On Saturday 08 November 2008 02:03:04 pm Kerim Aydin wrote: > Therefore, the "physical reality" of a rule is what's in its text, > no more no less. > > In other words, for a Rule to "act" (via a designated agent) and > say "I change the Rules by announcement" when that ability isn't > directly in its text (or other Rules) text, has the same effect as > a person saying "I flap my arms and fly by announcement" which has > been well-covered in the past.
I disagree. So far as the "physical reality" of a rule is its text, all texts exist theoretically, even unwritten. The only *physical* reality that a text can really have is, I think, the paper or magnetic disk it's written on. That a particular text has more of an "existence" as a Rule than any other, e.g., that "Foo." is a rule and "Bar." is not, is a legal fiction, a fact that is true only because its backing document says so. If a Rule says *anything*, whether that a particular asset exists, or that a particular action is possible by announcement, or that it itself performs some change, then by default that statement is self-fulfilling, because a Rule carries (by legal fiction) intrinsic authority. The *only* situation where it wouldn't work is if it's contradicted by another Rule that takes precedence. Even considering the presumably non-legal-fictional example of "flap my arms and fly by announcement", we have the precedent in the current Rules that statements of this form are indeed self-fulfilling: I can "sit up" by announcement. Doing so may have no effect on my real-world physical posture, but the Rule creates the legal fiction that, by so doing, I become Sitting. By default, we should always assume that anything a Rule says is true, and that this can only be overridden by another Rule, subject to the precedence Rules. It may be that this is in fact your reasoning, but it's not clear to me what Rule would be overriding the Monster in this case. Pavitra.
