DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Expedition] Word Card fixes
R1607: Distributed proposals have ID numbers, to be assigned by the Promotor. Was this not violated when omd distributed proposals without ID numbers? Were the proposals distributed, given that they did not have ID numbers?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgment of CFJ 3432
On Wed, 2014-11-12 at 14:43 +, Nicholas Evans wrote: I'm not sure the fact that the PoA is imaginary is all that relevant. If you add a rule to the PoA then the PoA can only specify imaginary events that occur regarding it, but it still clearly refers to the actual rule. The Dungeon Master is the one setting the property, and there is nothing that says the Dungeon Masters actions are imaginary or incapable of specifying aspects of outside entities. I'm not sure either. But it's imaginary _and self-contained_. I always wondered what self-contained was supposed to mean here. New Oxford American says complete, or having all that is needed, in itself. How should we interpret self-contained in this context? What restriction, if any, did it put on the DM's abilities? Does it simply mean that entities not added to the PoA aren't in the PoA? I guess the answer is not too important to me, since no attempted scams involved adding entities to the PoA, and the questionable text has been removed.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgment of CFJ 3432
In case it's been forgotten, here is a possibly relevant bit of discussion from before adoption: On Fri, 2014-09-12 at 18:57 +, Luis Ressel wrote: On Fri, 12 Sep 2014 10:51:54 -0400, Tanner Swett wrote: This looks dangerous. What if the Dungeon Master said the following: I cause the rule The Dungeon Master to add itself to the Province of Agora. I cause the rule The Dungeon Master to set its own text property to that property's current value, with the following paragraph appended: The Dungeon Master CAN by announcement cause this rule to effect any effect which it CAN effect. I cause the rule The Dungeon Master to deregister all players. Personally, I don't really see the benefit in adding the additional wording. I don't think this could work. Rules are entities described by our ruleset, so, according to The Province of Agora (The PoA is imaginary and self-contained; it CANNOT specify aspects of outside entities.), the PoA can't describe them. It's arguable what exactly would happen, but IMO either adding the Dungeon Master rule to the PoA would fail or the rule would cease its existence as a formal rule entity the moment it is added to the PoA.
DIS: Re: OFF: [IADoP] Lame Duck Metareport
On Sun, 2014-11-09 at 23:53 +, omd wrote: Referee Eritivus^ 4 Nov 14 30 Oct 14 [...] ^ Held iff any rule violation occurred between 3 Nov 00:00 and 4 Nov 00:01. Otherwise vacant. One possible such violation is under CFJ. On Tue, 2014-11-11 at 01:21 +, Eritivus wrote: The MfGNPE apologizes for having published inaccurate and misleading information in eir previous weekly report. The Ministry's historical records do not currently include messages sent only to the tue.nl forum, and the Minister deliberately failed to apply the required manual correction to Monthly GNP data, out of laziness. This report has corrected data for the months of May and June. Note that, since this previous report was published on 3 Nov, a violation of rule R2143 did in fact occur during that time.
DIS: Re: OFF: [IADoP] Lame Duck Metareport
On Sun, 2014-11-09 at 23:53 +, omd wrote: Referee Eritivus^ 4 Nov 14 30 Oct 14 [...] ^ Held iff any rule violation occurred between 3 Nov 00:00 and 4 Nov 00:01. Otherwise vacant. One possible such violation is under CFJ. Huh. When I deputised, I intended the relevant period to be the week of 27 Oct. My cited rule violation was that the Referee hadn't issued any Cards that week, but I also know of at least one other violation during that week. I was relying on (what I believed to be) the fact that the obligation to issue a Card during the week of 27 Oct (because violations occurred during that week) converted into an open-ended obligation (CFJs 2120/2121) which could be deputised for after the end of that week.
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [IADoP] Lame Duck Metareport
On Mon, 2014-11-10 at 00:44 +, omd wrote: You could have said so. :) But I don't think that works, because there was no Referee to be obligated at the time; the deputisation rule talks about hypothetical obligations, but the office hypothetically being filled at the time of deputisation is unrelated to the state of affairs the previous week. There is always the Referee (as an office), even when there is no officeholder. I believe the (real, not hypothetical) obligation was the office's, despite its vacancy. E.g. CFJ 2437? My deputisation was supposed to: - be effective via the unfulfilled obligation (of the vacant office), - cite the rule violation thus commited by the office, but - issue a Card to the new officeholder.
