On 27 June 2013 02:10, Fool <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 26/06/2013 10:09 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>> I invoke judgement on the following statement: The selection of a Judge
>> for this statement is a move whose legality cannot be determined with
>> finality.
>
>
> By rule 331, I must randomly select from myself or those who voted on the
> last proposal, excluding Chuck. The last proposal was 341 (...OR WAS IT??)
>
> My virtual 8-sided die comes up...... Walker again. You have 24 hours.
I'll get right to it: do rule changes occur simultaneously, or
sequentially? If they occur simultaneously, then this leads quickly to
paradox and undecidability. Thus it would seem that sequential
adoption is to be preferred in terms of the 'spirit' of the game,
although this is an admittedly ambiguous term. As players would not
miss out on much play by ending the game now, it could be argued that
the 'spirit' of the game might swing this judgement in either
direction. It may be that Agora XX encourages attempts to end the game
through paradoxes or undecidable statements. The game has obviously
not existed long enough to tell.
Fortunately, there is an additional guide to judgement in the form of
game custom, which judges are also bound to consider. I accept the
argument that Agora XX does not necessarily adopt the game customs of
Agora unless it explicitly chooses to do so. I do not, however, accept
the idea that Agora XX has no game custom of its own. It may have very
little, but already, with great subtlety, a custom of great importance
to the judgement of this case has been adopted. That is on the
awarding of points as if proposals took effect sequentially, in order
of their assigned number. The Speaker, as far as I can tell, adopted
this practice from the very first change to the points system and went
unchallenged and unCFJ'd until after the calling of this CFJ.
There is also an uncertainty about when exactly any rule change is
supposed to take effect which must be dealt with. Rule 210 states that
"An adopted rule change takes full effect at the moment of the
completion of the vote that adopted it." When, we must ask, is the
completion of the vote? The end of the voting period, or the
announcement of the results by the Speaker? The rules provide no
particular guide as to the answer of this question, so we must turn
again to game custom and the spirit of the game. The only thing that
can be said here is that it would be damaging to the game for rule
changes to take effect before anyone other than the Speaker knows with
certainty whether the change has been adopted or not. If the
'completion of the vote' was at the end of the voting period, then
there would always be a period of time before the next Speaker's
report in which the state of the rules is unknown. So I rule that the
'completion of the vote' must be taken to mean the announcement of the
result. This is important because it allows for the interpretation
that actions in each message occur an instant after each other to
decide this case. As explained in arguments, then if this
interpretation is allowed then the adoption of proposals is not
simultaneous and therefore a set of players who are eligible to judge
a CFJ can be determined with finality. If rule changes were simply
adopted at the end of the voting period, then there is no room for
this interpretation.
In light of the above, the language of Rule 305 ("at the same time")
is irrelevant because it refers to the time at which the voting
periods end.
Ultimately, this case is about how we are supposed to interpret the
phrase "The players qualified to judge a statement are the Speaker and
those Voters who voted on the rule change whose voting period most
recently ended [...]" in the relevant Rule. A distinction has to be
made here that has recently been made in discussion of an Agoran CFJ:
do we interpret Rules like logicians, or like lawyers? Each of these
comes at the task differently. The logician aims simply for the truth,
however unpalatable. For the lawyer's view, I quote G./ Goethe in the
discussion of the Agoran case:
"I myself am arguing for the "lawyer's" standpoint here without being
trained in that way of thinking myself. To me, the 'lawyer's argument'
basically says "in reality, any deeming is a fiction (since time travel
isn't truly happening), so if the fiction creates a paradox, we choose
some way to get out of it, which may be wholly arbitrary (but hopefully
fair to all parties and the spirit of the law's intent[*]) the first
time, then later follows precedent." This also, not wholly incidentally,
is the way people typically deal with conflicts in "normal" board games.
This is not *supposed* to satisfy a logician, which is the point of
Suber's essays."
I side with G. here, but it could be said that there are simply two
different styles of playing nomic being talked about. You can play
logician's nomic and you can play lawyer's nomic. (Of course nomics,
including Agora and Agora XX, will always exist on a continuum between
these two extremes depending on the state of the rules and the balance
of opinion amongst players.) There seems to be no way for me to decide
between the two styles of play on Agora XX's behalf. Furthermore,
Agora XX is too young to have opted explicity - in its Rules or
through the expression of opinion by its players - for either of the
available choices.
Therefore I come to the conclusion that this case is 'on a knife
edge'. It has to be admitted that there is little in it, but I must
make a ruling. I find that game custom and the spirit of the game, in
the form of the Speaker's awarding of points as if proposals were
adopted sequentially and the interest of the game in continuing to
play until its conclusion on Agora's Vigintennial, indicate that the
adoption of rule changes occurs sequentially, in order of assigned
number, upon the publication of the Speaker's report on the relevant
votes.
FALSE.
-- Walker
