spoon-discuss: Re: Moderation among the justice reform

[Antonio <zagarna@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 08:22:06 -0500, Greg Ritter <gritter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>At 11:22 PM 1/16/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>>Okay everyone, I'm getting the feeling that there are two distinct camps 
>>among the justice reformers.  As I see it, those are:
>>
>>a) Players may do whatever they want, things that have happened have 
>>happened and cannot be reversed.
>>b) Players may attempt to do whatever they want, but an action which is 
>>against the rules is not allowed to occur.
>
>Hello? You're missing the actual situation:
>
>c) Players may do or attempt whatever they want, but an action which is 
>against the rules can be reversed or allowed to occur.
>
>I think you believe this is the "mass-hallucination" effect that needs to 
>be gotten over, but your "mass-hallucination" is a hallucination itself, 
>dude. No such thing.
>
>That concept is your stumbling block and is echoed here in the Writings of 
>Uncle Psychosis (with which you expressed agreement):
>
>      "In most cases, it's impossible to disobey the law; nomic laws aren't 
>like
>      legal laws, they're more akin to physical laws."
>
>Which, to put it simply, is utter and complete nonsense.
>
>The rules of the game are just that: rules. NOT physical laws. A rule is "a 
>prescribed guide for conduct or behavior" (c.f. http://www.m-w.com). It 
>*guides* actions, it does not *limit* actions in the fashion that the "laws 
>of physics" do. This is the key distinction between a rule or a law that 
>can be violated and an inviolable "law of physics."
>


I belive there's a stardard response for this argument:
Consider the game of chess, it has a set of rules.
When playing chess nothing physically prohibits you to move your pawn two
squares to the side, but if you do, then you're not playing chess, you are
rather playing some other game (or you are cheating).
Nomic is a game. Even if there was no "follow the rules" you still must
follow the rules as you have accepted them implicitly simply by accepting
to play the game.
The rules of a game *are* physical laws as long as you play that game,
since a game is defined by it's rules in the same way that the
world/reality/whatever is defined by it's physical laws.

You say:"Players may do or attempt whatever they want, but an action which
is against the rules can be reversed or allowed to occur."
and this is true, it is inherent in any selfmodifying game such as B Nomic.
It is not true because game rules are "a prescribed guide for conduct or
behavior", it is true because you can modify the rules themselves.

-- 
Antonio

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com