On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 19:44, Alex Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > CFJ: Yally is a player. > > Arguments: > Recently Yally embarked upon a campaign of systematic rules-breaking, > pointing out that all the punishments listed in the ruleset for > rules-breaking could be avoided via more rules-breaking. However, > generally speaking, someone who refuses to abide by the rules of a game > is, in fact, not playing it, but a different game. Despite the attempts > of the rules to define who's playing the game or not, in terms of a > switch, it is generally accepted (except among some players of The Game) > that games cannot freely cause arbitrary persons to be playing them; > children sometimes invent games in which there are penalties for not > playing them, but this sort of thing is not generally accepted as making > sense. > > Thus, because Yally was operating to a different set of rules than > everyone else - intentionally not obeying the rules as written - it is > quite likely that he is not a player, beyond the power of anything in > the rules to make him one. (Just like you wouldn't consider a rule > defining, say, Hillary Clinton as a player, as actually causing her to > play Agora.) > > -- > ais523
Gratuitous: Nomics are generally seen as different from other games in this sense. Nomics define what is possible and what is legal. If I were to suddenly perform actions that were impossible under the ruleset, then yes, I would not be playing this game. However, performing illegal actions merely entitles me to a punishment; the fact that the punishment system is flawed does not mean I am not playing the game. Consider, for example, someone who performs an impossible action in real life. If a person traveled faster than the speed of light, then that person would not be real (he must be fictional). However, if someone stole a loaf of bread, he wouldn't cease to be in existence - he would merely be punished by relevant authorities.
