Meant to reply to twg’s comments on the zombie auction CFJ earlier, but got a bit busy this week. A few thoughts for your consideration:
> Twg wrote: > > The implication would seem to be that rules can redefine what other rules > mean. This does seem to me to be one reasonable approach to interpreting a code of rules—to interpret a provision in light of provisions in other rules, in a manner that tries to harmonize the rules into a consistent whole. That might feel reasonable to me because it’s a common discursive move in the area of my specialty (law). People from other backgrounds might find it less satisfying or reasonable, though, which could be an example of the sort of diversity of interpretive method that I think can be very cool about Agora. > But if, say, we had a rule saying "All rules begin with the word 'Tangelo'.", > a statement which is manifestly untrue (at least at present), surely that > should not be interpreted as a requirement to play the game _as if_ every > rule began with the word "Tangelo". (Perhaps it could be interpreted as a > redefinition of the word "rule", but then it would need to be at least power > 3, to override rule 2141.) I think the logic is similar. In this hypothetical, i can see several approaches: Maybe the Tangelo Rule would have no effect if it were contradicted by a higher powered rule (e.g., Rule 105, which purports to be the “only mechanism by which rules can be created, modified, or destroyed, or by which an entity can become a rule or cease to be a rule”). Absent a contradictory higher powered Rule, I think the Tangelo Rule (1) could invalidate any lower powered Rule that does not begin with Tangelo, on the theory that it wouldn’t actually be a Rule, or (2) alternatively, it could cause us to insert the word “Tangelo” at the beginning of any lower powered Rule, on the theory that the lower powered Rule, qua Rule, must include the word “Tangelo” at the start. And for higher powered Rules, we might either (1) insert “Tangelo” at the start (if that does not affect the functioning of the higher powered rule) or else (2) ignore the Tangelo Rule altogether (because contradicted by higher powered Rules). I suppose we could also just decide that the Tangelo Rule states an untrue fact about the world and therefore has no effect, but that approach seems to me to be in tension with Rule 217: “When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the rules takes precedence.” Simply disregarding as factually wrong a high-enough-powered Tangelo Rule, I think, would give precedence to something other than the text of the rules. Maybe.
