Re: [s-d] Sheesh

[Kerim Aydin <kerim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007, Daniel Lepage wrote:
> Illegally attempted actions AREN'T GAME ACTIONS! You can't make
> something happen just by saying it, and everyone needs to STOP TRYING.

Agora went through a spate of this a while ago, and it comes up now
and again:  basically some players (including myself at one point) claimed
that if you "deemed" something to happen, it happened because... hey, 
whatever's not regulated is permitted, right? 

Wrong. 

The rules are the "physical laws" of the game, not arbitrary statements.  
For example, I could try to "deem" gravity to be non-functional, but it 
*just wouldn't work*.  Under certain, rare and limited circumstances, 
it's possible that legal fictions are created that ignore boundaries (for
example, if a rule is given retroactive application even if it can't 
actually travel in time).  However, these are SPECIAL ENABLING CASES.  

If the enabling doesn't explicitly and directly exist in the game, just
saying something is so doesn't make it so, even under the "whatever is not
regulated is permitted" statute of a permissive nomic. After all, even
though there's no legislative law against defying gravity, that doesn't 
mean you can go out and just do it by saying you do it.

This is so common a mistake made by Agoran newbies that we call it the 
"I say I do, therefore I do" (ISIDTID) fallacy.  It's a fallacy because
ISIDTID doesn't actually work.  This is not a feature of a particular 
ruleset, but a feature of games in general.  The chess analogy is apt:  
within the "chess universe", it just *isn't possible* to make a queen 
suddenly disappear, it's an impossibility.  It might be possible on the
metagame level (by knocking it over), but if you do that, you're *no longer
playing chess*.  Just as, if you do all this claiming that's going on, 
you're *no longer playing Nomic*.  Those who are no longer playing Nomic
should probably not play nomic on a not-nomic mailing list.

-Goethe



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