On Tue, 14 Aug 2012, omd wrote: > On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:29 AM, Sean Hunt <[email protected]> > wrote: > > The rest of this rule notwithstanding, a promise CANNOT be cashed, > > directly or indirectly, as a part of the outcome of cashing that same > > promise. > > What would this solve? The promise's text could include creation of > an identical promise before whatever else it was going to do.
Or a trivially (but still functionally) different one; for example, "The condition for this promise being destroyed is -1 > N, where N is the number of promises so far created today". That's why I didn't propose a fix when ais523 and I tried this. I think the solutions that work are: (1) Forbidding any promise from cashing any other promise (breaks basic functionality of allowing promises to be general currencies, etc., so losing a lot of interesting but not-looping promise uses); (2) Putting specific protections on other quantities as they are on assets (e.g. if a Switch is undetermined, it is Default). Problematic as it may allow switching something to default when it's otherwise not allowed. (3) Making any "infinite processes" (when evaluated at a "Later Time") wholly fail, and also making Conditionals in Promises default to either TRUE or FALSE (the way that bad conditional votes default to PRESENT). (4) Live with it, but make it Not Winning. -G.
