On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 2:55 PM Jason Cobb via agora-discussion <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > Perhaps relevant: CFJ 3762 [0], which concluded both that a person CAN > perform a certain action and that that action is IMPOSSIBLE. > > [0]: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3762
Hmmmm. I feel like that case may have been wrongly decided. Tardy and completely gratuitous arguments: The caller, Jason, asked whether or not someone CAN impose a fine on em for a particular Class 0 crime that e committed. E pointed out that the rules state that a fine can be imposed "within the following guidelines", one of the guidelines being that the amount of the fine must be at least 1 and at most 0, which is an impossible criterion to satisfy. My interpretation of the Honorable twg's ruling is that since the rules say that the action CAN be taken, but the criteria for taking the action are impossible to fulfill, the action is both POSSIBLE and IMPOSSIBLE. As part of eir justification for this, e stated that, by Rule 217 "Interpreting the Rules", "it is perfectly acceptable to conclude an absurdity from provisions in the rules". I think that this ruling gives the rules a bit too much credit. Rule 2141 "Role and Attributes of Rules" states that rules have "the capacity to govern the game generally", but the rules never claim the ability to bend the laws of logic to their own will (apart from Rule 217's bizarre and futile assertion that "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"). Any attempt to perform an action is either successful or unsuccessful, not both. In my opinion the correct judgement would have been that if a rule states that something CAN be done, but only under a criterion which is impossible to fulfill, then the rule actually does not allow (or even purport to allow) the action at all. Since the rules do not allow the action, the action is IMPOSSIBLE and not POSSIBLE. —Warrigal
