Ah, sorry, this should have been a direct reply to the main message, not a reply to Charles Walker.
On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 7:20 PM Jason Cobb <jason.e.c...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm very new, so please take this with a massive pile of salt. > > You write: > "In both cases, if the gamestate did not include information about the > past, or the Rules did not refer to that information when referring to > the past, then these parts of the Rules wouldn't make sense." > > This seems to run afoul of Rule 217: > "Definitions and prescriptions in the rules are only to be applied using > direct, forward reasoning; in particular, an absurdity that can be > concluded from the assumption that a statement about rule-defined > concepts is false does not constitute proof that it is true." > > Jason Cobb > > > On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 7:12 PM Charles Walker <charles.w.wal...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> On Sun, 2 Jun 2019 at 04:59, James Cook <jc...@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote: >> > Comments welcome. Sorry that it's so long. I went back and forth on >> > 3726 a couple of times. >> >> Thanks for an interesting judgement--a good way for me to get back >> into the game. My instinct was that 3726 is TRUE, along the line of >> argument that you suggested in the initial discussion, but you seem to >> have found good reasons why the past is part of the gamestate. >> >> > (There may be best-interests-of-the-game arguments going the other way, >> > e.g. maybe it's easier to untangle some situations if ratification isn't >> > mucking around with the past. But 7A and 7B still apply.) >> >> R1551 reads as if it is trying to avoid amending the past, by amending >> the present gamestate with reference to a hypothetical past. I have >> tried to think of a couple of reasons, but neither feels particularly >> compelling in the face of your arguments in (7): >> >> - Pragmatism. It is impossible to amend the past, so why pretend >> otherwise via legal fiction? >> - It is simpler and cleaner to amend the gamestate at a single point >> in time (the present) than amend all times t, P<=t<=T, where P is the >> publication of the ratified document and T is the time of >> ratification. >> >
