On 11/15/20 2:17 PM, Kerim Aydin via agora-official wrote: > The below CFJ is 3888. I assign it to nix. > > status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#3888 > > =============================== CFJ 3888 =============================== > > On or about 00:15:33 UTC on 12 Nov 2020, in a message entitled > '[Stonemason] Throwing Stones', Jason made a pledge. > > ========================================================================== The caller asks if making a "SHALL" statement that does not have legal effect constitutes a pledge. E correctly points out that a pledge does not need to be by announcement, and so indeed it seems that pledges could be implied. However, this is not the sole limitation the rules put on creating pledges. From Rule 2450, "Pledges":
If a consenting Player makes a clear public pledge (syn. Oath) to perform (or refrain from performing) certain actions, then [...] Pledges cannot be made by any player, they must be made by a "consenting Player". Agora has a standard of consent in Rule 2519, "Consent": A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if, at the time the action took place: 1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement; 2. e is party to a contract whose body explicitly and unambiguously indicates eir consent; 3. the action is taken as part of a promise which e created; or 4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to take place or assented to it taking place. Conditions 2 and 3 are irrelevant in the current discussion. Condition 1 seems unlikely to be met, because Jason did not mention a pledge (or Oath) in the original action, nor has e since stated that e is agreeing to any such pledge. Condition 4 is the trickiest, because it applies a very subjective standard of "reasonably clear from context". From my own personal perspective, I did not interpret any actions in the message-in-question as a pledge when I read the message. I asked Jason if e did, and e responded with: No, I wasn't. I only thought it might be a pledge until a little before I called the CFJ. This response makes me think that even to em it was not "reasonably clear". Thus, it does not appear that, by Agora's own legal standard of consent, Jason was a "consenting Player" when the purported pledge was made. I rule this CFJ FALSE.
