On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 11:43 AM Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > > If I were to interpret the ruleset as strictly as I would like to, I > believe that no rule change whatsoever has happened since the clause "Any > ambiguity in the specification of a rule change causes that change to be > void and without effect." was added to the game. > > I feel like the game culture specific to Agora is playing a large role in > preventing that clause from pseudo-ossifying the game from not being able > to make changes in a practical way unless we write hyper-eloquent yet at > the same time, hyper-pedantic Proposals. If not straight up ossifying it.
One issue is that we've got a tug-of-war between approaching the rules as a practical legal document that allows for some measure of common-sense intent (which might interpret "any ambiguity" as "any reasonable ambiguity" or "any practical/effective ambiguity") and the computer programming/mathematical approach where "any" might mean "any at all full stop". The hybrid mix leads to some very weird outcomes, where there's a surface level of hyper-precision - mainly because the player base draws far more from the mathematical side than the legal side in its expertise - but digging deeper it all rests on some hazy common-law common-sense applications to break out of logical loops (hazy is not meant as 'bad' but more as 'flexible case-by-case including intent, good-of-the-game, and so forth'). I think the hybrid approach certainly contributes to the philosophical vigor of the game, but the translation of that hybrid approach to rules-lanugage is quite messy and it breaks down in very particular ways, as you say. -G.
