from:"Kerim Aydin"

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-08-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Tue 22 Aug 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[none]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st
4048 Murphy
4049 snail
 Yachay


OPEN CASES
---
[none]


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4049 Judged TRUE by snail [Sat 12 Aug 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4049
 In the above-quoted message, G. noted an infraction.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-08-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 18 Aug 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[none]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st
4048 Murphy
4049 snail


OPEN CASES
---
[none]


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4049 Judged TRUE by snail [Sat 12 Aug 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4049
 In the above-quoted message, G. noted an infraction.

4048 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4048
 The ruleset violated 2683.

4047 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4047
 Every player violated rule 2683.

4046 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4046
 4st violated rule 2683.

4045 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4045
 Juan, the Absurdor, violated rule 2683.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-08-11 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 11 Aug 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4049 Assigned to snail   Due Fri 18 Aug 2023 22:53:41


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st
4048 Murphy
4049 snail


OPEN CASES
---
4049 Assigned to snail [Due Fri 18 Aug 2023 22:53:41]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4049
 In the above-quoted message, G. noted an infraction.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4048 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4048
 The ruleset violated 2683.

4047 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4047
 Every player violated rule 2683.

4046 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4046
 4st violated rule 2683.

4045 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4045
 Juan, the Absurdor, violated rule 2683.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4049 Assigned to snail

2023-08-11 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4049.  I assign it to snail.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4049

===  CFJ 4049  ===

  In the above-quoted message, G. noted an infraction.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: snail

==

History:

Called by ais523: 04 Aug 2023 23:39:05
Assigned to snail:[now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Fri, 2023-08-04 at 10:55 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business
wrote:
> You didn't out yourself, and it was noticed - I checked the ADoP
> report a couple days ago but didn't sit down to do duties until
> today.
>
> H. Referee, I note that 4st violated R2143 (infraction: tardiness) by
> failing to publish a Herald's Weekly Report last week.

This excerpt from rule 2478:
{{{
  A player CAN, by announcement, "note" an unforgiven infraction
  committed by any other player in the last 7 days, specifying the
  incident and the rule it violates (or name of the Infraction if
  it has one).
}}}

Caller's Arguments:

G. got the name of the infraction wrong (its actual name is Weekly
Tardiness). Rule 2478 seems to be ambiguous: it can be read as either
*requiring* the name of the infraction to be specified if it has one,
or as *offering the alternative* of naming the infraction if it has a
name. With the former reading, G.'s action failed because it did not
name the infraction correctly. With the latter reading, it may have
succeeded (the rule number is correct), although there's still some
potential doubt as to whether incorrectly naming the infraction might
invalidate the action even though it would have succeeded with no name
at all.

(Note that this has no real impact on the current gamestate because an
infraction can be investigated regardless of whether or not it has been
noted; however, it affects the Referee's obligations and the contents
of the Referee's Report, and thus has gamestate relevance in a more
general way.)

==

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-08-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 04 Jul 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[none]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4037 snail
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st
4048 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
[none]


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4048 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4048
 The ruleset violated 2683.

4047 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4047
 Every player violated rule 2683.

4046 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4046
 4st violated rule 2683.

4045 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4045
 Juan, the Absurdor, violated rule 2683.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-07-24 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Mon 24 Jul 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[none]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4037 snail
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st
4048 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
[none]


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4048 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4048
 The ruleset violated 2683.

4047 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4047
 Every player violated rule 2683.

4046 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4046
 4st violated rule 2683.

4045 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 16 Jul 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4045
 Juan, the Absurdor, violated rule 2683.

4044 Judged TRUE by 4st [Sat 24 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4044
 On or about 2023-06-12, G. won the game.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-07-14 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 14 Jul 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4048 Assigned to Murphy  Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37
4047 Assigned to Murphy  Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37
4046 Assigned to Murphy  Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37
4045 Assigned to Murphy  Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4037 snail
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st
4048 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
4048 Assigned to Murphy [Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4048
 The ruleset violated 2683.

4047 Assigned to Murphy [Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4047
 Every player violated rule 2683.

4046 Assigned to Murphy [Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4046
 4st violated rule 2683.

4045 Assigned to Murphy [Due Fri 21 Jul 2023 18:01:37]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4045
 Juan, the Absurdor, violated rule 2683.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4044 Judged TRUE by 4st [Sat 24 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4044
 On or about 2023-06-12, G. won the game.

4043 Judged FALSE by G. [Tue 20 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4043
 Yachay's 5-22 rice plan was harvested.

4042 Judged DISMISS by G. [Tue 13 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4042
 At the time the Assessor first attempted to resolve the Agoran
 decision about whether to adopt proposal 8989, ais523's vote on
 that proposal resolved to PRESENT.

4041 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 18 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4041
 In the Herald's Monthly Report linked in evidence, "Blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who was
 last registered from the email address recorded as "malcolmr at
 cse.unsw.edu.au".

4040 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 18 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4040
 In the Herald's Weekly Report linked in evidence, "blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who
 registered from the email address recorded as "cearguinzoni1 at
 gmail dot com".

4038 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 18 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4038
 The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
 person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
 player.

4032 Judged TRUE by ais523 [Fri 16 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4032
 There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.

OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJs 4045-4048 Assigned to Murphy

2023-07-14 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Below are CFJs 4045, 4046, 4047, and 4048.  I assign each one to Murphy.

===  CFJ 4045  ===
  Juan, the Absurdor, violated rule 2683.

===  CFJ 4046  ===
  4st violated rule 2683.

===  CFJ 4047  ===
  Every player violated rule 2683.

===  CFJ 4048  ===
  The ruleset violated 2683.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Murphy

==

History:

Called by 4st:08 Jul 2023 02:27:21
Assigned to Murphy:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

Rule 2683 was violated, as the last time the boulder was pushed was June
23rd by 4st.

Rule 2683/0 (Power=0.5)
The Boulder

  The Absurdor is an office.

  The Boulder's Height is a singleton integer switch defaulting to
  0, tracked by the Absurdor.

  Each player CAN, once a week, by announcement, push the boulder.
  When a player pushes the Boulder, its Height is increased by 1.
  Players are ENCOURAGED to do so. The Boulder MUST be pushed at
  least once a week.

  If at any point the height of the Boulder is 100 or more, it is
  set to 0.


Caller's Arguments:

Arguments JUAN: Juan, the Absurdor, has an implied responsibility to push
the boulder, as e has the office responsible for tracking it, and has the
power to push the boulder on any given week.

Arguments 4ST: 4st, as the last and only pusher of the boulder, should have
continued to push the boulder, as by volunteering the first time, has an
implied responsibility to continue to do it.

Arguments EVERYONE: As anyone CAN push the boulder, it is everyone's
implied responsibility, and so, everyone violated rule 2683, because
everyone has the responsibility to push the boulder.

Arguments RULESET: Alternatively, since there is no one assigned to the
responsibility specifically, the ruleset violated the rule, and thus, the
infraction has no infracter. (I believe this is the precedent, but it
doesn't hurt to check)

--

Gratuitous Arguments by Janet:

Arguments for JUAN, 4ST, EVERYONE:
  CFJ 3730 clearly suggests a judgement of FALSE.

Arguments for RULESET:
  IRRELEVANT. No punishment can be imposed in any case.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by ais523:

I believe in this case it is the boulder that has violated
the rules, by not being pushed. (As far as I can tell, this viewpoint
is not inconsistent with CFJ 3730.) In CFJ 3141, the judge found that a
sentence fragment "judges SHALL NOT be assigned to any judicial case"
meant that the judge would have violated a rule by being assigned (as
opposed to the person doing the assignment). This situation has
comparable wording.

Anyway, CFJ 3730 is a direct enough precedent that I think the first
three CFJs could appropriately be judged IRRELEVANT, on the basis that
they can be trivially determined from the outcome of another judicial
case; there doesn't seem to be anything different this time compared to
last time we tried this (something which IIRC was pointed out during
the voting period).

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

(specific response to ais523's gratuitous arguments):

Even if the judge agrees with the principles and logic of CFJ 3730,
there's some rule text changes to consider.  The judgement quotes a
clause of Rule 2531/4 in effect at the time of that judgement:

> Any attempt to levy a fine is INEFFECTIVE if:
> (reasons)

That text has been replaced with this in R2531/16:

> An infraction is automatically forgiven if:
> (reasons)

The "reasons" in R2531/4 mixed the concepts of "not a rules violation
based on facts" and "technically a rules violation but excused from
penalties" so it was the appropriate citation at the time; currently,
"not a rules violation based on facts" is a platonic effect of Rule
2478 and R2531/16 is only relevant for forgiving an established rules
violation.  If the judge agrees with the overall logic of CFJ 3730, I
think this is a minor rules citation issue, but it's probably
different enough to reaffirm FALSE and cite R2478 as the new governing
rule, or do a little due diligence on whether the new rules text
functions as expected, rather than dismiss this as wholly irrelevant.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4044 Judged TRUE by 4st

2023-07-14 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4044
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4044  ===

  On or about 2023-06-12, G. won the game.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: 4st
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by Janet:  23 Jun 2023 16:28:37
Assigned to 4st:  23 Jun 2023 17:50:24
Judged TRUE by 4st:   23 Jun 2023 21:45:08
Motion to reconsider self-filed:  24 Jun 2023 00:16:28
Judged TRUE by 4st:   24 Jun 2023 00:16:28

==

Caller's Arguments:

This comes down to whether P8988 (adopted without dispute) affected the
continuity of previous "signatures". I argue that, after it took affect,
nobody had "signed" a rice plan. "Sign"ing, in the new text, is a
specific by action performed by announcement that necessarily could not
have been performed before the proposal was adopted. The condition of
"having signed" a rice plan is evaluated continuously, and must
therefore always use the current definition in force.

Even if redefining the action could allow continuity with some previous
action, Judge ais523 found in CFJ 4032 that "consent" to Rice Plans was
not a specific action, but a continuous state to be evaluated using
either natural-language standards of consent or an adaptation of R2519,
yielding similar results, but in neither case requiring a regulated
action of any form.

R1586 ("Definition and Continuity of Entities") is irrelevant. Rice
Plans are clearly continuous, but "signatures" are not entities under
either the current or former version of the rule.


Caller's Evidence:

//
ID: 8988
Title: Rice rewrite
Adoption index: 1.0
Author: Janet
Co-authors: snail


Amend the rule entitled "The Rice Game" to read, in whole:
{
The Ricemastor is an office.

Rice is a fixed asset tracked by the Ricemastor, with ownership wholly
restricted to players. If a rice would otherwise be in abeyance or is
owned by the Lost and Found Department, it is destroyed.

An active player CAN create a rice plan by announcement once per week,
specifying two sets of players (the rice up set and the rice down set).
When a rice plan is harvested, each active player in the rice up set
gains one rice, then one rice is revoked from each player in the rice
down set (if e has any). The Ricemastor's weekly report includes a list
of rice plans. The creator of a rice plan CAN by announcement destroy
it, thereby causing it to cease to be a rice plan.

An active player CAN by announcement sign a specified rice plan. An
active player's signature is on a rice plan if e has signed it or if a
contract e is party to clearly and unambiguously states that eir
signature is on it. The Ricemastor's weekly report includes, for each
rice plan, a list of players with signatures on it.

A harvest occurs at the beginning of each week. When a harvest occurs,
the following happen in order:
* The rice plan with the most signatures (breaking ties in favor of the
earliest created), if any, is harvested.
* All rice plans are destroyed.

Immediately after a harvest, if a single active player has at least 2
rice and more rice than any other player, e wins the game, then all rice
and rice plans are destroyed. If the game has been won in this manner
three times, this rule immediately repeals itself.
}

[
Changes:
- Generally cleaned up wording
- Handle rice at Lost and Found
- Harvesting a plan now grants rice before revoking (handling the case
where a person is in both the up and down sets)
- Use "CAN" for enabling
- Use a by announcement action or contract for signatures, rather than
"consent"
- Added a clarity requirement for contract-based signatures
- Removed Fancy Caps
]

//



Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

  The Ricemastor is an office, in charge of tracking Rice, Rice
  Plans and Signatures. Rice is a fixed asset, ownable only by
  players. Any active player can create a Rice Plan by announcement,
  if e hasn't done so yet in the current week. Rice Plans can have
  Signatures, and each Signature must be of an active player. A Rice
  Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
  consenting to it. An active player can destroy a Rice Plan that e
  has created by announcement.

  A Harvest occurs at the beginning of each week. When this occurs:
  - If there is only one

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 23 Jun 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4044 Assigned to 4st Due Fri 30 Jun 2023 17:50:24


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4037 snail
4039 Murphy
4041 Janet
4032 ais523
4043 G.
4044 4st


OPEN CASES
---
4044 Assigned to 4st [Due Fri 30 Jun 2023 17:50:24]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4044
 On or about 2023-06-12, G. won the game.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4043 Judged FALSE by G. [Tue 20 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4043
 Yachay's 5-22 rice plan was harvested.

4042 Judged DISMISS by G. [Tue 13 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4042
 At the time the Assessor first attempted to resolve the Agoran
 decision about whether to adopt proposal 8989, ais523's vote on
 that proposal resolved to PRESENT.

4041 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 18 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4041
 In the Herald's Monthly Report linked in evidence, "Blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who was
 last registered from the email address recorded as "malcolmr at
 cse.unsw.edu.au".

4040 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 18 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4040
 In the Herald's Weekly Report linked in evidence, "blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who
 registered from the email address recorded as "cearguinzoni1 at
 gmail dot com".

4039 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 04 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4039
 I currently own the recursion stone.

4038 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 18 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4038
 The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
 person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
 player.

4037 Judged FALSE by snail [Tue 13 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4037
 In the context of Commune, at least one tile belongs to some
 community.

4036 Judged FALSE by snail [Tue 13 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4036
 In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not empty, but belongs to no
 community.

4035 Judged FALSE by G. [Sun 04 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4035
 Juan has consented to a Rice Plan that does not have eir
 signature.

4034 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Mon 05 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4034
 G. has withdrawn consent from the Rice Plan in evidence, so that
 plan currently does not have G's signature.

4033 Judged IRRELEVANT by nix [Tue 30 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4033
 There is a currently registered player named “blob”.

4032 Judged TRUE by ais523 [Fri 16 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4032
 There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.

4030 Judged TRUE by Yachay affirmed by Moot [Wed 31 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4030
 Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
 for a single instance of a ritual act.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4044 Assigned to 4st

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4044.  I assign it to 4st.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4044

===  CFJ 4044  ===

  On or about 2023-06-12, G. won the game.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: 4st

==

History:

Called by Janet:  23 Jun 2023 16:28:37
Assigned to 4st:  [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

This comes down to whether P8988 (adopted without dispute) affected the
continuity of previous "signatures". I argue that, after it took affect,
nobody had "signed" a rice plan. "Sign"ing, in the new text, is a
specific by action performed by announcement that necessarily could not
have been performed before the proposal was adopted. The condition of
"having signed" a rice plan is evaluated continuously, and must
therefore always use the current definition in force.

Even if redefining the action could allow continuity with some previous
action, Judge ais523 found in CFJ 4032 that "consent" to Rice Plans was
not a specific action, but a continuous state to be evaluated using
either natural-language standards of consent or an adaptation of R2519,
yielding similar results, but in neither case requiring a regulated
action of any form.

R1586 ("Definition and Continuity of Entities") is irrelevant. Rice
Plans are clearly continuous, but "signatures" are not entities under
either the current or former version of the rule.


Caller's Evidence:

//
ID: 8988
Title: Rice rewrite
Adoption index: 1.0
Author: Janet
Co-authors: snail


Amend the rule entitled "The Rice Game" to read, in whole:
{
The Ricemastor is an office.

Rice is a fixed asset tracked by the Ricemastor, with ownership wholly
restricted to players. If a rice would otherwise be in abeyance or is
owned by the Lost and Found Department, it is destroyed.

An active player CAN create a rice plan by announcement once per week,
specifying two sets of players (the rice up set and the rice down set).
When a rice plan is harvested, each active player in the rice up set
gains one rice, then one rice is revoked from each player in the rice
down set (if e has any). The Ricemastor's weekly report includes a list
of rice plans. The creator of a rice plan CAN by announcement destroy
it, thereby causing it to cease to be a rice plan.

An active player CAN by announcement sign a specified rice plan. An
active player's signature is on a rice plan if e has signed it or if a
contract e is party to clearly and unambiguously states that eir
signature is on it. The Ricemastor's weekly report includes, for each
rice plan, a list of players with signatures on it.

A harvest occurs at the beginning of each week. When a harvest occurs,
the following happen in order:
* The rice plan with the most signatures (breaking ties in favor of the
earliest created), if any, is harvested.
* All rice plans are destroyed.

Immediately after a harvest, if a single active player has at least 2
rice and more rice than any other player, e wins the game, then all rice
and rice plans are destroyed. If the game has been won in this manner
three times, this rule immediately repeals itself.
}

[
Changes:
- Generally cleaned up wording
- Handle rice at Lost and Found
- Harvesting a plan now grants rice before revoking (handling the case
where a person is in both the up and down sets)
- Use "CAN" for enabling
- Use a by announcement action or contract for signatures, rather than
"consent"
- Added a clarity requirement for contract-based signatures
- Removed Fancy Caps
]

//



Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

  The Ricemastor is an office, in charge of tracking Rice, Rice
  Plans and Signatures. Rice is a fixed asset, ownable only by
  players. Any active player can create a Rice Plan by announcement,
  if e hasn't done so yet in the current week. Rice Plans can have
  Signatures, and each Signature must be of an active player. A Rice
  Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
  consenting to it. An active player can destroy a Rice Plan that e
  has created by announcement.

  A Harvest occurs at the beginning of each week. When this occurs:
  - If there is only one Rice Plan with the most Signatures, that
Rice Plan is Harvested.
  - If there is more than one Rice Plan with the most Signatures,
the one that was created earliest is Harvested.
  - In all other cases, nothing happens.
  And then all Rice Plans are destroyed

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4043 Judged FALSE by G.

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4043
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4043  ===

  Yachay's 5-22 rice plan was harvested.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: G.
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by 4st:08 Jun 2023 22:08:10
Assigned to G.:   15 Jun 2023 18:09:42
Judged FALSE by G.:   20 Jun 2023 18:27:42

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: G withdrew their consent (CFJ 4034), and 4st's consent
didn't work or worked on both, so Yachay's plan was earliest and was tied
for most signatures, and was thus harvested.

Arguments PARADOX:
G did not withdraw their consent (CFJ 4034), so 4st's consent results in a
paradox as eir consent only exists if a plan would not be harvested.
Yachay's plan would not have enough signatures if it were to be harvested,
and it would have enough signatures if it wasn't going to be harvested.

G withdrew their consent (CFJ 4034), so 4st's consent results in a paradox
as eir consent only exists if a plan would not be harvested, thus Yachay's
plan would now have enough signatures, and juan's plan would be tied for
first.

Arguments AGAINST: G did not withdraw eir consent, and 4st's consent either
didn't work or worked on both, so juan's plan was harvested.

--

Judge G.'s Arguments:

First, I've reviewed the Ricekeepor's report published here:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017142.html

and in particular the Rice Plans and signatures for the Harvest Week
of 5-28 (see evidence below), and noticed no factual errors.  CFJ 4032
found that rice plan consent generally functioned (unter the first
version of the rule) as one might expect, and CFJ 4034 found that G.
consented to Juan's Rice Plan but did not withdraw consent.  So the
final question is interpretation of this announcement by 4st:

> I consent to all rice plans that will not be harvested.

In general, indirect specification of entities or sets (like "I do
this for all X that meet conditions Y") are subject to the same
standards of communication as conditional actions - the specification
of the set must be determinate at the time of communication, otherwise
the communication simply fails to communicate and does nothing.  The
specification that 4st used was clear future tense - it didn't say "I
consent to all plans that are currently not ahead" but "I consent to
all plans that will in the future not be ahead".  Future information
such as this is indeterminate, so there was no reasonably clear
consent to sign any plan at the time that message was sent.

Now, it's *possible* that the Rice rule allowed a kind of continual
evaluation of this statement, such that some plan was signed by 4st
whenever that statement became determinate.  For various reasons I
don't think that forward continual evaluation works, but even if it
*did* work, it fails here.  Because there's no time when "will not be
harvested" is actually resolvable.  Up to the instant of the
beginning-of-week deadline, the "will be harvested" is indeterminate,
so consent is not reasonably clear.  At the instant the deadline
passes though, the rice plans platonically become "harvested" or "not
harvested". So there is no actual instant in between where "will be
harvested" becomes determinate, and 4sts set of "rice plans that will
not be harvested" is never sufficiently determine to express consent
for any plan.

Therefore, Juan's rice plan was harvested, not Yachay's.  I find FALSE.


Judge G.'s Evidence

RICE PLANS
==
Section 1: Harvest of Week 5-28

Created: 2023-05-28 by snail
Up: {active players at time of creation}
Down: {}
Signatures: beokirby, snail, Janet, 4st

Created: 2023-05-27 by G.
Up: {G., Janet}
Down: {4st}
Signatures: G., Janet, 4st

Created: 2023-05-26 by Janet
Up: {}
Down: {}
Signatures: Janet, ais523, 4st

Created: 2023-05-22 by juan
Up: {Aspen, G., Janet, Murphy, ais523, cuddlybanana, juan}
Down: {4st, beokirby, blob, iWright, nix, snail, Yachay}
Signatures: ais523, juan, (G, if G hasn't withdrawn eir signature), Janet,
(4st, if this plan will not be harvested)

Created: 2023-05-22 by Yachay
Up:  {4st, beokirby, blob, inalienableWright, nix, snail, Yachay}
Down: {Aspen, ais523, cuddlybanana, G., Janet, juan, Murphy}
Signatures: Yachay, beokirby, snail, (4st, if this plan will not be
harvested)

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4042 Judged DISMISS by G.

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4042
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4042  ===

  At the time the Assessor first attempted to resolve the Agoran
  decision about whether to adopt proposal 8989, ais523's vote on
  that proposal resolved to PRESENT.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: G.
Judgement: DISMISS

==

History:

Called by ais523: 05 Jun 2023 00:19:23
Assigned to G.:   12 Jun 2023 22:58:01
Judged DISMISS by G.: 13 Jun 2023 18:12:54

==

Caller's Arguments:

Rule 2127 requires a conditional vote to be "determinate" in
order to avoid evaluating to PRESENT. Rule 2518 requires a value to be
reasonably determinable from information reasonably available to be
determinate.

Were my rice holdings actually determinate at this point? There has
been mass confusion (and several CFJs) regarding how the rice rules
actually work, with at least two CFJs unresolved at the time of the
attempted resolution. The Ricemastor is inactive, and has missed
reports. Some people have taken to attempting to sign Rice Plans using
lots of different wordings in the same message, in the apparent hope
that at least one of them will work.

Further evidence is that the Assessor appeared to be in sufficient
doubt about my Rice holdings that e immediately CoEd eir own
resolution, referring the situation to CFJ – this implies that it was
unreasonable for em to determine my Rice holding, otherwise e would
probably have done so. (In general, it seems that although it's
reasonable to tie a report to a CFJ outcome, it is unreasonable to do
the same for a conditional vote.)

--

Judge G.'s Arguments:

As per R2518/1, a value is indeterminate if it "CANNOT be reasonably
determined (without circularity or paradox) from information
reasonably available".   As per R2127/11, the determinacy of
conditional votes is calculated as per conditions at the time the
voting period ends.  Importantly, the verb "determined" is an active
verb that implies the determination is being conducted by persons
(thinking beings) - and that determination is a physical/mental
process that takes time.  Taken literally, it is physically impossible
for anybody to make the determination at (exactly) the end of the
voting period, because given email delays, the full set of information
isn't practically known until at least a few minutes after the
deadline passes.  To make sense of these rules, then, is to assume
that the "information reasonably available" must be present (or en
route with an early enough datestamp) at the end of the voting period,
but that "determination" is an allowable interpretive process - e.g.
by the Assessor - that can occur after the voting period has closed.

To this end, the caller has erred in eir arguments, in noting that the
CoE and CFJ calling are evidence of indeterminacy.  Rather, they are
part of the working determination process, not evidence of its
failure.  CFJs must be taken to be an acceptable part of the
"reasonable determination" process occurring after the deadline, or
they would fail to set up a "reasonable expectation" of controversy
resolution as mandated by R217/12.  So the Assessor calling a CFJ is
simply exporting the formal responsibility for determination to a
judge.  While it is unfortunate that judicial delays may drag out the
determination process, R217 confirms (essentially defines) that these
CFJ delays are still within the timeline for "reasonably" determining
a result or resolving a controversy about the interpretation of a
result.

CFJ 4032 has been called that questions the results of the first Rice
Harvest.  CFJ 4043 is questioning the result of the second Rice
Harvest.  If neither of those CFJs finds the situation indeterminate,
then that would answer ("reasonably determine") the status of ais523's
vote at the time the voting period ended.  This current CFJ could be
trivially revisited when those CFJs are judged, but until then, in
deference to those CFJs, I DISMISS this case.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4041 Judged FALSE by Janet

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4041
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

=== CFJ 4041 ===

In the Herald's Monthly Report linked in evidence, "Blob" without
additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who was
last registered from the email address recorded as "malcolmr at
cse.unsw.edu.au".

Caller:G.

Judge: Janet
Judgement: FALSE

History:

Called by G.: 04 Jun 2023 12:45:57
Assigned to Janet:04 Jun 2023 13:31:51
Motion to Extend filed: 11 Jun 2023 05:23:35
Judged FALSE by Janet:18 Jun 2023 23:36:19

[Linked to CFJ 4041]

Caller's Evidence:

Herald's Weekly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017107.html

Herald's Monthly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017108.html

Registrar's Weekly Report noting the email of current player 'blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017106.html

Registrar's Monthly Report noting the last known email of former player 'Blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017011.html

Caller's Arguments:

The Herald's Weekly and Herald's Monthly reports linked in evidence were
both published by the same officer on the same day. One lists 'blob' with
an amount of radiance, one lists 'Blob' as the holder of some patent titles.
Neither report has any comments to resolve this (alleged) ambiguity. Same
officer's reports, same day, read back-to-back - how are the two entities
being distinguished? Is the capital letter enough? The current context of
discussion? If "the current context" is sufficient, does that become
insufficient as time passes/for future historical viewers? Is that enough
certainty for radiance self-ratification, or patent title ratification? Or
are these reports ambiguous?

Judge Janet's Arguments:

These cases are regarding the registration of a player who calls emself
"blob". Because a former and well-known player went by the name "Blob",
this has resulted in confusion about how officers should refer to either
player in reports. The question before this court is how these names are
to be interpreted in a short-term ephemeral report about current players
(CFJ 4040) and a long-term historical document about an unbounded set of
persons (CFJ 4041).

Agora is a game that highly values its history. As such, many former
players, even from long ago, are frequently referenced in reports. The
older Blob is no exception. E is referenced every month in the
Rulekeepor's Herald's, and Registrar's monthly reports. As such, most
current and long-standing players are aware of the existence of Blob
and, before the registration of the newer blob, would have recognized
the name as a historical player.

However, reports are not just for experienced players. The purpose of a
report is primarily to inform all interested persons, including new
players and onlookers who lack historical context, and secondarily to
act as a historical record. Both of these purposes demand clarity and
unambiguity, as prior cases on reports have found.

Here I focus on the first purpose, as it is more tangible. Let us
consider a hypothetical new player that has acquired the most recent
version of each report. Such a player would most certainly conclude that
the "blob" and "Blob" referenced in the two reports at issue are the
same person. (As to the casing difference, even the most perceptive and
inquisitive new player might fail to notice the difference, and those
that do would likely ignore it.)

Thus, a new player reading the reports at issue would be actively
mislead into believing one version of the gamestate, while a veteran
player would read the reports in a different, accurate way using their
historical knowledge. This is confusion, not communication. The reports
have failed in their primary duty to inform.

Therefore, at least the referenced Herald's monthly report must be
ambiguous in its reference to "Blob".

However, this leaves the question of whether the referenced Herald's
Weekly report is ambiguous in its reference to "blob". Both a veteran
player and a new player will come to the conclusion that the "blob"
referenced there is the same person listed as "blob" in the most recent
Registrar's report. It has also been suggested that the fact that the
Herald's weekly

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4040 Judged FALSE by Janet

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4040
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

=== CFJ 4040 ===

In the Herald's Weekly Report linked in evidence, "blob" without
additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who
registered from the email address recorded as "cearguinzoni1 at
gmail dot com".

Caller:G.

Judge: Janet
Judgement: FALSE

History:

Called by G.: 04 Jun 2023 12:45:57
Assigned to Janet:04 Jun 2023 13:30:49
Motion to Extend filed: 11 Jun 2023 05:23:35
Judged FALSE by Janet:18 Jun 2023 23:36:19

[Linked to CFJ 4041]

Caller's Evidence:

Herald's Weekly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017107.html

Herald's Monthly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017108.html

Registrar's Weekly Report noting the email of current player 'blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017106.html

Registrar's Monthly Report noting the last known email of former player 'Blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017011.html

Caller's Arguments:

Judge Janet's Arguments:

Therefore, at least the referenced Herald's monthly report must be
ambiguous in its reference to "Blob".

