Daniel Lepage on 30 Jun 2003 02:10:01 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Ow. 


On Sunday, June 29, 2003, at 07:14  PM, Glotmorf wrote:
And you call yourself an authority. You cite the rule I said works in 
combination with the Boilerplate rule, yet failed to use it in your
counterargument.

The Standard Delimiters rule reads: "The character sequences '{{' and
'}}' (without the single quotes) may be used in the text of any
Action, Proposal, or Rule [[ yay recursion ]] to mark the beginning
and end, respectively, of text that should be set apart, such as the
text of a Proposal or Rule, or an amendment to either one. If it is
not explicitly specified that these character sequences mean something 
else, they are considered to delimit text in that way."  The rule
explicitly references the text of a Proposal or Rule; granted "such
as" is more inclusive than exclusive, but for that I cite the Default
Case and say that since the rule doesn't state the validity of
delimited text other than proposals or rules it is only the creation
of proposals and rules via delimited text that is permitted.
Since I no longer Rule, I can't create rules upon my sayso; therefore, 
of the two explicitly mentioned possibilities, the only possibility
for delimited text in a standalone manner is a proposal.  Since there
is onle one action inside the proposal, and that delimited and given a 
title (as per the third paragraph of the Standard Delimiters rule:
"The character sequence '__' (again without the single quotes)
delimits the title of a Rule or Proposal; the title begins after the
first '__' and ends before the second one. The title is applied to
whatever Rule or Proposal has most recently been introduced in the
text of the message."), it conforms to the Boilerplate rule as being a 
proposal containing a single action being the creation of a rule.


I disagree with two of your assumptions here.
	First, you claim that the mention of Proposals and Rules in r217
implies that *only* proposals and rules are legitimate uses of the
delimiters. However, r217 explicitly states that delimiters may be used 
to mark the beginning and end of "text that should be set apart"; the
mention of Rules and Proposals is simply for clarification, and does
not in any way imply that rules and proposals are the only forms of
"text that should be set apart".
The mention of Rules and Proposals may be "simply for clarification", but the presence of it in the rule text, as opposed to comment-delimited, means it has the force of rule. While there may in fact be other instances of "text that should be set apart", the rule doesn't give a clear general case for them; therefore, the examples the rule provides are the only valid examples because there's insufficient criteria to identify another valid example.
"Text that should be set apart" is sufficient to imply that any body of text is valid; the use of 'such as' preceding the examples confirms this.
I also point out a precedent: societal charters and philosophical mandates have both been accepted as valid uses of the brackets. 


	Secondly, you assume that the existence of delimiters is enough to
imply an intent to create something with the delimited text; r217 in no 
way says or implies this. It merely permits you to use the brackets to
mark a block of text. You could be suggesting the text of a new rule
you wish somebody else to propose; you could be quoting a rule from a
different game; you could simply be stating some random text that you
think should be set apart. Nothing in your message in any way implies
that you intend to create anything.
Except that the things you provide as examples aren't recognizable actions on the public forum. Assuming for a moment that the primary purpose of the public forum is to post recognizable actions (never mind a lot of the other damnfool stuff we use it for), the examining of a public forum message should involve looking for things that can be recognized as actions. A proposal is recognizable. A quote from another Nomic is not. Therefore, if one were to put a quote from another Nomic on the public forum delimited by curly braces, it might well be parsable as a proposal, and should be.
The text posted to a public forum need not be an action; in fact, there is no way the ruleset can force it to be. We are permitted to send whatever we want to the public forum, and nothing states or implies that we should try to force whatever you say to be an action. 


	Likewise, even if you had declared that you were making a proposal,
the existence of delimiters within your proposal cannot be construed to 
indicate that you wish to create a rule. You have nowhere indicated
that you wish to create anything; in fact, you never even specified
that the text inside was an action. While we can perhaps assume that it is meant to be a change to the gamestate, as proposals are simply lists 
of such changes, you haven't indicated what the change should be. Is
the delimited block intended to create a new rule? A new proposal? A
new section of an existing rule? A new text to replace that of an old
rule?
See above. If a proposal is a collection of changes to the gamestate to be performed, the act of recognizing a proposal should consist of looking for recognizable gamestate changes within it. Does the creation of a proposal change the gamestate? Technically, posting to the public forum with a valid action changes the gamestate. So if we make proposals that make proposals, should we also make proposals to make forum posts?
I never claimed that all changes to the gamestate must be in proposal form. I did claim that a proposal may enact changes to the gamestate (see the ruleset if you don't believe me); I also claim that the creation of a proposal is a change to the gamestate, and thus legally createable by a proposal.
Besides which, the fact that a proposal is a collection of actions does not imply that we have a duty to try to twist whatever's in it into an action. If what you put in is not an action, then it is not a legal proposal. 


	The fact that the act of "proposing a rule" is defined as making a
proposal with a single action that creates a new rule in no way
indicates that you did that, unless you state that that's the action
you're doing. Otherwise, we have no reason to believe you've taken any
action at all.
We could simplify this discussion by taking it in a different direction. I have done this before. It was recognized as a proposal that creates a rule. This establishes a precedent that suggests the validity of subsequent similar action.
I see precedent for simply stating something in brackets and assuming it is a prop. I see no precedent for doing the same within a prop and assuming it is a new rule. You yourself have used {{}} pairs for CFIs, society charters, philosophical mandates, and 2GC declarations, any of which could be created by a proposal. Your text is not specific enough to determine which of these was your intent. 


Oh, and BTW, you can't claim that the definition of '__' helps you at
all, because you didn't use the standard title delimiters; you used
single underscores instead. They aren't defined to do anything.


Hm.  You might have me there.


Wasn't there an old CFI to this effect?


Not that I can see.


I'll do some digging.  I know this argument has come up before.


If it has, it's not in the database as a CFI.

--
Wonko

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