[s-b] Justice Reminder

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is the last nday Personman and TPR have to rule on the appeal of 
"All is Not Made Right", the text of which is included below.

See various posts from around the time of this message for the full 
arguments presented by the Plaintiff and Defendant.

{{
__All Is Not Made Right__

Plaintiff: Zarpint
Defendant: Wonko

Assigned Judge: Personman
Original Ruling: FALSE

Appellate Judges: Personman, The Pusher Robot
Appelate Ruling: pending (due at the end of nweek 73, nday 1)


Statement:
The following attempts to change the gamestate by Wonko were not legal.

  On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 08:32:49PM -0400, Daniel Lepage wrote:
> Ok, I would say the time is right for a little god-mode loophole I'd
> been sitting on for a bit...
>
> If there do not exist Cards called 'Red','Green', or 'Indigo', I hereby
> create the following cards; if they do exist, I modify them to have the
> following properties:

[snip]

> Then I move the cards around in such a way that the current cards page
> shows accurately what cards people have (this is still showing last
> nweek's set up).
>
> I cause all players and other objects to cease to be Stained with
> Tomato juice. I destroy all Tomatoes.
>
> I create four tomatoes in the possession of PersonMan.
>
> I create and destroy tildex as needed so that the current TildexCount
> Page is accurate.
>
> Then I award myself a Win, and modify r699 to read:
>
> {{
> __The Slightly Less Important Not-So Default Case__
>
>   Any action is legal if a majority of all Players cannot distinguish 
> it
> from an otherwise-legal action.
>   This rule takes precedence over all other rules except rule 33.
>
> }}
>
> I can do this because the current wording of r699 states "Any action
> indistinguishable from a legal action by at least one Player is legal."
> The Voice has not posted in over an nyear, and eir nomic email account
> seems not to be receiving messages, so I submit that e is not watching
> the game and thus cannot distinguish my actions from a set of legal
> actions, so all my actions are legalized by r699.
>
> Moreover, the fact that I'm claiming that I can do these things clearly
> indicates that *I* also cannot distinguish them from legal actions.

Argument by Plaintiff:

"indistinguishable" means "cannot be distinguished". We have no way of
knowing if the Voice is reading the list archives or not, and
regardless, both he and Wonko are capable of distinguishing them as
follows:

Making a claim does not indicate that you think your claim is correct.
Defendant's argument seems to be:

1. If I cannot distinguish these actions from legal actions, they're 
legal.
2. I claim I can do these things.
3. Therefore, I cannot distinguish them from legal actions.
4. Therefore they're legal.

Step 3 does not follow. In fact, if they are not legal, e is certainly
capable of distinguishing, and it is circular to argue that the actions
are legal because e can't distinguish them, and e can't distinguish them
because they are legal.

Since no rule other than r699 gives any authorization for these actions,
and Defendant's r699 argument does not follow, the actions are illegal
by The Default Case.

Argument by Judge Personman:

Regarding All is Not Made Right, we have no way of judging Wonko's
coherency, intelligence, or irrational beliefs. None of these are Game
Objects, and B Nomic has no rules for ascertaining any information 
about the
actual person behind a Player, and makes no provisions for what sort of
people they should be, or for that matter whether they even have to be
people. just so long as they post to a public forum,  B Nomic is happy. 
A
rule which depends on something not defined in the game (ie, Wonko's 
ability
to distinguish legal rules from illegal ones) can refer only to the 
player's
publicly posted statements regarding those things.

}}


--
Wonko

"Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the 
money to do it right."
     -Kurt Herbert Alder

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