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4036 Judged FALSE by snail

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4036
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4036  ===

  In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not empty, but belongs to no
  community.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: snail
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by ais523: 28 May 2023 23:25:13
Assigned to snail:04 Jun 2023 13:27:43
Judged FALSE by snail:13 Jun 2023 03:07:17

==

[Linked to CFJ 4037]

Caller's Evidence:

This week, I placed a tile at G6. It was adjacent to two
communities, Jade (with four tiles) at G7, and Emerald (with fewer than
four tiles) at F6. Emerald was thus merged into Jade.

The relevant part of the tournament regulations is:
{{{
   If a tile has not been placed on a location on the board, it is
   empty.

   Participants CAN place a tile on an empty location by paying one
   letter token and one number token that correspond to that
   location's coordinates.

   If a tile is placed that is not adjacent to any tiles belonging to
   any communities, the player that placed it founds a new community,
   e is granted 1 investment for that community, and e becomes its
   founder. E CAN and SHOULD name the community after any color that
   starts with a different first letter than any existing community
   by announcement. If a community has not been named, the Surveyor
   CAN and SHALL do so by announcement.

   A player who is the founder of an existing community CANNOT place
   a tile that would found a new community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to one or more tiles belonging to a
   single community, that tile belongs to that community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to two or more tiles belongining to
   different communities, a merger happens.

   When a merger happens, if a single community involved in the
   merger has more tiles than each other community, that community is
   the acquiring community. If there is a tie, the tied community
   that gained a tile least recently is the acquiring community. The
   other communities are the acquired communities. All tiles
   belonging to the acquired communities cease to belong to them and
   begin to belong to the acquiring community.  Each player gains X
   (rounded down) Accolades for each acquired community e had an
   investment in, where X is the total tiles that belonged to that
   community immediately before the merger divided by the total
   number of investments that exist for that community and times the
   number of investments for that community that player owns. The
   acquired communities and all investments in all acquired
   communities are destroyed.
}}}


Caller's Arguments:

The intention behind the tournament regulations is probably that, if a
player places a tile to merge two or more communities into a single
community, the tile that was placed becomes part of the new merged
community.

However, I can't find anything in the tournament regulations that
states that a tile placed to cause a merger becomes part of any
community. Does this imply that the tile is non-empty, but not part of
the resulting merged community? (This doesn't break much, but causes
scores to be slightly lower.) The first CFJ is TRUE in that case, or
FALSE if G6 is part of Jade.

I also note that the tournament regulations don't explicitly state that
founding a new community by placing a tile not adjacent to any existing
communities causes the placed tile to become part of the community
founded that way. It seems plausible that such tiles would be part of
no community, although that would completely break the tournament (both
because there would be no way to score and because most of the moves
that have happened so far would be illegal). The second CFJ is checking
for the possibility that this has happened.

--

Judge snail's Arguments:

Unfortunately, I see nowhere stating in these regulations that a tile
begins belonging to a community at any point except when placed next to a
tile already in a community. When a player places their first tile, all
that happens is they found a new community, get an investment in it, and
become its founder. I don't see any text that says otherwise, so sadly, the
tournament is broken.

I judge CFJ 4037 FALSE, and recommend some sort of proposal to fix the
tournament.

I also judge CFJ 4036 FALSE, ("In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not
empty, but belongs to no community.") as the tile is in fact empty, since
ais523 already founded a community, which was

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4038 Judged FALSE by Murphy

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4038
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4038  ===

  The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
  person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
  player.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: Murphy
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Janet:  30 May 2023 21:27:23
Assigned to nix:  04 Jun 2023 13:29:00
nix recused:  06 Jun 2023 23:36:56
Assigned to Murphy:   14 Jun 2023 18:02:20
Judged FALSE by Murphy:   18 Jun 2023 21:03:30

==

Caller's Evidence:

On 5/22/23 15:07, juan via agora-official wrote:
> PLAYERS
>
> Active players: 14/21
>
> a Player   Registered  Last change Contact
> - --   --  --- ---
> + 4st  2023-01-27   "  notorious4st at gmail dot com
> + Aspen2022-11-04   "  thoughtsoflifeandlight17 at 
> gmail dot com
> + G.   2017-08-25  2021-02-03  kerim at uw dot edu
> + Janet2019-06-02  2021-02-03  agora at randomcat dot org
> + Murphy   2017-12-17  2021-02-03  murphy.agora at gmail dot com
> + Yachay Wayllukuq 2023-03-16   "  yachaywayllukuq at gmail.com
> + ais523   2021-06-08   "  callforjudgement at yahoo.co 
> dot uk
> + beokirby 2023-05-18   "  beokirbyagora at gmail dot com
> + blob 2023-05-18   "  cearguizoni1 at gmail dot com
> + cuddlybanana 2021-03-16  2023-01-16  rose.strong42 at gmail dot com
> + inalienableWright2023-05-16   "  inalienablewright at mailfence 
> dot com
> + juan 2022-03-14   "  juan at juanmeleiro.mat dot br
> + nix  2022-10-09   "  agora at nullarch dot com
> + snail2022-01-29   "  secretsnail9 at gmail dot com
> - Aced72022-10-19  2023-04-03  cadenomic at gmail dot com
> - Gaelan   2017-05-15  2023-04-03  gbs at canishe dot com
> - Marb 2022-11-27  2023-04-03  marb at shabu dot town
> - R. Lee   2023-01-31  2023-04-03  sarahestrange0 at gmail dot com
> - Shy Owl  2022-10-07  2023-04-03  iamashyown at proton dot me
> - omd  2011-02-03  2022-03-23  comexk at gmail dot com
> - tb1482023-02-06  2023-04-03  tb148 at proton dot me

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

The Registrar's Report in question lists an email address for the person
'blob'.  This email address does not match the email address associated
with Blob in previous Registrar's Monthly Reports (around Jan 1 2023).

Furthermore, the currently-registered blob, around the time of eir
registration, had this (summarized) conversation in Discord:

> snail 05/16/2023 8:00 PM
> welcome! How did you find us?
>
> Murphy 05/16/2023 11:40 PM
> Are you a mauve-colored blob, specifically?
>
> blob (@snail) 05/17/2023 4:38 PM
> just found out about nomics somehow (through a "related articles"
> wikipedia thing i believe) and thought that this looked pretty cool
>
> blob (@Murphy) 05/17/2023 4:38 PM
> not specifically, no
>
> G. 05/17/2023 4:39 PM
> welcome!  Murphy's message on mauve is because we had someone nicknamed
> Blob many years ago, and that was an in-joke with them.
>
> blob 05/17/2023 4:39 PM
> ah, i see! i had to check my bio for a moment there, because muave is
> my favorite color, and i thought it might be there xD

I think that conversation establishes, to the preponderance of evidence,
that the currently-registered blob is new to nomic, and unaware of various
in-jokes concerning the original Blob.

So I think this should be FALSE; though in particular, the disambiguation
relies on the Registrar's Report including the email address as an
annotation, so this CFJ doesn't really address who 'blob' refers to
if the name is used in other reports without the additional annotation.

--

Judge Murphy's Arguments:

I accept the caller's arguments on all points and judge FALSE.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4037 Judged FALSE by snail

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4037
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4037  ===

  In the context of Commune, at least one tile belongs to some
  community.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: snail
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by ais523: 28 May 2023 23:25:13
Assigned to snail:04 Jun 2023 13:28:17
Judged FALSE by snail:13 Jun 2023 03:07:17

==

[Linked to CFJ 4036]

Caller's Evidence:

This week, I placed a tile at G6. It was adjacent to two
communities, Jade (with four tiles) at G7, and Emerald (with fewer than
four tiles) at F6. Emerald was thus merged into Jade.

The relevant part of the tournament regulations is:
{{{
   If a tile has not been placed on a location on the board, it is
   empty.

   Participants CAN place a tile on an empty location by paying one
   letter token and one number token that correspond to that
   location's coordinates.

   If a tile is placed that is not adjacent to any tiles belonging to
   any communities, the player that placed it founds a new community,
   e is granted 1 investment for that community, and e becomes its
   founder. E CAN and SHOULD name the community after any color that
   starts with a different first letter than any existing community
   by announcement. If a community has not been named, the Surveyor
   CAN and SHALL do so by announcement.

   A player who is the founder of an existing community CANNOT place
   a tile that would found a new community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to one or more tiles belonging to a
   single community, that tile belongs to that community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to two or more tiles belongining to
   different communities, a merger happens.

   When a merger happens, if a single community involved in the
   merger has more tiles than each other community, that community is
   the acquiring community. If there is a tie, the tied community
   that gained a tile least recently is the acquiring community. The
   other communities are the acquired communities. All tiles
   belonging to the acquired communities cease to belong to them and
   begin to belong to the acquiring community.  Each player gains X
   (rounded down) Accolades for each acquired community e had an
   investment in, where X is the total tiles that belonged to that
   community immediately before the merger divided by the total
   number of investments that exist for that community and times the
   number of investments for that community that player owns. The
   acquired communities and all investments in all acquired
   communities are destroyed.
}}}

--

Judge snail's Arguments:

Unfortunately, I see nowhere stating in these regulations that a tile
begins belonging to a community at any point except when placed next to a
tile already in a community. When a player places their first tile, all
that happens is they found a new community, get an investment in it, and
become its founder. I don't see any text that says otherwise, so sadly, the
tournament is broken.

I judge CFJ 4037 FALSE, and recommend some sort of proposal to fix the
tournament.

I also judge CFJ 4036 FALSE, ("In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not
empty, but belongs to no community.") as the tile is in fact empty, since
ais523 already founded a community, which was not destroyed.

I will note for future reference that "If a tile is placed adjacent to one
or more tiles belonging to a single community, that tile belongs to that
community." can still apply in a merger, which, if CFJ 4037 was true, would
mean the tournament works as intended. The tile would belong to each
community involved, and then since the acquired communities are destroyed,
only belong to the acquiring community.

Caller's Arguments:

The intention behind the tournament regulations is probably that, if a
player places a tile to merge two or more communities into a single
community, the tile that was placed becomes part of the new merged
community.

However, I can't find anything in the tournament regulations that
states that a tile placed to cause a merger becomes part of any
community. Does this imply that the tile is non-empty, but not part of
the resulting merged community? (This doesn't break much, but causes
scores to be slightly lower.) The first CFJ is TRUE in that case, or
FALSE if G6 is part of Jade.

I also note that the tournament regulations don't explicitly state that
founding a new community by placing a tile not

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4032 Judged TRUE by ais523

2023-06-23 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4032
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

=== CFJ 4032 ===

There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.

Caller:Yachay

Judge: ais523
Judgement: TRUE

History:

Called by Yachay: 25 May 2023 19:17:23
Assigned to 4st: 25 May 2023 23:36:45
Judged TRUE by 4st: 27 May 2023 17:40:02
Motion to reconsider group-filed: 28 May 2023 03:15:50
4st recused: 08 Jun 2023 22:59:57
Assigned to ais523: 13 Jun 2023 18:42:28
Judged TRUE by ais523:16 Jun 2023 23:56:48

Caller's Arguments:

[none provided so far]

Gratuitous Arguments by G.

This CFJ was called on 25-May-23, when only one Rice Harvest had occurred,
and Rule 2682/0 was in effect.

The report in question is here:

https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017077.html

No factual errors have been noted in this report, in terms of who sent
messages attempting to either make Rice Plans or to sign rice plans
either via direct consent or contract.

The question is wholly interpretive, in that all signatures allegedly
applied to the Rice Plans were governed by this clause of R2682/0:
> A Rice
> Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
> consenting to it.

This clause is written passively, without our general standards like
"CAN sign by announcement" etc. And R2519/2 covers consent for "actions"
not continuous states so it's unclear how that applies.

Basically, if signing Rice Plans works as generally intended by the
rule's author, then this CFJ is true, with the persons with more than
0 rice indicated in that report.

Judge 4st initially judged this CFJ and eir original judgement is
included below, but a Motion to Reconsider was filed for that judgement,
and 4st was later recused. The players supporting the motion to
reconsider generally gave the reason that Judge 4st's arguments called
"having a signature on a plan" a kind of "continuous action" that
players were "continually agreeing to" which didn't generally match
Agoran conceptions of actions as instantaneous events (sorry if this
is a very coarse summary of the objections).

Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

The Ricemastor is an office, in charge of tracking Rice, Rice
Plans and Signatures. Rice is a fixed asset, ownable only by
players. Any active player can create a Rice Plan by announcement,
if e hasn't done so yet in the current week. Rice Plans can have
Signatures, and each Signature must be of an active player. A Rice
Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
consenting to it. An active player can destroy a Rice Plan that e
has created by announcement.

A Harvest occurs at the beginning of each week. When this occurs:
- If there is only one Rice Plan with the most Signatures, that
Rice Plan is Harvested.
- If there is more than one Rice Plan with the most Signatures,
the one that was created earliest is Harvested.
- In all other cases, nothing happens.
And then all Rice Plans are destroyed and the Harvest ends.

Rice Plans consist of two lists of players, with each list having
no repeated players, and the lists can be empty. One of these
lists is its Rice Up list, and the other is its Rice Down list.
When a Rice Plan is Harvested, for each player listed in its Rice
Up list, if that player is active, e gains 1 Rice; and for each
player listed in its Rice Down list, if e has at least 1 Rice then
e lose 1 Rice.

If after a Harvest there is a single active player with at least 2
Rice and more Rice than any other player, then that player wins
the game, and all Rice is destroyed. When the game has been won in
this manner three times, this rule repeals itself.

Judge 4st's Arguments:

Evidence:
Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4043 Assigned to G.

2023-06-15 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

[out of time to assign this case but want to ensure the  judgements
happen in the right order and build on each other...]

I make the following pledge, with a time window of 14 days:
{I SHALL NOT judge CFJ 4043 until the current judge of CFJ 4032
(ais523) has either judged that case or been recused from it}.

The below CFJ is 4043.  I assign it to G..

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4043

===  CFJ 4043  ===

  Yachay's 5-22 rice plan was harvested.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: G.

==

History:

Called by 4st:08 Jun 2023 22:08:10
Assigned to G.:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: G withdrew their consent (CFJ 4034), and 4st's consent
didn't work or worked on both, so Yachay's plan was earliest and was tied
for most signatures, and was thus harvested.

Arguments PARADOX:
G did not withdraw their consent (CFJ 4034), so 4st's consent results in a
paradox as eir consent only exists if a plan would not be harvested.
Yachay's plan would not have enough signatures if it were to be harvested,
and it would have enough signatures if it wasn't going to be harvested.

G withdrew their consent (CFJ 4034), so 4st's consent results in a paradox
as eir consent only exists if a plan would not be harvested, thus Yachay's
plan would now have enough signatures, and juan's plan would be tied for
first.

Arguments AGAINST: G did not withdraw eir consent, and 4st's consent either
didn't work or worked on both, so juan's plan was harvested.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4038 Assigned to Murphy

2023-06-14 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I assign CFJ 4038 (below) to Murphy.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4038

===  CFJ 4038  ===

  The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
  person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
  player.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: Murphy

==

History:

Called by Janet:  30 May 2023 21:27:23
Assigned to nix:  04 Jun 2023 13:29:00
nix recused:  06 Jun 2023 23:36:56
Assigned to Murphy:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On 5/22/23 15:07, juan via agora-official wrote:
> PLAYERS
>
> Active players: 14/21
>
> a Player   Registered  Last change Contact
> - --   --  --- ---
> + 4st  2023-01-27   "  notorious4st at gmail dot com
> + Aspen2022-11-04   "  thoughtsoflifeandlight17 at 
> gmail dot com
> + G.   2017-08-25  2021-02-03  kerim at uw dot edu
> + Janet2019-06-02  2021-02-03  agora at randomcat dot org
> + Murphy   2017-12-17  2021-02-03  murphy.agora at gmail dot com
> + Yachay Wayllukuq 2023-03-16   "  yachaywayllukuq at gmail.com
> + ais523   2021-06-08   "  callforjudgement at yahoo.co 
> dot uk
> + beokirby 2023-05-18   "  beokirbyagora at gmail dot com
> + blob 2023-05-18   "  cearguizoni1 at gmail dot com
> + cuddlybanana 2021-03-16  2023-01-16  rose.strong42 at gmail dot com
> + inalienableWright2023-05-16   "  inalienablewright at mailfence 
> dot com
> + juan 2022-03-14   "  juan at juanmeleiro.mat dot br
> + nix  2022-10-09   "  agora at nullarch dot com
> + snail2022-01-29   "  secretsnail9 at gmail dot com
> - Aced72022-10-19  2023-04-03  cadenomic at gmail dot com
> - Gaelan   2017-05-15  2023-04-03  gbs at canishe dot com
> - Marb 2022-11-27  2023-04-03  marb at shabu dot town
> - R. Lee   2023-01-31  2023-04-03  sarahestrange0 at gmail dot com
> - Shy Owl  2022-10-07  2023-04-03  iamashyown at proton dot me
> - omd  2011-02-03  2022-03-23  comexk at gmail dot com
> - tb1482023-02-06  2023-04-03  tb148 at proton dot me

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

The Registrar's Report in question lists an email address for the person
'blob'.  This email address does not match the email address associated
with Blob in previous Registrar's Monthly Reports (around Jan 1 2023).

Furthermore, the currently-registered blob, around the time of eir
registration, had this (summarized) conversation in Discord:

> snail 05/16/2023 8:00 PM
> welcome! How did you find us?
>
> Murphy 05/16/2023 11:40 PM
> Are you a mauve-colored blob, specifically?
>
> blob (@snail) 05/17/2023 4:38 PM
> just found out about nomics somehow (through a "related articles"
> wikipedia thing i believe) and thought that this looked pretty cool
>
> blob (@Murphy) 05/17/2023 4:38 PM
> not specifically, no
>
> G. 05/17/2023 4:39 PM
> welcome!  Murphy's message on mauve is because we had someone nicknamed
> Blob many years ago, and that was an in-joke with them.
>
> blob 05/17/2023 4:39 PM
> ah, i see! i had to check my bio for a moment there, because muave is
> my favorite color, and i thought it might be there xD

I think that conversation establishes, to the preponderance of evidence,
that the currently-registered blob is new to nomic, and unaware of various
in-jokes concerning the original Blob.

So I think this should be FALSE; though in particular, the disambiguation
relies on the Registrar's Report including the email address as an
annotation, so this CFJ doesn't really address who 'blob' refers to
if the name is used in other reports without the additional annotation.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4032 Assigned to ais523

2023-06-13 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I assign CFJ 4032 to ais523.

[Full disclosure: I've added gratuitous arguments to cover the
specific facts in this case,
limited to the first week of Rice Harvests based on the timing of the CFJ call].

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4032

=== CFJ 4032 ===

There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.

Caller:Yachay

Judge: ais523

History:

Caller's Arguments:

[none provided so far]

Gratuitous Arguments by G.

This CFJ was called on 25-May-23, when only one Rice Harvest had occurred,
and Rule 2682/0 was in effect.

The report in question is here:

https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017077.html

No factual errors have been noted in this report, in terms of who sent
messages attempting to either make Rice Plans or to sign rice plans
either via direct consent or contract.

This clause is written passively, without our general standards like
"CAN sign by announcement" etc. And R2519/2 covers consent for "actions"
not continuous states so it's unclear how that applies.

Basically, if signing Rice Plans works as generally intended by the
rule's author, then this CFJ is true, with the persons with more than
0 rice indicated in that report.

Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

Judge 4st's Arguments:

Evidence:
Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-06-12 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Mon 12 Jun 2023

[Note, I am purposefully staggering some case assignments that are
dependent on other outstanding cases - the "+ 1 day" for assignment
deadline is due to succumbing].

DEADLINES (details below)
---
4036 Assigned to snail   OVERDUE Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:27:43
4037 Assigned to snail   OVERDUE Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:28:17
4038 nix recused, assignment due Due Tue 13 Jun 2023 23:36:56 + 1 day
4043 Called by 4st, assignment due   Due Thu 15 Jun 2023 22:08:10 + 1 day
4032 4st recused, assignment due Due Thu 15 Jun 2023 22:59:57 + 1 day
4041 Motion to Extend filed (Janet)   Due Sun 18 Jun 2023 13:30:49
4040 Motion to Extend filed (Janet)   Due Sun 18 Jun 2023 13:30:49
4042 Assigned to G.  Due Mon 19 Jun 2023 22:58:01


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4032 4st
4034 ais523
4037 snail
4039 Murphy
4041 Janet
4042 G.


OPEN CASES
---
4043 Called by 4st [Due Thu 15 Jun 2023 22:08:10]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4043
 Yachay's 5-22 rice plan was harvested.

4042 Assigned to G. [Due Mon 19 Jun 2023 22:58:01]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4042
 At the time the Assessor first attempted to resolve the Agoran
 decision about whether to adopt proposal 8989, ais523's vote on
 that proposal resolved to PRESENT.

4041 Motion to Extend filed [Due Sun 18 Jun 2023 05:23:35]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4041
 In the Herald's Monthly Report linked in evidence, "Blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who was
 last registered from the email address recorded as "malcolmr at
 cse.unsw.edu.au".

4040 Motion to Extend filed [Due Sun 18 Jun 2023 05:23:35]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4040
 In the Herald's Weekly Report linked in evidence, "blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who
 registered from the email address recorded as "cearguinzoni1 at
 gmail dot com".

4038 nix Recused [Due Tue 13 Jun 2023 23:36:56]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4038
 The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
 person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
 player.

4037 Assigned to snail [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:28:17]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4037
 In the context of Commune, at least one tile belongs to some
 community.

4036 Assigned to snail [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:27:43]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4036
 In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not empty, but belongs to no
 community.

4032 4st recused [Due Thu 15 Jun 2023 22:59:57]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4032
 There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4039 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 04 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4039
 I currently own the recursion stone.

4035 Judged FALSE by G. [Sun 04 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4035
 Juan has consented to a Rice Plan that does not have eir
 signature.

4034 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Mon 05 Jun 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4034
 G. has withdrawn consent from the Rice Plan in evidence, so that
 plan currently does not have G's signature.

4033 Judged IRRELEVANT by nix [Tue 30 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4033
 There is a currently registered player named “blob”.

4031 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Sun 21 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4031
 This violates Rule 2029 ("Town Fountain").

4030 Judged TRUE by Yachay affirmed by Moot [Wed 31 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4030
 Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
 for a single instance of a ritual act.

4029 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 21 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4029
 There was an infraction noted in this message.

4027 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 14 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4027
 This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

4026 Judged IRRELEVANT by ais523 [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4026
 In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
 to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

4025 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sat 13 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4025
 In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
 rules as proscribing an

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4042 Assigned to G.

2023-06-12 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4042.  I assign it to G..

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4042

===  CFJ 4042  ===

  At the time the Assessor first attempted to resolve the Agoran
  decision about whether to adopt proposal 8989, ais523's vote on
  that proposal resolved to PRESENT.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge:G.

==

History:

Called by ais523: 05 Jun 2023 00:19:23
Assigned to G.:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Rule 2127 requires a conditional vote to be "determinate" in
order to avoid evaluating to PRESENT. Rule 2518 requires a value to be
reasonably determinable from information reasonably available to be
determinate.

Were my rice holdings actually determinate at this point? There has
been mass confusion (and several CFJs) regarding how the rice rules
actually work, with at least two CFJs unresolved at the time of the
attempted resolution. The Ricemastor is inactive, and has missed
reports. Some people have taken to attempting to sign Rice Plans using
lots of different wordings in the same message, in the apparent hope
that at least one of them will work.

Further evidence is that the Assessor appeared to be in sufficient
doubt about my Rice holdings that e immediately CoEd eir own
resolution, referring the situation to CFJ – this implies that it was
unreasonable for em to determine my Rice holding, otherwise e would
probably have done so. (In general, it seems that although it's
reasonable to tie a report to a CFJ outcome, it is unreasonable to do
the same for a conditional vote.)

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4039 Judged FALSE by Murphy

2023-06-12 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4039
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4039  ===

  I currently own the recursion stone.

==

Caller:snail

Judge: Murphy
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by snail:  01 Jun 2023 21:16:54
Assigned to Murphy:   04 Jun 2023 13:29:32
Judged FALSE by Murphy:   04 Jun 2023 20:26:20

==

Caller's Evidence:

snail wrote:
> I wield the radiance stone. (This increases my radiance by 3.)
> I reach for the Minty stone.
> I wield the recursion stone as the soul stone, specifying the
> anti-equatorial stone.
> I wield the anti-equatorial stone. (This transfers the power stone to me.)

  - Recursion Stone (Monthly, 4): The Recursion Stone can be wielded
once per month as if it had the power of any other stone of your
choice.

  - Soul Stone (weekly, 3): When wielded, the Soul Stone is
transferred to the owner of a different specified non-immune
stone not owned by Agora, then that stone is transferred to the
wielder.

Caller's Arguments:

Using the recursion stone as the soul stone seems to transfer the soul
stone to the owner of the anti-equatorial stone, as that's what the rule
says (the power of the soul stone, which is being copied, transfers the
soul stone, not the recursion stone or perhaps "this stone"). But does it
actually do that? If so, I own the recursion stone and ais523 now owns the
soul stone. If not, my recursion stone was transferred to ais523. A real
thinker, a conundrum, if you will. Will the practical reading prevail? Or
the technical, textual one?

--

Judge Murphy's Arguments:

Beokirby acquired the Recursion Stone on or about 2023-05-29, and still
had it when the attempted actions listed in Caller's Evidence were
attempted. I judge FALSE.

To answer the intended question, though: The Recursion Stone's power is
worded broadly; "as if it had the power", as opposed to "as if it had a
copy of the power's text". Accordingly, I interpret that it also
substitutes itself into any clause in which the power of the target
stone references the target stone itself. This would result in a
judgement of FALSE even if Beokirby had not acted.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4035 Judged FALSE by G.

2023-06-12 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4035
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4035  ===

  Juan has consented to a Rice Plan that does not have eir
  signature.

==

Caller:Juan

Judge: G.
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Juan:   28 May 2023 00:32:29
Assigned to G.:   04 Jun 2023 13:27:00
Judged FALSE by G.:   04 Jun 2023 15:14:47

==

Caller's Evidence:

>On 5/27/23 20:19, Juan F. Meleiro via agora-business wrote:
>> I create, consent, and join the following contract, named “Juan's feeble
>> attempt at paradox”:
>>
>> {
>> Only juan is a party of this contract.
>>
>> Any party to this contract consents to all existing Rice Plans that do
>> not have eir signature.
>> }

--

Judge G.'s Arguments:

In general, contracts only have the exact abilities the rules say they
have, no more. In particular, statements/interpretations of contracts
are generally subject to standards of textual clarity similar to
by-announcement actions. The standards (precedents over time)
generally hold that self-contradictory announcements or contract
clauses are simply failures to communicate, not paradox-makers. Rule
2682 makes "consenting to a rice plan" essentially synonymous with
having one's signature on it, so the contract in the Caller's evidence
reduces to a classic self-contradictory Russell's Paradox. Due to this
self-contradiction, the contract fails to "explicitly and
unambiguously" communicate any kind of consent as required by
R2519(2).  Further, while some "technically broken" contracts may
still provide some limited context for consent as per R2519(4),
creating "paradoxical consent" has been found to fail to meet R2519(4)
standards as per CFJ 4013:

> Taking the position that silence != consent also means assuming that
> uncertainty != consent. In many cases in Agora, we have legislated
> away the law of excluded middle - just because something isn't true
> doesn't mean it's false, it may be logically indeterminate. However,
> in dealing with consent, we should generally avoid such logic and
> maintain that a lack of clear consent means NO consent exists, at
> least to the extent that the rules allow.
(https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4013)

Therefore, the contract in the Caller's evidence does not meet Agoran
standards for determining consent to anything.  FALSE.

Side-note: I believe the logic of this judgement holds whether or not
"consenting to rice plans" is judged (in currently-parallel CFJs) as
an instant action, a continual action, or if R2519 is used as
definitional guidance for consenting to a non-action.  So this
judgement should hold regardless of the outcome of those CFJs.

Judge's Evidence:

Rule 2519/2 (Power=3)
Consent

  A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if,
  at the time the action took place:

  1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the
 action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement;
  2. e is party to a contract whose body explicitly and
  unambiguously indicates eir consent;
  3. the action is taken as part of a promise which e created; or
  4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to
 take place or assented to it taking place.

Rule 2682/0 (Power=1)
The Rice Game

  The Ricemastor is an office, in charge of tracking Rice, Rice
  Plans and Signatures. Rice is a fixed asset, ownable only by
  players. Any active player can create a Rice Plan by announcement,
  if e hasn't done so yet in the current week. Rice Plans can have
  Signatures, and each Signature must be of an active player. A Rice
  Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
  consenting to it. An active player can destroy a Rice Plan that e
  has created by announcement.

