On Sun, 2022-03-20 at 18:08 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-official wrote: > > I CFJ, barring Jason: secretsnail transferred 5000 coins and 6 wincards in > > the above message. > > I number the above CFJ 3951 and assign it to ais523.
This CFJ is, in effect, a CFJ about what "table an intent" means – it comes down to establishing what specific actions rule 1728 is permitting. The two main potential readings appear to be as follows: a) To "table an intent" is a method of creating a "tabled intent", which is an Agoran-legal construct (and a specific type of intent). This is an action comparable to creating a proposal or initiating a CFJ; it causes a new tabled intent to be created, and specifies its properties. b) To "table an intent" is an action that is applied to an existing intent, causing it to become "tabled". Intents are created by some other mechanism (presumably because they aren't Agoran-legal constructs, and thus can be recognised by Agora as a consequence of rule 2125; if rule 1728 isn't providing a mechanism of creating intents, then creating them is unregulated). The relevant meaning of "table" as a verb, in British English, is along the lines of "to propose, or put on the agenda". (American English has a similar verb, but with the opposite meaning, which is probably irrelevant here as it makes no sense in context.) This is compatible with both meanings: "propose" fits reading a), and "put on the agenda" fits reading b). It does seem to fit reading b) a little better, though. We can split reading b) into two sub-readings: b1) When discussing the tabling of an intent, the rules are talking about the moment from which it went from being untabled to being tabled. Thus, attempting to table an intent twice has no real effect – the intent was already tabled, so when a rule looks at the circumstances surrounding its tabling, it sees only the first instance. b2) Because "tabling an intent" is an action, rules that check for tablings of intents check for times at which the action was performed; an intent can be tabled twice, and when checking for the circumstances surrounding the tabling of an intent, the rules therefore see every instance of tabling of the intent simultaneously. However, there are a number of points in the rules for which reading b2) is incompatible with the reading of the rule: * Rule 1728 requires, when tabling an intent, that the intent's action and method are specified, and permits specifying conditions. In reading a), this serves as a method to specify the properties of the new tabled intent. In reading b), this would only serve as a method of *identifying* the intent (or of confirming the relevant properties, in much the same way that the Promotor has to specify the author of a proposal when distributing it). However, the wording of the rule strongly implies that the conditions are something that are specified by the tabler, rather than something pre-existing in the intent. Meanwhile, rule 2124 simply just refers to "[the intent's] conditions", rather than the conditions surrounding a particular tabling. This points strongly towards reading a), and favours reading b1) over b2). * Rule 1728 talks about "the person who tabled [an intent]", implying that only one person can table any given intent. It's just about possible that the text in question applies only to intents that were tabled by exactly 1 person, with the rest of the rule nonetheless applying also to intents that were tabled by multiple people, but this is not a natural reading of the rule. * Rule 1728 defines "intend" as a synonym for "table an intent". Even if "table" can be interpreted as a way to change the state of an existing intent, "intend" can't be – it's incompatible with the language of the rule for someone to have an intent to do something, someone (else?) to perform the action of intending to do it, and then for the original intent to still remain but to have changed state somehow. This again strongly points towards reading a). Again, I can just about see reading b1) applying here (the idea would be that the intent existed all along, and the "tabling" action is announcing the fact so that other players can take notice of it), but reading b2) doesn't make sense. Under reading b) here, the tabling action would also be inconsistent with other actions by announcement, in that the action has to be read as a statement of fact rather than as a speech act (i.e. "I intend to do X" would be read as a report that the intent exists). As such, the wording of the rule leans towards reading a), although reading b1) may not be entirely inconsistent with it. This does definitely mean, though, that either reading a) is the only viable reading, or else that we need a rule 217 tiebreak between the readings. Looking at the rule 217 tests: Game custom: It is definitely game custom that tabling an intent creates a new intent object, that can be supported, objected to, etc.., and that each intent is pretty much considered as its own object. In other words, reading a). Common sense: Under either reading b), the wording of the rule wouldn't exclude the possibility of tabling *someone else's* intent to do something, using the language "I intend". Even if that manages not to be inconsistent with the wording of the rule, it's definitely a violation of common sense. Past judgements: These are generally irrelevant, because they talk about a version of the rule which was written somewhat differently. In particular, they often talk about the special circumstances that arise due to intending not being an action by announcement (it wasn't in the old version of the rule). However, in the current version of the rule, intending *is* an action by announcement, so the reasoning in the past judgements no longer applies to the current version. The best interests of the game: These definitely favour reading a). Under reading b), tracking intents becomes very difficult (there's no Officer assigned to the job, and they may or may not have ever been mentioned at Agora); under reading b2), it becomes especially difficult because the entire history of an intent could become relevant arbitrarily far into the future. This also raises the question of determining whether two intents are the same or not (in order to determine the entire history of tablings of a particular intent, you need to work out which intent each tabling is attached to, and the information specified during a tabling isn't enough to work this out). In conclusion, it seems that reading a) is the correct reading of the rule. It might be the only reading consistent with the rule's text; and even if it isn't, rule 217 suggests that we use that reading rather than any of the other possibilities. In order for the statement of this CFJ to be TRUE, we have to take reading b2); neither reading a) nor even b1) is sufficient. As such, there's very strong evidence that this scam didn't work, and I judge CFJ 3951 FALSE. -- ais523
