Re: spoon-discuss: modification of 302/0, Subliminal eligiousIndoctrination

[Roland of Gilead <inertia@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Firstly, the purpose of RFJ's is to clarify a point of law. That is if
> the Rules are ambiguous about something and Players cannot agree on the
> correct interpretation, then an RFJ is used. An RFJ isn't something that
> should be used during the course on normal gameplay.

The RFJ just seemed to be the well-defined, existing mechanism for deciding 
matters which require arbitration.  If you have a better method, that's 
fine--but doing it as an RFJ would work, and would do so with the existing 
ruleset.  I understand having aesthetic concern for the 'true' function of 
RFJs, but I'm personally not too concerned with it.

> Secondly, when I wrote the Rule I assumed that once the Heresy is
> pointed out then it should be obvious. For example "Look, your proposal
> would create a rule that says 'xxx' and in Genesis 1:2 it says 'xxx'
> therefore you have commited Heresy". Given that none of us are running
> for President (snigger) I would think that we'd play fair and admit it
> if we get caught.

Based on the way I've seen Nomic games progress in the past, I 
guaran-fucking-tee you that someone might resort to stonewalling, 
conspiracy, or other dirty tricks, given the opportunity and incentive.  I 
know the Biblical texts are fairly self-apparent if one is caught trying to 
sneak a verse by; but I wouldn't be surprised if there were only one or two 
(if that) copies of the "ISO/IEC 14882, Standard for the C++ Programming 
Language" among the group of Nomic players.  I certainly don't own one.  It 
would be easy for owners of said texts to simply deny whether or not such a 
passage exists (or make one up on the fly).

Or on the other hand, such an incident might never occur.  Whatever.

Potter