  A Harvest occurs at the beginning of each week. When this occurs:
  - If there is only one Rice Plan with the most Signatures, that
Rice Plan is Harvested.
  - If there is more than one Rice Plan with the most Signatures,
the one that was created earliest is Harvested.
  - In all other cases, nothing happens.
  And then all Rice Plans are destroyed and the Harvest ends.

  Rice Plans consist of two lists of

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4034 Judged FALSE by ais523

2023-06-12 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4034
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4034  ===

  G. has withdrawn consent from the Rice Plan in evidence, so that
  plan currently does not have G's signature.

==

Caller:G.

Judge: ais523
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by G.: 27 May 2023 17:16:28
Assigned to ais523:   04 Jun 2023 13:25:34
Judged FALSE by ais523:   05 Jun 2023 00:04:21

==

Caller's Evidence:

G wrote:
> On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 12:21=E2=80=AFPM juan wrote:
>>
>> I create the following Rice Plan:
>>
>> {
>> Up Rice: {Aspen, G., Janet, Murphy, ais523, cuddlybanana, juan}
>> Down Rice: {4st, beokirby, blob, iWright, nix, snail, Yachay}
>> }
>>
>> and consent to having my signature put in it.
>
> I consent to the above Rice Plan (to having my signature on it).
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is true, I withdraw my consent from the
> above Rice Plan.

Caller's Arguments:

Granting consent in most cases is described in Rule 2519/2, and CFJ
4013 recently found that, even without that rule, the general concept
of "giving consent" requires positive evidence of consent, and neither
silence nor ambiguity should be inferred as granting consent.

However, *withdrawing* consent is another matter.  In particular, you
CANNOT withdraw consent from a contract without the unanimous
agreement of parties or unless the contract text itself explicitly
allows it.  Otherwise, the contract wouldn't be a "binding" agreement,
by the basic definition of "binding".

Rule 2682/0 contains this clause:
> Rice Plans can have
>  Signatures, and each Signature must be of an active player. A Rice
>  Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
>  consenting to it.

This *anticipates* that consent could be withdrawn from Rice Plans,
but provides no mechanism for doing so.  My belief is that this is
regulated (the Ricemastor tracks signatures) so it is currently
IMPOSSIBLE to withdraw consent.  However, in the event that the above
rules text enables the "natural" withdrawal of consent by various
means, there is no standard of communication to be inferred, no "good
of the game" reason to allow for consent withdrawal, and no "good of
the game" reason to decide that the burden of proof is for or against
withdrawal succeeding.  So it could quite easily lead to PARADOXICAL
if my conditional above is indeterminate.

Another possibility is that by making a "consent withdrawal" as a
paradoxical statement, is is no longer clear from context as per R2519
that consent exists, which effectively removes it (therefore a withdrawal
attempt that is paradoxical still results in withdrawal).

--

Judge ais523's Arguments:

This CFJ hinges around what "consent" means, from the point of view of
rule 2682.

There are two main possible meanings that we could use. One is the rule
2519 definition of consent, which defines what it means to consent to
an action. The other is that it reflects some notion of "natural
consent", which is a state of mind that players can change their mind
about at any time (in this viewpoint, rule 2519 does not apply because
the consent is to something other than an action).

First, let's see what would happen under the rule 2519 definition. In
this case, the sort of revocation in question would be effective only
if G. had "publicly withdrawn eir statement", which rule 478 defines as
the withdrawal of eir statement "within a public message". Rule 478
requires actions by announcement to be clear and unambiguous, but this
is not an action by announcement, and thus a rule 2519 withdrawal of
consent can be done by any means that can be reasonably implied from
the body of the message. In order to do that, the message would have to
indicate that G. desired to withdraw eir consent: it could either do
that by explicitly stating it (in the style of an action by
announcement), or else by clarifyng G.'s mental state. But the message
fails to accomplish the former (it has a conditional that cannot
reasonably be evaluated and thus fails to state that the action is
being performed), and in the case of the latter, the rule 2519
definition basically collapses down to the "natural consent"
definition. (Note: rule 2519 should probably be fixed to explicitly
make withdrawal of consent an action by announcement.)

So what matters here is either a) whether G.'s actual state of mind is
that e consents to the rice plan in question, or b) whether G.'s

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Sun 04 Jun 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4032 4st Motion to reconsiderOVERDUE Sun 04 Jun 2023 03:15:50
4034 Assigned to ais523  Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:25:34
4035 Assigned to G.  Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:27:00
4036 Assigned to snail   Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:27:43
4037 Assigned to snail   Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:28:17
4038 Assigned to nix Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:29:00
4039 Assigned to Murphy  Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:29:32
4040 Assigned to Janet   Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:30:49
4041 Assigned to Janet   Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:31:51


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4032 4st
4034 ais523
4035 G.
4037 snail
4038 nix
4039 Murphy
4041 Janet
[4030 Yachay - inactive]


OPEN CASES
---
4041 Assigned to Janet [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:31:51]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4041
 In the Herald's Monthly Report linked in evidence, "Blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who was
 last registered from the email address recorded as "malcolmr at
 cse.unsw.edu.au".

4040 Assigned to Janet [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:30:49]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4040
 In the Herald's Weekly Report linked in evidence, "blob" without
 additional annotation unambiguously refers to the person who
 registered from the email address recorded as "cearguinzoni1 at
 gmail dot com".

4039 Assigned to Murphy [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:29:32]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4039
 I currently own the recursion stone.

4038 Assigned to nix [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:29:00]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4038
 The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
 person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
 player.

4037 Assigned to snail [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:28:17]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4037
 In the context of Commune, at least one tile belongs to some
 community.

4036 Assigned to snail [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:27:43]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4036
 In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not empty, but belongs to no
 community.

4035 Assigned to G. [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:27:00]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4035
 Juan has consented to a Rice Plan that does not have eir
 signature.

4034 Assigned to ais523 [Due Sun 11 Jun 2023 13:25:34]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4034
 G. has withdrawn consent from the Rice Plan in evidence, so that
 plan currently does not have G's signature.

4032 Motion to reconsider group-filed [Due Sun 04 Jun 2023 03:15:50]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4032
 There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4033 Judged IRRELEVANT by nix [Tue 30 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4033
 There is a currently registered player named “blob”.

4031 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Sun 21 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4031
 This violates Rule 2029 ("Town Fountain").

4030 Judged TRUE by Yachay affirmed by Moot [Wed 31 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4030
 Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
 for a single instance of a ritual act.

4029 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 21 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4029
 There was an infraction noted in this message.

4028 Judged FALSE by G. [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4028
 There was an infraction noted in this message.

4027 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 14 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4027
 This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

4026 Judged IRRELEVANT by ais523 [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4026
 In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
 to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

4025 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sat 13 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4025
 In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
 rules as proscribing an unregulated action.

4024 Judged TRUE by snail [Thu 18 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4024
 This means the same thing as "each and every".

4023 Judged TRUE by 4st [Fri 19 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4023
 Rule 879, "Quorum", has power 3.0.

4022 Judged TRUE by

OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 4041 Assigned to Janet

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4041. I assign it to Janet.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4041

=== CFJ 4041 ===

Caller:G.

Judge: Janet

History:

Called by G.: 04 Jun 2023 12:45:57
Assigned to Janet:[now]

[Linked to CFJ 4041]

Caller's Evidence:

Herald's Weekly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017107.html

Herald's Monthly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017108.html

Registrar's Weekly Report noting the email of current player 'blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017106.html

Registrar's Monthly Report noting the last known email of former player 'Blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017011.html

Caller's Arguments:

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4040 Assigned to Janet

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4040. I assign it to Janet.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4040

=== CFJ 4040 ===

Caller:G.

Judge: Janet

History:

Called by G.: 04 Jun 2023 12:45:57
Assigned to Janet:[now]

[Linked to CFJ 4041]

Caller's Evidence:

Herald's Weekly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017107.html

Herald's Monthly Report:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-June/017108.html

Registrar's Weekly Report noting the email of current player 'blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017106.html

Registrar's Monthly Report noting the last known email of former player 'Blob':
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-May/017011.html

Caller's Arguments:

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4039 Assigned to Murphy

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4039.  I assign it to Murphy.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4039

===  CFJ 4039  ===

  I currently own the recursion stone.

==

Caller:snail

Judge: Murphy

==

History:

Called by snail:  01 Jun 2023 21:16:54
Assigned to Murphy:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

snail wrote:
> I wield the radiance stone. (This increases my radiance by 3.)
> I reach for the Minty stone.
> I wield the recursion stone as the soul stone, specifying the
> anti-equatorial stone.
> I wield the anti-equatorial stone. (This transfers the power stone to me.)

  - Recursion Stone (Monthly, 4): The Recursion Stone can be wielded
once per month as if it had the power of any other stone of your
choice.

  - Soul Stone (weekly, 3): When wielded, the Soul Stone is
transferred to the owner of a different specified non-immune
stone not owned by Agora, then that stone is transferred to the
wielder.

Caller's Arguments:

Using the recursion stone as the soul stone seems to transfer the soul
stone to the owner of the anti-equatorial stone, as that's what the rule
says (the power of the soul stone, which is being copied, transfers the
soul stone, not the recursion stone or perhaps "this stone"). But does it
actually do that? If so, I own the recursion stone and ais523 now owns the
soul stone. If not, my recursion stone was transferred to ais523. A real
thinker, a conundrum, if you will. Will the practical reading prevail? Or
the technical, textual one?

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4038 Assigned to nix

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4038.  I assign it to nix.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4038

===  CFJ 4038  ===

  The above-quoted Registrar's report contains a statement that the
  person that, as of 2023-01-01, would have been known as Blob is a
  player.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: nix

==

History:

Called by Janet:  30 May 2023 21:27:23
Assigned to nix:  [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On 5/22/23 15:07, juan via agora-official wrote:
> PLAYERS
>
> Active players: 14/21
>
> a Player   Registered  Last change Contact
> - --   --  --- ---
> + 4st  2023-01-27   "  notorious4st at gmail dot com
> + Aspen2022-11-04   "  thoughtsoflifeandlight17 at 
> gmail dot com
> + G.   2017-08-25  2021-02-03  kerim at uw dot edu
> + Janet2019-06-02  2021-02-03  agora at randomcat dot org
> + Murphy   2017-12-17  2021-02-03  murphy.agora at gmail dot com
> + Yachay Wayllukuq 2023-03-16   "  yachaywayllukuq at gmail.com
> + ais523   2021-06-08   "  callforjudgement at yahoo.co 
> dot uk
> + beokirby 2023-05-18   "  beokirbyagora at gmail dot com
> + blob 2023-05-18   "  cearguizoni1 at gmail dot com
> + cuddlybanana 2021-03-16  2023-01-16  rose.strong42 at gmail dot com
> + inalienableWright2023-05-16   "  inalienablewright at mailfence 
> dot com
> + juan 2022-03-14   "  juan at juanmeleiro.mat dot br
> + nix  2022-10-09   "  agora at nullarch dot com
> + snail2022-01-29   "  secretsnail9 at gmail dot com
> - Aced72022-10-19  2023-04-03  cadenomic at gmail dot com
> - Gaelan   2017-05-15  2023-04-03  gbs at canishe dot com
> - Marb 2022-11-27  2023-04-03  marb at shabu dot town
> - R. Lee   2023-01-31  2023-04-03  sarahestrange0 at gmail dot com
> - Shy Owl  2022-10-07  2023-04-03  iamashyown at proton dot me
> - omd  2011-02-03  2022-03-23  comexk at gmail dot com
> - tb1482023-02-06  2023-04-03  tb148 at proton dot me

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4037 Assigned to snail

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4037.  I assign it to snail.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4037

===  CFJ 4037  ===

  In the context of Commune, at least one tile belongs to some
  community.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: snail

==

History:

Called by ais523: 28 May 2023 23:25:13
Assigned to snail:[now]

==

[Linked to CFJ 4036]

Caller's Evidence:

This week, I placed a tile at G6. It was adjacent to two
communities, Jade (with four tiles) at G7, and Emerald (with fewer than
four tiles) at F6. Emerald was thus merged into Jade.

The relevant part of the tournament regulations is:
{{{
   If a tile has not been placed on a location on the board, it is
   empty.

   Participants CAN place a tile on an empty location by paying one
   letter token and one number token that correspond to that
   location's coordinates.

   If a tile is placed that is not adjacent to any tiles belonging to
   any communities, the player that placed it founds a new community,
   e is granted 1 investment for that community, and e becomes its
   founder. E CAN and SHOULD name the community after any color that
   starts with a different first letter than any existing community
   by announcement. If a community has not been named, the Surveyor
   CAN and SHALL do so by announcement.

   A player who is the founder of an existing community CANNOT place
   a tile that would found a new community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to one or more tiles belonging to a
   single community, that tile belongs to that community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to two or more tiles belongining to
   different communities, a merger happens.

   When a merger happens, if a single community involved in the
   merger has more tiles than each other community, that community is
   the acquiring community. If there is a tie, the tied community
   that gained a tile least recently is the acquiring community. The
   other communities are the acquired communities. All tiles
   belonging to the acquired communities cease to belong to them and
   begin to belong to the acquiring community.  Each player gains X
   (rounded down) Accolades for each acquired community e had an
   investment in, where X is the total tiles that belonged to that
   community immediately before the merger divided by the total
   number of investments that exist for that community and times the
   number of investments for that community that player owns. The
   acquired communities and all investments in all acquired
   communities are destroyed.
}}}


Caller's Arguments:

The intention behind the tournament regulations is probably that, if a
player places a tile to merge two or more communities into a single
community, the tile that was placed becomes part of the new merged
community.

However, I can't find anything in the tournament regulations that
states that a tile placed to cause a merger becomes part of any
community. Does this imply that the tile is non-empty, but not part of
the resulting merged community? (This doesn't break much, but causes
scores to be slightly lower.) The first CFJ is TRUE in that case, or
FALSE if G6 is part of Jade.

I also note that the tournament regulations don't explicitly state that
founding a new community by placing a tile not adjacent to any existing
communities causes the placed tile to become part of the community
founded that way. It seems plausible that such tiles would be part of
no community, although that would completely break the tournament (both
because there would be no way to score and because most of the moves
that have happened so far would be illegal). The second CFJ is checking
for the possibility that this has happened.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4036 Assigned to snail

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4036.  I assign it to snail.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4036

===  CFJ 4036  ===

  In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not empty, but belongs to no
  community.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: snail

==

History:

Called by ais523: 28 May 2023 23:25:13
Assigned to snail:[now]

==

[Linked to CFJ 4037]

Caller's Evidence:

This week, I placed a tile at G6. It was adjacent to two
communities, Jade (with four tiles) at G7, and Emerald (with fewer than
four tiles) at F6. Emerald was thus merged into Jade.

The relevant part of the tournament regulations is:
{{{
   If a tile has not been placed on a location on the board, it is
   empty.

   Participants CAN place a tile on an empty location by paying one
   letter token and one number token that correspond to that
   location's coordinates.

   If a tile is placed that is not adjacent to any tiles belonging to
   any communities, the player that placed it founds a new community,
   e is granted 1 investment for that community, and e becomes its
   founder. E CAN and SHOULD name the community after any color that
   starts with a different first letter than any existing community
   by announcement. If a community has not been named, the Surveyor
   CAN and SHALL do so by announcement.

   A player who is the founder of an existing community CANNOT place
   a tile that would found a new community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to one or more tiles belonging to a
   single community, that tile belongs to that community.

   If a tile is placed adjacent to two or more tiles belongining to
   different communities, a merger happens.

   When a merger happens, if a single community involved in the
   merger has more tiles than each other community, that community is
   the acquiring community. If there is a tie, the tied community
   that gained a tile least recently is the acquiring community. The
   other communities are the acquired communities. All tiles
   belonging to the acquired communities cease to belong to them and
   begin to belong to the acquiring community.  Each player gains X
   (rounded down) Accolades for each acquired community e had an
   investment in, where X is the total tiles that belonged to that
   community immediately before the merger divided by the total
   number of investments that exist for that community and times the
   number of investments for that community that player owns. The
   acquired communities and all investments in all acquired
   communities are destroyed.
}}}


Caller's Arguments:

The intention behind the tournament regulations is probably that, if a
player places a tile to merge two or more communities into a single
community, the tile that was placed becomes part of the new merged
community.

However, I can't find anything in the tournament regulations that
states that a tile placed to cause a merger becomes part of any
community. Does this imply that the tile is non-empty, but not part of
the resulting merged community? (This doesn't break much, but causes
scores to be slightly lower.) The first CFJ is TRUE in that case, or
FALSE if G6 is part of Jade.

I also note that the tournament regulations don't explicitly state that
founding a new community by placing a tile not adjacent to any existing
communities causes the placed tile to become part of the community
founded that way. It seems plausible that such tiles would be part of
no community, although that would completely break the tournament (both
because there would be no way to score and because most of the moves
that have happened so far would be illegal). The second CFJ is checking
for the possibility that this has happened.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4035 Assigned to G.

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4035.  I assign it to G..

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4035

===  CFJ 4035  ===

  Juan has consented to a Rice Plan that does not have eir
  signature.

==

Caller:Juan

Judge: G.

==

History:

Called by Juan:   28 May 2023 00:32:29
Assigned to G.:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

>On 5/27/23 20:19, Juan F. Meleiro via agora-business wrote:
>> I create, consent, and join the following contract, named “Juan's feeble
>> attempt at paradox”:
>>
>> {
>> Only juan is a party of this contract.
>>
>> Any party to this contract consents to all existing Rice Plans that do
>> not have eir signature.
>> }

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4034 Assigned to ais523

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4034.  I assign it to ais523.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4034

===  CFJ 4034  ===

  G. has withdrawn consent from the Rice Plan in evidence, so that
  plan currently does not have G's signature.

==

Caller:G.

Judge: ais523

==

History:

Called by G.: 27 May 2023 17:16:28
Assigned to ais523:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

G wrote:
> On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 12:21=E2=80=AFPM juan wrote:
>>
>> I create the following Rice Plan:
>>
>> {
>> Up Rice: {Aspen, G., Janet, Murphy, ais523, cuddlybanana, juan}
>> Down Rice: {4st, beokirby, blob, iWright, nix, snail, Yachay}
>> }
>>
>> and consent to having my signature put in it.
>
> I consent to the above Rice Plan (to having my signature on it).
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is true, I withdraw my consent from the
> above Rice Plan.

Caller's Arguments:

Granting consent in most cases is described in Rule 2519/2, and CFJ
4013 recently found that, even without that rule, the general concept
of "giving consent" requires positive evidence of consent, and neither
silence nor ambiguity should be inferred as granting consent.

However, *withdrawing* consent is another matter.  In particular, you
CANNOT withdraw consent from a contract without the unanimous
agreement of parties or unless the contract text itself explicitly
allows it.  Otherwise, the contract wouldn't be a "binding" agreement,
by the basic definition of "binding".

Rule 2682/0 contains this clause:
> Rice Plans can have
>  Signatures, and each Signature must be of an active player. A Rice
>  Plan has an active player's Signature as long as that player is
>  consenting to it.

This *anticipates* that consent could be withdrawn from Rice Plans,
but provides no mechanism for doing so.  My belief is that this is
regulated (the Ricemastor tracks signatures) so it is currently
IMPOSSIBLE to withdraw consent.  However, in the event that the above
rules text enables the "natural" withdrawal of consent by various
means, there is no standard of communication to be inferred, no "good
of the game" reason to allow for consent withdrawal, and no "good of
the game" reason to decide that the burden of proof is for or against
withdrawal succeeding.  So it could quite easily lead to PARADOXICAL
if my conditional above is indeterminate.

Another possibility is that by making a "consent withdrawal" as a
paradoxical statement, is is no longer clear from context as per R2519
that consent exists, which effectively removes it (therefore a withdrawal
attempt that is paradoxical still results in withdrawal).

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4033 Judged IRRELEVANT by nix

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4033
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4033  ===

  There is a currently registered player named “blob”.

==

Caller:Juan

Judge: nix
Judgement: IRRELEVANT

==

History:

Called by Juan:   25 May 2023 20:42:33
Assigned to nix:  25 May 2023 23:38:04
Judged IRRELEVANT by nix: 30 May 2023 19:44:29

==

Caller's Evidence:

This thread (linking to end):
https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-discussion@agoranomic.org/msg55883.html


Caller's Arguments:

Apparently, it is the first time in agoran history that a
player game emself the same name as a previous player *long enough* for
it to become an issue. Now there is controversy: there is long-standing
tradition both in letting people choose eir own names and asking for
people to choose unique names.

Names are not defined by the rules. There is, however, an old CFJ
stablishing that names are identifiers that uniquely specify
players across all contexts in Agora. The question is: is this
enforceable? Besides not defining them, the rules don't even *mention*
names; instead opting to make officers “uniquely identify” players.

So, in my view the crux of the matter for this CFJ is to determine
whether refering to a current player by a name that a previous player
had, in a context where only registered players are mentioned, *is*
actually uniquely identifying the current player.

--

Judge nix's Arguments:

I judge this CFJ IRRELEVANT.

The rules do not mention and do not care about person's names. Reports
and actions need to clearly differentiate who they are referring to, but
nothing says that needs to be done by names. It's not regulated, nor is
it tracked. The closest we get to tracking anything like names is the
Registrar's report, which must include "information sufficient to
identify and contact each player." This could be many things, such as
email address, assigned identifiers, registration date, or many other
solutions. Some are clearly more useful than others, but all seem allowable.

It also seems to be that nobody is debating whether this person is
called blob. I could be wrong here, but the debate appears to be about
whether that is ambiguous.

Meaningful questions may arise in specific usages of this name as an
identifier. It may very well be ambiguous with the previous player also
known as blob, especially in instances of reports that mention both
(Herald, Registrar, and Rulekeepor monthlies perhaps) or in actions that
can refer to any persons, not just current players (titles, ribbons).
These deserve their own CFJs when they occur, with arguments about the
specific instance.

There's also a very valid concern about whether this muddies the clarity
of historical documents, or historical research. I think this concern
needs to be balanced with the long-standing tradition that the caller
mentions of allowing players to choose their own name, and of referring
to players primarily by chosen name. This appears to be a conflict
between individual rights Agora gives, and the best interest of Agora
long-term. Both seem to be equally strong claims about the best
interests of Agora to me. Ideally this would be resolved by agreement on
conventions, either informally or legislatively.

In any case, I believe this CFJ is both the wrong question and the wrong
approach to addressing this conflict. I beseech interested parties to
seek common ground and to ask CFJs on specific instances of potential
ambiguity/conflict that more directly interact with the rules. When it
becomes clear how often this is actually an issue (or not) for play, it
may become easier to agree on standards.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4030 Judged TRUE by Yachay, affirmed by Moot

2023-06-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4030
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4030  ===

  Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
  for a single instance of a ritual act.

==

Caller:nix

Judge: Yachay

==

History:

Called by nix:17 May 2023 23:14:29
Assigned to Yachay:   21 May 2023 14:06:53
Judged TRUE by Yachay:21 May 2023 17:35:04
Entered into Moot:22 May 2023 19:28:28
Judged TRUE by Yachay affirmed by Moot:   31 May 2023 19:12:46

==

Caller's Evidence:

On 5/17/23 16:45, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> Previous versions of rule 2680 said "CAN once" (e.g.
> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-April/016950.html
> - mail-archive.com isn't archiving old rulesets so I had to link the
> private archive).
>
> However, proposal 8943
> (https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg13159.html)
> changed it to a version without the "once". We generally say "CAN once"
> if an action is only intended to be possible once, and the "once", once
> present, is now repealed. This means that it should be possible to
> anoint multiple ritual numbers using the same ritual act.

Caller's Arguments:

To me, the intuitive reading of "When [event] happens, a player CAN
[verb]" is that a player can do the verb one time per event. This is the
way I would mean this is plain speech, and it's the way the rules of
pretty much any board game are written. "When [event] happens, draw a
card" doesn't usually mean you can draw more than one card. Nothing in
the rules (that I see) seems to suggest any reason that Agora would
interpret this differently than plain speech or analogous situations in
other games.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

In any board game, if a rule said "When you place your meeple, you can
draw a card", I don't think any board game group in the world would
interpret it as meaning you can empty the deck.  I wholly agree that
the "whole deck" interpretation is Agoran current custom and that,
barring minor technical issues, this win was obtained totally fairly
under that assumption.  But I sure am interested in how the assumption
came to be - so I might ask the judge to look into details or first
principles if e's willing to pursue it a bit, instead of just saying
"it's our common custom" (which is a totally fair reason to uphold the
win).

For example, tabled actions are written continuously - a player can
perform the tabled action "if e is [currently] a sponsor" of an
appropriate intent.  Some of the "multiple wins from one trigger"
successes were based on Apathy intents.  If the precedent was written
originally for the tabled action case, and depended on the continuity
of the condition, it might have been an error to extend it to "When X
happens, a player CAN Y" language.

--

Judge Yachay's Arguments:

Guidance in Rule 217 states:

  When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the rules
  takes precedence. Where the text is silent, inconsistent, or
  unclear, it is to be augmented by game custom, common sense, past
  judgements, and consideration of the best interests of the game.

However, the text of the rule isn't clear, such text being:

  When a ritual act is performed, any player CAN, within 7 days, by
  announcement anoint a ritual number, specifying the ritual act and
  the new ritual number.

The text of the rule can be understood to mean either that you can anoint
once, or that you can anoint multiple times.

Arguments in favor of being able to anoint several times has been Agoran
custom, custom which I am personally not very familiar with, but evidence
from G. and a lack of counterarguments to this seems reasonable enough to
permit it as evidence for this case:

  I wholly agree that the "whole deck" interpretation is Agoran current
custom
  and that, barring minor technical issues, this win was obtained
totally fairly
  under that assumption.

However, there are also arguments in favor that you shouldn't be able to
anoint several times, for example, from Caller nix, which seems to me to
allude to what would be "in the best interests of the game":

  To me, the intuitive reading of "When [event] happens, a player CAN
  [verb]" is that a player can do the verb one time per event. This is
the
  way I

OFF: [Arbitor] Moot on CFJ 4030 resolved as AFFIRM

2023-05-31 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I hereby resolve the Agoran Decision (Moot) to determine public
confidence in CFJ 4030's judgement of TRUE, delivered by Yachay on 21
May 2023, as follows:

AFFIRM: ais523, Yachay, 4st, snail
REMAND: (none)
REMIT: Juan, Janet[0], nix[1]
PRESENT: Murphy

Voting strength for everybody above on this is 3.
Voting strength tally is affirm 12, remand 0, remit 9
Quorum of 5 was met.
Outcome:  AFFIRM

[0] Janet: REMIT if there are more unconditional REMIT ballots than
unconditional REMAND ballots, otherwise REMAND.
[1] nix: REMAND if at least two other people vote REMAND, otherwise REMIT.

[Personal note: I didn't vote because it was looking close and I
didn't want to 'vote twice' by both voting and breaking the tie, but
the affirm side had convinced me in the end].

-G.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4033 Assigned to nix

2023-05-25 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4033.  I assign it to nix.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4033

===  CFJ 4033  ===

  There is a currently registered player named “blob”.

==

Caller:Juan

Judge: nix

==

History:

Called by Juan:   25 May 2023 20:42:33
Assigned to nix:  [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

This thread (linking to end):
https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-discussion@agoranomic.org/msg55883.html


Caller's Arguments:

Apparently, it is the first time in agoran history that a
player game emself the same name as a previous player *long enough* for
it to become an issue. Now there is controversy: there is long-standing
tradition both in letting people choose eir own names and asking for
people to choose unique names.

Names are not defined by the rules. There is, however, an old CFJ
stablishing that names are identifiers that uniquely specify
players across all contexts in Agora. The question is: is this
enforceable? Besides not defining them, the rules don't even *mention*
names; instead opting to make officers “uniquely identify” players.

So, in my view the crux of the matter for this CFJ is to determine
whether refering to a current player by a name that a previous player
had, in a context where only registered players are mentioned, *is*
actually uniquely identifying the current player.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4032 Assigned to 4st

2023-05-25 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

[Apologies for not waiting for more input from the Caller, but if I
don't assign this now it may be nearly a week before I can.  Hopefully
Yachay can still provide something timely, or Judge 4st has some
knowledge of the controversy.]

The below CFJ is 4032.  I assign it to 4st.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4032

===  CFJ 4032  ===

  There are some persons right now who have more than 0 Rice.

==

Caller:Yachay

Judge: 4st

==

History:

Called by Yachay: 25 May 2023 19:17:23
Assigned to 4st:  [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

[none provided so far]

==

OFF: [Arbitor] MOOT on CFJ 4030 - Please Vote

2023-05-24 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I hereby initiate an Agoran Decision (a Moot) to determine public
confidence in CFJ 4030's current judgement of TRUE, delivered by
Yachay on 21 May 2023. For this decision, the vote collector is the
Arbitor, quorum is 5, voting method is first-past-the-post.

