On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 02:57 -0700, Ed Murphy wrote:
> ============================== CFJ 2198 ==============================
>
> BobTHJ and root won the game on September 26, 2008 UTC.
>
> ========================================================================
I argue on and judge CFJ 2198 as follows:
First, I really like this scam; messing around with coincidences like
that is to me one of the most elegant forms of scamming.
There are two things to consider here: whether BobTHJ had a Power of 2
and thus was capable of creating Power-2 rules, and whether BobTHJ had
some other method of creating the rule in question.
First, the powering-up of BobTHJ clearly failed. Although rule 2148
states that the Embassy can grant Agora's Ambassador powers (including,
presumably, a Power of 2), rule 2140 (which takes precedence over it)
prevents the power-0 nomic in question elevating anything to power 2. I
am not aware of any reasonable arguments against this; the way rule 2148
is worded, it is clearly not granting the power in question itself.
(Scams which rely on wording have to work on the literal wording of the
rules; you can't rely on literal wording for part of the scam and then
claim game custom on the same wording to reinterpret it a different
way!)
The case of the granted privilege is more interesting. Rule 101 has been
amended since the scam took place, but the relevant part of R101/7, the
relevant version, is its preamble:
{{{
The rules may define persons as possessing specific rights or
privileges. Be it hereby proclaimed that no binding agreement
or interpretation of Agoran law may abridge, reduce, limit, or
remove a person's defined rights. A person's defined privileges
are assumed to exist in the absence of an explicit, binding
agreement to the contrary. This rule takes precedence over any
rule which would allow restrictions of a person's rights or
privileges.
}}}
The language here is "the rules may define persons as possessing
specific rights or privileges". In other words, it is clear that the
intent of R101 at the time is that privileges are granted to persons by
rules. Embassy is not a rule, so it certainly doesn't fit the game
custom definition of what can grant a privilege. Game custom is not
enough to stop a valid scam, though, as long as the scam is very
thoroughly defended by the text of the rules.
There is no real reason to believe that the grant of the privilege in
question failed. However, it is far from certain what the privilege in
question actually does when it's been granted. The privilege claims to
make it possible for the Ambassador to modify power-2-or-lower rules in
a specific manner; however, this is pretty strongly rebutted by rule
105. Rule 105 makes it clear that only instruments can create rules, and
takes precedence over most instruments itself. A privilege granted by a
foreign nomic is not an instrument (unlike in the similar scam I
attempted, which worked because the Monster was an instrument); the
foreign nomic itself having a power of 0, it cannot elevate anything
else into privilege status. Therefore, there are only two remaining
scenarios:
* An instrument was involved in making the actual rule change the
scamsters claimed to make, or
* Rule 101 allowed the privilege to change the rules (or allowed
the privilege to allow the scamsters in question to change the
rules), despite rule 105.
In the first case, the only plausible instruments seem to be rule 2148,
and rule 101. Rule 2148, however, is merely allowing foreign nomics to
grant privileges to a person; it is a huge and implausible stretch to
assume that it itself is changing the rules (note that rule 2148 is not
sufficiently powerful to allow persons to change rules directly).
This leaves only rule 101, and the language above. Defined privileges
are assumed to exist in the absence of an explicit binding agreement to
the contrary; however, what we have here is an undefined privilege being
caused to exist. This seems to be a situation entirely irrelevant to
rule 101, whose purpose was then, at least partly, to cause privileges
to exist. In the case of an already-existing privilege that was imposed
some other way, rule 101 effectively does not state anything; it
certainly doesn't allow the privilege to change the rules, or change the
rules itself as a result.
Therefore, it is clear that no sufficiently powerful instrument was used
to enact "Win by Diplomacy", so the enactment failed, and thus the win
was never awarded. I judge CFJ 2198 FALSE.
--
ais523
Judge, CFJ 2198
