> On Jun 17, 2017, at 5:49 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > > > > On Fri, 16 Jun 2017, Owen Jacobson wrote: >>> 6. If a non-player publicly pledges but says e isn't being bound by the >>> rules, >>> is it a R2450 Agoran pledge, or a non-enforceable non-Agoran pledge? >> >> 7. It is not necessary that someone be bound to the rules in order for them >> to >> participate in the game in rule-mediated ways. Supposing for a moment that >> someone >> who does not consent to the rules somehow nonetheless comes to be able to >> cast a >> ballot on an Agoran Decision [...] > > No argument there, the question is specific to Pledges, and whether treating > a non-player's pledge as an Agoran pledge breaks R869's "The Rules CANNOT > otherwise bind a person to abide by any agreement without that person's > willful > consent.”
I can’t see any point at which the question of consent enters into handling your pledge, because I can see no way in which any other person's response to a broken pledge has anything to do with the pledgor’s consent. * If you pledge to do a thing, then Agorans can evaluate whether you have broken your pledge or not, regardless of your consent. * The Referee can (maybe; see the other arm of this thread) issue you a card, regardless of your consent. * Other players can apply the consequences of that card to the game, regardless of your consent. * Other people can change their personal opinions of you based on your actions, regardless of your consent. I can’t see any contradictions that might arise if we treated a pledge from a non-consenting non-player as an Agoran pledge. However, as a purely practical matter, it may be better to ignore pledges from non-players until such time as they become players, as no rule-imposed penalty has any meaning to someone who isn’t bound by the rules. Even if we made it against the rules for a pledge-breaker to post to the public forum other than to apologize, or added some consequence which imposed a duty on the pledge-breaker, all we can meaningfully do if you were to break those rules would be to issue you more cards. In principle, we could banish you outright by taking technical measures to prevent your messages from reaching any public forum - but as you’re not bound by the rules I don’t think that would have meaning for you, either. I tend to treat the rule about consent as an informative observation about the nature of Agora, and not as a normative part of the rules. It memorializes the observation that we all agree that Agora Is A Game, and that playing is voluntary. We recognize that any rules which purport to bind people without their consent are ineffective, but it’s not the rule that makes that true. I suppose that if circumstances were such that Agora’s rules were a form of legislation or regulation, rather than the rules of an interesting game, the clause about consent might take on more importance. If we were to hold an Agora Convention, we might want to mitigate the consent clause to allow, for example, the forcible removal of people from the Convention grounds by duly-appointed law enforcement officers or Convention security personnel based on violations of rules (or - hat tip to Aris - regulations). If we had a critical mass of players such that Agora was in effect a tiny polity then our attitude towards consent would inform others’ perspective on the Agoran rule-making process’ legitimacy for governing that polity. However, these are extreme scenarios, given the nature of the game today. I intend to submit a derivative of this message, based on feedback and possibly with some extensions, to the public forum in pursuit of an A.N. degree, because I think the question of consent is deeply intertwined with the nature of Agora and that having some scholarly works on the subject might be of value to future players. Thoughts? -o
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