Valid options:
- AFFIRM (meaning you think Yachay's judgement of TRUE should stand).
- REMAND (meaning you think Yachay should have a chance to re-judge this case).
- REMIT (meaning you think a different judge should be assigned to re-judge it).
- PRESENT is also a valid vote, as are conditional votes.

For judgements of Remand and Remit, giving or referring to a reason is
greatly beneficial to future judges.

JUDGEMENT BELOW, ALSO VIEWABLE AT:
status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4030

===  CFJ 4030  ===

  Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
  for a single instance of a ritual act.

==

Caller:nix

Judge: Yachay

==

History:

Called by nix:17 May 2023 23:14:29
Assigned to Yachay:   21 May 2023 14:06:53
Judged TRUE by Yachay:21 May 2023 17:35:04
Entered into Moot:22 May 2023 19:28:28

==

Caller's Evidence:

On 5/17/23 16:45, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> Previous versions of rule 2680 said "CAN once" (e.g.
> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-April/016950.html
> - mail-archive.com isn't archiving old rulesets so I had to link the
> private archive).
>
> However, proposal 8943
> (https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg13159.html)
> changed it to a version without the "once". We generally say "CAN once"
> if an action is only intended to be possible once, and the "once", once
> present, is now repealed. This means that it should be possible to
> anoint multiple ritual numbers using the same ritual act.

Caller's Arguments:

To me, the intuitive reading of "When [event] happens, a player CAN
[verb]" is that a player can do the verb one time per event. This is the
way I would mean this is plain speech, and it's the way the rules of
pretty much any board game are written. "When [event] happens, draw a
card" doesn't usually mean you can draw more than one card. Nothing in
the rules (that I see) seems to suggest any reason that Agora would
interpret this differently than plain speech or analogous situations in
other games.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

In any board game, if a rule said "When you place your meeple, you can
draw a card", I don't think any board game group in the world would
interpret it as meaning you can empty the deck.  I wholly agree that
the "whole deck" interpretation is Agoran current custom and that,
barring minor technical issues, this win was obtained totally fairly
under that assumption.  But I sure am interested in how the assumption
came to be - so I might ask the judge to look into details or first
principles if e's willing to pursue it a bit, instead of just saying
"it's our common custom" (which is a totally fair reason to uphold the
win).

For example, tabled actions are written continuously - a player can
perform the tabled action "if e is [currently] a sponsor" of an
appropriate intent.  Some of the "multiple wins from one trigger"
successes were based on Apathy intents.  If the precedent was written
originally for the tabled action case, and depended on the continuity
of the condition, it might have been an error to extend it to "When X
happens, a player CAN Y" language.

--

Judge Yachay's Arguments:

Guidance in Rule 217 states:

  When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the rules
  takes precedence. Where the text is silent, inconsistent, or
  unclear, it is to be augmented by game custom, common sense, past
  judgements, and consideration of the best interests of the game.

However, the text of the rule isn't clear, such text being:

  When a ritual act is performed, any player CAN, within 7 days, by
  announcement anoint a ritual number, specifying the ritual act and
  the new ritual number.

The text of the rule can be understood to mean either that you can anoint
once, or that you can anoint multiple times.

Arguments in favor of being able to anoint several times has been Agoran
custom, custom which I am personally not very familiar with, but evidence
from G. and a lack of counterarguments to this seems reasonable enough to
permit it as evidence for this case:

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-05-24 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Wed 24 May 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[None]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4022 nix
4023 4st
4024 snail
4025 Janet
4028 G.
4029 Murphy
4030 Yachay
4031 ais523


OPEN CASES
---
[none]


SUSPENDED CASES
---
4030 Entered into Moot [Due Mon 29 May 2023 19:28:28]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4030
 Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
 for a single instance of a ritual act.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4031 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Sun 21 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4031
 This violates Rule 2029 ("Town Fountain").

4029 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 21 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4029
 There was an infraction noted in this message.

4028 Judged FALSE by G. [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4028
 There was an infraction noted in this message.

4027 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 14 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4027
 This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

4026 Judged IRRELEVANT by ais523 [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4026
 In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
 to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

4025 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sat 13 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4025
 In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
 rules as proscribing an unregulated action.

4024 Judged TRUE by snail [Thu 18 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4024
 This means the same thing as "each and every".

4023 Judged TRUE by 4st [Fri 19 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4023
 Rule 879, "Quorum", has power 3.0.

4022 Judged TRUE by nix [Mon 08 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4022
 I am not guilty of violating No Faking by collecting taxes.

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4031 Judged FALSE by ais523

2023-05-24 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4031
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4031  ===

  This violates Rule 2029 ("Town Fountain").

==

Caller:4st

Judge: ais523
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by 4st:18 May 2023 19:43:07
Assigned to ais523:   21 May 2023 14:07:37
Judged FALSE by ais523:   21 May 2023 16:38:25

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 12:31 PM Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> I submit the following proposal:
>
> Title: Sacrilege
>
> Adoption index: 1.0
>
> Author: Janet
>
> Coauthors:
>
> {
>
> Repeal Rule 2680 ("Ritual Paper Dance").
>
> }

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: Ritual Paper Dance enables dancing. Rule 2029 asks us to
always dance a powerful dance. Thus, if it were repealed, we could no
longer dance. Thus, proposing to repeal it is a crime.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by Jason:

CFJ 1881.

CFJ 2589.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 1:32 PM ais523 via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business
> wrote:
> > I informally risk being guilty of favoritism 7 days from now, by
> > saying that the combination of CFJ calling and parenthetical reminder
> > that it may fail is enough disclaimer to avoid no faking.  I'll also
> > note that Janet pointed out CFJ 1881 which asked if R2029 created a
> > duty to dance, and in fact Judge omd of that case found that R2029
> > *does* apply penalties to the Marvy (if there were any Marvy), and
> > CFJ 2589 which raised the matter again/independently. So it's not
> > 100% cut-and-dried that R2029's exhortation to dance has no legal
> > effect. And I'd forgotten at least one of those cases myself, so I
> > wouldn't expect 4st to know about them.
>
> Are there any Marvy at the moment? IIRC the definition was something
> along the lines of "a player who has increased voting power but is not
> an officer", but I can't properly remember it (it was over a decade ago
> at this point).
>
> That said, I suspect the word in R2029 is currently undefined: I don't
> think "a definition that was in place at the time the rule was adopted"
> is one of the things that we can legally use to interpret the rules.
> (In fact, given that rules of lower power can't outright define terms
> in higher-power rules – just clarify them – it may be very hard to
> define a term in a power-4 rule at all if it has no common meaning, and
> after this much time, I doubt it has a common meaning.)

It was CFJ 2585, and you (Judge ais523) found the exact opposite of
what you just said above. In
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2585, Judge ais523
wrote:

> However, by the implicit mention in CFJ 1881,
> and the explicit precedent of CFJ 1534 (that in a rule of historical
> significance such as 104 or 2029, terms used in the rule have the
> meaning they had when the rule was created), not to mention rule 1586, I
> can only conclude that "marvy" in rule 2029 has the meaning it did when
> the Fountain was created.

Recently, Judge 4st found, in CFJ 3989, that there just wasn't
sufficient evidence to find anyone guilty of this, explicitly refuting
CFJ 2585 (unfortunately the evidence/context was left out of this case
record):  https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3989.  In
refuting CFJ 2585, Judge 4st also specifically refuted CFJ 1534, which
dealt with continuity of the "First Speaker" term, which you
cited/upheld in CFJ 2585:
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1534

Those 4 cases form the complete set of relevant cases that turn up
search the CFJ github for Marvy/Marvies (1881, 2585, 2589 and 3989)
plus CFJ 1534 for the more general finding that concerned old terms of
art like "First Speaker".

--

Gratiutous Arguments by ais523:

On Tue, 2023-05-16 at 15:21 -0500, nix via agora-official wrote:
> Marvy:4st, ais523, CreateSource,
>   cuddlybanana, duck, G., Janet,
>   juan, Murphy, R. Lee, snail,
&g

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4029 Judged FALSE by Murphy

2023-05-24 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4029
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4029  ===

  There was an infraction noted in this message.

==

Caller:Yachay

Judge: Murphy
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Yachay: 12 May 2023 13:24:04
Assigned to Murphy:   21 May 2023 14:05:04
Judged FALSE by Murphy:   21 May 2023 21:19:30

==

Caller's Evidence:

Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business wrote:
> I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st for jaywalking
> without a license, compounded by having dangerous levels of swagger.

Caller's Arguments:

So, after the silence, finding that a couple other players actually don't
know what "Invisibilitating" is either, and some simple searches in the
mail archives, apparently "Invisibilitating" relies on gamestate that
supposedly still exists after 10+ years. I thought we didn't dig into the
past that far to consider how many turtles down the current gamestate was
held up by, but if we do, then:

- Why would we make a special case just for Invisibilitating specifically?
What about other ancient things that may affect how other *current* things
of the game work too?
- Are we even sure that the secret Invisibilitating instrument still exists
or works as intended?
- It takes agency away from newer players and puts more into older ones
which are more familiar with this obscure ancient arcana which has now
supposedly been made relevant, which feels terrible.

Thankfully, I'm far from a win so I have a margin to endure risking some
blots, which I'll spend to try to uncover more about this.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G:

>> Re-enact Rule 2056 (Invisibilitating) with the following text:
>>
>>   Invisibilitating is a Class 1 infraction.

Proposal 4513[0] - clearly cited in the proposal just adopted - made
the following 'pronouncement' when it took effect, and the
pronouncement was not 'rescinded' when the rule was repealed[1].  I'm
under no illusion that the pronouncement is still "taking effect" in
any legal way, but it is a unique case because (as Yachay found)
there's no common-sense definition or term findable on an internet
search, so this text - which was just voted into the rules, so must be
interpreted as the text of the rules - is the only thing I know that
potentially "clarifies" the text of the rules in a R217 definitional
sense.  Further it is clear from the text itself that it was intended
that this definition be "hidden" and continue to provide definitional
guidance (that's unique afaik when thinking of other old gamestate):

> Proposal 4513 by Steve, AI=1, Ordinary
> Invisibilitating
>
> Be it resolved, that the proposer of an adopted proposal (besides this
> proposal) that includes a provision that proposes to make changes to
> parts of the gamestate, where no player is required to report those
> changes in an official report, with the exception of the publication of
> that proposal by the Promotor and the Assessor, shall be guilty of the
> Class 0 Infraction of Invisibilitating.

[0] 
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2003-July/000706.html
[1] 
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2005-May/002223.html

ais523 wrote:
> It can't provide definitional guidance. Rule 217 contains a complete
> list of things that can be used to interpret and apply the rules where
> their text is silent, and "the text of adopted proposals" isn't on the
> list. (So neither the text of proposal 4513, nor the text of proposal
> 8961 which references it, is relevant in the interpretation.)
>
> Do you have a past judgement to reference for the definition? (There's
> no game custom remaining at this point – I remembered that
> Invisibilitating had once been defined, which is why I voted AGAINST,
> but couldn't remember the details – and common sense and the best
> interests of the game may argue towards leaving the term defined or
> undefined but don't provide a definition.)

G. wrote:
 I grepped the full BUS and OFF mboxes, and searched the CFJ archive,
and I believe that there were never any legal proceedings accusing
anyone of Invisibilitating, either while it existed in the previous
iteration or afterwards.  The only references I found were the
enactment, the repeal, and the appearances in the ruleset or the
proposal.  This vaguely matched my memory that it was rarely if ever
used.

In this special case, I disagree that we are limited to

Re: OFF: [@all] Confirming birthdays

2023-05-22 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 12:10 PM juan via agora-official
 wrote:
> 2009-05-04 G.

Goethe is my former nickname so it's actually 2001-02-04 for me:
> v  Goethe   2001-02-04 2003-03-24

Thanks much for checking.
-G.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-05-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Sun 21 May 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4029 Assigned to Murphy  Due Sun 28 May 2023 14:05:04
4030 Assigned to Yachay  Due Sun 28 May 2023 14:06:53
4031 Assigned to ais523  Due Sun 28 May 2023 14:07:37


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4022 nix
4023 4st
4024 snail
4025 Janet
4028 G.
4029 Murphy
4030 Yachay
4031 ais523


OPEN CASES
---
4031 Assigned to ais523 [Due Sun 28 May 2023 14:07:37]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4031
 This violates Rule 2029 ("Town Fountain").

4030 Assigned to Yachay [Due Sun 28 May 2023 14:06:53]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4030
 Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
 for a single instance of a ritual act.

4029 Assigned to Murphy [Due Sun 28 May 2023 14:05:04]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4029
 There was an infraction noted in this message.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4028 Judged FALSE by G. [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4028
 There was an infraction noted in this message.

4027 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 14 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4027
 This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

4026 Judged IRRELEVANT by ais523 [Fri 12 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4026
 In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
 to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

4025 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sat 13 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4025
 In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
 rules as proscribing an unregulated action.

4024 Judged TRUE by snail [Thu 18 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4024
 This means the same thing as "each and every".

4023 Judged TRUE by 4st [Fri 19 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4023
 Rule 879, "Quorum", has power 3.0.

4022 Judged TRUE by nix [Mon 08 May 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4022
 I am not guilty of violating No Faking by collecting taxes.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4031 Assigned to ais523

2023-05-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4031.  I assign it to ais523.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4031

===  CFJ 4031  ===

  This violates Rule 2029 ("Town Fountain").

==

Caller:4st

Judge: ais523

==

History:

Called by 4st:18 May 2023 19:43:07
Assigned to ais523:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 12:31 PM Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
> I submit the following proposal:
>
> Title: Sacrilege
>
> Adoption index: 1.0
>
> Author: Janet
>
> Coauthors:
>
> {
>
> Repeal Rule 2680 ("Ritual Paper Dance").
>
> }

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: Ritual Paper Dance enables dancing. Rule 2029 asks us to
always dance a powerful dance. Thus, if it were repealed, we could no
longer dance. Thus, proposing to repeal it is a crime.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by Jason:

CFJ 1881.

CFJ 2589.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 1:32 PM ais523 via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business
> wrote:
> > I informally risk being guilty of favoritism 7 days from now, by
> > saying that the combination of CFJ calling and parenthetical reminder
> > that it may fail is enough disclaimer to avoid no faking.  I'll also
> > note that Janet pointed out CFJ 1881 which asked if R2029 created a
> > duty to dance, and in fact Judge omd of that case found that R2029
> > *does* apply penalties to the Marvy (if there were any Marvy), and
> > CFJ 2589 which raised the matter again/independently. So it's not
> > 100% cut-and-dried that R2029's exhortation to dance has no legal
> > effect. And I'd forgotten at least one of those cases myself, so I
> > wouldn't expect 4st to know about them.
>
> Are there any Marvy at the moment? IIRC the definition was something
> along the lines of "a player who has increased voting power but is not
> an officer", but I can't properly remember it (it was over a decade ago
> at this point).
>
> That said, I suspect the word in R2029 is currently undefined: I don't
> think "a definition that was in place at the time the rule was adopted"
> is one of the things that we can legally use to interpret the rules.
> (In fact, given that rules of lower power can't outright define terms
> in higher-power rules – just clarify them – it may be very hard to
> define a term in a power-4 rule at all if it has no common meaning, and
> after this much time, I doubt it has a common meaning.)

It was CFJ 2585, and you (Judge ais523) found the exact opposite of
what you just said above. In
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2585, Judge ais523
wrote:

> However, by the implicit mention in CFJ 1881,
> and the explicit precedent of CFJ 1534 (that in a rule of historical
> significance such as 104 or 2029, terms used in the rule have the
> meaning they had when the rule was created), not to mention rule 1586, I
> can only conclude that "marvy" in rule 2029 has the meaning it did when
> the Fountain was created.

Recently, Judge 4st found, in CFJ 3989, that there just wasn't
sufficient evidence to find anyone guilty of this, explicitly refuting
CFJ 2585 (unfortunately the evidence/context was left out of this case
record):  https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3989.  In
refuting CFJ 2585, Judge 4st also specifically refuted CFJ 1534, which
dealt with continuity of the "First Speaker" term, which you
cited/upheld in CFJ 2585:
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1534

Those 4 cases form the complete set of relevant cases that turn up
search the CFJ github for Marvy/Marvies (1881, 2585, 2589 and 3989)
plus CFJ 1534 for the more general finding that concerned old terms of
art like "First Speaker".

--

Gratiutous Arguments by ais523:

On Tue, 2023-05-16 at 15:21 -0500, nix via agora-official wrote:
> Marvy:4st, ais523, CreateSource,
>   cuddlybanana, duck, G., Janet,
>   juan, Murphy, R. Lee, snail,
>   Trigon, Vitor Gonçalves

Marvy is a patent title that's currently in use. I suspect that this
has no impact on rule 2029 for much the same reason that a player named
"Marvy" wouldn't, but it feels like a relevant data point.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4030 Assigned to Yachay

2023-05-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4030.  I assign it to Yachay.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4030

===  CFJ 4030  ===

  Per Rule 2680, a player can anoint a ritual number multiple times
  for a single instance of a ritual act.

==

Caller:nix

Judge: Yachay

==

History:

Called by nix:17 May 2023 23:14:29
Assigned to Yachay:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On 5/17/23 16:45, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
> Previous versions of rule 2680 said "CAN once" (e.g.
> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-April/016950.html
> - mail-archive.com isn't archiving old rulesets so I had to link the
> private archive).
>
> However, proposal 8943
> (https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg13159.html)
> changed it to a version without the "once". We generally say "CAN once"
> if an action is only intended to be possible once, and the "once", once
> present, is now repealed. This means that it should be possible to
> anoint multiple ritual numbers using the same ritual act.

Caller's Arguments:

To me, the intuitive reading of "When [event] happens, a player CAN
[verb]" is that a player can do the verb one time per event. This is the
way I would mean this is plain speech, and it's the way the rules of
pretty much any board game are written. "When [event] happens, draw a
card" doesn't usually mean you can draw more than one card. Nothing in
the rules (that I see) seems to suggest any reason that Agora would
interpret this differently than plain speech or analogous situations in
other games.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

In any board game, if a rule said "When you place your meeple, you can
draw a card", I don't think any board game group in the world would
interpret it as meaning you can empty the deck.  I wholly agree that
the "whole deck" interpretation is Agoran current custom and that,
barring minor technical issues, this win was obtained totally fairly
under that assumption.  But I sure am interested in how the assumption
came to be - so I might ask the judge to look into details or first
principles if e's willing to pursue it a bit, instead of just saying
"it's our common custom" (which is a totally fair reason to uphold the
win).

For example, tabled actions are written continuously - a player can
perform the tabled action "if e is [currently] a sponsor" of an
appropriate intent.  Some of the "multiple wins from one trigger"
successes were based on Apathy intents.  If the precedent was written
originally for the tabled action case, and depended on the continuity
of the condition, it might have been an error to extend it to "When X
happens, a player CAN Y" language.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4029 Assigned to Murphy

2023-05-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4029.  I assign it to Murphy.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4029

===  CFJ 4029  ===

  There was an infraction noted in this message.

==

Caller:Yachay

Judge: Murphy

==

History:

Called by Yachay: 12 May 2023 13:24:04
Assigned to Murphy:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business wrote:
> I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st for jaywalking
> without a license, compounded by having dangerous levels of swagger.

Caller's Arguments:

So, after the silence, finding that a couple other players actually don't
know what "Invisibilitating" is either, and some simple searches in the
mail archives, apparently "Invisibilitating" relies on gamestate that
supposedly still exists after 10+ years. I thought we didn't dig into the
past that far to consider how many turtles down the current gamestate was
held up by, but if we do, then:

- Why would we make a special case just for Invisibilitating specifically?
What about other ancient things that may affect how other *current* things
of the game work too?
- Are we even sure that the secret Invisibilitating instrument still exists
or works as intended?
- It takes agency away from newer players and puts more into older ones
which are more familiar with this obscure ancient arcana which has now
supposedly been made relevant, which feels terrible.

Thankfully, I'm far from a win so I have a margin to endure risking some
blots, which I'll spend to try to uncover more about this.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G:

>> Re-enact Rule 2056 (Invisibilitating) with the following text:
>>
>>   Invisibilitating is a Class 1 infraction.

Proposal 4513[0] - clearly cited in the proposal just adopted - made
the following 'pronouncement' when it took effect, and the
pronouncement was not 'rescinded' when the rule was repealed[1].  I'm
under no illusion that the pronouncement is still "taking effect" in
any legal way, but it is a unique case because (as Yachay found)
there's no common-sense definition or term findable on an internet
search, so this text - which was just voted into the rules, so must be
interpreted as the text of the rules - is the only thing I know that
potentially "clarifies" the text of the rules in a R217 definitional
sense.  Further it is clear from the text itself that it was intended
that this definition be "hidden" and continue to provide definitional
guidance (that's unique afaik when thinking of other old gamestate):

> Proposal 4513 by Steve, AI=1, Ordinary
> Invisibilitating
>
> Be it resolved, that the proposer of an adopted proposal (besides this
> proposal) that includes a provision that proposes to make changes to
> parts of the gamestate, where no player is required to report those
> changes in an official report, with the exception of the publication of
> that proposal by the Promotor and the Assessor, shall be guilty of the
> Class 0 Infraction of Invisibilitating.

[0] 
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2003-July/000706.html
[1] 
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2005-May/002223.html

ais523 wrote:
> It can't provide definitional guidance. Rule 217 contains a complete
> list of things that can be used to interpret and apply the rules where
> their text is silent, and "the text of adopted proposals" isn't on the
> list. (So neither the text of proposal 4513, nor the text of proposal
> 8961 which references it, is relevant in the interpretation.)
>
> Do you have a past judgement to reference for the definition? (There's
> no game custom remaining at this point – I remembered that
> Invisibilitating had once been defined, which is why I voted AGAINST,
> but couldn't remember the details – and common sense and the best
> interests of the game may argue towards leaving the term defined or
> undefined but don't provide a definition.)

G. wrote:
 I grepped the full BUS and OFF mboxes, and searched the CFJ archive,
and I believe that there were never any legal proceedings accusing
anyone of Invisibilitating, either while it existed in the previous
iteration or afterwards.  The only references I found were the
enactment, the repeal, and the appearances in the ruleset or the
proposal.  This vaguely matched my memory that it was rarely if ever
used.

In this special case, I disagree that we are limited to the R217
definitional sources - in particular, because there are *no* R217
definitional sources, and the "text of the rules" says

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4023 Judged TRUE by 4st

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4023
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4023  ===

  Rule 879, "Quorum", has power 3.0.

==

Caller:Aspen
Barred:Janet

Judge: 4st
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by Aspen:  02 May 2023 16:16:29
Assigned to 4st:  08 May 2023 16:53:01
Judged TRUE by 4st:   19 May 2023 20:03:44

==

Caller's Arguments:

Adoption message of proposal in question (proposal 8639, 'sole quorum'):
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2022-February/015693.html

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:01 AM Janet Cobb wrote:
> On 5/2/23 01:01, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 8:38 PM Janet Cobb wrote:
> >
> >> [Proposal 8639
> >> failed to make this change because it used "amend" for a power change.
> >
> > If everyone involved including you knew what it meant at the time so as to
> > miss the “error” entirely, how could it possibly have been unclear, even
> > by r105 standards?
> > I maintain that “amend a rule’s power” is a clear synonym for “change a
> > rules power” and is obviously not amending a rule’s text.
>
>
> Well, past me is an idiot and I disavow everything they've said.
>
> I've been consistent (or tried to be) in saying that "amend a rule's
> title" doesn't work, and AFAIK there have been no legal challenges to
> that (and it was suggested in Discord to legislate a different rule
> rather than that my reading is wrong).
>
> My reading is that R105 makes "amend" in the context of a rule mean only
> and exactly changing the text of the rule, and any other usage is
> inherently ambiguous.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by nix:

Gratuitous FOR:

"ambiguous" requires more than one possible interpretation. I don't
understand the assertion that something is "ambiguous" without
clarifying the two or more ways to interpret it.

Additionally, the rules do not define "amend". They name "amending the
text" as a rule change, but that's not a definition. It's clear (and
AFAICT, unambiguous) that "amend the power" refers to changing the power.

Gratuitous Arguments by Janet:

I've was consistent (or tried to be) in saying that "amend a rule's
title" doesn't work, until we explicitly amended Rule 105 to say that it
does work (P8871). We agreed that legislation was needed there, and the
fact that Rule 105 now *explicitly* uses "amend" for one non-text change
but not another suggests that rule changes where it is not used should
be able to use "amend". If they could, "syn. amend the title of" would
be surplusage.

Gratuitous Arguments by nix:

I wrote that section. It's not surplusage, it was an attempt to
compromise with the Rulekeepor by disambiguating, since it seemed clear
e wasn't going to change eir mind. This grat strips authorial intent to
argue the exact opposite of what the intent was.

Gratuitous Arguments by Janet:

I agree, it's not surplusage. A finding that "amend" can include changes
other than those explicitly described in Rule 105 would render it surplus.

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

Janet's logic about "surplussage" is a bit of a fallacy that leads to
a problematic cycle.  Consider the following:

1.  A single player finds something in the rules unclear to em.
Instead of testing by CFJ e makes a proposal to add clarifying text.

2.  Voters see it as harmless - it wasn't unclear to them, the
clarification proposed is what they assumed the text meant all along,
but it must have been unclear to someone, and better safe than sorry
right?

3.  Once the added text is adopted, the original player uses it as
proof (via "surplussage") that the original text would absolutely be
read in the opposite way if the clarifying text was removed, also
perhaps citing other places in the rules that the same original
language must now be unclear.  This leads to a round of adding
clarifying language to other areas, and the assumptions that it's
always needed, when the original text was never tested by CFJ and
might have been perfectly clear to most people.

This kind of ratchet, wherein adding "extra" clarity is assumed to
weaken the text of the original, is not logicially sound reasoning,
nor does it make for g

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4028 Judged FALSE by G.

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4028
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4028  ===

  There was an infraction noted in this message.

==

Caller:Yachay

Judge: G.
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Yachay: 12 May 2023 12:00:00
Assigned to G.:   12 May 2023 13:20:12
Judged FALSE by G.:   12 May 2023 13:20:12

==

Caller's Evidence:

> If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
> described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
> for being a player.
>
> If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
> described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
> for holding an office.
>
> If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
> described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
> for their latest message posted to fora.
>
> If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
> described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
> for jaywalking without a license, compounded by having dangerous levels of
> swagger.

--

Judge G.'s Arguments:

FALSE, due to the use of conditional announcements in the noting
attempts, where the conditions were not "reasonably straightforward to
evaluate at the time with publicly-available information at the time
of communication" as required by Rule 2518/1.  In general, the
"reasonably straightforward" clause means that the caller themselves
must be able to resolve the conditional with a bit of minor research
in the archives (e.g. looking at recent past activities) such that
resolving the conditional is a fairly minor act of
interpretation/convenience.  These conditionals, which hinge on a
complex question, are not so easy to evaluate.


Judge G.'s Evidence:

Rule 2518/1 (Power=3)
Determinacy

  If a value CANNOT be reasonably determined (without circularity or
  paradox) from information reasonably available, or if it
  alternates indefinitely between values, then the value is
  considered to be indeterminate, otherwise it is determinate.

  A communication purporting to express conditional intent to
  perform an action is considered unclear and ambiguous unless, at a
  minimum, the conditional is determinate, true, and reasonably
  straightforward to evaluate with publicly-available information at
  the time of communication. The communicator SHOULD explain
  specific reasons for being uncertain of the outcome when e makes
  the communication.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4027 Judged FALSE by Murphy

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4027
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4027  ===

  This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Murphy
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by 4st:08 May 2023 14:39:14
Assigned to Murphy:   08 May 2023 16:55:33
Judged FALSE by Murphy:   14 May 2023 23:15:00

==

Caller's note:

Er typo [in the CFJ statement]: "This proposal introduces" should be
"This contract introduces"


Caller's Evidence:

I create and join the following contract (new! clearly saying what proposal
can do!):
{
Players can leave this contract at any time.
When a player makes a rule change via proposal, that proposal CAN directly
apply that rule change to private information in this contract, even if the
author
is not party to this contract. This contract has private information that
is a copy
of the Agoran ruleset.
}


Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: "change/alter/modify/update/amend/fix a rule/the power/the
title to read", "delete/destroy/shred/eliminate a rule", and
"create/spawn/induce a rule" are presumed to introduce ambiguity even
though all seem pretty clear that they want to make a rule/power/title be
something, repeal a rule, or enact a rule. Repeal a portion of a rule seems
to introduce a similar ambiguity. THUS, this contract would introduce a
global ambiguity: did the author mean to do the rule change to the
contract... or the rule? (See Rule 105 "Any ambiguity in the specification
of a rule change causes that change to be void and without effect."

