On 1/29/2021 5:55 AM, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > On 1/29/21 7:52 AM, nix via agora-discussion wrote: >> The issue is a white ribbon scam. The pet argument (that your pet can >> consent to play a game with you) allows a single individual to generate >> a new white ribbon, which is extremely valuable. Working with other >> Agorans means you have to negotiate with other people that value white >> ribbons. The friend scam already exists in the current rules. My concern >> is that this adds a new scam. > > I should add: There was some debate about whether the pet argument is > true. I believe it is. I like the intent of the proposal, and I know > Aris has worked hard on it, but I also think there's probably a solution > that does what we want without including pets/socially intelligent > animals. So, PRESENT.
A paraphrase of a Discord conversation might be useful here, to get at the logic. It came about from looking at CFJ 2398. CFJ 2398 asked whether (under an old definition), a young child was a "person". The judgement at the time suggested that (under that old definition) there might be a dividing line for personhood based on whether a child was old enough to successfully communicate. So the conversation: "Under the new proposed definition, is a newborn baby meant to qualify?" "Yes, a baby can certainly communicate needs, so would be a person." "By raw communication standards, my dog is more communicative than my baby was as a newborn - with the dog, you can differentiate "need food" from "need to pee" etc. which can be hard with newborns. So if personhood is defined by communication ability, and written so that babies would qualify, then dogs would qualify too." Whether a dog (or baby) can 'consent' to play Agora is a trickier issue that we discussed a bit. I don't think we came to any conclusions on what the current rules allowed, there were arguments on both sides. It was noted that one way around the issue might be to accept that a dog is a person under the new rule, but make sure the consent definition is amended such that someone can't consent if e clearly can't understand what e's consenting to. -G.