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: Rulekeepor's notes on Proposals 7698-7710
On Tue, 2014-11-04 at 03:16 +, Edward Murphy wrote: There is no obvious substantive difference in the overall effect on the gamestate from applying these rule changes in one order versus another. Suppose we accept your arguments and let the changes take effect. A while later, a proposal with the following text takes effect: If proposal 7701 amended rule 2424 before amending rule 2420, award Eritivus 1 point. What happens, and why?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [IADoP] Election Voting
On Tue, 2014-11-04 at 08:38 +, omd wrote: Is this supposed to Card the (nonexistent) previous Referee or yourself (successfully but incorrectly, since you didn't violate the rules last week due to not holding the office)? Myself, clearly. If by incorrectly you just mean that the receiver of the Card isn't the rule violator (the office), then I probably agree.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: Rulekeepor's notes on Proposals 7698-7710
On Tue, 2014-11-04 at 13:52 +, Kerim Aydin wrote: Pretty much the same thing that happens if a proposal took effect that says If the last digit of pi is 3, Eritivus gets one point. This sort of thing has happened many, many times. In the current ruleset, your score would become Indeterminate. But there is no rule that says pi has a last digit (and that would be ineffective anyway). There _is_ a rule that says rule changes always occur sequentially. I had originally drafted an amendment to R105 which enforced that the order be Indeterminate in cases where it doesn't (yet) matter to the gamestate. Murphy's argument almost convinced me that this proposal would be unnecessary. Without such an amendment, though, can we really just agree to let the order be Indeterminate because it doesn't seem to matter (yet)? If so, what prevents us from doing so when the order does matter?
DIS: Re: OFF: Rulekeepor's notes on Proposals 7698-7710
On Mon, 2014-11-03 at 02:45 +, omd wrote: Proposal 7701 (AI=2) by Henri Credits Replace every instance of the word points in the ruleset excluding the instances of the word points in Rule 1023 (Common Definitions) with credits. Fails due to lack of specified order. I must not understand this comment. Surely the problem wasn't that there was no specified order for the individual replacements? It would seem very odd to require such an order.
DIS: Re: OFF: State of the Province of Agora
Sorry, what errors exactly? My understanding would have been that, as DM, it would be legal for you to ratify the Warrigal's hypothetical changes. Apologies for the HTML, I hope a plaintext part comes through...
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Deputy Promotor] Any proposals around?
On Thu, 2014-10-30 at 02:24 +, Eritivus wrote: The Promotor failed to publish all such information. In particular, e did not publish that Wordplay was in the Proposal Pool. Counterarguments: The information required is 'a list of all proposals in the Proposal Pool, along with their text and attributes', not each individual fact that list represents, such as 'that Wordplay was in the Proposal Pool'. The Promotor DID publish the list on time. The list was simply incorrect.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Deputy Promotor] Any proposals around?
On Thu, 2014-10-30 at 15:25 +, Sprocklem wrote: E did, however, fail to, as part of eir weekly duties, distribute all pending proposals, something that the rules say e SHALL do. omd distributed the only pending proposal, Ribbons 2014. I don't think this duty could enable deputisation again until Monday.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Deputy Promotor] Any proposals around?
