[s-b] Consultations on the Pencil Sharpener

["Craig Daniel" <teucer@xxxxxxxxx>]

I submit the following Consultation, naming comex as the unbeliever:

{Question: Does teucer have any mackerel?

Arguments: if the Pencil Sharpener works as advertised (and I believe
it does), then the mackerel it destroyed of mine are, in fact, the
entirety of my mackerel. At least, they might be. The sum is enough
for this to be the case, but when I bought a rapier I didn't specify
whether or not all of the mackerel being spent to buy and use it had
been created by the Laser Printer. Nor did Warrigal specify whether
the ten he loaned me came from my prior holdings or not.

If mackerel are non-fungible (which, as they are distinct game
objects, seems reasonable) then none of the various game actions
involving them this era worked, since nobody ever specified which
mackerel they were destroying and so forth. The Laser Printer would
have worked, except that we didn't actually have a color to create it
in. Thus, the Pencil Sharpener fails because the mackerel it destroys
don't exist. I still have exactly m100 per the PD, as do the four
other squared players (comex, ehird, Sgeo, and Warrigal).

If mackerel are fungible (which also seems reasonable; they're
currency, after all) then the pencil sharpener failed because it
failed to specify what quantity of mackerel were being destroyed.

By the way, if a specific number of mackerel were to have been
specified in this case - or if some strange fluke might inspire the
Priest to answer NO on the grounds that the sharpener worked when both
interpretations suggest otherwise, also a plausible decision - it's
worth noting that it still may not be able to affect me. Laws do not
have the force of the Ruleset behind them except on squares of the
color where they are the Laws; as the Laws of White cannot oblige me
to destroy my macks I remain only mostly convinced they can destroy
them directly. But I am mostly convinced, and so would have to judge
that a properly-worded Sharpener would have worked if I were assigned
to do so.}

 - teucer
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