Arguments AGAINST: It should be implied that things in Agora are reasonable
unless otherwise stated. EG Amend the power of something should be a valid,
unambiguous rule change, because it is reasonable to interpret it that way.

(Another argument against that may make this matter unfortunately trivial:
R217 means the rules take precedence over contracts, although the rules are
silent on whether this introduces ambiguity, however, the fact that I have
to ask implies that it is so?)

--

Judge Murphy's Arguments:

This contract doesn't introduce ambiguity of any sort.

First, just because a proposal making a rule change CAN apply it to the
contract's copy of the rules, doesn't mean that it does. It only does if
the proposal says it does.

Second, just because a proposal making a rule change does apply it to
the contract's copy of the rules, doesn't mean that it applies it /only/
to the contract's copy of the rules. It only does if the proposal says
it does. And in that case, it's unambiguously not a rule change.

Furthermore, even if a more carefully worded contract made it ambiguous
whether a proposal making a rule change also affected something defined
by the contract, that wouldn't be an ambiguity in the rule change
itself, but an ambiguity in a side effect of that rule change (or of the
proposal itself).

I judge FALSE.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4026 Judged IRRELEVANT by ais523

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4026
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4026  ===

  In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
  to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

==

Caller:G.

Judge: ais523
Judgement: IRRELEVANT

==

History:

Called by G.: 04 May 2023 23:05:01
Assigned to ais523:   08 May 2023 16:54:56
Judged IRRELEVANT by ais523:  12 May 2023 23:34:38

==

Caller's Arguments:

Currently, an action that's made ILLEGAL by a SHALL NOT does not in
itself make that action regulated by clause (1) of R2125 (SHALL NOT is
not a limit, allowance, enablement, or permission).  I believe clause
1 used to include 'forbid' which would have made SHALL NOTs regulated,
but that word or a synonym is not there now.

"Interpretation" is a thought/speech act and as a whole - it's not
subject to success or failure (clause 2).  Interpretation in certain
contexts (CFJ judgements) may change a record for clause 3, but
interpretation in general does not do that.

Therefore, my interpretation is that the clause in question forbids
itself.  Also, as these CFJ arguments are themselves an
interpretation, I believe these CFJ arguments are an interpretation
about the legality of making these CFJ arguments and I would ask the
judge to note if this is so.


Caller's Evidence:

Rule 2125/13 (Power=3)
Regulated Actions

  An action is regulated if: (1) the Rules limit, allow, enable, or
  permit its performance; (2) the Rules describe the circumstances
  under which the action would succeed or fail; or (3) the action
  would, as part of its effect, modify information for which some
  player is required to be a recordkeepor.

  A Regulated Action CAN only be performed as described by the
  Rules, and only using the methods explicitly specified in the
  Rules for performing the given action. The Rules SHALL NOT be
  interpreted so as to proscribe unregulated actions.

--

Judge ais523's Arguments:

Here's an excerpt from a proposal (8867) that was adopted recently:

> [
> The goal of this is to expand on our banning system and implement some
> clearly defined values into the rules of Agora. This comprises two main
> changes.
>
> The first removes the "free speech" clause from R478 and replaces it
> with a bill of expectations that largely seek to maximize participation
> while recognizing ways in which that might reasonably be abridged.
>
[snip]
>
> Amend R478 by deleting the following text:
>
> Freedom of speech being essential for the healthy functioning of
> any non-Imperial nomic, it is hereby resolved that no Player shall
> be prohibited from participating in the Fora
[snip]

The resulting rule change broke a long-standing protection that
prevented the rules accidentally making it ILLEGAL to participate in
gameplay generally (see CFJ 1738). This has a chilling effect on
various forms of participation in Agora as a whole: this CFJ is asking
me to interpret the rules, but if I discover that the statement of the
CFJ is TRUE, that in turn means that I SHALL NOT give that verdict.
Additionally, I can't even work out whether the statement of the CFJ is
true or not without attempting to interpret the rules, something which
might turn out to be illegal (and for which I can't know, before
attempting it, whether it's illegal or not).

Normally, when judging a CFJ whose statement has been posed
incorrectly, I provide arguments to let people know the truth or
otherwise of the statement that they probably meant to ask. However,
with the protections that would normally be provided to me repealed, I
do not wish to attempt that in this case. Instead, I will simply note
that the caller has asked the wrong question: this is a question of
interpretation, and various parts of the ruleset affect the meaning of
various other parts of the ruleset. It isn't relevant to the game
whether a hypothetical action might or might not breach a *particular*
rule if, e.g., the same action is permitted by a different rule.

When trying to judge this CFJ, I got as far as "OK, there's a
distinction between 'the rules proscribe this action' and 'rule 2125
proscribes this action' – does that matter here", looked at the other
rules that might matter, discovered that one of them had had the
relevant sentence fragment repealed, and realised I was on dangerous
ground even attempting to understand the

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4025 Judged FALSE by Janet

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4025
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4025  ===

  In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
  rules as proscribing an unregulated action.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Janet
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by 4st:04 May 2023 21:04:40
Assigned to Janet:08 May 2023 16:54:24
Judged FALSE by Janet:13 May 2023 00:22:49

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: Basically, this depends on whether I was found guilty of
violating No Faking. If I was not, then G has interpreted the rules to
proscribe the collection of taxes as referee.
Arguments AGAINST: Similarly, if I am guilty, then no violation has
occurred.


Caller's Evidence:

On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 2:05 PM Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 1:55 AM Forest Sweeney  wrote:
> >
> > Under penalty of no faking, as Referee, I do the following game action
> > for each active player:
> > I collect that player's taxes that are owed to the office of Referee.
> > (The active players being 4st, Aspen, G.,Janet, Murphy, Yachay, ais523,
> > cuddlybanana, juan, nix, and snail.)
> >
> > Please make any disputes about this individually, as taxes are done on a
> > case by case basis.
>
> The above public statement by 4st was noted by Yachary as a violation
> of rule 2471 (No Faking).  As 4st is the Referee, the Arbitor is the
> Investigator.
>
> I investigate as follows:
>
> The alleged violation was not merely an assertion that taxes were owed
> by certain parties.  It was an assertion that taxes were owed as part
> of the official abilities and/or duties of the Referee.  If a
> statement about taxes had been made to BUS, without reference to the
> Referee, it *might* be defensible (depending on context) to say "I was
> talking about my own private unregulated taxes which exist in my head
> but happen to be 0".  But in this case, the clear "as Referee, I do
> the following game actions" and context of sending to OFF makes the
> assertion that this is part of the referee's official position a core
> part of the statement.   This is a direct falsehood.  It is not
> reasonable to claim that those duties were part of some kind of
> "unregulated yet official" task because that doesn't make sense -
> claiming to be acting "as Referee" to levy taxes is essentially
> synonymous with claiming that the taxes are a regulated or required
> thing, which is a lie.  It is also not a reasonable defense to say "I
> never actually *said explicitly* that this was a referee duty" - the
> implication contained in the composition of the statement is suitably
> strong to (falsely) imply the connection with the office.
>
> Further, I'll state for the record that I was (momentarily) fooled.
> Not to the point of thinking I owed taxes, but my thought process went
> "did I miss a proposal?  a pledge or contract about referee's duties?
> or is a mousetrap scam maybe coming?"  Had there been no subsequent
> comments, I might have searched my Agoran emails for "tax" before
> concluding that no such taxes exist, and I still would have been
> suspicious of a hidden mousetrap.  As it is, I depended on a statement
> by Yachary, who stated that they also had to "review the rules" before
> concluding falsehood.  So between myself and Yachary, there is
> sufficient to find that the statement was misleading enough to be a
> violation of the cited rule.
>
> This violation has a (default) class of 2.  The fact that the
> defendant revealed the situation right away is somewhat mitigating,
> while using the guise of an official position is somewhat aggravating.
> Balancing these, I conclude this investigation by specifying 2 blots
> as the penalty.
>
> As a final comment, I'll note that, even if the officer-part of this
> were left out, the mention of taxes would not necessarily be harmless
> - saying " gee I was talking about my private unregulated taxes" is
> not *necessarily* a sufficient defense - as I stated above, it depends
> on context.  On one hand, we don't want to penalize fun and silly
> comments (like "I floop the doop" or whatever).  But the flipside is
> that before No Faking existed, these kinds of f

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4024 Judged TRUE by snail

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4024
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4024  ===

  This means the same thing as "each and every".

==

Caller:4st

Judge: snail
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by 4st:02 May 2023 17:13:03
Assigned to snail:08 May 2023 16:53:45
Judged TRUE by snail: 15 May 2023 00:17:58
Motion to reconsider group-filed: 16 May 2023 12:42:48
Judged TRUE by snail: 18 May 2023 03:19:11

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:38 AM Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote:
> I support all intents to award anything.
> Discussion has taken place and the appropriate people have placed their
> intents, I trust those people and my opinion was considered.
> (We can award more than one thing too if you want to add MORE intents :D )

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: This is extremely clear and unambiguous language.
Arguments AGAINST: This only provides support for one tabled intent, one
that doesn't exist.

Please find this CFJ as FOR. I find it ridiculous I have to ask this.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

For context, this came up on discord.  There was an assertion that
supporting "all" intents is a single atomic action where if any of
them would fail, they all do.  So if 4st previously supported one of
the intents and can't do so again, they all would fail.  But using the
term "every" avoids this problem and makes them fail or succeed
together.

--

Judge snail's Arguments:

I once again judge CFJ 4024 TRUE, but for different reasoning.

For any action taken using written language, there is an undeniable amount
of ambiguity, inexactness, because all words have different meanings to
different people. All talks of "unambiguity" in Agora are really about what
we can take as "practically" unambiguous. Ambiguity is more of a spectrum,
from "nobody agrees on what this means" to "every person on the planet
agrees it means this" (the impossible, unambiguous end of the spectrum).
For something to be "practically" unambiguous in Agora, we only need all
players to agree to play as if it is the case. New players coming to Agora
adds new possible interpretations to action text, and brings back ambiguity
in cases where there used to be none. Fortunately we have tools in Agora to
reach an agreement on what a particular message meant. A player can say
something, intending to take one action, but then after discussion, CFJs,
and rule clarification, come to the conclusion that they didn't actually do
what they intended: the setting forth of intent in by-announcement actions,
then, is augmented by this procedure of coming to an agreement. This is
what we sign up for when we join Agora: our actions may be reinterpreted
retroactively through judicial process, and our intent when sending
messages must include that. This unfortunately makes most of a player's
intent when sending an action negligible, besides the fact it must be clear
they want to attempt to do something, regardless of what thing it is.

So the relevant part of "specifying the action and setting forth intent to
perform that action by sending that message, doing both clearly and
unambiguously" is the specification of the action, as the intent to do
something is clearly there.

Is it ambiguous if the action was specified? It is clear there is
disagreement about what the specified action was, so practical unambiguity
has not yet been met. But of course, to resolve this ambiguity, we use the
tools for that, CFJs, and the 4 factors we use for them.

"Best interest of the game" here seems to be relevant: the failure to
object to certain powerful intents like those of RWO's could be disastrous.
On the contrary, actions doing things you didn't explicitly specify could
be a violation of consent: but remember we already do this to degree when
we reinterpret actions via cfj, as "explicit" is such a subjective term.
The best interests of the game could serve to be clarified in the rules,
but it seems to lean toward success of supports and objections in this case.

"Game Custom" is important in all action text cases: we copy what other
people do when we see them take actions. We ascribe meanings to our actions
in one case based on what could be wildly different cases, but cases that
feel the same. The closer an example we can get, the better. "I object to
all

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4022 Judged TRUE by nix

2023-05-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4022
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

=== CFJ 4022 ===

I am not guilty of violating No Faking by collecting taxes.

Caller:4st

Judge: nix
Judgement: TRUE

History:

Called by 4st:30 Apr 2023 01:13:06
Assigned to nix: 08 May 2023 16:51:16
Judged TRUE by nix: 08 May 2023 17:33:26

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments PARADOX:
IF I successfully collected taxes, then the action was
EFFECTIVE, and THUS, was NOT falsey, and could not violate no faking.
IF I didn't successfully collect taxes, then the action WAS NOT effective,
and thus, IS NOT covered by No Faking, and THUS,
I should not be found guilty.

However, I was found guilty of violating No Faking.

Arbitor's Evidence:

Alleged rules violation:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-April/016998.html

Noting of alleged violation:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2023-April/051171.html

Investigation:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2023-April/051175.html
--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

Gratuitous arguments for TRUE:

It's trivially TRUE that 4st was not found guilty of violating No
Faking by "collecting taxes". E was found guilty of violating No
Faking by asserting in public that collecting taxes (whether
successfully or unsuccessfully) was done "as Referee". The factual
matter of whether tax collection was EFFECTIVE is in fact IRRELEVANT
(as it impacts nothing in the game), what's relevant for the guilty
verdict is that the act of collection is not part of the Referee's
duties or abilities.

Response by 4st:

It is not part of my duties; it is also not not part of my duties.
With regard to ability, collecting taxes is not part of the rules, so it is
unregulated,
unless of course No Faking finds it effective, and therefore, successful.

Response by G.:

After some discussion on discord it was a bit clear 4st and I were
taking entirely different angles on this case. To clarify, I did not
address or think about the "unregulated" angle or R2125 at all, but
rather took No Faking at face value. So I defer to 4sts arguments on
the unregulated nature of the whole thing. My investigation was based
on the following, solely determining if eir statement was falsy:

- If 4st had written "As an official duty of the office of Referee, I
collect taxes" I think most people would say that was a lie, as there
was no official duty.

- 4st is noting that the phrasing e used "As Referee, I collect taxes"
was "technically true" as e was the Referee, and doing a (wholly
unofficial and unregulated) tax.

- My investigation asserted that "As Referee, I collect taxes" in a
message to OFF, with the phrase "game action", with no disclaimers
etc. was close enough in content and context to strongly imply "As an
official duty of the Referee, I collect taxes" - false advertising is
falsy.

Judge nix's Arguments:

On April 29th 4st published the following message:

Under penalty of no faking, as Referee, I do the following game
action for each active player:
I collect that player's taxes that are owed to the office of
Referee.
(The active players being 4st, Aspen, G.,Janet, Murphy, Yachay,
ais523, cuddlybanana, juan, nix, and snail.)

Please make any disputes about this individually, as taxes are done
on a case by case basis.

Furthermore, I intend to, without objection, declare apathy,
specifying all players.

--
4st
Referee and Deputy(AKA FAKE) webmastor
Uncertified Bad Idea Generator

Up for debate is whether the attempt to collect taxes is a violation of
"No Faking" which reads:

A person SHALL NOT make a public statement that is a lie.

A public statement is falsy if any of the following was true at
the time of publication:
* The statement was not true and the author knew or should have
known that it was not true.
* The author believed the statement to be not true.

A public statement is a lie if it is falsy and any of the
following is true:
* The author made the statement with intent to mislead.
* The author, in the

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4028 Assigned to G., Judged FALSE

2023-05-12 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The CFJ in the below message is 4028.  I assign it to G.

Statement: "There was an infraction noted in this message."

Judgement

FALSE, due to the use of conditional announcements in the noting
attempts, where the conditions were not "reasonably straightforward to
evaluate at the time with publicly-available information at the time
of communication" as required by Rule 2518/1.  In general, the
"reasonably straightforward" clause means that the caller themselves
must be able to resolve the conditional with a bit of minor research
in the archives (e.g. looking at recent past activities) such that
resolving the conditional is a fairly minor act of
interpretation/convenience.  These conditionals, which hinge on a
complex question, are not so easy to evaluate.

[I'm not meaning to stack the deck by judging this one, but rather to
expedite a different case if someone attempts to Note Invisibilitating
unconditionally.  I'd assign any such case to someone else.  But
hiding behind conditionals for criminal allegations doesn't/shouldn't
work - if you want to Note, you need to take a risk and
unconditionally allege that a specific act was a violation].

Rule 2518/1 (Power=3)
Determinacy

  If a value CANNOT be reasonably determined (without circularity or
  paradox) from information reasonably available, or if it
  alternates indefinitely between values, then the value is
  considered to be indeterminate, otherwise it is determinate.

  A communication purporting to express conditional intent to
  perform an action is considered unclear and ambiguous unless, at a
  minimum, the conditional is determinate, true, and reasonably
  straightforward to evaluate with publicly-available information at
  the time of communication. The communicator SHOULD explain
  specific reasons for being uncertain of the outcome when e makes
  the communication.

-- Forwarded message -
From: Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business 
Date: Fri, May 12, 2023 at 5:00 AM
Subject: Re: BUS: [Proposal] now you don't see it
To: Agora Business 
Cc: Yachay Wayllukuq 

So, after the silence, finding that a couple other players actually don't
know what "Invisibilitating" is either, and some simple searches in the
mail archives, apparently "Invisibilitating" relies on gamestate that
supposedly still exists after 10+ years. I thought we didn't dig into the
past that far to consider how many turtles down the current gamestate was
held up by, but if we do, then:

- Why would we make a special case just for Invisibilitating specifically?
What about other ancient things that may affect how other *current* things
of the game work too?
- Are we even sure that the secret Invisibilitating instrument still exists
or works as intended?
- It takes agency away from newer players and puts more into older ones
which are more familiar with this obscure ancient arcana which has now
supposedly been made relevant, which feels terrible.

Thankfully, I'm far from a win so I have a margin to endure risking some
blots, which I'll spend to try to uncover more about this.

G., the person who proposed to add that rule, is both the default
investigator for the Referee, and the person who holds the office for CfJs,
so I trust that this is gameplay that they intended and will participate in.

I look forward to the investigation (if any) and the resulting CfJ. Their
arguments in particular.

If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
for being a player.

If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
for holding an office.

If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
for their latest message posted to fora.

If 4st has committed the following infraction for the following reason
described, then I note the infraction of Invisibilitating performed by 4st
for jaywalking without a license, compounded by having dangerous levels of
swagger.

I CfJ: "There was an infraction noted in this message."

On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 6:48 PM Yachay Wayllukuq 
wrote:

> What is Invisibilitating?
>
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 6:42 PM Kerim Aydin via agora-business <
> agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
>> I submit the following proposal, "now you don't see it", AI=1:
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>> Re-enact Rule 2056 (Invisibilitating) with the following text:
>>
>>   Invisibilitating is a Class 1 infraction.
>>
>>
>> [
>> Rule 2056 history (confirmed by checking archives):
>>
>> Enacted (Power=1) by Proposal 4513 "Invisibilitating" (Steve), 10 July
>> 2003.
>> Repealed by Proposal 4759 "Olive Repeals" (Manu, Sherlock), 15 May 2005.
>> ]
>>
>>
>> 
>>
>

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Mon 08 May 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4022 Assigned to nix Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:51:16
4023 Assigned to 4st Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:53:01
4024 Assigned to snail   Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:53:45
4025 Assigned to Janet   Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:54:24
4026 Assigned to ais523  Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:54:56
4027 Assigned to Murphy  Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:55:33


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4021 G.
 Yachay
4022 nix
4023 4st
4024 snail
4025 Janet
4026 ais523
4027 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
4027 Assigned to Murphy [Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:55:33]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4027
 This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

4026 Assigned to ais523 [Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:54:56]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4026
 In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
 to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

4025 Assigned to Janet [Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:54:24]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4025
 In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
 rules as proscribing an unregulated action.

4024 Assigned to snail [Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:53:45]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4024
 This means the same thing as "each and every".

4023 Assigned to 4st [Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:53:01]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4023
 Rule 879, "Quorum", has power 3.0.

4022 Assigned to nix [Due Mon 15 May 2023 16:51:16]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4022
 I am not guilty of violating No Faking by collecting taxes.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4021 Judged FALSE by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4021
 Yachay owns the Hot Potato stone.

4020 Judged INSUFFICIENT by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4020
 jimmy's recent attempt at registering is unambiguously successful.

4019 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4019
 In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
 a powerful dance around the fountain.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4027 Assigned to Murphy

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4027.  I assign it to Murphy.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4027

===  CFJ 4027  ===

  This proposal introduces "any ambiguity" into all rule changes.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Murphy
Judgement:

==

History:

Called by 4st:08 May 2023 14:39:14
Assigned to Murphy:   [now]

==

Caller's note:

Er typo [in the CFJ statement]: "This proposal introduces" should be
"This contract introduces"


Caller's Evidence:

I create and join the following contract (new! clearly saying what proposal
can do!):
{
Players can leave this contract at any time.
When a player makes a rule change via proposal, that proposal CAN directly
apply that rule change to private information in this contract, even if the
author
is not party to this contract. This contract has private information that
is a copy
of the Agoran ruleset.
}


Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: "change/alter/modify/update/amend/fix a rule/the power/the
title to read", "delete/destroy/shred/eliminate a rule", and
"create/spawn/induce a rule" are presumed to introduce ambiguity even
though all seem pretty clear that they want to make a rule/power/title be
something, repeal a rule, or enact a rule. Repeal a portion of a rule seems
to introduce a similar ambiguity. THUS, this contract would introduce a
global ambiguity: did the author mean to do the rule change to the
contract... or the rule? (See Rule 105 "Any ambiguity in the specification
of a rule change causes that change to be void and without effect."

Arguments AGAINST: It should be implied that things in Agora are reasonable
unless otherwise stated. EG Amend the power of something should be a valid,
unambiguous rule change, because it is reasonable to interpret it that way.

(Another argument against that may make this matter unfortunately trivial:
R217 means the rules take precedence over contracts, although the rules are
silent on whether this introduces ambiguity, however, the fact that I have
to ask implies that it is so?)

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4025 Assigned to Janet

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4025.  I assign it to Janet.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4025

===  CFJ 4025  ===

  In G's investigation, G violated Rule 2125 and interpreted the
  rules as proscribing an unregulated action.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Janet

==

History:

Called by 4st:04 May 2023 21:04:40
Assigned to Janet:[now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: Basically, this depends on whether I was found guilty of
violating No Faking. If I was not, then G has interpreted the rules to
proscribe the collection of taxes as referee.
Arguments AGAINST: Similarly, if I am guilty, then no violation has
occurred.


Caller's Evidence:

On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 2:05 PM Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 1:55 AM Forest Sweeney  wrote:
> >
> > Under penalty of no faking, as Referee, I do the following game action
> > for each active player:
> > I collect that player's taxes that are owed to the office of Referee.
> > (The active players being 4st, Aspen, G.,Janet, Murphy, Yachay, ais523,
> > cuddlybanana, juan, nix, and snail.)
> >
> > Please make any disputes about this individually, as taxes are done on a
> > case by case basis.
>
> The above public statement by 4st was noted by Yachary as a violation
> of rule 2471 (No Faking).  As 4st is the Referee, the Arbitor is the
> Investigator.
>
> I investigate as follows:
>
> The alleged violation was not merely an assertion that taxes were owed
> by certain parties.  It was an assertion that taxes were owed as part
> of the official abilities and/or duties of the Referee.  If a
> statement about taxes had been made to BUS, without reference to the
> Referee, it *might* be defensible (depending on context) to say "I was
> talking about my own private unregulated taxes which exist in my head
> but happen to be 0".  But in this case, the clear "as Referee, I do
> the following game actions" and context of sending to OFF makes the
> assertion that this is part of the referee's official position a core
> part of the statement.   This is a direct falsehood.  It is not
> reasonable to claim that those duties were part of some kind of
> "unregulated yet official" task because that doesn't make sense -
> claiming to be acting "as Referee" to levy taxes is essentially
> synonymous with claiming that the taxes are a regulated or required
> thing, which is a lie.  It is also not a reasonable defense to say "I
> never actually *said explicitly* that this was a referee duty" - the
> implication contained in the composition of the statement is suitably
> strong to (falsely) imply the connection with the office.
>
> Further, I'll state for the record that I was (momentarily) fooled.
> Not to the point of thinking I owed taxes, but my thought process went
> "did I miss a proposal?  a pledge or contract about referee's duties?
> or is a mousetrap scam maybe coming?"  Had there been no subsequent
> comments, I might have searched my Agoran emails for "tax" before
> concluding that no such taxes exist, and I still would have been
> suspicious of a hidden mousetrap.  As it is, I depended on a statement
> by Yachary, who stated that they also had to "review the rules" before
> concluding falsehood.  So between myself and Yachary, there is
> sufficient to find that the statement was misleading enough to be a
> violation of the cited rule.
>
> This violation has a (default) class of 2.  The fact that the
> defendant revealed the situation right away is somewhat mitigating,
> while using the guise of an official position is somewhat aggravating.
> Balancing these, I conclude this investigation by specifying 2 blots
> as the penalty.
>
> As a final comment, I'll note that, even if the officer-part of this
> were left out, the mention of taxes would not necessarily be harmless
> - saying " gee I was talking about my private unregulated taxes" is
> not *necessarily* a sufficient defense - as I stated above, it depends
> on context.  On one hand, we don't want to penalize fun and silly
> comments (like "I floop the doop" or whatever).  But the flipside is
> that before No Faking existed, these kinds of fakeries were a bit
> problematic, and occasionally used to genuinely fool people - maybe
> not fooling them to think the taxes exi

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4026 Assigned to ais523

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4026.  I assign it to ais523.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4026

===  CFJ 4026  ===

  In Rule 2125, the phrase 'The Rules SHALL NOT be interpreted so as
  to proscribe unregulated actions' proscribes unregulated actions.

==

Caller:G.

Judge: ais523

==

History:

Called by G.: 04 May 2023 23:05:01
Assigned to ais523:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Currently, an action that's made ILLEGAL by a SHALL NOT does not in
itself make that action regulated by clause (1) of R2125 (SHALL NOT is
not a limit, allowance, enablement, or permission).  I believe clause
1 used to include 'forbid' which would have made SHALL NOTs regulated,
but that word or a synonym is not there now.

"Interpretation" is a thought/speech act and as a whole - it's not
subject to success or failure (clause 2).  Interpretation in certain
contexts (CFJ judgements) may change a record for clause 3, but
interpretation in general does not do that.

Therefore, my interpretation is that the clause in question forbids
itself.  Also, as these CFJ arguments are themselves an
interpretation, I believe these CFJ arguments are an interpretation
about the legality of making these CFJ arguments and I would ask the
judge to note if this is so.


Caller's Evidence:

Rule 2125/13 (Power=3)
Regulated Actions

  An action is regulated if: (1) the Rules limit, allow, enable, or
  permit its performance; (2) the Rules describe the circumstances
  under which the action would succeed or fail; or (3) the action
  would, as part of its effect, modify information for which some
  player is required to be a recordkeepor.

  A Regulated Action CAN only be performed as described by the
  Rules, and only using the methods explicitly specified in the
  Rules for performing the given action. The Rules SHALL NOT be
  interpreted so as to proscribe unregulated actions.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4024 Assigned to snail

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4024.  I assign it to snail.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4024

===  CFJ 4024  ===

  This means the same thing as "each and every".

==

Caller:4st

Judge: snail

==

History:

Called by 4st:02 May 2023 17:13:03
Assigned to snail:[now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:38 AM Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote:
> I support all intents to award anything.
> Discussion has taken place and the appropriate people have placed their
> intents, I trust those people and my opinion was considered.
> (We can award more than one thing too if you want to add MORE intents :D )

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: This is extremely clear and unambiguous language.
Arguments AGAINST: This only provides support for one tabled intent, one
that doesn't exist.

Please find this CFJ as FOR. I find it ridiculous I have to ask this.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

For context, this came up on discord.  There was an assertion that
supporting "all" intents is a single atomic action where if any of
them would fail, they all do.  So if 4st previously supported one of
the intents and can't do so again, they all would fail.  But using the
term "every" avoids this problem and makes them fail or succeed
together.

==

OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 4023 Assigned to 4st

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4023.  I assign it to 4st.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4023

===  CFJ 4023  ===

  Rule 879, "Quorum", has power 3.0.

==

Caller:Aspen
Barred:Janet

Judge: 4st

==

History:

Called by Aspen:  02 May 2023 16:16:29
Assigned to 4st:  [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Adoption message of proposal in question (proposal 8639, 'sole quorum'):
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2022-February/015693.html

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:01 AM Janet Cobb wrote:
> On 5/2/23 01:01, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 8:38 PM Janet Cobb wrote:
> >
> >> [Proposal 8639
> >> failed to make this change because it used "amend" for a power change.
> >
> > If everyone involved including you knew what it meant at the time so as to
> > miss the “error” entirely, how could it possibly have been unclear, even
> > by r105 standards?
> > I maintain that “amend a rule’s power” is a clear synonym for “change a
> > rules power” and is obviously not amending a rule’s text.
>
>
> Well, past me is an idiot and I disavow everything they've said.
>
> I've been consistent (or tried to be) in saying that "amend a rule's
> title" doesn't work, and AFAIK there have been no legal challenges to
> that (and it was suggested in Discord to legislate a different rule
> rather than that my reading is wrong).
>
> My reading is that R105 makes "amend" in the context of a rule mean only
> and exactly changing the text of the rule, and any other usage is
> inherently ambiguous.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by nix:

Gratuitous FOR:

"ambiguous" requires more than one possible interpretation. I don't
understand the assertion that something is "ambiguous" without
clarifying the two or more ways to interpret it.