On Fri, 2014-10-31 at 02:56 +, Kerim Aydin wrote: Once again, I vaguely remember a past CFJ that asked how much of a report could be missing and still be a considered a report (with missing data) versus an entirely missing report. The gist of my TRUE argument is that R2143 doesn't say that an Officer's duty is to publish a report; it says that the duty is publication of the information which is required to be in the report. So it doesn't matter whether there was a report, if the report was missing required information. I think I can see an interpretation of all such information which picks out a class of sets of data, not a particular set of data. In this case the class of sets of data would contain both the data in 'the proposal pool is empty' and the data in 'Wordplay is in the proposal pool' (along with proposal attributes, of course), even though the latter was the true data.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: restricted distribution
On Tue, 2014-10-28 at 19:49 +, omd wrote: On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Jonatan Kilhamn I had a vague memory of a rule which said that a CAN without mechanism was treated as CAN by announcement, but there is no such rule. Was there ever? Anyway, I will fix. IIRC there was a CFJ about this recently, but good form is to have 'by announcement'. For others following along at home, that's CFJ 3425, judged by G.: On Thu, 2014-10-02 at 20:46 +, Kerim Aydin wrote: Note that this is not directly and officially by announcement exactly, as the last paragraph of R478 reserves that for cases where CAN by announcement is actually stated. Instead, the attempt is performed by announcement, which then causes the action to succeed. So, strictly and technically speaking, the attempt is by announcement, and the attempt causes the action to succeed, but that's not *quite* the same as the action being performed by announcement.
Re: DIS: Protos: bring back contracts!
Why were contracts repealed? So far all I've discovered is that the repeal occurred during a lull in Feb 2010. Contracts was the obvious answer to a question I had about an idea, so I was pleasantly surprised to see your proposal. I'm FOR unless I see good reasons not to bring this back.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Deputy Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 7698-7710
On Sun, 2014-10-26 at 19:15 +, Tanner Swett wrote: I was thinking that it may be useful to have a proposal say something like Enact a rule saying 'blah blah blah N blah', where N is the number of things that have happened in the past 14 days. I can't think of a good example, so on second thought, I retract this AGAINST vote and vote FOR instead. I was also a bit confused by the meaning of full text of a rule change. E.g. would Henri's Credits pass the test? The full text of the proposal has been published. But A rule change is any effect... -- the rule change is not the proposal, but the effect of the proposal through R106. So what is the full text of the rule change? I worried that it might be the full diff of the rules the change would effect, which is not directly included in Henri's proposal, and which seems too restrictive. I'll be FOR if someone can convince me that publish the full text of a rule change means something like publish text which unambiguously and clearly specifies the full effect of a rule change on the rules.
DIS: yoyo?
Is yoyo still up? I note that the link in the Registrar's Census (http://yoyo.its.monash.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/nomic) 404's. How do I subscribe? Even if it's no longer up, if anyone has an archive (preferably .mbox) of all the yoyo messages, I'd appreciate a copy (or hints on how to obtain one). On Sun, 2014-10-26 at 19:38 +, Kerim Aydin wrote: For perspective, my personal favorite times in the game were mid-2001 (tri-currency zombie auctions)and 2005 (Discordian Cards). Wait, mid-2001? Where are these messages? I had assumed they were in yoyo, but just discovered that the yoyo archives are available in html (http://yoyo.its.monash.edu.au/pipermail/nomic/), and only go back to 2003.
DIS: Re: BUS: oyhh
I was confused by this when you mentioned it before: where do the rules establish any kind of deadline at all?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: oyhh
Ah, nevermind, found it.
DIS: Re: BUS: [Deputy Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 7698-7710
On Sun, 2014-10-26 at 02:48 +, omd wrote: Ah, I missed your resubmission. I distribute 7701 again, same parameters, title, and text as before, but the corrected AI is indeed 2. I re-vote AGAINST. Whoops, missed this. But didn't you resign?
Re: DIS: Two Days to Bet... place bets please!
On Fri, 2014-10-24 at 16:22 +, Benjamin Schultz wrote: I wager 10 Florins on 25-30, and another 10 on 0-24. Note: unbet Florins are lost each week.
DIS: Re: BUS: Intent to Deputise for Promotor
I didn't think to actually echo your intent. However, I am ready to distribute the proposals after ribbons; if you'd like me to do so, resign.
DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
On Wed, 2014-10-22 at 21:41 +, omd wrote: Rules pertaining to sounds right to me, but people pertaining to sounds fundamentally wrong; this doesn’t change just because the rule talks vaguely about entities. Yes, totally agree! While pretending pertaining to meant related to, I completely failed to maintain its distinct connotation. E claims that “in order to play the game, players must be expected to understand[] messages at the time they are sent”, but certainly we want players to understand the rules at the time they play! Yes, at the very least, this stuff should have been qualified better. If the rule were repealed before the judgement, intuitive sense says it shouldn’t change anything. In the case that the rule is repealed, my recommendation is that judges must still be permitted to use new information to interpret the repealed text as it applied at the time of the action, and not be restricted to information available only when the text was first proposed or enacted. I generally agree with the criticism, though, even if I think that particular thought experiment is irrelevant. However, I disagree that discussion *must not* establish custom “before the first judicial test of the meaning of the term”; if it had been six months instead of three weeks, I think discussion and general playing-in-accordance would have a quite strong likelihood to establish custom, precisely *because* it did not “explicitly address[] the meaning of the term” (because the meaning was considered inarguable). Again, totally agree. I had meant to add some qualifications (i.e. don't give judges cart blanche to invalidate any established interpretation by discovering a more reasonable interpretation), but apparently forgot. As I said in reply to ais523, this wording is just horrible. First judicial test of the meaning is not really what I meant -- if the first judicial test is months later, as you suggest, the fact that it is the first test is not too relevant. In this case, the current judicial process started almost immediately after the question arose, so this was the first reasonable _opportunity_ for a judicial test of the meaning. I think that's closer to what I meant to say. If players do not take advantage of this opportunity within a reasonable time, then, yes, too late!
DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
So, several valid criticisms have been raised regarding my Brief. I myself wasn't as happy with the end result as I'd hoped to be. I submitted it anyway, because it was late (with regard to both deadlines and clocks), because I expected that any potential harm was revertible, and probably due to the sunk cost. I want to note, though, that the sunk cost would not cause me much bother in the case that I were to, say, retract the Brief and join the revolutionaries. So, if it would be better not to pollute the fine judicial records of Agora with a bad opinion, I'd be happy to do that. I don't think I properly understand the big picture yet, though, so please advise if you care one way or the other.
DIS: Re: BUS: A little briefer than hoped
On Mon, 2014-10-20 at 06:31 +, Alex Smith wrote: You know what? I'm actually really concerned with the current Moot process. By making things into a vote, not a discussion, it's pretty bad at actually finding the truth. And at this point, I'm not really sure /what/ to think about this case. There are a lot of viewpoints and potential issues to consider, and we're not going to get a single judgement that considers them all. The final judgement is thus a word, and not something that should guide play (nor does it have any influence beyond R217). [...] I've never intentionally sabotaged a CFJ about a real issue before (I've done a bunch of screwing with CFJs, but nearly always on ones with trivial statements like This is a CFJ). However, as someone who believes in a platonic gamestate, CFJs coming to the wrong result is really bad for the game unless they're enforced by ratification or proposal. I don't know what the correct result is here, and this Moot process doesn't do much to reassure me that it'll be reached; I'd much rather sabotage the CFJ than the actual facts about the gamestate, especially as CFJs are currently expected to be biased and thus not a good judge of truth. I'm not sure I understand your concerns. When you say nor does it have any influence beyond R217, do you specifically mean that only these suspect judgements have no influence beyond R217, or do they have no influence beyond R217 simply because they are judgements? I recently was somewhat surprised to find that the current CFJ rules are completely silent on the effects of CFJ resolution. In hindsight, it seems like that might be obviously the right thing. As far as I can tell, though, R217 is the only rule-defined influence, for any judgement? So, then, what do you mean when you say sabotage [...] the actual facts about the gamestate? Maybe, sabotage the gamestate facts by causing players, through a non-rules-defined convention, to continue play with an incorrect view of the gamestate?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Fast Track
Suppose I send the following message, having sent no previous relevant messages (i.e. no previously published intent). I hereby fast track the following proposal: Proposal: Eritivus Regnat AI: 4 Create a new Power-4 Rule titled Eritivus Regnat: Eritivus CAN cause this rule to amend itself by announcement. Rule changes by this method need not be subject to any review whatsoever, rules to the contrary notwithstanding. The self-ratifying clause seems worrisome, because it is not obvious to me that it requires the conditions in the first paragraph (AI=1, 7 days notice, etc) to be satisfied. If it were A message purporting to fast track a proposal constitutes self-ratifying claims that such a proposal existed and was fast tracked. then I'd think it clear that such a message can't skip the requirements (because the ratified fact is that a proposal was fast tracked, and I think ratification would fail). But the current A message purporting to fast track a proposal constitutes self-ratifying claims that such a proposal existed, was adopted, and took effect. seems to declare that the ratified fact is not that a proposal was fast tracked (regardless of what the message says), but that it was adopted. Ratification of this fact seems more likely to succeed.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Fast Track
On Thu, 2014-10-23 at 18:33 +, omd wrote: That it ignores the AI=1 requirement is accidental, but probably not important. If someone makes an obviously deficient fast track attempt, that's what a Claim of Error is for. Sure, I just don't have a feel for how likely it is that skilled Ridering or inattentiveness might allow a high-powered rule to get through, hence worrisome. You think it's very unlikely, I take it?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Fast Track
I guess the power of rules enacted by illicit fast track ratification actually can't be more than 3, since the fast track rule has power 3? So not as worrisome as I thought.
