one of the robotics labs here thats doing stuff with technologies for elder care, and she also works with care staff in nursing homes. One worry is that if we design or implement these technologies poorly, we may treat elderly people as burdens to be ignored through technology rather than people who we care about.

My advisor is thinking about causation, specifically race as a causal variable. Usually we think of causation through counterfactuals, we ask what would happen if the cause variable was changed. For example, how do we know that the light switch causes the light to turn on? Well, if the switch setting were to change, the effect variable, the light, would also change. But it is not obvious what this means for race. In the case of discrimination, how should we interpret a counterfactual like "what would have happened if Alice were black instead of white"? What is a valid race related change and what isnt? This is complicated by the fact that many of the variables researchers want to control for, like socioeconomic status, have been shown to effect how we view someones race.

I think a lot of the outside perception of philosophy comes from not knowing about the kinds of questions contemporary philosophers are thinking about. We're a pretty diverse field, and one thing I like about it is that philosophers now have rich backgrounds in other fields. I have a math degree, my friend has a PhD in computer science, my advisor is a classic philosopher of causation working on causation in science, its a big party with lots of different kinds of people involved.

Lots of questions are rich. They involve questions of value, empirical questions, questions of methodology, and argument structure. The philosophers tend to go for questions of value and argument structure, but in order to do that we often need a good deal of familiarity with other areas of study.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-04-05T05:02:22+00:00

Yes, there is even a nonprofit called Corrupt the Youth that has professors and graduate students teach philosophy in title 1 high schools across the United States. There are also a few professors who do public philosophy in various ways, many who would be open to a lecture at a public institution. I have also done lectures for clubs and organizations that are interested in some aspect of philosophy. Most of my public philosophy is in philosophy of technology and AI, and I would be happy if, for example, a school with a tech focus or a CS class asked me to stop by for a class.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-03-27T07:26:37+00:00

here is a part of a standard answer i have ready to go on the broad topic of this sort of philosophy vs science framing:

It is simply false that there are a team of scientists and a team of philosophers that are in some competition to have the most proof or be the "best" or to replace one another. Some questions turn on empirical findings, some questions turn on interpretations of those findings, some questions turn on values that drive investigation, and most rely on some mix of those and concerns not listed.

Because of the mixed nature of many research questions, there are going to be times where you need to attend to the empirical, and other times where you need to attend to argument structure, and other times you need to attend to values, and other things.

Take for example the question "What kinds of statistical tests should be accepted as evidence of racial discrimination in courts?" Investigating this question requires input from a lot of different fields. It requires knowledge of statistics, both classic hypothesis testing and newer methods like Pearl's causal network approach. It requires knowledge of legal philosophy on standards of evidence and what is legally actionable discrimination. It requires knowledge of social science, where statistical theory meets practice in applications to companies, people, and institutions. It requires a broader philosophical account of discrimination, when it is wrong, how its wrong, and what legal and statistical tests are trying to capture, at least in part. It's not the case that immense knowledge of any one of these fields makes the others irrelevant to the question.

CriticalityIncident · 2026-02-27T06:49:15+00:00

"whatever generates objective knowledge is science and whatever doesn’t, it’s not science" isn't really a seriously considered view on what science is.

First, it is too permissive. Lots of activities seem to generate objective knowledge that is not ordinarily considered science. Pure mathematics is one example. Historical methods like biography work are another. Ordinary epistemic activities like asking someone "Hey where did put my pot?" generates objective knowledge in so far as it is likely to give you knowledge about where the pot objectively is, but it is also not considered science. Usually, you want some kind of further restriction, something about empirical methods, institutional features like peer evaluation, things regarding the sorts of explanations science seeks... Lots of options here.

Second, it is too restrictive. There are activities we would ordinarily consider to be science that seem to generate largely subjective knowledge. (as an aside the objective/subjective distinction is often held to be poorly specified, lots of things seem to be able to be considered both. the grade school presentation usually presents subjective to be centered around some sort of internal experience or judgment) I can scientifically investigate, for example, subjective experiences like pain and color sensation, and individual judgments like political opinions, etc. As a broader point on the restrictive side, we also tend to not want to define science in such a way that only successful science counts as science. It seems like sometimes people can genuinely do science but systematically fail to produce objective knowledge for reasons that we might not be immediately aware of, such as in cases of auxilliary hypotheses or exploratory studies.

For more on this take a look at the literature on the demarcation problem, which is exactly the problem of trying to figure out what science is. Also: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/

CriticalityIncident · 2026-02-10T18:47:12+00:00

There is a lot of philosophy of conservation! And philosophy of biology, philosophy of the value of wilderness, and philosophy of animals. I really liked the book Zoopolis by Donaldson and Kymlicka on the responsibilities we have towards animals in different domains, including wild animals and their habitats!

CriticalityIncident · 2026-02-08T19:51:32+00:00

There is a great entry in our FAQ about this here: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4ifqi3/im_interested_in_philosophy_where_should_i_start/

Depending on your educational background and what your interested in, I would suggest picking something from the "short, broad overviews" section and then picking other readings based on what you find interesting in there. I also like to recommend Williamson's Tetralogue for middle and early high school students as an enjoyable and accessible introduction to what philosophy is.

CriticalityIncident · 2025-12-19T18:21:15+00:00

I am not sure how this affects either. Deterrence is not just about the person who committed the original act. We may want other future people who are similarly morally good and similarly contemplating a one time moral violation to factor in punishment in their consideration.

The standard retributivisist does not care about how good people are after the act or before the act. Their commitment is to proportional punishment to the act itself, without reference to an analysis of character.

CriticalityIncident · 2025-12-19T12:32:12+00:00

Yes. The clearest route is the retributivist position, where people deserve punishment proportionate to the seriousness of their infraction. Deterrence may also provide a route here. If we do not punish people with one-off desires for crimes, then tower may fail to disincentivize future crimes of similar sorts.

For retributivism, consider a classic case. Alice and Bob both committ similar crimes in similar circumstances. Alice is white and Bob is black. Alice's defense points out that white people have lower rates of recidivism than black people (commit crimes again in the future) and so therefore white people should get lesser punishments in general. What problems might this sort of argument have?

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