Additionally, the rules do not define "amend". They name "amending the
text" as a rule change, but that's not a definition. It's clear (and
AFAICT, unambiguous) that "amend the power" refers to changing the power.

Gratuitous Arguments by Janet:

I've was consistent (or tried to be) in saying that "amend a rule's
title" doesn't work, until we explicitly amended Rule 105 to say that it
does work (P8871). We agreed that legislation was needed there, and the
fact that Rule 105 now *explicitly* uses "amend" for one non-text change
but not another suggests that rule changes where it is not used should
be able to use "amend". If they could, "syn. amend the title of" would
be surplusage.

Gratuitous Arguments by nix:

I wrote that section. It's not surplusage, it was an attempt to
compromise with the Rulekeepor by disambiguating, since it seemed clear
e wasn't going to change eir mind. This grat strips authorial intent to
argue the exact opposite of what the intent was.

Gratuitous Arguments by Janet:

I agree, it's not surplusage. A finding that "amend" can include changes
other than those explicitly described in Rule 105 would render it surplus.

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

Janet's logic about "surplussage" is a bit of a fallacy that leads to
a problematic cycle.  Consider the following:

1.  A single player finds something in the rules unclear to em.
Instead of testing by CFJ e makes a proposal to add clarifying text.

2.  Voters see it as harmless - it wasn't unclear to them, the
clarification proposed is what they assumed the text meant all along,
but it must have been unclear to someone, and better safe than sorry
right?

3.  Once the added text is adopted, the original player uses it as
proof (via "surplussage") that the original text would absolutely be
read in the opposite way if the clarifying text was removed, also
perhaps citing other places in the rules that the same original
language must now be unclear.  This leads to a round of adding
clarifying language to other areas, and the assumptions that it's
always needed, when the original text was never tested by CFJ and
might have been perfectly clear to most people.

This kind of ratchet, wherein adding "extra" clarity is assumed to
weaken the text of the original, is not logicially sound reasoning,
nor does it make for good rules-writing.  Whatever else the merits of
this particular case, that logic should not be a reason for a finding,
one way or the other.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4022 Assigned to nix

2023-05-08 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4022.  I assign it to nix.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4022

===  CFJ 4022  ===

  I am not guilty of violating No Faking by collecting taxes.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: nix

==

History:

Called by 4st:30 Apr 2023 01:13:06
Assigned to nix:  [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments PARADOX:
IF I successfully collected taxes, then the action was
EFFECTIVE, and THUS, was NOT falsey, and could not violate no faking.
IF I didn't successfully collect taxes, then the action WAS NOT effective,
and thus, IS NOT covered by No Faking, and THUS,
I should not be found guilty.

However, I was found guilty of violating No Faking.


Arbitor's Evidence:

Alleged rules violation:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2023-April/016998.html

Noting of alleged violation:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2023-April/051171.html

Investigation:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2023-April/051175.html

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

Gratuitous arguments for TRUE:

It's trivially TRUE that 4st was not found guilty of violating No
Faking by "collecting taxes".  E was found guilty of violating No
Faking by asserting in public that collecting taxes (whether
successfully or unsuccessfully) was done "as Referee".  The factual
matter of whether tax collection was EFFECTIVE is in fact IRRELEVANT
(as it impacts nothing in the game), what's relevant for the guilty
verdict is that the act of collection is not part of the Referee's
duties or abilities.

--

Response by 4st:

It is not part of my duties; it is also not not part of my duties.
With regard to ability, collecting taxes is not part of the rules, so it is
unregulated,
unless of course No Faking finds it effective, and therefore, successful.

--

Response by G.:

After some discussion on discord it was a bit clear 4st and I were
taking entirely different angles on this case.  To clarify, I did not
address or think about the "unregulated" angle or R2125 at all, but
rather took No Faking at face value.  So I defer to 4sts arguments on
the unregulated nature of the whole thing.  My investigation was based
on the following, solely determining if eir statement was falsy:

- If 4st had written "As an official duty of the office of Referee, I
collect taxes" I think most people would say that was a lie, as there
was no official duty.

- 4st is noting that the phrasing e used "As Referee, I collect taxes"
was "technically true" as e was the Referee, and doing a (wholly
unofficial and unregulated) tax.

- My investigation asserted that "As Referee, I collect taxes" in a
message to OFF, with the phrase "game action", with no disclaimers
etc. was close enough in content and context to strongly imply "As an
official duty of the Referee, I collect taxes" - false advertising is
falsy.

==

OFF: (@Herald) Re: [Arbitor] Wooden Gavel Intent

2023-05-04 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 1:48 PM Kerim Aydin wrote:
> I intend (as Arbitor), with 2 Agoran Consent, to award the (2022)
> patent title of Wooden Gavel to snail, for eir judgement in CFJ 3971
> (https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3971).

OYEZ OYEZ OYEZ

WHEREAS over four days have passed since the above announcement was
made, in a clear, conspicuous, explicit, and unobfuscated manner

and WHEREAS the above announcement of intent has gained the support of
Yachay, snail, and nix

and WHEREAS, during that time, there were no public objections to the
matter to be seen, heard, or read

I HEREBY award the (2022) patent title of Wooden Gavel to snail, for
eir judgement in CFJ 3971.

SO THAT the Herald may record the distinction on the Scroll of Agora,
such that snail's name should appear there, for as long as the scroll
should exist, and the skill and wisdom of snail's judgement may shine
forth to inspire future generations of Judges.

BE IT SO ORDERED

> Reason for selection:  An excellent and thorough walkthrough of a
> complex core set of rules (the tabled action rules) - the first sort
> of "full examination" of the method's functioning since a rather
> substantial 2021 rewrite, putting the use of those "new" rules on
> solid ground and affirming that they are working more-or-less as
> desired.
>
> Also, if e'd judged that particular case the other way, my current
> intent would be meaningless and the wooden gavel award impossible, so
> that's a tidy logical loop.
>
> = the Arbitor

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-04-28 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 28 Apr 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[none]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4012 snail
4017 ais523
 4st
4018 nix
4019 Janet
4021 G.
4018 Murphy
 Yachay


OPEN CASES
---
[none]


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4021 Judged FALSE by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4021
 Yachay owns the Hot Potato stone.

4020 Judged INSUFFICIENT by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4020
 jimmy's recent attempt at registering is unambiguously successful.

4019 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4019
 In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
 a powerful dance around the fountain.

4018 Judged TRUE by nix [Fri 31 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4018
 I currently own the Radiance stone.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-04-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

[I think I got all the judge requests, but please let me know if the
list is missing someone.]

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 21 Apr 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
[None]


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4012 snail
4017 ais523
 4st
4018 nix
4019 Janet
4021 G.
 Yachay
4018 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
[None]


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4021 Judged FALSE by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4021
 Yachay owns the Hot Potato stone.

4020 Judged INSUFFICIENT by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4020
 jimmy's recent attempt at registering is unambiguously successful.

4019 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4019
 In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
 a powerful dance around the fountain.

4018 Judged TRUE by nix [Fri 31 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4018
 I currently own the Radiance stone.

4017 Judged TRUE by ais523 [Sat 25 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4017
 snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4021 Judged FALSE by G.

2023-04-21 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4021
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4021  ===

  Yachay owns the Hot Potato stone.

==

Caller:snail
Barred:nix

Judge: G.
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by snail:  09 Apr 2023 20:40:20
Assigned to G.:   10 Apr 2023 16:02:37
Judged FALSE by G.:   10 Apr 2023 17:10:32

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments for TRUE:
Snail, Janet, and nix all tied for highest modified stone rockiness at the
end of the week, so the following rule text applied:

  In a tie, the stone
  specified by the tied player who reached first is transferred to
  em.

snail was the player that "reached first", since e was the first player to
ever reach (though it was for the Score Stone), so the Hot Potato stone is
transferred to em, as e reached for it the previous week, and the previous
week's stone specifications are what are referred to by "stone specified."
Complications may arise if you consider the sentence before this:

  At the beginning of each week, the stone specified by the player
  with the highest Modified Rockiness that reached for a stone in
  the previous week is transferred to em.

but it seems to merely supply the context under which "stone specified",
"in a tie", and "tied player" is to be defined. "Reaching" is defined in a
separate paragraph:

  Once a week each player CAN "reach" for a specified stone owned by
  Agora by announcement.

It is worth determining what "in a tie", "stone specified", and "reached
first" each mean.
Also note that "When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the
rules takes precedence."
It seems pretty clear to me that when the rules say "reached first" it
refers to the player that took the reaching game action first, among the
relevant players, generally, and not specifically "in the previous week"
as others may argue, as that wording isn't present in the text.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by nix:

First, the text itself is as follows:

   At the beginning of each week, the stone specified by the player
   with the highest Modified Rockiness that reached for a stone in
   the previous week is transferred to em. In a tie, the stone
   specified by the tied player who reached first is transferred to
   em. When a player receives a stone in this way, eir Base Rockiness
   is set to 0.

The immediately relevant sentence is "In a tie, the stone specified by
the tied player who reached first is transferred to em." "In a tie"
specifies a context, and as an adverbial phrase can be moved around.

It seems that snail is interpretting it as "The stone specified by the
tied player who reached first is transferred to em in a tie."

It can also be read as "The stone specified by the tied player who
reached first in a tie is transferred to em."

Now, I'll grant that each reading is equally likely if we have no
context. The first sentence of the paragraph provides the context of a
weekly reach, which favors the second reading.

However, even if we ignore that context, we have two equally textually
supported readings. It'd then come down to our Four Factors. There's no
precedent or previous gameplay that disagrees with either reading.
There's a clear "best interest of the game" to make it play as it is
intended, and not give a player a permanent advantage. "Common sense"
also seems to favor the reading that is more fair.

Thus, while both readings might be plausible, only one is supportable by
our judicial tradition.

--

Caller's response to gratuitous arguments by nix:

This assertion deserves skepticism. Moving the phrase around changes the
meaning of the sentence. It may be fine for "When X, Y happens." meaning
the same as "Y happens when X." But the sentence is more complicated. When
X happens, the Y specified by Z that is a part of X is W. This is the same
as "The Y specified by Z is W, when X." but not the same as "The Y
specified by (Z when X) is W" or even "The (Y when X) specified by Z is W"
or "The Y specified by Z is (W when X)" . To be clear, the difference here
is that the adverbial phrase (when X) applies to the whole subsequent
clause when it is seperated at the start, or the whole preceding clause
when at the end, but when situated in the middle, it only modifies one part
of the clause, causing a different meaning.

Applying

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-04-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Mon 10 Apr 2023 16:05:51 UTC


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4021 Assigned to G.  Due Mon 17 Apr 2023 16:02:37


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4012 snail
4017 ais523
 4st
4018 nix
4019 Janet
4021 G.
(timeout:  4018 Murphy)


OPEN CASES
---
4021 Assigned to G. [Due Mon 17 Apr 2023 16:02:37]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4021
 Yachay owns the Hot Potato stone.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4020 Judged INSUFFICIENT by G. [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4020
 jimmy's recent attempt at registering is unambiguously successful.

4019 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 10 Apr 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4019
 In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
 a powerful dance around the fountain.

4018 Judged TRUE by nix [Fri 31 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4018
 I currently own the Radiance stone.

4017 Judged TRUE by ais523 [Sat 25 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4017
 snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.

4016 Judged FALSE by nix [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4016
 cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
 adopt proposal 8911.

4015 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4015
 This is a valid objection.

4012 Judged TRUE by snail [Tue 14 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4021 Assigned to G.

2023-04-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4021.  I assign it to G..

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4021

===  CFJ 4021  ===

  Yachay owns the Hot Potato stone.

==

Caller:snail
Barred:nix

Judge: G.

==

History:

Called by snail:  09 Apr 2023 20:40:20
Assigned to G.:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments for TRUE:
Snail, Janet, and nix all tied for highest modified stone rockiness at the
end of the week, so the following rule text applied:

  In a tie, the stone
  specified by the tied player who reached first is transferred to
  em.

snail was the player that "reached first", since e was the first player to
ever reach (though it was for the Score Stone), so the Hot Potato stone is
transferred to em, as e reached for it the previous week, and the previous
week's stone specifications are what are referred to by "stone specified."
Complications may arise if you consider the sentence before this:

  At the beginning of each week, the stone specified by the player
  with the highest Modified Rockiness that reached for a stone in
  the previous week is transferred to em.

but it seems to merely supply the context under which "stone specified",
"in a tie", and "tied player" is to be defined. "Reaching" is defined in a
separate paragraph:

  Once a week each player CAN "reach" for a specified stone owned by
  Agora by announcement.

It is worth determining what "in a tie", "stone specified", and "reached
first" each mean.
Also note that "When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the
rules takes precedence."
It seems pretty clear to me that when the rules say "reached first" it
refers to the player that took the reaching game action first, among the
relevant players, generally, and not specifically "in the previous week"
as others may argue, as that wording isn't present in the text.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by nix:

First, the text itself is as follows:

   At the beginning of each week, the stone specified by the player
   with the highest Modified Rockiness that reached for a stone in
   the previous week is transferred to em. In a tie, the stone
   specified by the tied player who reached first is transferred to
   em. When a player receives a stone in this way, eir Base Rockiness
   is set to 0.

The immediately relevant sentence is "In a tie, the stone specified by
the tied player who reached first is transferred to em." "In a tie"
specifies a context, and as an adverbial phrase can be moved around.

It seems that snail is interpretting it as "The stone specified by the
tied player who reached first is transferred to em in a tie."

It can also be read as "The stone specified by the tied player who
reached first in a tie is transferred to em."

Now, I'll grant that each reading is equally likely if we have no
context. The first sentence of the paragraph provides the context of a
weekly reach, which favors the second reading.

However, even if we ignore that context, we have two equally textually
supported readings. It'd then come down to our Four Factors. There's no
precedent or previous gameplay that disagrees with either reading.
There's a clear "best interest of the game" to make it play as it is
intended, and not give a player a permanent advantage. "Common sense"
also seems to favor the reading that is more fair.

Thus, while both readings might be plausible, only one is supportable by
our judicial tradition.

--

Caller's response to gratuitous arguments by nix:

This assertion deserves skepticism. Moving the phrase around changes the
meaning of the sentence. It may be fine for "When X, Y happens." meaning
the same as "Y happens when X." But the sentence is more complicated. When
X happens, the Y specified by Z that is a part of X is W. This is the same
as "The Y specified by Z is W, when X." but not the same as "The Y
specified by (Z when X) is W" or even "The (Y when X) specified by Z is W"
or "The Y specified by Z is (W when X)" . To be clear, the difference here
is that the adverbial phrase (when X) applies to the whole subsequent
clause when it is seperated at the start, or the whole preceding clause
when at the end, but when situated in the middle, it only modifies one part
of the clause, causing a different meaning.

Applying this to the wording of "The stone specified by the tied player who
reached first is transferred to em." we have a lot of candidates for

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4019 Judged FALSE by Janet

2023-04-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4019
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4019  ===

  In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
  a powerful dance around the fountain.

==

Caller:Juan

Judge: Janet
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Juan:   27 Mar 2023 18:21:13
Assigned to Janet:02 Apr 2023 17:59:43
Motion to extend filed:   01 Jan 1970 00:00:00
Judged FALSE by Janet:01 Jan 1970 00:00:00

==

Caller's Evidence:

Juan wrote, to Agora-Business:
> Forest Sweeney via agora-business [2023-03-27 08:56]:
>> Here are some interesting reports you should go and look at. What did these
>> offices do? What was in these reports? Some things have changed!
>>
>> In response to the Sun 24 Feb 2008 Conductor Report, I declare the ritual
>> number as 10.
> https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg01091.html
>>
>> […]
>>
>> In response to
>> https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg06559.html
>> I declare the ritual number as 15.
>>
>> I'm done for now. I'll be back later until someone inevitably
>> doesn't like this and fixes the timeframes we can report on.
>> :) It's just 1 point and this is a lot of work to dig up :P

> For each natural number N from 16 to 41, I perform the following action:
>
> {
> In response to the Nth ritual act ever performed, I declare the ritual
> number to be N.
> }
>
> I have qualified players lift the First Speaker in a powerful dance
> around the fountain, thereby making it so all of em earn 1 radiance.


Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR:

The only issue here is whether the intent is clear and unambiguous, which
ultimately will come down to some criterion of reasonable effort. The only
information that needs to be verified is whether 1) there were at least 41
ritual acts, and that 2) none of those have had a ritual number declared in
response. Well, I posit that those two facts are patently obvious, even
though it might be unreasonably hard to identify specifically which acts
were those. But their identity, alas, is irrelevant.

--

Judge Janet's Arguments:

Although the caller states that this case turns only on whether eir
attempts were sufficiently clear, it also depends on whether 4st's
purported declarations of the ritual number as 10 to 15 succeeded (at [0]).

I find that these purported declarations were not successful. R2680/1
phrases the definitions of ritual acts as ongoing and present tense.
Similarly, the enabling of declaring the ritual number is phrased as
present and ongoing. Thus, I find that the ENABLING of declaring a
ritual number attaches when the ritual act is performed and does not
apply retrospectively past when R2680 was enacted. Thus, the purported
declarations from 10 to 15 were referencing events that were not ritual
acts.

However, the caller raises the argument that R2680 does not require the
declaration of a ritual number to include a reference to a specific
event. I find that this is not correct. R2680's phrasing of "for each
ritual act" suggests that the declaration applies to a specific ritual
act, and thus the specification of the action must include the specific
ritual act. The caller's purported declarations even seem to accept
that, as they attempt to include a reference to a specific ritual act,
rather than just having a raw declaration.

Thus, I find that 4st's purported declarations from 10-15 were invalid
because they failed to specify the required ritual act.

Although this finding means that I do not need to reach the clarity of
caller's purported declarations from 16-41 (sine they are invalid due to
not being at most 1 greater than some previous declaration), I will
continue to resolve the controversy anyway.

Having found that a specific ritual act must be referenced for a
declaration to be valid, the question is now what communication standard
must be met. I find that the standard is equivalent to the normal
"specify" standard. The only clarity standard weaker than that in the
rules is used in R869 registration, which is explicitly and deliberately
weaker than "by announcement" (and includes "reasonably clearly and
reasonably unambiguously"). Given that the only weaker standard has
explicit and clear wording, I find that, under the "game custom" factor,
it is not reasonable to read in a weaker clarity standard than "specify".

Having found that specific ritual acts must be

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4020 assigned to G., judged INSUFFICIENT

2023-04-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I am performing the following actions for procedural reasons of the
Arbitor's office.  I pledge not to claim any radiance for the actions
below.

On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 10:59 AM Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business  wrote:
>
> I CFJ: "jimmy's recent attempt at registering is unambiguously
> successful"

The above CFJ is CFJ 4020.  I assign it to G.

I judge CFJ 4020 INSUFFICIENT. The Caller has not cleanly presented
the existing evidence such as the alleged registration message, which
is a bit of an issue; more importantly, in what arguments e does
present, e has said e "doesn't have any evidence but e believes..."
It is not the job of the judge to assemble said evidence without
anything to go on; that would place an undue burden on the judge, as
it places em in the position of making potentially intrusive enquiries
into whether someone is "really" a person. If it turns out jimmy
wasn't a person, or was an already-registered person, ratification or
self-ratification will fail retroactively as it would "add
inconsistencies between the gamestate and the rules" (R1551, as
interpreted by CFJ 3455 for registration) so asking a judge to push
the matter further based on the current publicly-available evidence is
not in the best interests of the judicial system or the game.

We don't use INSUFFICIENT too often, as judges often take it on
themselves to dig in past emails to verify or find evidence and so
forth, which is generally part of the game. However, and with no
prejudice or fault placed on the caller or this issue should future
evidence be presented, as an Arbitor's policy it seems appropriate to
draw a line for insufficient on this case.

>
> On Sunday, April 9, 2023, Janet Cobb via agora-business <
> agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> > On 4/9/23 10:08, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business wrote:
> > > I don't have any damning evidence but I believe that "jimmy" is a
> > currently
> > > registered player. As such, they couldn't have registered again (R869,
> > only
> > > the unregistered can register)
> > >
> > > I intend to ratify without objection: {The person who recently went by
> > the
> > > name "jimmy" has not ever registered as the player named "jimmy"}
> >
> >
> > I object.
> >
> > That's unlikely. Most players would know not to do such a thing. Also, I
> > don't think this would work, one doesn't register "as" a specific
> > player. Even if it is the case that this was an existing player, the
> > Cantus Cygneus would still be valid, and the recent registration attempt
> > being unsuccessful wouldn't change that.
> >
> > --
> > Janet Cobb
> >
> > Assessor, Rulekeepor, Stonemason
> >
> >

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-04-02 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Sun 02 Apr 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4019 Assigned to Janet   Due Sun 09 Apr 2023 17:59:43


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4013 G.
4012 snail
4017 ais523
n/a  4st
4018 nix
4019 Janet
(timeout:  4018 Murphy)


OPEN CASES
---
4019 Assigned to Janet [Due Sun 09 Apr 2023 17:59:43]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4019
 In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
 a powerful dance around the fountain.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4018 Judged TRUE by nix [Fri 31 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4018
 I currently own the Radiance stone.

4017 Judged TRUE by ais523 [Sat 25 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4017
 snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.

4016 Judged FALSE by nix [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4016
 cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
 adopt proposal 8911.

4015 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4015
 This is a valid objection.

4014 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 05 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4014
 Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

4012 Judged TRUE by snail [Tue 14 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4019 Assigned to Janet

2023-04-02 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4019.  I assign it to Janet.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4019

===  CFJ 4019  ===

  In this message, I had qualified players lift the First Speaker in
  a powerful dance around the fountain.

==

Caller:Juan

Judge: Janet

==

History:

Called by Juan:   27 Mar 2023 18:21:13
Assigned to Janet:[now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

Juan wrote, to Agora-Business:
> Forest Sweeney via agora-business [2023-03-27 08:56]:
>> Here are some interesting reports you should go and look at. What did these
>> offices do? What was in these reports? Some things have changed!
>>
>> In response to the Sun 24 Feb 2008 Conductor Report, I declare the ritual
>> number as 10.
> https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg01091.html
>>
>> […]
>>
>> In response to
>> https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg06559.html
>> I declare the ritual number as 15.
>>
>> I'm done for now. I'll be back later until someone inevitably
>> doesn't like this and fixes the timeframes we can report on.
>> :) It's just 1 point and this is a lot of work to dig up :P

> For each natural number N from 16 to 41, I perform the following action:
>
> {
> In response to the Nth ritual act ever performed, I declare the ritual
> number to be N.
> }
>
> I have qualified players lift the First Speaker in a powerful dance
> around the fountain, thereby making it so all of em earn 1 radiance.


Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR:

The only issue here is whether the intent is clear and unambiguous, which
ultimately will come down to some criterion of reasonable effort. The only
information that needs to be verified is whether 1) there were at least 41
ritual acts, and that 2) none of those have had a ritual number declared in
response. Well, I posit that those two facts are patently obvious, even
though it might be unreasonably hard to identify specifically which acts
were those. But their identity, alas, is irrelevant.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4018 Judged TRUE by nix

2023-04-02 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4018
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4018  ===

  I currently own the Radiance stone.

==

Caller:snail
Barred:Janet

Judge: nix
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by snail:  15 Mar 2023 03:13:52
Assigned to Murphy:   19 Mar 2023 17:12:25
Murphy Recused:   28 Mar 2023 15:11:03
Assigned to nix:  28 Mar 2023 15:11:03
Judged TRUE by nix:   31 Mar 2023 17:21:00

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments for TRUE:
The Radiance stone is the same stone as the Score stone, just with
different attributes, and so falls under Rule 1586 (Definition and
Continuity of Entities):

  If the entity that defines another entity is amended such that it
  defines the second entity both before and after the amendment, but
  with different attributes, then the second entity and its
  attributes continue to exist to whatever extent is possible under
  the new definitions.


Caller's Evidence:

>From adopted proposal 8919:

Amend R2645 by replacing:

   - Score Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player's
 (defaulting to the wielder if not specified) Score is increased
 by 3.

with:

   - Radiance Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player
 (defaulting to the wielder if not specified) gains 3 radiance.


>From Rule 2645 (The Stones):

  The following stones are defined, one per paragraph, with the
  following format: Stone Name (Frequency, Smoothness): Description.


It seems like the different attributes that were changed are just the Stone
Name and Description, and common sense indicates they're the same stone.

--

Judge nix's Arguments:

I judge CFJ 4018 TRUE.

Introduction


The text of the CFJ is "I currently own the Radiance stone." where "I"
refers to snail and "currently" refers to 4 Mar 2023.

It seems to me that the caller's argument is that the Radiance Stone and
the Score stone are the same based on Radiance essentially being a
rebranding of Score.

The other plausible interpretation is that the Score Stone has been
replaced by the Radiance Stone, swapped in place with analagous purpose.

R1586/9 makes it pretty clear that an entity can have its name changed:

   A rule, contract, or regulation that refers to an entity by name
   refers to the entity that had that name when the rule first came
   to include that reference, even if the entity's name has since
   changed.

And of course tells us that any other attributes can be changed as well:

   If the entity that defines another entity is amended such that it
   defines the second entity both before and after the amendment, but
   with different attributes, then the second entity and its
   attributes continue to exist to whatever extent is possible under
   the new definitions.

The question is hinged on whether the rules "[define] the [entity] both
before and after the amendment". The rules do not give guidance on how
we would know whether these are the same entity.

What makes an entity?
-

Through inference of Rule 1586, it seems that legally speaking an entity
is a specific collection of attributes. It's not clear whether an entity
needs to have a name, but if it does then its name is unique but could
be changed.

Augmenting this with common sense, and the best interest of the game, I
contend that not all attributes of an entity are equal. Clearly names
are crucial, as they get special treatment by the rules. Depending on
the entity, different attributes will be essential to its identity. For
example, the power of a rule is less identifying and less unique than
the name, number, or text of a rule.

I also argue that there is one more important common sense feature of an
entity: variously known as its personality, purpose, or identity. While
the rules are largely silent on this, it seems to be implied by the
re-enactment mechanism. Re-enactment has been used for rules with
different titles and text than what they're re-enacting but a similar
purpose, and in fact this seems to be considered preferable by players
over a new rule, even tho the difference is purely semantic.

So how do we know if two entities are the same entity? If they have the
same name, they are by definition (R1586). Otherwise, they must share
crucial attributes and a

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4017 Judged TRUE by ais523

2023-04-02 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4017
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4017  ===

  snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:snail

Judge: ais523
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by G.: 14 Mar 2023 19:11:01
Assigned to ais523:   19 Mar 2023 17:11:49
Judged TRUE by ais523:25 Mar 2023 21:43:41

==

Caller's Arguments:

When Proposal 8919 *started* taking effect, R2657 read in part:
  Each time a player fulfills a scoring condition, the officer
  associated with the condition CAN once by announcement, and SHALL
  in an officially timely fashion, add to that player's score the
  associated amount of points, rounded down.

  Below is a list of scoring conditions and their associated points
  and officers.
  [...]
* Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1
  (Assessor).

When Proposal 8919 *finished* taking effect, R2657 read in part:
   Each time a player fulfills a radiance condition, e CAN once by
   announcement (specifying any indicated info) gain the associated
   radiance.

   Below is a list of radiance conditions:
   [...]
 * Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1 (must
   specify proposal number)

I think the "when" is triggered when the proposal *first* starts
taking effect, so e earned the right to be awarded by the old system
(which was then made impossible to give via rule change), but not the
new system.  A counterargument is that since the proposal is still
"taking effect" when the new text came into being, that was awarded
somehow too - but interpreting the trigger as continuous is a
self-conflict with the first sentence of the rule that says "each
time", which implies a specific single instant.

Caller's Evidence:

On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 11:46=E2=80=AFAM secretsnail9 via agora-business
 wrote:
>
> For the adoption of P8919, I gain 1 radiance (co-author).
>
> --
> snail

Proposal 8919:
//
ID: 8919
Title: Radiance v1.1
Adoption index: 3.0
Author: nix
Co-authors: G., 4st, snail

[This proposal reskins points/score as "radiance" and also changes the
scoring conditions to be cashed by players. IE, insteead of the assessor
granting points for proposals, each player must claim them. Also
introduce gains/grants language to get rid of clunkier things, and adds
some requirements to specify your radiance when winning, and where you
gained the radiance from when you do.]

Retitle R2656 to "Radiance".

Amend R2656 to read in full:

   A player's Radiance is an integer player switch defaulting to 0,
   tracked by the Herald. When a player is "granted" or "gains" a
   specified amount of radiance, eir radiance is increased by that
   amount.

   Upon a correct announcement from a player that eir radiance is 100
   or more (correctly specifying the amount), e wins the game. Then,
   eir radiance is set to 0, and all other players' radiance are set
   to half their current value rounded down.

