Orc In A Spacesuit on 6 May 2003 02:56:01 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] Veni, Vidi, Vacancy


From: "Baron von Skippy" <baronvonskippy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
My mistake. That last paragraph should have read:
"Penguin" is never defined. There is no such thing as a Penguin. There
is "the act of becoming a Penguin", which is defined to have exactly
the same effects as "the act of becoming a Toad"; "the act of becoming
a Toad" has the effect of causing the object taking the action to end
up as a toad; therefore, "the act of becoming a Penguin", having the
same effect on the object, also has the effect of causing the object
taking the action to end up as a toad.

Now we're back to the logical contradiction. To say that a player "becomes a penguin" (as opposed to "begins to become a penguin", "has a predisposition to become a penguin", "takes some but not all of the necessary steps toward becoming a penguin") indicates a process that has as its end being a penguin, not a toad. And since a penguin is in fact defined as something a player can become as the result of the triggering of an IID, as opposed to all the toad-making possibilities that define the existence of a toad, "penguin" and "toad" are two different things.

So the rule that states where penguins come from regulates the existence of penguinship, even if all other effects of toadsmanship carry over.

In the absence of a definition of a penguin, I believe that "becomes a penguin" should be interpreted as a single event. The Baron does not perform the action "become", targeting emself and the class Penguin; rather, e performs the action "become a penguin", which is defined to be equivalent to the action "become a toad". "Become a Penguin" is, IMHO, no different from the action "Vote" or "Propose".

If "penguin" were defined in any meaningful way in the ruleset, then I would agree with you, citing the "Drink a glass of champagne" vs. "Drink" a "Glass of Champagne" CFI; but if the object in question is not an object, I don't think we can break this up into "become" a "penguin"; it is simply "become a penguin". It's like your bit about hiring Contract Mining Companies... didn't we decide that in your favor? Namely that, in the absence of any sort of mining contractors, the statement that players could "pay mining contractors to mine things" did not first require that mining contractors be objects?

-I remember back when we had the occasional intelligent discussion in here... on a topic which actually mattered for sonething... anyway, you two are playing havoc with my morphic resonance field, and I don't feel like ending up with flippers and webbed feet permanently from the coinfusion, so if you could maybe resolve this...?-

[[BvS]]

http://www.donsutherlandstudio.com/images/z2Penguin.jpg

My work here is done.

Orc in a Spacesuit

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