Falsifian wrote:
I'm confused about a couple of things...Abstractly, the situation is as follows: * Just before time T, rule R had body B0 and revision number R0. * Document D alleges that, at time T, rule R had body B1 and revision number R1. * At time T+Y, document D is ratified.Was R0=R1 in this case? Shouldn't it be, unless document D was doubly-wrong? (I guess your judgement never claims they're *not* equal, but still I wonder if I'm missing something since you went to the trouble to separate them.)
Yes, in this case, R0 and R1 were both 0. The labels were just shorthand to be used later in the judgement.
Past interpretation has been in line with possibility #2. But were we wrong all along about that? Relevant clauses from Rule 1551: When a document or statement (hereafter "document") is ratified, rules to the contrary notwithstanding, the gamestate is modified to what it would be if, at the time the ratified document was published, the gamestate had been minimally modified to make the ratified document as true and accurate as possible; ... ... If no such modification is possible, or multiple substantially distinct possible modifications would be equally appropriate, the ratification fails. Within the evaluation of this hypothetical, the ratified document need not be /completely/ true, just "as true and accurate as possible". Past practice thus amounts to implicitly interpreting this as "as true and accurate as possible without violating the subsequent restrictions": * Within the evaluation of this hypothetical, at time T, rule R had body B1, even if its revision number was still R0. * Thus, at time T+Y, rule R comes to have body B1, and revision number (whatever it was just before time T+Y) + 1.Where do you get ((whatever it was just before time T+Y) + 1) from? I believe it's true, but it seems your reasoning is skipping a step, so I wanted to check my understanding. The "as true and as accurate as possible" condition is evaluated within the hypothetical. Within the hypothetical, there's nothing special about time T+Y. The magic happens at time T. I suppose there would be cascading consequences: within the hypothetical, the revision number is bumped by 1 at time T, and therefore every subsequent revision number would also be increased by 1, just to keep them sequential. Is that what you're saying?
Revision numbers are actually not explicitly regulated beyond R1681 requiring the SLR to include them, so they implicitly fall back on ordinary language and Rulekeepor practice (the latter of which has been in line with the approach cited above).