   At the start of every quarter, all radiance switches are set to
   half their current value rounded down.

For each player, set eir radiance switch to be equal to the value eir
score switch was at immediately before this proposal was adopted.

Retitle R2657 to "Gaining Radiance".

Amend R2657 to read, in full:

   Each time a player fulfills a radiance condition, e CAN once by
   announcement (specifying any indicated info) gain the associated
   radiance.

   Below is a list of radiance conditions:

 * Being the author of a proposal that takes effect: 5 (must
   specify proposal number)

 * Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1 (must
   specify proposal number)

 * Having an Agoran Birthday: X, where X is the number of active
   players during eir birthday.

 * Judging a CFJ that e was assigned to without violating a time
   limit to do so, unless at the time of judgement the case was
   open due to self-filing a motion to reconsider it: 2 (must
   specify CFJ number)

Amend R2659 by replacing "increase eir own score by (X^2)-X points" with
"gain (X^2)-X radiance" and replacing "increase eir own score by (X-1)*2
points" with "gain (X-1)*2 radiance".

In R2670 replacing:

 The score of the player that has the most dollaries

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4018 Assigned to nix

2023-03-28 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I recuse Murphy from Cfj 4018 and then assign it to nix (below is for
reference, and is not intended to assign to Murphy)

On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 10:12 AM Kerim Aydin via agora-official <
agora-official@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> The below CFJ is 4018.  I assign it to Murphy.
>
> status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4018
>
> ===  CFJ 4018  ===
>
>   I currently own the Radiance stone.
>
> ==
>
> Caller:snail
> Barred:Janet
>
> Judge: Murphy
>
> ==
>
> History:
>
> Called by snail:  15 Mar 2023 03:13:52
> Assigned to Murphy:   [now]
>
> ==
>
> Caller's Arguments:
>
> Arguments for TRUE:
> The Radiance stone is the same stone as the Score stone, just with
> different attributes, and so falls under Rule 1586 (Definition and
> Continuity of Entities):
>
>   If the entity that defines another entity is amended such that it
>   defines the second entity both before and after the amendment, but
>   with different attributes, then the second entity and its
>   attributes continue to exist to whatever extent is possible under
>   the new definitions.
>
>
> Caller's Evidence:
>
> From adopted proposal 8919:
>
> Amend R2645 by replacing:
>
>- Score Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player's
>  (defaulting to the wielder if not specified) Score is increased
>  by 3.
>
> with:
>
>- Radiance Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player
>  (defaulting to the wielder if not specified) gains 3 radiance.
>
>
> From Rule 2645 (The Stones):
>
>   The following stones are defined, one per paragraph, with the
>   following format: Stone Name (Frequency, Smoothness): Description.
>
>
> It seems like the different attributes that were changed are just the Stone
> Name and Description, and common sense indicates they're the same stone.
>
> ==
>

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-03-22 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Wed 22 Mar 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4017 Assigned to ais523  Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:11:49
4018 Assigned to Murphy  Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:12:25


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4013 G.
4015 Janet
4012 snail
4016 nix
4017 ais523
4018 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
4018 Assigned to Murphy [Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:12:25]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4018
 I currently own the Radiance stone.

4017 Assigned to ais523 [Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:11:49]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4017
 snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4016 Judged FALSE by nix [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4016
 cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
 adopt proposal 8911.

4015 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4015
 This is a valid objection.

4014 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 05 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4014
 Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

4013 Judged FALSE by G. [Thu 23 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4013
 Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
 'Riemann is'.

4012 Judged TRUE by snail [Tue 14 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

4011 Judged TRUE by snail [Wed 01 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4011
 There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
 which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

4010 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Mon 27 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4010
 The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
 applied.

4006 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4006
 To meet the requirements of Rule 2201 upon acceping a Claim of
 Error regarding a document, it is enough for the publisher of that
 document to provide information that clearly and unambiguously
 determines the text of the revised document.

4005 Judged TRUE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4005
 Rule 2201 requires of a publisher of a document, upon acceping a
 Claim of Error, to publish the literal text of the revised
 document.

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-03-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Sun 19 Mar 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4017 Assigned to ais523  Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:11:49
4018 Assigned to Murphy  Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:12:25


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4013 G.
4015 Janet
4012 snail
4016 nix
4017 ais523
4018 Murphy


OPEN CASES
---
4018 Assigned to Murphy [Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:12:25]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4018
 I currently own the Radiance stone.

4017 Assigned to ais523 [Due Sun 26 Mar 2023 17:11:49]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4017
 snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4016 Judged FALSE by nix [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4016
 cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
 adopt proposal 8911.

4015 Judged FALSE by Janet [Sun 12 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4015
 This is a valid objection.

4014 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 05 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4014
 Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

4013 Judged FALSE by G. [Thu 23 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4013
 Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
 'Riemann is'.

4012 Judged TRUE by snail [Tue 14 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

4011 Judged TRUE by snail [Wed 01 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4011
 There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
 which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

4010 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Mon 27 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4010
 The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
 applied.

4009 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sat 18 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4009
 In this message, Apathy was declared.

4008 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Thu 16 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4008
 It costs 2 hooves to get a jersey for a horse and add a horse to
 that horse's pull.

4006 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4006
 To meet the requirements of Rule 2201 upon acceping a Claim of
 Error regarding a document, it is enough for the publisher of that
 document to provide information that clearly and unambiguously
 determines the text of the revised document.

4005 Judged TRUE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4005
 Rule 2201 requires of a publisher of a document, upon acceping a
 Claim of Error, to publish the literal text of the revised
 document.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4018 Assigned to Murphy

2023-03-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4018.  I assign it to Murphy.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4018

===  CFJ 4018  ===

  I currently own the Radiance stone.

==

Caller:snail
Barred:Janet

Judge: Murphy

==

History:

Called by snail:  15 Mar 2023 03:13:52
Assigned to Murphy:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments for TRUE:
The Radiance stone is the same stone as the Score stone, just with
different attributes, and so falls under Rule 1586 (Definition and
Continuity of Entities):

  If the entity that defines another entity is amended such that it
  defines the second entity both before and after the amendment, but
  with different attributes, then the second entity and its
  attributes continue to exist to whatever extent is possible under
  the new definitions.


Caller's Evidence:

>From adopted proposal 8919:

Amend R2645 by replacing:

   - Score Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player's
 (defaulting to the wielder if not specified) Score is increased
 by 3.

with:

   - Radiance Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player
 (defaulting to the wielder if not specified) gains 3 radiance.


>From Rule 2645 (The Stones):

  The following stones are defined, one per paragraph, with the
  following format: Stone Name (Frequency, Smoothness): Description.


It seems like the different attributes that were changed are just the Stone
Name and Description, and common sense indicates they're the same stone.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4017 Assigned to ais523

2023-03-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4017.  I assign it to ais523.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4017

===  CFJ 4017  ===

  snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:snail

Judge: ais523

==

History:

Called by G.: 14 Mar 2023 19:11:01
Assigned to ais523:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

When Proposal 8919 *started* taking effect, R2657 read in part:
  Each time a player fulfills a scoring condition, the officer
  associated with the condition CAN once by announcement, and SHALL
  in an officially timely fashion, add to that player's score the
  associated amount of points, rounded down.

  Below is a list of scoring conditions and their associated points
  and officers.
  [...]
* Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1
  (Assessor).

When Proposal 8919 *finished* taking effect, R2657 read in part:
   Each time a player fulfills a radiance condition, e CAN once by
   announcement (specifying any indicated info) gain the associated
   radiance.

   Below is a list of radiance conditions:
   [...]
 * Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1 (must
   specify proposal number)

I think the "when" is triggered when the proposal *first* starts
taking effect, so e earned the right to be awarded by the old system
(which was then made impossible to give via rule change), but not the
new system.  A counterargument is that since the proposal is still
"taking effect" when the new text came into being, that was awarded
somehow too - but interpreting the trigger as continuous is a
self-conflict with the first sentence of the rule that says "each
time", which implies a specific single instant.

Caller's Evidence:

On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 11:46=E2=80=AFAM secretsnail9 via agora-business
 wrote:
>
> For the adoption of P8919, I gain 1 radiance (co-author).
>
> --
> snail

Proposal 8919:
//
ID: 8919
Title: Radiance v1.1
Adoption index: 3.0
Author: nix
Co-authors: G., 4st, snail

[This proposal reskins points/score as "radiance" and also changes the
scoring conditions to be cashed by players. IE, insteead of the assessor
granting points for proposals, each player must claim them. Also
introduce gains/grants language to get rid of clunkier things, and adds
some requirements to specify your radiance when winning, and where you
gained the radiance from when you do.]

Retitle R2656 to "Radiance".

Amend R2656 to read in full:

   A player's Radiance is an integer player switch defaulting to 0,
   tracked by the Herald. When a player is "granted" or "gains" a
   specified amount of radiance, eir radiance is increased by that
   amount.

   Upon a correct announcement from a player that eir radiance is 100
   or more (correctly specifying the amount), e wins the game. Then,
   eir radiance is set to 0, and all other players' radiance are set
   to half their current value rounded down.

   At the start of every quarter, all radiance switches are set to
   half their current value rounded down.

For each player, set eir radiance switch to be equal to the value eir
score switch was at immediately before this proposal was adopted.

Retitle R2657 to "Gaining Radiance".

Amend R2657 to read, in full:

   Each time a player fulfills a radiance condition, e CAN once by
   announcement (specifying any indicated info) gain the associated
   radiance.

   Below is a list of radiance conditions:

 * Being the author of a proposal that takes effect: 5 (must
   specify proposal number)

 * Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1 (must
   specify proposal number)

 * Having an Agoran Birthday: X, where X is the number of active
   players during eir birthday.

 * Judging a CFJ that e was assigned to without violating a time
   limit to do so, unless at the time of judgement the case was
   open due to self-filing a motion to reconsider it: 2 (must
   specify CFJ number)

Amend R2659 by replacing "increase eir own score by (X^2)-X points" with
"gain (X^2)-X radiance" and replacing "increase eir own score by (X-1)*2
points" with "gain (X-1)*2 radiance".

In R2670 replacing:

 The score of the player that has the most dollaries is increased
 by 30.  In the event of an N-way tie, instead, each tied
 player's score is increased by 30/N points, rounded

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4016 Judged FALSE by nix

2023-03-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4016
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4016  ===

  cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
  adopt proposal 8911.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: nix
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by ais523: 05 Mar 2023 20:40:06
Assigned to nix:  10 Mar 2023 20:56:52
Judged FALSE by nix:  12 Mar 2023 15:44:37

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Sun, 2023-03-05 at 15:27 -0500, Rose Strong via agora-business wrote:
> I vote FOR on all proposals.
>
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2023, 6:36 PM secretsnail9 via agora-official <
> agora-official@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
[snip]
> > I hereby distribute each listed proposal, initiating a referendum
> > on it, and removing it from the proposal pool.
[snip]
> > ID  Author(s)   AITitle
> > ---
> > 8914~   nix 1.5   Can't Trust Em To Do Eir Own
> > Work
> > 8915~   4st, G., Janet  1.0   Reenactment V2
> > 8916~   4st, Janet  1.0   Ongoing obligation
> > 8917*   Janet   3.0   No
> > 8918~   4st, nix, G. Murphy 1.0   Ritual Paper Dance V2
> > 8919*   nix, G., 4st, snail 3.0   Radiance v1.1
> > 8920*   Janet   3.0   Adopted change re-application
> >

Caller's Arguments:

cuddlybanana stated "I vote FOR on all proposals", and
quoted a message that listed only a proper subset of the proposals that
are currently open for voting (and as far as I can tell, is eligible to
vote on all such proposals). Should that be interpreted as voting FOR
on all the proposals that can be voted on, or only on the proposals
that were listed in the quoted message?

--

Judge nix's Arguments:

I judge this CFJ FALSE. Arguments follow.

The wording of the vote in question is "I vote FOR on all proposals.",
and it was in reply to the thread with distribution of proposals
8914-8920. Cuddlybanana made no other acknowledgments of proposal 8911,
even tho e could have voted separately on that distribution.

"All" means "all", without other specifiers, so cuddlybanana specified
*every* proposal, including many that are not available to vote on. It
is doubtful to me that cuddlybanana intended to vote on every proposal
that exists, but that's what eir statement seems to say.

Additionally, even if I ignore that hitch, I truly cannot decide whether
e intended to vote for just that set of proposals in the thread, or
everything currently available to em. Both seem equally plausible with a
blanket vote. There's historical precedent for players to, occasionally
or frequently, vote the same way on every proposal, so it's certainly
not unreasonable. But e did quote a specific distribution, so that
interpretation is reasonable too.

Rule 683 sets out requirements for a ballot, reproduced below with my
own emphasis added:

   An entity submits a ballot on an Agoran decision by publishing a
   notice satisfying the following conditions:

   1. The ballot is submitted during the voting period for the
  decision.

   2. The entity casting the ballot (the voter) was, at the
  initiation of the decision, a player.

   **3. The ballot clearly identifies the matter to be decided.**

   4. The ballot clearly identifies a valid vote, as determined by
  the voting method.

   **5. The ballot clearly sets forth the voter's intent to place
  the identified vote.**

   6. The voter has no other valid ballots on the same decision.

Is the matter clearly identified? Doubtful, there's multiple valid
interpretations of the scope. Is the intent clear? I think not at all.

Thus not only do I think this is not a ballot on 8911, I do not think
this is a ballot at all, on any proposal.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4015 Judged FALSE by Janet

2023-03-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4015
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4015  ===

  This is a valid objection.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Janet
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by 4st:01 Mar 2023 04:50:01
Assigned to Janet:03 Mar 2023 22:26:08
Motion to Extend filed:   10 Mar 2023 05:03:53
Judged FALSE by Janet:12 Mar 2023 03:21:56

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 6:31 PM Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2023, 3:59 PM Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
>
> > MAD ENGINEER'S WEEKLY REPORT
> >
> > The Device is off.
> >
> >
> > EXPERIMENT 00074 INTENT TO INVENT
> >
> > I intend, with Agoran consent, to cause Rule 2655 to amend the Rule "The
> > Device" by appending the following a a list item to the "When the device
> > is on:" list:
> >
> > ...
> >
>
>
> I oppose this intent because it is not my suggestion. :)
>

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: the intent is clear and unambiguous.
(I think this is fairly clear, but Janet has issued a doubt without making
a CFJ and it will come time to decide whether the intent passed or not
eventually.)

--

Judge Janet's Arguments:

Objecting to an intent is a "by announcement" action. Therefore, to
perform it, one must, "clearly and unambiguously", specify the action
and set forth intent to perform it by sending the message. The possible
ambiguity in this case is whether 4st could have meant "oppose" to mean
that e was informally stating eir disapproval to the intent without
formally objecting. In fact, a person who meant to do exactly that could
quite plausibly have written the same thing that 4st did, and, for an
unwary Agoran, it would be a much more natural way to write it than "I
am against, but do not object to, this intent". I find that this is
enough to create ambiguity with respect to whether intent to perform the
action was set forth by sending the message. This causes the purported
to fail.

Having found that intent to perform the action of objecting was not set
forth, I do not reach whether the action itself was sufficiently clearly
specified.

Judged FALSE.

Judge Janet's Evidence:

Rule 478/41 (Power=3)
Fora

  Publicity is a secured forum switch with values Public,
  Discussion, and Foreign (default), tracked by the Registrar.

  The Registrar may change the publicity of a forum without
  objection as long as:

  1. e sends eir announcement of intent to that forum; and

  2. if the forum is to be made public, the announcement by which
 the Registrar makes that forum public is sent to all existing
 public fora.

  Each player should ensure e can receive messages via each public
  forum.

  A public message is a message sent via a public forum, or sent to
  all players and containing a clear designation of intent to be
  public. A rule can also designate that a part of one public
  message is considered a public message in its own right. To
  "publish" or "announce" something is to send a public message
  whose body contains that thing. To do something "publicly" is
  to do that thing within a public message.

  Where the rules define an action that a person CAN perform "by
  announcement", that person performs that action by, in a single
  public message, specifying the action and setting forth intent to
  perform that action by sending that message, doing both clearly
  and unambiguously.

  Any action performed by sending a message is performed at the time
  date-stamped on that message. Actions in messages (including
  sub-messages) are performed in the order they appear in the
  message, unless otherwise specified. Allowing actions performed by
  sending a message to take place simultaneously must be done
  explicitly and is secured at power 2.

Rule 2124/31 (Power=3)
Performing Tabled Actions

  For a given tabled intent, a player CAN, unless otherwise
  forbidden by the rules or the document enabling the action, act on
  eir own behalf, by announcement, to:
  * Become a supporter ("support" it), unless e tabled or previously
supported it;
  * Become an objector ("object to" it), unless e previously
objected to

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4012 Judged TRUE by snail

2023-03-19 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4012
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4012  ===

  The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
  including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:Janet

Judge: snail
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by G.: 19 Feb 2023 20:07:07
Assigned to R. Lee:   21 Feb 2023 01:06:14
R. Lee Recused:   05 Mar 2023 21:57:38
Assigned to snail:05 Mar 2023 21:57:38
Judged TRUE by snail: 14 Mar 2023 18:32:25

==

Caller's Evidence:

The text in question (> quotes added)
>_
>  _\ /_
>  >_X_<
>   .---._  /_\  _.---.
> /`.---._`{/ \}`_.---.`\
>| /   ___`{\_/}`___   \ |
>\ \."`*  `"{_}"`  *`"./ /
> \ \  )\  _\ /_  /(  / /
>  \ *<()( >_X_< )()>* /
>   |._)/._./_\._.\(_.|
>  jgs  |() () () () () ()|
>   <><>><>
>  `"""`


Caller's Arguments:

The cited text is ASCII art.  Art is an attempt to communicate...
something. For this type of communication, whitespace is clearly
substantial, as the quoted text has a very different meaning and (I would
argue) communicates something substantially different compared to:

  _ _\ /_ >_X_< .---._ /_\ _.---. /`.---._`{/ \}`_.---.`\ | /
  ___`{\_/}` ___  \ | \ \."`* `"{_}"` *`"./ / \ \ )\ _\ /_ /( / / \
  *<()( >_X_< )()>* / |._)/._./_\._.\(_.| jgs |() () () () () ()|
  <><>><> `"""`

(this should be the same non-whitespace characters with whitespace
reduced/formatted as wrapped rule text).  If the rulekeepor were allowed
to replace one with the other, that would be a substantial change of
meaning.

Rule 2429/1 (Bleach) reads:
  Replacing a non-zero amount of whitespace with a different
  non-zero amount of whitespace is generally insignificant, except
  for paragraph breaks.

While CFJ 3542 stresses that paragraphs are elements of "prose not
whitespace", it emphasizes this point in stating that it's the logical
structure of the text that most readily determines paragraphs.  In this
situation, I argue that "logical structure" is replaced with "artistic
structure" that comingles characters and whitespace in a precise manner,
and that's what determines paragraph breaks in the rule in question.

Therefore, in this rule, pretty much all the whitespace, and whitespace
following whitespace, represent "significant" whitespace, and are
therefore paragraph breaks.

It might seem like a semantic irrelevance to determine if ASCII art has
"paragraphs", but the purpose of this CFJ is not to allow a
proposal to refer to parts of this art by paragraph (that's kind of silly
and would be very hard to specify properly) but to determine whether
the whitespace in that rule is "significant" in terms of the rulekeepor's
ability to rearrange such rules.

--

Judge snail's Arguments:

I judge CFJ 4012 TRUE.

Certain punctuation and other symbols, such as the "-" in front of a list
item, may not be considered part of a paragraph, but in this case, each
collection of symbols that make up a line have a meaning, being part of
the ASCII art. I find that enough to make each line have it's own "logical
structure" in addition to "artistic structure". Each paragraph combined may
be readable as a whole, but that doesn't exclude each line from being its
own paragraph, with a meaning "this is the first line of the ASCII art"
and so on.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-03-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 10 Mar 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4015 Assigned to Janet   Due Fri 10 Mar 2023 22:26:08
4012 Assigned to snail   Due Sun 12 Mar 2023 21:57:38
4016 Assigned to nix Due Fri 17 Mar 2023 20:56:52


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4010 ais523
4011 snail
4013 G.
4014 Murphy
4015 Janet
4016 nix


OPEN CASES
---
4016 Assigned to nix [Due Fri 17 Mar 2023 20:56:52]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4016
 cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
 adopt proposal 8911.

4015 Assigned to Janet [Due Fri 10 Mar 2023 22:26:08]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4015
 This is a valid objection.

4012 Assigned to snail [Due Sun 12 Mar 2023 21:57:38]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4014 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 05 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4014
 Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

4013 Judged FALSE by G. [Thu 23 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4013
 Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
 'Riemann is'.

4011 Judged TRUE by snail [Wed 01 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4011
 There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
 which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

4010 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Mon 27 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4010
 The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
 applied.

4009 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sat 18 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4009
 In this message, Apathy was declared.

4008 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Thu 16 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4008
 It costs 2 hooves to get a jersey for a horse and add a horse to
 that horse's pull.

4007 Judged FALSE by G. [Wed 15 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4007
 The horses have been motivated this week.

4006 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4006
 To meet the requirements of Rule 2201 upon acceping a Claim of
 Error regarding a document, it is enough for the publisher of that
 document to provide information that clearly and unambiguously
 determines the text of the revised document.

4005 Judged TRUE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4005
 Rule 2201 requires of a publisher of a document, upon acceping a
 Claim of Error, to publish the literal text of the revised
 document.

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4014 Judged FALSE by Murphy

2023-03-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4014
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4014  ===

  Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: Murphy
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Janet:  28 Feb 2023 01:47:43
Assigned to Murphy:   03 Mar 2023 22:25:36
Judged FALSE by Murphy:   05 Mar 2023 22:17:09

==

Caller's Arguments:

P8906 attempts to insert a "paragraph", but the text to insert has two
paragraphs. This may be sufficiently ambiguous as to render the change
ineffective under Rule 105/23.

I am not aware of any on-point precedent.


Caller's Evidence:

//
ID: 8906
Title: Stone Immunity Correction (Keeping Our Stones) Act
Adoption index: 2.0
Author: Janet
Co-authors:


[Restore the definition of immunity, and add security to it.]

Amend Rule 2643 ("Collecting Stones") by prepending the following paragraph:

{

A stone is immune if and only if it is defined as such by the rules of
power not less than 2.

A stone is immune if it is owned by Agora. A stone is immune if it has
been granted immunity since the last collection notice. The granting of
immunity is secured.

}


[Explicitly prohibit the Soul Stone from transferring stones owned by
Agora. This isn't technically needed with the previous change, but it's
better to just make it explicit to prevent accidentally it breaking
again in the future.]

Amend Rule 2645 ("The Stones") by replacing "When wielded, the Soul
Stone is transferred to the owner of a different specified non-immune
stone, then that stone is transferred to the wielder." with "When
wielded, the Soul Stone is transferred to the owner of a different
specified non-immune stone not owned by Agora, then that stone is
transferred to the wielder.".


[Disallow theft of Protected stones, and add a tiebreak.]

Amend Rule 2645 ("The Stones") by replacing the list item beginning
"Anti-Equatorial" with the following

{

- Anti-Equatorial Stone (Monthly, 5): When wielded, the mossiest
non-immune stone is transferred to the wielder. If more than one such
stone is tied for mossiest, a specified one is transferred. When this
happens, the Anti-Equatorial Stone's mossiness is incremented by 1.

}

//


Rule 105/23 (Power=3)
Rule Changes

  When the rules provide that an instrument takes effect, it can
  generally:

  1. enact a rule. The new rule has power equal to the minimum of
 the power specified by the enacting instrument, defaulting to
 one if the enacting instrument does not specify or if it
 specifies a power less than 0.1, and the maximum power
 permitted by other rules. The enacting instrument may specify a
 title for the new rule, which if present shall prevail. The ID
 number of the new rule cannot be specified by the enacting
 instrument; any attempt to so specify is null and void.

  2. repeal a rule. When a rule is repealed, it ceases to be a rule,
 its power is set to 0, and the Rulekeepor need no longer
 maintain a record of it.

  3. reenact a rule. A repealed rule identified by its most recent
 rule number MUST be reenacted with the same ID number and the
 next change identifier. If no text is specified, the rule is
 reenacted with the same text it had when it was most recently
 repealed. If the reenacting proposal provides new text for the
 rule, the rule SHOULD have materially the same purpose as did
 the repealed version. Unless specified otherwise by the
 reenacting instrument, a reenacted rule has power equal to the
 power it had at the time of its repeal (or power 1, if power
 was not defined at the time of that rule's repeal). If the
 reenacting instrument is incapable of setting the reenacted
 rule's power to that value, then the reenactment is null and
 void.

  4. amend the text of a rule.

  5. retitle (syn. amend the title of) a rule.

  6. change the power of a rule.

  A rule change is any effect that falls into the above classes.
  Rule changes always occur sequentially, never simultaneously.

  Any ambiguity in the specification of a rule change causes that
  change to be void and without effect. An inconsequential

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4016 Assigned to nix

2023-03-10 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4016.  I assign it to nix.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4016

===  CFJ 4016  ===

  cuddlybanana has voted FOR on the Agoran decision about whether to
  adopt proposal 8911.

==

Caller:ais523

Judge: nix

==

History:

Called by ais523: 05 Mar 2023 20:40:06
Assigned to nix:  [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Sun, 2023-03-05 at 15:27 -0500, Rose Strong via agora-business wrote:
> I vote FOR on all proposals.
>
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2023, 6:36 PM secretsnail9 via agora-official <
> agora-official@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
[snip]
> > I hereby distribute each listed proposal, initiating a referendum
> > on it, and removing it from the proposal pool.
[snip]
> > ID  Author(s)   AITitle
> > ---
> > 8914~   nix 1.5   Can't Trust Em To Do Eir Own
> > Work
> > 8915~   4st, G., Janet  1.0   Reenactment V2
> > 8916~   4st, Janet  1.0   Ongoing obligation
> > 8917*   Janet   3.0   No
> > 8918~   4st, nix, G. Murphy 1.0   Ritual Paper Dance V2
> > 8919*   nix, G., 4st, snail 3.0   Radiance v1.1
> > 8920*   Janet   3.0   Adopted change re-application
> >

Caller's Arguments:

cuddlybanana stated "I vote FOR on all proposals", and
quoted a message that listed only a proper subset of the proposals that
are currently open for voting (and as far as I can tell, is eligible to
vote on all such proposals). Should that be interpreted as voting FOR
on all the proposals that can be voted on, or only on the proposals
that were listed in the quoted message?

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4012 Assigned to snail

2023-03-05 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

I recuse R. Lee from CFJ 4012 for violating the time limit to judge
(and remove em from the judges' list pending response as per R2492p3).

I assign CFJ 4012 to snail.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4012

===  CFJ 4012  ===

  The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
  including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:Janet

Judge: snail

==

History:

Called by G.: 19 Feb 2023 20:07:07
Assigned to R. Lee:   21 Feb 2023 01:06:14
R. Lee Recused:   [Now]
Assigned to snail: [Now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

The text in question (> quotes added)
>_
>  _\ /_
>  >_X_<
>   .---._  /_\  _.---.
> /`.---._`{/ \}`_.---.`\
>| /   ___`{\_/}`___   \ |
>\ \."`*  `"{_}"`  *`"./ /
> \ \  )\  _\ /_  /(  / /
>  \ *<()( >_X_< )()>* /
>   |._)/._./_\._.\(_.|
>  jgs  |() () () () () ()|
>   <><>><>
>  `"""`


Caller's Arguments:

The cited text is ASCII art.  Art is an attempt to communicate...
something. For this type of communication, whitespace is clearly
substantial, as the quoted text has a very different meaning and (I would
argue) communicates something substantially different compared to:

  _ _\ /_ >_X_< .---._ /_\ _.---. /`.---._`{/ \}`_.---.`\ | /
  ___`{\_/}` ___  \ | \ \."`* `"{_}"` *`"./ / \ \ )\ _\ /_ /( / / \
  *<()( >_X_< )()>* / |._)/._./_\._.\(_.| jgs |() () () () () ()|
  <><>><> `"""`

(this should be the same non-whitespace characters with whitespace
reduced/formatted as wrapped rule text).  If the rulekeepor were allowed
to replace one with the other, that would be a substantial change of
meaning.

Rule 2429/1 (Bleach) reads:
  Replacing a non-zero amount of whitespace with a different
  non-zero amount of whitespace is generally insignificant, except
  for paragraph breaks.

While CFJ 3542 stresses that paragraphs are elements of "prose not
whitespace", it emphasizes this point in stating that it's the logical
structure of the text that most readily determines paragraphs.  In this
situation, I argue that "logical structure" is replaced with "artistic
structure" that comingles characters and whitespace in a precise manner,
and that's what determines paragraph breaks in the rule in question.

Therefore, in this rule, pretty much all the whitespace, and whitespace
following whitespace, represent "significant" whitespace, and are
therefore paragraph breaks.

