On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Zefram wrote: > ihope wrote: >> What is ISIDTID? > > "I say I do, therefore I do". The cause of much philosophical debate > regarding actions that are defined only by the rules.
Specifically, all the actions we perform around here are "speech acts", enabled by the Rules (posting "I give Zefram 1 pen" creates a legal requirement for the recordkeepor of pens to note the change). This leads many to make the mistake that any statement describing any action (e.g. "I jump up and down") or "I give Zefram 1 pen an infinite number of times" is the same as actually doing it (jumping up and down, or posting an infinite number of messages). As Michael once said, the only actual actions we ever do is send messages, and sometimes those message create legal requirements for recordkeepors to modify the contents of other messages. Kelly once called the fallacy of the above belief "A typical example of I Say I Do, Therefore I Do, which has plagued Agora for a long time" and the quote appeared in a sig for a while hence the ISIDTID abbreviation. Maybe we just need some /emote tags. I mean in my day (Nomic World), when you said you jumped up and down, you actually jumped up and down! Or at least, um, you looked like you did. -Goethe
