I know some of you here advocate a less logicist and more legalist
approach, and I guess this is the bit where you "watch the logicians
sweat" as Peter Suber would have it. Well, the paradox I present to you
is: how should a legalist rule in a game which has a tradition of
"absurd literalism"?
In most other contexts, the sort of reasoning I'm using would just be
dismissed, but is it actually _fair_ to do so in Agora? You might wish
that we were less logicist, and might well support a proposal to
explicitly make it so. And indeed, there were a few suggestions along
these lines during the long paradox discussion about a month and a half
ago. It is plausible that this stunt will catalyse support for such
things. But, as of now, none of these have been enacted (or even
formally proposed, AFAIK). An abrupt change to the "common law" without
explicit statute would generally speaking be unfair, that is precisely
what precedent is all about.
And the precedent clearly has granted all sorts of "wins by paradox" to
various liar-paradox-type constructions. So this stunt ought to fly as
well. (In fact this is more creative, if I do say so myself. Someone
owes me something very shiny.)
Now it might be objected that I am one to talk about fairness, when I
hardly have "clean hands". Historical wins by paradox were basically
cosmetic, not disrupting anything. Whereas I, after all, am claiming
Agora for my cat! Perhaps that justifies a certain amount of
"unfairness" in turn.
Taking over is a rarer but still perfectly traditional way to win. As I
recently learned, it actually pre-dates Agora and goes back to Nomic
World (Lindstrom's dictatorship). So I don't think the fact that my
attempt to win is by takeover really does justify anything. (But of
course I'd say that...)