It might seem like a semantic irrelevance to determine if ASCII art has
"paragraphs", but the purpose of this CFJ is not to allow a
proposal to refer to parts of this art by paragraph (that's kind of silly
and would be very hard to specify properly) but to determine whether
the whitespace in that rule is "significant" in terms of the rulekeepor's
ability to rearrange such rules.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-03-03 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Fri 03 Mar 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4012 Assigned to R. Lee  OVERDUE Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:06:14
4014 Assigned to Murphy  Due Fri 10 Mar 2023 22:25:36
4015 Assigned to Janet   Due Fri 10 Mar 2023 22:26:08


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4010 ais523
4011 snail
4012 R. Lee
4013 G.
4014 Murphy
4015 Janet


OPEN CASES
---
[Note: there may be an open and unassigned CFJ with a duplicate text
to CFJ 4015].

4015 Assigned to Janet [Due Fri 10 Mar 2023 22:26:08]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4015
 This is a valid objection.

4014 Assigned to Murphy [Due Fri 10 Mar 2023 22:25:36]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4014
 Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

4012 Assigned to R. Lee [Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:06:14]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4013 Judged FALSE by G. [Thu 23 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4013
 Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
 'Riemann is'.

4011 Judged TRUE by snail [Wed 01 Mar 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4011
 There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
 which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

4010 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Mon 27 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4010
 The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
 applied.

4009 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sat 18 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4009
 In this message, Apathy was declared.

4008 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Thu 16 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4008
 It costs 2 hooves to get a jersey for a horse and add a horse to
 that horse's pull.

4007 Judged FALSE by G. [Wed 15 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4007
 The horses have been motivated this week.

4006 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4006
 To meet the requirements of Rule 2201 upon acceping a Claim of
 Error regarding a document, it is enough for the publisher of that
 document to provide information that clearly and unambiguously
 determines the text of the revised document.

4005 Judged TRUE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4005
 Rule 2201 requires of a publisher of a document, upon acceping a
 Claim of Error, to publish the literal text of the revised
 document.

4004 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Sat 04 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4004
 I now own and control a Device.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4015 Assigned to Janet

2023-03-03 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4015.  I assign it to Janet.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4015

===  CFJ 4015  ===

  This is a valid objection.

==

Caller:4st

Judge: Janet

==

History:

Called by 4st:01 Mar 2023 04:50:01
Assigned to Janet:[now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 6:31 PM Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2023, 3:59 PM Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
>
> > MAD ENGINEER'S WEEKLY REPORT
> >
> > The Device is off.
> >
> >
> > EXPERIMENT 00074 INTENT TO INVENT
> >
> > I intend, with Agoran consent, to cause Rule 2655 to amend the Rule "The
> > Device" by appending the following a a list item to the "When the device
> > is on:" list:
> >
> > ...
> >
>
>
> I oppose this intent because it is not my suggestion. :)
>

Caller's Arguments:

Arguments FOR: the intent is clear and unambiguous.
(I think this is fairly clear, but Janet has issued a doubt without making
a CFJ and it will come time to decide whether the intent passed or not
eventually.)

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4014 Assigned to Murphy

2023-03-03 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4014.  I assign it to Murphy.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4014

===  CFJ 4014  ===

  Rule 2643 contains the text 'A stone is immune if and only if'.

==

Caller:Janet

Judge: Murphy

==

History:

Called by Janet:  28 Feb 2023 01:47:43
Assigned to Murphy::  [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

P8906 attempts to insert a "paragraph", but the text to insert has two
paragraphs. This may be sufficiently ambiguous as to render the change
ineffective under Rule 105/23.

I am not aware of any on-point precedent.


Caller's Evidence:

//
ID: 8906
Title: Stone Immunity Correction (Keeping Our Stones) Act
Adoption index: 2.0
Author: Janet
Co-authors:


[Restore the definition of immunity, and add security to it.]

Amend Rule 2643 ("Collecting Stones") by prepending the following paragraph:

{

A stone is immune if and only if it is defined as such by the rules of
power not less than 2.

A stone is immune if it is owned by Agora. A stone is immune if it has
been granted immunity since the last collection notice. The granting of
immunity is secured.

}


[Explicitly prohibit the Soul Stone from transferring stones owned by
Agora. This isn't technically needed with the previous change, but it's
better to just make it explicit to prevent accidentally it breaking
again in the future.]

Amend Rule 2645 ("The Stones") by replacing "When wielded, the Soul
Stone is transferred to the owner of a different specified non-immune
stone, then that stone is transferred to the wielder." with "When
wielded, the Soul Stone is transferred to the owner of a different
specified non-immune stone not owned by Agora, then that stone is
transferred to the wielder.".


[Disallow theft of Protected stones, and add a tiebreak.]

Amend Rule 2645 ("The Stones") by replacing the list item beginning
"Anti-Equatorial" with the following

{

- Anti-Equatorial Stone (Monthly, 5): When wielded, the mossiest
non-immune stone is transferred to the wielder. If more than one such
stone is tied for mossiest, a specified one is transferred. When this
happens, the Anti-Equatorial Stone's mossiness is incremented by 1.

}

//


Rule 105/23 (Power=3)
Rule Changes

  When the rules provide that an instrument takes effect, it can
  generally:

  1. enact a rule. The new rule has power equal to the minimum of
 the power specified by the enacting instrument, defaulting to
 one if the enacting instrument does not specify or if it
 specifies a power less than 0.1, and the maximum power
 permitted by other rules. The enacting instrument may specify a
 title for the new rule, which if present shall prevail. The ID
 number of the new rule cannot be specified by the enacting
 instrument; any attempt to so specify is null and void.

  2. repeal a rule. When a rule is repealed, it ceases to be a rule,
 its power is set to 0, and the Rulekeepor need no longer
 maintain a record of it.

  3. reenact a rule. A repealed rule identified by its most recent
 rule number MUST be reenacted with the same ID number and the
 next change identifier. If no text is specified, the rule is
 reenacted with the same text it had when it was most recently
 repealed. If the reenacting proposal provides new text for the
 rule, the rule SHOULD have materially the same purpose as did
 the repealed version. Unless specified otherwise by the
 reenacting instrument, a reenacted rule has power equal to the
 power it had at the time of its repeal (or power 1, if power
 was not defined at the time of that rule's repeal). If the
 reenacting instrument is incapable of setting the reenacted
 rule's power to that value, then the reenactment is null and
 void.

  4. amend the text of a rule.

  5. retitle (syn. amend the title of) a rule.

  6. change the power of a rule.

  A rule change is any effect that falls into the above classes.
  Rule changes always occur sequentially, never simultaneously.

  Any ambiguity in the specification of a rule change causes that
  change to be void and without effect. An inconsequential variation
  in the quotation of an existing rule does not constitute ambiguity
  for the purposes of this rule, but any other variation does.

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4013 Judged FALSE by G.

2023-03-03 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4013
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4013  ===

  Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
  'Riemann is'.

==

Caller:Janet
Barred:snail

Judge: G.
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by Janet:  20 Feb 2023 01:11:06
Assigned to G.:   21 Feb 2023 01:06:43
Judged FALSE by G.:   23 Feb 2023 14:57:47

==

Caller's Arguments:

I see a few possibilities:

* Each purported consent is unclear due to having an indeterminate
condition attached, so 0 contracts were created.

* Exactly one purported consent worked, based on whether the Riemann
hypothesis is true or false, so 1 contract was created.

* Both purported consents work, as the conditional doesn't affect
whether consent was given, so 2 contracts were created.

The applicable clause of Rule 2519/2 is item 1. This item does not
include any clarity standards for consenting, and it does not explicitly
mention conditionals. We could potentially read the same standard as "by
announcement" into "publicly stated" in order to make the purported
consents fail. Similarly, the rule could be read to make purported
conditional consents consent unconditionally, as I may have "publicly
stated" my consent, even if I attempted to hedge it, thus making both
consents work.

Rule 1742/23 also does not place any clarity standards on the creation
of contracts (other than "publicly"). Paragraph 3 does not apply
because, of the zero or more contracts that exist, their text is fully
public and well-specified (even if their existence is not). So I think
this comes down entirely to which purported consents work, rather than
the consents involving contracts specifically.

Caller's Evidence:

On Sun, Feb 19, 2023 at 5:11 PM Janet Cobb via agora-business  wrote:
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is true, I consent to, create, and join the
> following contract entitled "Riemann is True":
>
> {
>
> Well, I guess that's not particularly surprising.
>
> Only Janet can be a party to this contract; if any other person is a
> party, e immediately ceases to be.
>
> }
>
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is false, I consent to, create, and join the
> following contract entitled "Riemann is False":
>
> {
>
> Wow! That's amazing!
>
> Only Janet can be a party to this contract; if any other person is a
> party, e immediately ceases to be.
>
> }
>

Rule 2519/2 (Power=3)
Consent

  A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if,
  at the time the action took place:

  1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the
 action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement;
  2. e is party to a contract whose body explicitly and
  unambiguously indicates eir consent;
  3. the action is taken as part of a promise which e created; or
  4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to
 take place or assented to it taking place.

Rule 1742/23 (Power=2.5)
Contracts

  Any group of one or more consenting persons (the parties) may
  publicly make an agreement among themselves with the intention
  that it be binding upon them and be governed by the rules. Such
  an agreement is known as a contract. A contract may be modified,
  including by changing the set of parties, with the consent of all
  existing parties. A contract may also be terminated with the
  consent of all parties. A contract automatically terminates if the
  number of parties to it falls below one. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a
  person to become a party to a contract without eir consent.

  Parties to a contract governed by the rules SHALL act in
  accordance with that contract. This obligation is not impaired
  by contradiction between the contract and any other contract, or
  between the contract and the rules.

  Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, any change that would cause
  the full provisions or parties of a contract to become publicly
  unavailable is canceled and does not take effect.

  The portion of a contract's provisions that can be interpreted
  with reference only to information that is either publicly or
  generally available are known as its body; the remainder of the
  provisions are known as the annex.

  A party to a

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4011 Judged TRUE by snail

2023-03-03 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4011
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4011  ===

  There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
  which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:ais523

Judge: snail
Judgement: TRUE

==

History:

Called by G.: 19 Feb 2023 15:28:01
Assigned to snail:21 Feb 2023 01:05:43
Judged TRUE by snail: 01 Mar 2023 05:52:41

==

Caller's Arguments:

In CFJ 3941, I judged:
> First, to be clear, The Device switch and The Device rule are not
> "devices" by virtue of their names alone.

In CFJ 4004, Judge ais523 wrote:
> In order to resolve this CFJ, we need to be clear on what a device
> actually is. Rule 2654 has somehow managed to avoid defining it.
> However, rule 2655 does contain a definition: "The device is a
> singleton switch with values off (default) and on."

Neither judgement examined too deeply whether the explicit definition
of the device switch in R2655 contradicts the various properties of
"devices" defined in R2654 (e.g. switches aren't platinum).

To elaborate my CFJ 3941 arguments a bit, I think the various
definitional statements in R2654 describe different types of devices
and therefore define them in a way distinct from the switch.  In some
circumstances, definitions can be operational ("a platinum device")
without saying "a device is platinum" directly.

But the main purpose of this cfj is to look at the conflict between
the two judgements, so I'm not arguing too strongly for either side,
mainly trying to resolve the conflict.

--

Judge snail's Arguments:

I will first uphold the judgement of CFJ 3941, "the device" is not
necessarily a device. Imagine if there was another switch called "The CFJ",
it wouldn't be a CFJ just because of its name. So the question is, what
about the judgement of CFJ 4004 needs to change? It begins with this
assumption and bases most of its arguments off of it, so practically the
whole judgement needs rethinking, though its conclusion may be the same.

Since "the device" and "a device" are different classes of entities, I find
that enough to simply judge CFJ 4011 TRUE.

Rule 2654 (The Device) describes a few different kinds of devices: Agoran
devices, random devices, welcome devices. I wouldn't go so far to say it
"defines" them, though. It describes the properties of the different kinds
of devices, and also of the device itself, as if they were defined
elsewhere. The device is defined elsewhere, but devices seem to have no
definition, at least while the device is off. There are plenty of
definitions while the device is on, though. This likely functions similarly
to the definition of something such as a stamp being repealed and
reenacted: devices don't exist while they aren't defined, so CFJ 4004's
judgement seems to be correct.

==

OFF: [CotC] CFJ 4010 Judged FALSE by ais523

2023-03-03 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4010
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).

===  CFJ 4010  ===

  The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
  applied.

==

Caller:snail

Judge: ais523
Judgement: FALSE

==

History:

Called by snail:  19 Feb 2023 05:12:47
Assigned to ais523:   21 Feb 2023 01:05:11
Judged FALSE by ais523:   27 Feb 2023 17:11:13

==

Caller's Evidence:

> On Feb 18, 2023, at 10:40 PM, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
>
> In proposal 8898:
>
>> Amend R2675 (Dream of Wandering) by replacing the paragraph that starts
>> with "- Gardens" with:
>>
>> - Gardens: Immediately after a wandering, the Base Rockiness of each
>>Gardens Dreamer is increased by 1.
>
>
> The text to replace is a list item, not a paragraph. I am interpreting
> this as not being applied.
>
> --
> Janet Cobb
>
> Assessor, Mad Engineer, Rulekeepor, Stonemason


Caller's Arguments:

Light arguments for TRUE: a list item is a type of paragraph, and there's
nothing else the term "paragraph that starts with '- Gardens'" could refer
to.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by Jason:

I believe we've generally held that list items are either parts of
paragraphs or a separate thing, rather than being paragraphs themselves
(even if formatted as such). Also, "it can't possibly mean anything
else" isn't enough, given that we've rejected things like "Amend Rule
/R", even though that couldn't possibly mean anything else.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

CFJ 3778 found that list items could have whole line breaks inserted
between them and removed because they were not significant.  This is
not true with paragraphs.  If the section of text with ' - Gardens" is
taken to begin a paragraph, and is followed by additional list items
where the whitespace could be removed, the replaced paragraph would
include all of those line items.  Or at least it is unclear where the
paragraph ends.

Additional CFJ to consider -  In CFJ 3451, Judge Tiger explicitly
finds that the R105 standard is even stricter than "everyone knows
what was meant and there's only one reasonable interpretation" (maybe
R105 should be weakened a tad, but that would be a legislative not
judicial correction):

Judge Tiger wrote:
> By the natural-language interpretation of ambiguity alone, I would deem
> that using the wrong ID, which is not used by any other rule, and the
> correct title, is clear enough. Ambiguity implies multiple potential
> meanings. There is no sensible way for the "incorrect" number 2455 to be
> an indication of another meaning, or an attempt at obfuscation of the
> proposal's effect, when there is no rule 2455 but there is a 2445. I
> deem this case to not fall under the precedent of CFJ 1625.
>
> However, the second sentence of the paragraph specifies that any
> variation, other than "inconsequential variation in the quotation of a
> rule", constitutes ambiguity. I take this to be an extra safety measure:
> even if, as in this case, the intended meaning was never really
> ambiguous to us (to me), the rules require a higher standard of clarity.

https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3451
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3778

--

Additional discussion in DIS:

snail wrote:
> Looking at this CFJ (3778), it seems to say the opposite about line
> breaks within a paragraph:
>
> CFJ 3452 ruled that paragraph boundaries should be determined based mainly
> on grammatical structure rather than layout.  Following its reasoning, "A"
> above would all be considered a single paragraph, since it's a single
> grammatical sentence; therefore, there are no "paragraph breaks" to
> contend with and the changes *[inserting whole line breaks within a
> paragraph]* are definitely insignificant.
>
> Grammatically, each list item looks to be its own paragraph. The list
> items following the "- Gardens" list item are not able to have all of
> their whitespace removed, as this would contradict CFJ 3778: "[there
> is] a prohibition on merging or splitting paragraphs".
>
> If there was any ambiguity of whether the list items are all part of
> one paragraph, or each their own paragraph, the proposal resolves that
> ambiguity by referring to one of the list items as a paragraph.


G. wrote:
> Interestingly, this argument had the

OFF: [Arbitor] Court Gazette

2023-02-20 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

Agoran Court Gazette (Arbitor's Weekly Report)
Tue 21 Feb 2023


DEADLINES (details below)
---
4010 Assigned to ais523  Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:05:11
4011 Assigned to snail   Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:05:43
4012 Assigned to R. Lee  Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:06:14
4013 Assigned to G.  Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:06:43


INTERESTED JUDGES AND THEIR MOST RECENT CASE
---
4006 Janet
4009 Murphy
4010 ais523
4011 snail
4012 R. Lee
4013 G.


OPEN CASES
---
4013 Assigned to G. [Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:06:43]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4013
 Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
 'Riemann is'.

4012 Assigned to R. Lee [Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:06:14]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4012
 The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
 including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

4011 Assigned to snail [Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:05:43]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4011
 There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
 which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

4010 Assigned to ais523 [Due Tue 28 Feb 2023 01:05:11]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4010
 The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
 applied.


RECENTLY-JUDGED CASES
---
4009 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sat 18 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4009
 In this message, Apathy was declared.

4008 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Thu 16 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4008
 It costs 2 hooves to get a jersey for a horse and add a horse to
 that horse's pull.

4007 Judged FALSE by G. [Wed 15 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4007
 The horses have been motivated this week.

4006 Judged FALSE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4006
 To meet the requirements of Rule 2201 upon acceping a Claim of
 Error regarding a document, it is enough for the publisher of that
 document to provide information that clearly and unambiguously
 determines the text of the revised document.

4005 Judged TRUE by Janet [Mon 20 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4005
 Rule 2201 requires of a publisher of a document, upon acceping a
 Claim of Error, to publish the literal text of the revised
 document.

4004 Judged FALSE by ais523 [Sat 04 Feb 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4004
 I now own and control a Device.

4003 Judged FALSE by Murphy [Sun 22 Jan 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4003
 I won the game in this message.

4002 Judged TRUE by snail [Sun 22 Jan 2023]
 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?4002
 Destructor is part of Cannon's pull.

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4013 Assigned to G.

2023-02-20 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4013.  I assign it to G..

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4013

===  CFJ 4013  ===

  Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
  'Riemann is'.

==

Caller:Janet
Barred:snail

Judge: G.

==

History:

Called by Janet:  20 Feb 2023 01:11:06
Assigned to G.:   [now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

I see a few possibilities:

* Each purported consent is unclear due to having an indeterminate
condition attached, so 0 contracts were created.

* Exactly one purported consent worked, based on whether the Riemann
hypothesis is true or false, so 1 contract was created.

* Both purported consents work, as the conditional doesn't affect
whether consent was given, so 2 contracts were created.

The applicable clause of Rule 2519/2 is item 1. This item does not
include any clarity standards for consenting, and it does not explicitly
mention conditionals. We could potentially read the same standard as "by
announcement" into "publicly stated" in order to make the purported
consents fail. Similarly, the rule could be read to make purported
conditional consents consent unconditionally, as I may have "publicly
stated" my consent, even if I attempted to hedge it, thus making both
consents work.

Rule 1742/23 also does not place any clarity standards on the creation
of contracts (other than "publicly"). Paragraph 3 does not apply
because, of the zero or more contracts that exist, their text is fully
public and well-specified (even if their existence is not). So I think
this comes down entirely to which purported consents work, rather than
the consents involving contracts specifically.

Caller's Evidence:

On Sun, Feb 19, 2023 at 5:11 PM Janet Cobb via agora-business  wrote:
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is true, I consent to, create, and join the
> following contract entitled "Riemann is True":
>
> {
>
> Well, I guess that's not particularly surprising.
>
> Only Janet can be a party to this contract; if any other person is a
> party, e immediately ceases to be.
>
> }
>
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is false, I consent to, create, and join the
> following contract entitled "Riemann is False":
>
> {
>
> Wow! That's amazing!
>
> Only Janet can be a party to this contract; if any other person is a
> party, e immediately ceases to be.
>
> }
>

Rule 2519/2 (Power=3)
Consent

  A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if,
  at the time the action took place:

  1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the
 action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement;
  2. e is party to a contract whose body explicitly and
  unambiguously indicates eir consent;
  3. the action is taken as part of a promise which e created; or
  4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to
 take place or assented to it taking place.

Rule 1742/23 (Power=2.5)
Contracts

  Any group of one or more consenting persons (the parties) may
  publicly make an agreement among themselves with the intention
  that it be binding upon them and be governed by the rules. Such
  an agreement is known as a contract. A contract may be modified,
  including by changing the set of parties, with the consent of all
  existing parties. A contract may also be terminated with the
  consent of all parties. A contract automatically terminates if the
  number of parties to it falls below one. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a
  person to become a party to a contract without eir consent.

  Parties to a contract governed by the rules SHALL act in
  accordance with that contract. This obligation is not impaired
  by contradiction between the contract and any other contract, or
  between the contract and the rules.

  Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, any change that would cause
  the full provisions or parties of a contract to become publicly
  unavailable is canceled and does not take effect.

  The portion of a contract's provisions that can be interpreted
  with reference only to information that is either publicly or
  generally available are known as its body; the remainder of the
  provisions are known as the annex.

  A party to a contract CAN perform any of the following actions as
  explicitly and unambiguously permitted by the contract's body:

  * Act on behalf of

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4012 Assigned to R. Lee

2023-02-20 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4012.  I assign it to R. Lee.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4012

===  CFJ 4012  ===

  The text of Rule 2486/1 (The Royal Parade), up to but not
  including "IN CELEBRATION", consists of multiple paragraphs.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:Janet

Judge: R. Lee

==

History:

Called by G.: 19 Feb 2023 20:07:07
Assigned to R. Lee:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

The text in question (> quotes added)
>_
>  _\ /_
>  >_X_<
>   .---._  /_\  _.---.
> /`.---._`{/ \}`_.---.`\
>| /   ___`{\_/}`___   \ |
>\ \."`*  `"{_}"`  *`"./ /
> \ \  )\  _\ /_  /(  / /
>  \ *<()( >_X_< )()>* /
>   |._)/._./_\._.\(_.|
>  jgs  |() () () () () ()|
>   <><>><>
>  `"""`


Caller's Arguments:

The cited text is ASCII art.  Art is an attempt to communicate...
something. For this type of communication, whitespace is clearly
substantial, as the quoted text has a very different meaning and (I would
argue) communicates something substantially different compared to:

  _ _\ /_ >_X_< .---._ /_\ _.---. /`.---._`{/ \}`_.---.`\ | /
  ___`{\_/}` ___  \ | \ \."`* `"{_}"` *`"./ / \ \ )\ _\ /_ /( / / \
  *<()( >_X_< )()>* / |._)/._./_\._.\(_.| jgs |() () () () () ()|
  <><>><> `"""`

(this should be the same non-whitespace characters with whitespace
reduced/formatted as wrapped rule text).  If the rulekeepor were allowed
to replace one with the other, that would be a substantial change of
meaning.

Rule 2429/1 (Bleach) reads:
  Replacing a non-zero amount of whitespace with a different
  non-zero amount of whitespace is generally insignificant, except
  for paragraph breaks.

While CFJ 3542 stresses that paragraphs are elements of "prose not
whitespace", it emphasizes this point in stating that it's the logical
structure of the text that most readily determines paragraphs.  In this
situation, I argue that "logical structure" is replaced with "artistic
structure" that comingles characters and whitespace in a precise manner,
and that's what determines paragraph breaks in the rule in question.

Therefore, in this rule, pretty much all the whitespace, and whitespace
following whitespace, represent "significant" whitespace, and are
therefore paragraph breaks.

It might seem like a semantic irrelevance to determine if ASCII art has
"paragraphs", but the purpose of this CFJ is not to allow a
proposal to refer to parts of this art by paragraph (that's kind of silly
and would be very hard to specify properly) but to determine whether
the whitespace in that rule is "significant" in terms of the rulekeepor's
ability to rearrange such rules.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4011 Assigned to snail

2023-02-20 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4011.  I assign it to snail.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4011

===  CFJ 4011  ===

  There are different types of devices described or defined in R2654
  which do not refer to the device switch defined in R2655.

==

Caller:G.
Barred:ais523

Judge: snail

==

History:

Called by G.: 19 Feb 2023 15:28:01
Assigned to snail:[now]

==

Caller's Arguments:

In CFJ 3941, I judged:
> First, to be clear, The Device switch and The Device rule are not
> "devices" by virtue of their names alone.

In CFJ 4004, Judge ais523 wrote:
> In order to resolve this CFJ, we need to be clear on what a device
> actually is. Rule 2654 has somehow managed to avoid defining it.
> However, rule 2655 does contain a definition: "The device is a
> singleton switch with values off (default) and on."

Neither judgement examined too deeply whether the explicit definition
of the device switch in R2655 contradicts the various properties of
"devices" defined in R2654 (e.g. switches aren't platinum).

To elaborate my CFJ 3941 arguments a bit, I think the various
definitional statements in R2654 describe different types of devices
and therefore define them in a way distinct from the switch.  In some
circumstances, definitions can be operational ("a platinum device")
without saying "a device is platinum" directly.

But the main purpose of this cfj is to look at the conflict between
the two judgements, so I'm not arguing too strongly for either side,
mainly trying to resolve the conflict.

==

OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4010 Assigned to ais523

2023-02-20 Thread Kerim Aydin via agora-official

The below CFJ is 4010.  I assign it to ais523.

status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4010

===  CFJ 4010  ===

  The mentioned replacement in proposal 8898 was effectively
  applied.

==

Caller:snail

Judge: ais523

==

History:

Called by snail:  19 Feb 2023 05:12:47
Assigned to ais523:   [now]

==

Caller's Evidence:

> On Feb 18, 2023, at 10:40 PM, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote:
>
> In proposal 8898:
>
>> Amend R2675 (Dream of Wandering) by replacing the paragraph that starts
>> with "- Gardens" with:
>>
>> - Gardens: Immediately after a wandering, the Base Rockiness of each
>>Gardens Dreamer is increased by 1.
>
>
> The text to replace is a list item, not a paragraph. I am interpreting
> this as not being applied.
>
> --
> Janet Cobb
>
> Assessor, Mad Engineer, Rulekeepor, Stonemason


Caller's Arguments:

Light arguments for TRUE: a list item is a type of paragraph, and there's
nothing else the term "paragraph that starts with '- Gardens'" could refer
to.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by Jason:

I believe we've generally held that list items are either parts of
paragraphs or a separate thing, rather than being paragraphs themselves
(even if formatted as such). Also, "it can't possibly mean anything
else" isn't enough, given that we've rejected things like "Amend Rule
/R", even though that couldn't possibly mean anything else.

--

Gratuitous Arguments by G.:

CFJ 3778 found that list items could have whole line breaks inserted
between them and removed because they were not significant.  This is
not true with paragraphs.  If the section of text with ' - Gardens" is
taken to begin a paragraph, and is followed by additional list items
where the whitespace could be removed, the replaced paragraph would
include all of those line items.  Or at least it is unclear where the
paragraph ends.

Additional CFJ to consider -  In CFJ 3451, Judge Tiger explicitly
finds that the R105 standard is even stricter than "everyone knows
what was meant and there's only one reasonable interpretation" (maybe
R105 should be weakened a tad, but that would be a legislative not
judicial correction):

Judge Tiger wrote:
> By the natural-language interpretation of ambiguity alone, I would deem
> that using the wrong ID, which is not used by any other rule, and the
> correct title, is clear enough. Ambiguity implies multiple potential
> meanings. There is no sensible way for the "incorrect" number 2455 to be
> an indication of another meaning, or an attempt at obfuscation of the
> proposal's effect, when there is no rule 2455 but there is a 2445. I
> deem this case to not fall under the precedent of CFJ 1625.
>
> However, the second sentence of the paragraph specifies that any
> variation, other than "inconsequential variation in the quotation of a
> rule", constitutes ambiguity. I take this to be an extra safety measure:
> even if, as in this case, the intended meaning was never really
> ambiguous to us (to me), the rules require a higher standard of clarity.

https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3451
https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3778

--

Additional discussion in DIS:

snail wrote:
> Looking at this CFJ (3778), it seems to say the opposite about line
> breaks within a paragraph:
>
> CFJ 3452 ruled that paragraph boundaries should be determined based mainly
> on grammatical structure rather than layout.  Following its reasoning, "A"
> above would all be considered a single paragraph, since it's a single
> grammatical sentence; therefore, there are no "paragraph breaks" to
> contend with and the changes *[inserting whole line breaks within a
> paragraph]* are definitely insignificant.
>
> Grammatically, each list item looks to be its own paragraph. The list
> items following the "- Gardens" list item are not able to have all of
> their whitespace removed, as this would contradict CFJ 3778: "[there
> is] a prohibition on merging or splitting paragraphs".
>
> If there was any ambiguity of whether the list items are all part of
> one paragraph, or each their own paragraph, the proposal resolves that
> ambiguity by referring to one of the list items as a paragraph.


G. wrote:
> Interestingly, this argument had the opposite effect on me.  Before
> you said it, I thought "we've all agreed these are list items not
> paragraphs, the question is whether a proposal

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