On Wed, 13 Jan 2010, Craig Daniel wrote: > On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Kerim Aydin <[email protected]> wrote: >> If so, it means that self-ratification is simply an admission that, >> in spite of R1698, we are not in fact playing a nomic, but rather >> playing a system where we can arbitrarily make any change by >> unanimous consent (to ignore the falsehood), regardless of whether >> the proposal process exists. In other words, we've formally >> agreed to accept any metagame falsehood as long as consent to >> accept it is unanimous; this is hardly a comfortable position for >> a nomic to be in. >> > > On the contrary, it means that self-ratification is a mechanism by > which the gamestate can be changed without bound by common consent - > and that this is one of the game's built-in methods of self-amendment, > which seems entirely nomic-appropriate to me.
Part of the point - which I forgot to address - is that the rules for self-ratification don't actually make something POSSIBLE by the rules, but rather they say that "this IMPOSSIBLE thing happened." That's an important distinction for R1698 and breaking the rules in general. If self-ratification were written to say "It is POSSIBLE to change the rules by retroactively adopting a proposal by self-ratification" that would be something different, an acceptable "built-in method" the way you describe. -G.
