On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 10:18 AM Alexis Hunt via agora-discussion
<agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
> A fact is either a natural fact or a legal fact. A natural fact is a
> fact which is extrinsic to Agoran law, such as whether a message
> expresses a particular intent, or whether or not an entity is an
> organism. A legal fact is a fact which is intrinsic to Agoran law,
> such as the state of a rule-defined value. A legal fiction is a kind
> of legal fact which overrides other natural and/or legal facts. Legal
> fictions must be established explicitly.
I agree that it's not clear from this proto why we need to
differentiate natural facts from legal facts. One potential reason I
can think of is that the rules can change legal facts, whereas they
can only paper over natural facts. But the definition of legal
fiction here seems to pick the "paper over" approach regardless of the
subject.
> A legal fiction must be defined with respect to a specific point in
> time, or to a specific period of time, which CANNOT be in, or extend
> into, the future beyond its creation.
By analogy with the officeholder-despite-non-player example, if a
legal fiction is established that a second legal fiction exists
despite the point in time being in the future, does that state persist
until disturbed?
> A legal fiction's direct effects
> are retroactive to the time so specified, for which it operates
> notwithstanding any rule to the contrary. Beyond that time, its
> effects are limited to the natural consequences of its direct effects
Missing a period at the end of the paragraph.
What is a "direct effect"? What is a "natural consequence"?
How complicated can the natural consequences be? You establish later
that it can be something like "Michael Norish is the Registrar despite
not being a player". Can the complexity be extended to effectively
amount to a rule, like "Michael Norrish CAN submit a proposal by
announcement, despite not being a player"? If not, it should be more
clear why not.
Regardless, there should be an office responsible for tracking ongoing
"natural consequences" of (known) legal fictions.
> A legal fiction does not operate retroactively prior to the specified
> time, nor does it reason backwards to affect the preconditions for the
> state it specifies. Thus, it CAN cause result in a state which would
Extraneous "cause".
> otherwise be IMPOSSIBLE to have attained under the rules at the time.
> Such an impossible state CAN persist beyond the time of effect,
> provided that nothing occurs or has occurred since to disturb it.
"occurs or has occurred" is redundant; pick a tense.
CAN is probably the wrong term here and elsewhere: what does it mean
exactly that "attempts to perform the described action are
successful"? (Under your other proto, could any person cause an
impossible state to persist beyond the time of effect with Agoran
Consent? You can't say it's not an action, since it says "action"
right in the definition.) I'd just say that the state does persist
beyond the time of effect.
> [I would love to be more clear with the last sentence, but I do not
> want to be because either way could have bad effects. If we become too
> sensitive to definition changes, then they could cause massive
> unwinding of legal fictions. But if we are too strict, then
> redefinition of terms could cause previous legal fictions to propagate
> in an undesirable manner. And I tried to think of an interpretive
> guide based on the actual effect of a legal fiction relative to an
> underlying fact, in the manner similar to focusing on the ratio
> decendi of a judgment, but that undermines the idea that legal
> fictions created by mechanisms like ratification are intended to
> eliminate the need to look at the underlying facts.]
Meh. I understand the motivation to avoid specificity, but the
resulting text is *very* vague. The example helps, though.
> Even with such a
> rule, however, if a legal fiction was established that the person held
> the office for a period of time, then e would be the officeholder for
> that entire time, and would not constantly oscillate in and out of
> office.
While I understand what you mean, the use of this particular example
is somewhat confusing given that typical ratification of office
holdings (in the form of the ADoP's report) covers an instant rather
than a period of time.
> [Detailed examples are unusual in Agora, as in law, but I see no
> reason not to include one here, and sometimes they serve as the best
> interpretive guides.]
I agree.
> Legal fictions are evaluated in chronological order,
What does it mean for a legal fiction to be evaluated? Does the first
thing to be evaluated take precedence, or the last thing?
> and CAN override
> previous legal fictions or result in reinterpretation of history so as
> to result in the establishment or non-establishment of legal fictions
> in the intervening time.
So it retroactively creates or destroys 'real' legal fictions? Or
does it just create a legal fiction that there was a legal fiction?
Does it matter?
> A legal fiction which is internally
> inconsistent, after applying the usual rules of interpretation,
Not necessary to mention the rules of interpretation here.
> or
> whose establishment would paradoxically prevent itself from being
> established,
Why include this? There's nothing inherently problematic about
ratifying a document which implies that the ratification process would
have failed – especially compared to the continuous rule-contradicting
effects that you allow elsewhere.
> For the purposes of this paragraph, multiple
> legal fictions established simultaneously are treated as a single
> legal fiction.
>
> Creation of legal fictions, as defined by this rule, is secured with
> power threshold 3. This rule does not otherwise limit the scope of
> interpretation of the rules, including interpretations that operate in
> a manner similar to the creation of legal fictions.
> }
>
> Amend Rule 1551 (Ratification) to read as follows:
> {
> When a document, statement, or collection of statments and/or
> documents (hereafter "document") is ratified,
This definition is not necessary. Also, typo in "statments".
> a legal fiction is
> established that, at the time of the document's publication if it does
> not specify another time or period of time, the text of the
> document,with exceptions specified by this rule, was wholly true and
space after comma
> correct.
>
> If a document can be divided main section and a summary section, where
into
> the only purpose of the summary section is to summarize information in
> the main section, then ratifying the document ratifies only its main
> section, and in particular can proceed even if the main section is
> inconsistent with the summary section so long as the main section is
> internally consistent.
Wording could be improved to tie this better into the previous
paragraph: "ratifying the document ratifies only its main section" is
self-contradictory if taken literally.
> Text which serves only to document the existence of legal fictions,
> and ratifications in particular, is exempt from ratification.
Why?
> The rules may indicate other legal fictions to be created as
> part of a ratification
This should be secured, or removed (see below).
> in that case, if any of the involved legal
> fictions would fail to be effective, they all do.
What does it mean for a legal fiction to fail to be effective?
> Any person CAN, without objection, ratify a public document. The
> ratification includes a legal fiction that, from the time period
> extending from the first moment of the legal fiction relating to the
> document's correctness until the moment of ratification, the ruleset
> was what it would have been notwithstanding the ratification of the
> document's text.
What if the document says that the ruleset is something other than
what it would have been, notwithstanding this legal fiction? The
prioritization really should be specified separately, probably in Rule
1551, rather than as part of the definition of the legal fiction. But
the separate-legal-fiction mechanism also seems awkward and
unnecessary.
> [Drive-by-fix: s/player/person/ which is important if the document in
> question is a registrar's report. The latter sentence is a manner of
> reproducing the current effects of RWO. I don't like that exception;
> limiting the rules from ratification is ordinarily unproductive as it
> might cause errors to arise, and it is useless to protect against
> scams as you can just ratify something which will cause the rules to
> change immediately after the ratification, such as that there is a
> proposal, with specified text, whose voting is closed and on whom all
> active players have voted.]
Removing the exception sounds fine.
General notes:
- You should add a clause about how CFJs interact with legal fictions – e.g.
they take into account legal fictions that existed at the time of initiation,
but not ones established thereafter.
- I'm tentatively positive about this new approach, but even though it fixes a
lot of issues with ratification as it currently exists, it's scary in
entirely different ways.