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Minister for GNP Evaluation] Weekly GNP Analysis Report
On Thu, 2014-10-23 at 19:47 +, Kerim Aydin wrote: CoE: I came up with 37, not 36. Here are the date strings (dunno if it's helpful). The x means I eyeballed it in the archive text file. Thanks for checking my work! Sun, 19 Oct 2014 15:02:17 -0700 = 2014-10-13 x I don't have this one. I think you're counting the dice server's copy of your message to it, in the body of its message? I guess it might be arguable whether such an embedded message counts for GNP. The MfGNPE's position is that it does not count, since this makes eir job easier. The MfGNPE will make no official comment at this time, but unofficially can confirm that e has, in the past, used GNP measurement devices susceptible to similar errors, and thus that eir previous reports may contain small errors. The MfGNPE's current methods are not susceptible to this sort of error, but may still suffer from other sorts of error. As always, e continues to work to improve the accuracy of eir reports.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
On Thu, 2014-10-23 at 01:27 +, Nich Del Evans wrote: 1) No one mentioned that interpretation until you did, so this leads me to believe that interpretation is not the most natural one, and makes me think most people weren't aware of it (I certainly wasn't). I argued in the Brief that, except for omd, players reading the text before the scam implicitly had this interpretation in mind. I find the interpretation natural for the same reasons we had that interpretation in the first place. Discovering the belonging to sense only made the original interpretation seem permissible given the text (where omd's scam had made it seem impermissible). Let's say an imaginary rule states All players must publish one spritual document. A player publishes a document about eir beliefs, but its validity is contested for some reason X. We discuss this for a week. Suddenly a player notes that it never was valid, because writing their document was not directly influenced by the Holy Spirit. This has nothing at all to do with X. It seems clear to me that this interpretation, which is valid modern-day Christian jargon, is not a reasonable one. Agreed. In your thought experiment as described, though, the influenced by the Holy Spirit reading does not 'lower the energy' of the text at all. The spiritual does not make any more sense in the context of the rule under that reading (actually, much less sense, I think). 3) If there is any preference in the current rules for either legalistic or ordinary-language meanings, it's for ordinary-language meanings because Mother, May I? (Rule 2152) seeks to provide guidance in determining the ordinary-language meaning of a term when a rule includes a term otherwise. We need no guidance for determining the ordinary-language meaning -- it's related to. I don't see how this text could be construed to give preference to the ordinary-language meaning. I note that this text was introduced into R2152 during the time that R754 still gave preference to legal meanings (not to imply that this is a good argument that it doesn't now give any preference).
DIS: Re: BUS: Intent to Deputise for Promotor
I had been planning to send a similar message. Happy to give the office a shot if neither you nor aranea want it.
DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
On Wed, 2014-10-22 at 21:59 +, Alex Smith wrote: This is something of a problem. If the rule had used a word with a meaning in English, and another meaning in a language that most players didn't know, then it'd probably be the English meaning that took precedence. In this case, we have a word with a familiar English meaning, and also a meaning that I was previously unaware of (and I expect many other players were too). At what point does a word become obscure enough to lose its ability to have meaning within the rules? Agreed that this is a problem. I think I probably didn't adequately address the failure to communicate concern in the Brief. At the very least some qualifications are needed. The intent of a rule, or how it obviously works, is thus rather dubious as a tool to judge a rule's meaning; it would be highly against the interests of the game for the meaning of a rule to depend on whether the person who submitted it introduced a bug intentionally. Imagine if omd had been the submitter of the proposal, and e'd placed the pertaining in there in the hope that nobody would notice. I agree that what aranea intended to say is mostly irrelevant. Actually, I was quite surprised to find eir message suggesting adding exclusively, because it seems to suggest that e didn't know explicitly about the belonging to sense -- otherwise, why wouldn't e have pointed it out? Still, that action also suggested to me that e did originally intend them as synonyms. Of course, that's mostly irrelevant. When I say that pertaining to is obviously being used as a synonym for belonging to, I don't mean that aranea obviously intended it as a synonym, I mean that when looking at just the text itself, this interpretation makes much more sense, regardless of whatever the author thought or didn't think. Would it influence your opinion to know that I was /totally/ planning to exploit this if G.'s process argument was upheld (most likely to set my own Power to 1)? I don't consider this situation as all that nonsensical; broader dictatorship rules have existed in the past. I don't think so. That you were going to try to use it doesn't make it seem any less absurd to me. If a rule directly said Eritivus CAN cause this rule to set properties of ais523 by announcement, I would consider that absurd: I cause R to set ais523's net worth to 1 billion USD. Again, the physical impossibility of some uses would not necessarily rule out other uses. If that were actually directly in a rule, I think it could work for e.g. setting power. But that text doesn't have a less absurd interpretation available. omd's points about this seem pretty convincing to me so far, though. I don't believe the meaning of the rule depends on our knowledge about potential meanings it could have, except inasmuch as it affects the R217 game custom clause (just as the meaning of a rule does not depend on its potential implications, except inasmuch as it affects the the best meaning of the game clause). I'm not sure I understand this point -- are you also a believer in Platonic rule meanings? I originally had (our interpretation of) the text, but dropped it. Would that have helped? 4) The only official actions and gamestate changes with direct bearing on this case was the judicial process up to this point (G.'s two judgements and this Moot). No large backlog of gamestate changes has accrued which would have to be retroactively fixed due to discovering the misinterpretation. This is, of course, not a reason to affect the interpretation of a rule, other than arguably the best interests of the game clause in R217. It's also worth mentioning here that Agorans have quite a bit of experience at this sort of reconstruction (partly in Agora, but mostly in B Nomic, where many Agorans also played). Agreed. I didn't tie those comments into the rest of the Brief very well. I think I only had a vague impression that large revisions of history were unacceptable, but no solid reason why. At the very least, such discussion must not establish custom before the first judicial test of the meaning of the term! This would seem to be at odds with practice. Often something only becomes controversial much later than it's been established (such as, for instance, the four-day waiting period on rules changes by fiat). Totally agreed! That wording was just horrible. omd also made this point, I think, so I will respond to this point when I respond to em.
DIS: Re: BUS: A little briefer than hoped
On Mon, 2014-10-20 at 06:13 +, omd wrote: The second is a little more concerning. The judgement of FALSE will, as things currently stand, be a composite of the following two opinions: - (G.) The prescribed method of by announcement does not include a review period and is thus inherently incapable of satisfying Rule 105. - (Eritivus) The rule has no bug because it is using a secondary definition of pertaining. Note: I have not submitted a Brief yet, because I was deregistered when I attempted to do so. I'm pondering whether to resubmit as is, expand, or abandon.
