Daniel Lepage on Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:00:48 -0500 (CDT)


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Re: [s-d] Re: [s-b] Work is sucking the lifeforce from me--I mean, more than usual 


On Oct 26, 2004, at 4.54 PM, Jeremy Cook wrote:


The CFI doesn't say the location is unknown. The statement is that I
didn't succeed in laying them down more than once; the judge declared
that the statement is true because once laid down a real world card
cannot be laid down again until it has been picked up, and thus the
same must be true of a B Nomic card. Neither of these says that the
card isn't still in my hand, and indeed Araltaln's argument
specifically states that it makes no claim as to the location of the
cards.


Where is that specifically stated? It's clear from the ruling that the
Cards are no longer in your hand. Or do you insist on another CFI for
the statement "The Cards are currently in the Deck"? That was in my
argument and not denied by the Judge.
The ruling doesn't say they're not in my hand. The ruling actually says outright that they might be (which denies your claims in your argument, btw).
And the CFI's statement has nothing to do with their location - as I already said, I could've done it even if they were in the deck. 


If the CFI's argument is valid, I submit that a Real World (RW) card
can't be put back into a RW deck without first picking up the card, so
by the same logic as was used in the CFI, we can't put the card back
into the deck.


r1727.B:
The Deck is a collection of cards; if a card's location is not defined,
it is moved to the Deck.


r1903:
Any player may lay down a set of three or more cards in sequence for the following: ...
You could make a passably decent case that none of these can happen until they've been "picked up"; you can make a very good case that both can happen without 'picking them up'; there is absolutely no way you can justify claiming that r1727 has some magical property so your argument only applies to r1903. 


The location doesn't really matter, by the way: the rules permit me to
lay down three in sequence regardless of their location.


See the CFI - uin's precedent indicates that you need to possess the
cards to perform actions with them. Or do you claim you can possess
cards that aren't in your Hand?
That's not what Uin claimed at all! He claimed that the objects have to exist before you can use them; he said nothing about needing to possess them. The cards in question existed, and so I didn't need to possess them.
But I disagree with the argument anyway - RW cards need to be picked up first because they've been physically laid down. Our cards don't have a 
physical existence, and so I could not have physically laid them down.
It's downright impossible. But without them being physically down,
there's no reason why I need to physically pick them up; indeed, that's 
also impossible.


Not the point - we use words like "lay down" because they apply outside
the physical realm, to creations of our minds. There are no physical
locations in this game, for instance, but we meaningfully talk about
locations.
Only as explicitly stated by the rules; the things we assume are properties like 'an object moved from one location to another is no longer in the first'. These apply equally well to nonphysical locations, such as directories in a filesystem or 'hands' in a card game.
Note, btw, that a 'hand' in a real card game isn't a physical location - the cards in my hand are still in my hand if I hold them with my other hand, put them down on the table to go use the bathroom, or hand them to a passing gorilla while I stave off barbarian invaders. You can 'lay down' cards without them being out of your hand of cards. I've played games where at times you'd lay down a card to reveal that you had it, but then you'd hide it again; you'd never let go of it, and it would be in your hand before and after you laid it down. And to claim that in order to do this, I needed a specific rule permitting me to pick them up again is downright ridiculous.
So the fundamental differences between RW cards and our cards mean that 
the properties Araltaln cites don't apply to ours.

I think e's trying to claim that the intent of the rule was to follow
the real-world definition as closely as possible. I don't accept that
the intent should make any difference; to accept that would invalidate
most scams and make my favorite aspect of the game meaningless.


That's not really possible. Our rules aren't a formal system; they're
rooted in English, where ambiguities are resolved by looking at what the 
intent must reasonably have been.
You're right, I can't make the statement that intent shouldn't matter at all. But intent can never override the words of the rule - I can't claim that by 'there exist Game Objects called Gnomes' means that I get a win every nweek, and I can't claim that "players may lay down cards" means that they must perform an illegal action on those cards first. 


The Clock is Off; actions taken will not occur until it turns back on,
which will also be the beginning of the new nweek.
Which means there exist no tomatoes now anyway. And uin's precedent says 
that no Player can throw something e doesn't possess.
Again, no it doesn't. This is something like the fourth time I've had to say this; please go read the CFI before claiming this again.
Also, in case you still aren't convinced, let me point out that general game precedent also says you're wrong: we routinely do things like 'vote' and 'capture' things we don't possess. Or do you think that you can't vote in an Election because you don't possess the election, too? 


The new nweek may be a long time in coming: Thanks to Araltaln's
judgment, I need to redo a bunch of things before Cards will be
properly correct: a Rotary Exchange was played illegally, my cards may
or may not have been in the deck, and this means that all subsequent
draws were done wrongly... basically, I need to undo and redo all card
actions taken since I first laid down my cards.


And we also need to fix the Tildex count.


Yeah. Assuming you can convince me that this CFI is valid.
Which I don't think you can, if the only rationale you can give is a reference to a CFJ that doesn't say what you seem to think and a vague claim that defining one action in the rules must implicitly define but not permit a second action that is nowhere mentioned in the rules. 

--
Wonko
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. 
      -Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address

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