RE: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Moderation among the justi ce reform

["Doig, Gavin" <GDoig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Didn't platonism go out with the Ancient Greeks? 
>
As a view of real life, perhaps. As a view of nomic? No. It's a good idea
not to confuse the two. ;-)

Platonism is pretty much a standard nomic viewpoint, largely because it just
makes a lot more sense (for nomic). I'm not just making this stuff up as I
go along; it's a shoulders-of-giants thing.

Our rules *are* like inviolable laws of physics; rule 152 ensures that. In
fact, the analogy (although remember that analogy != identity)  with
physical laws works well - the rules completely define the behaviour of
everything *within the universe*. The universe, in this case, is the game
state. Rule 10 is unnecessary because any entity defined solely by the rules
cannot help but obey them, and players can't be made to do so (because we
come from outside the universe of the rules). I can post English messages to
public fora even with the sushi, or post 40 proosals, for example, and
nothing can stop me. If I do, though, r152 kicks in, and any such actions I
attempt never take place *within the game universe* because the rules don't
permit them.

You miss the point of the CFJ system. Yes, physical laws don't need courts
to enforce them; that's not what the CFJ system does. It simply lets *us*
know what has happened. We're chained up in the cave, looking at the shadows
on the wall. Our records of the rules and gamestate are the shadows; the
actual rules and gamestate are what cast the shadows; and the CFJ system is
just what we use to interpret the shadows. Exactly as you describe - the
physicals laws are just *there*, but our approximations to them sometimes
have to be updated to reflect them better.

The only problem with the Platonist interpretation is that it can lead to
having to recalculate months worth of game if you miss an error in our view
of the game for a long time, and that's what the statute of limitations is
for.

Platonism is more elegant, and much, much cooler.

uin.
Repeal rule 10!


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