spoon-business: Ruling on CFJ 254

[Eric Gerlach <egerlach@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On the matter of the statement:

"Any points awarded as a result of the passage of Proposal 229 and/or a 
rule resulting from its passage must be awarded to Bob the Voting Fish as 
indicated by Rule 155, assuming Rule 155 was in effect at the time of the 
passage of Proposal 229. If Proposal 229 failed to pass, this CFJ is 
rescinded."

Bean renders his judgement:

This statement is judged FALSE.

Analysis: This is a really tough one.  Try to follow this train of 
logic:  Rule 155 was in effect at the time of Proposal 229's passage, and 
so governs the actions taken by the proposal.  However, the only action 
explicitly named in this proposal is the creation of a rule.  Now, Rule 155 
applies to this new rule if and only if immediate actions taken by this 
rule are considered to be "included in the actions of the proposal." (as 
paraphrased from Rule 155)

So, the statement boils down to: "The immediate effects of a rule are 
included in the actions of the proposal that created it."  This is not 
defined anywhere in the rules.  However, it seems slightly absurd and bad 
legal precedent to judge this "condensed" statement as TRUE [[ If I were to 
do that, changes to the way votes are counted could become difficult, if 
not impossible ]].  Not to mention, there is nothing in the rules which 
states that a rule cannot determine who voted for the proposal which 
created it, and so by Rule 18, it is allowed.

And so, unfortunately against the spirit of Rule 155, I must rule FALSE.

[[ I am making this judgement against my own personal bias... my initial 
instinct was to rule TRUE, but on closer inspection, that would not have 
been a fair ruling.  Hey, I'm likely going to lose 17 points on this as well. ]]