Re: DIS: Brief count
Note: I do intend to submit a(n expanded) Brief, by 07:00 UTC Tuesday (midnight tonight PDT), perhaps earlier. I did some related grunt work last night (collecting and reviewing all relevant contemporary messages, and more mostly -- but not totally -- fruitless CFJ searching). I 'just' need to polish the structure and then write it out. Generally, I want to address the prima facie unclarity of pertain, and the question of it being defined by game custom in the discussion preceding the Moot. However, I would be perfectly happy to leave that for a future CFJ, if players would rather end the Moot sooner than later.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Census
On Sun, 2014-10-19 at 16:45 +, woggle wrote: This information is not self-ratifying. The list of players registered is as a result of R2162(c). Ah, I see. I mistakenly thought that all information required to be in reports is self-ratifying. Oh well, see you next month :).
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Minister for GNP Evaluation] Weekly GNP Analysis Report
On Tue, 2014-10-14 at 19:24 +, Kerim Aydin wrote: NOW TAKING BETS for GNP for the Week of 2014-10-13! I see no reason not to bet at 23:59... except that that would be no fun. So I bet 90 Florins on 27-36, 10 on 37+.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
On Tue, 2014-10-14 at 18:58 +, Alex Smith wrote: In my case, I simply didn't know that pertain had two meanings; the only meaning I'd come across was relevant to. (I just looked it up; belonging to is indeed another possible meaning.) I'm not quite sure what effect this has on the case. It may be that game custom established the meaning of the ambiguous pertain, due to R217, before it was noticed it was ambiguous. I didn't know of the second sense either. I guess that no one active did. Is the pertain ambiguous, though? Given knowledge of the second sense, I think it is quite unambiguous. I've been working on expanding my Brief to argue that, when evaluating whether rule text is unclear, a judge should consider common knowledge at the time of the judgement, which now includes the second sense (since I pointed it out in a public message). That is, I think the fact that two meanings have been reasonably understood by players does not make the text ambiguous. It would only be ambiguous if two meanings could _now_ be reasonably understood.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
On Fri, 2014-10-17 at 21:52 +, omd wrote: Well, to the extent that language is communication, I think the failure of the term to communicate the seemingly intended meaning to, apparently, anyone in the audience is prima facie evidence for its unclearness. On the other hand, I think everyone voting on the proposal (except maybe you, if you had already spotted the scam?) implicitly understood the intended meaning. Perhaps only because they didn't look too closely, of course...
DIS: Re: BUS: Brief for Moot on CFJ 3429
I could probably be easily convinced to retract this Brief. I think that the fact that (this part of) omd's scam became generally accepted can be explained by the fact that equivocation can be difficult to detect, especially if one sense is generally more common and overlaps with the other, and especially if one is distracted by other issues (e.g. R105). However, this hypothesis requires my assuming that players have erred in their acceptance of the scam. While I did detect in myself a failure to detect the equivocation, I consider it somewhat likely that the error is instead in my Brief.
Re: DIS: No more Rights means no informal process?
On 2014-10-09 21:34 UTC, Alex wrote: One argument the other way that may be worth considering is that just because omd's message gave Agorans an opportunity to review the rules change, it didn't give any opportunity for that review to have any effect. Depending on your interpretation of the rules, this might or might not matter. I was drafting a Brief (which, for now at least, I do not intend to submit, since I do not feel qualified) which attempts this argument. I think the questions about the length of time required for review and the legality of informal processes are relevant to the question of whether omd's rule change was subjected to review through a public process. However, even if I agree that they were _subjected_ to such review (and I think I do), I don't agree that they were _subject_ to review. I submit two definitions of subject, obtained from www.merriam-webster.com, for consideration: subject (adjective): contingent on or under the influence of some later action the plan is subject to discussion subject (transitive verb): to cause or force to undergo or endure (something unpleasant, inconvenient, or trying) was subjected to constant verbal abuse Is there precedent for interpreting subject in R105 not as subject, but subjected, under these definitions? I take it that there may be at least a custom of 'standard dictatorship processes' which seem to rely on the latter interpretation?
Re: DIS: No more Rights means no informal process?
What is the flaw in this alternative argument? The Low-Powered Rule sets up a Rules Change mechanism of By Announcement. This is a different mechanism than the mechanism which is, according to R105, the only mechanism. This mechanism is therefore overruled by a higher-powered rule, and just plain old doesn't work.
