CFJ called by R. Lee, on 16 May 2020 10:29:54 +1000: > It is both possible and true that a > rule named "A coin award" took the game action of increasing the number of > coins R. Lee owned by 1.
This is CFJ 3835. I assign it to myself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Caller's Arguments: I will simply link the two CFJs that provide all relevant context for these two CFJs: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3828 https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3832 These two cases include sufficient arguments and summaries of the facts involved that you can decide this case. I don't think I need to provide/rehash any other arguments or evidence to avoid insufficiency. The only thing I'd like to add is that irrelevant is not an appropriate judgement on the first CFJ because it is relevant to whether or not I have a legal obligation. Also the first CFJ is clearly about the possibility of a game action due to its phrasing that specifically includes those elements. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I deliver this judgement on CFJ 3835: The office of Arbitor has an interest in the precedent this particular case sets, in terms of the culture of Agoran judgements. Therefore I am purposefully assigning this case to myself and judging this case under the spirit of this clause of Rule 991: > The Arbitor is an office, responsible for the administration of > justice in a manner that is fair for emself, if not for the rest > of Agora. There's two aspects of "fairness" to consider here. First, when a winning condition arises through a bug, it sometimes does so in such a way that multiple (sometimes infinite) wins could be manufactured. So, out of "fairness", we (culturally) discourage people from tweaking past attempted win methods slightly and claiming them. If the win arises from the administration of justice (i.e. the direct result of a CFJ), then repeated CFJs to manufacture wins would be generally "unfair" by this custom. Second, "fairness" in the administration of justice applies to respect for the judges of past judgements. R217 gives weight to past precedents, but beyond that, we have a culture of respecting each judge's initial primacy in a question and not re-litigating. Otherwise it would not be fair to past judges who put work into judgements, or to the Arbitor, as the same cases might be called and called again whenever doing so is to someone's game advantage. Combining these different types of fairness, we look at this clause in R591: * IRRELEVANT, appropriate if [...] it can be trivially determined from the outcome of another (possibly still undecided) judicial case that was not itself judged IRRELEVANT In order to both be "fair" to judges (for setting past precedent) and to be "fair" to players (to limit copycat PARADOXICAL wins, in particular) and to be "fair" to the Arbitor (to limit copycat caseload), the term "trivially" in R591 should be given a little breathing space. So if the judge of a current case has to discuss or interpret the issue for a paragraph or so, to determine if a past case applies, it is still in the category of "trivial", provided the resulting interpretation uses (in R217's words) "direct, forward reasoning" from the past CFJ that would be pretty clear to most people, and that the original case arguments are answering the question that was asked originally (and not a digression, etc.). In CFJ 3828, the judge's arguments were very specific and direct: > > The court also agrees that, upon the enactment of that rule, a coin was > created in the possession of a player, as per the definition of 'earn' > in R2577/2: > > For an entity to earn an asset is for that asset to be created in > that entity's possession. > > And just for good measure, the rules grant themselves explicit general > authority to create coins, as per R2166/28: > > An asset's backing document can generally > specify when and how that asset is created, destroyed, and > transferred. > > Therefore, in the words of "A Coin Award", a player did indeed earn a > coin "this way" and the rule repealed itself. and > We have determined that the rule was enacted, and the rule repealed > itself. However, it is indeterminate whether R. Lee's coin totals were > increased. So while CFJ 3828 had a "compound" CFJ statement, the logic used to come to the final decision was a direct answer to the question asked now. Furthermore, answering CFJ 3835's statement wasn't a digression on the part of the judge of CFJ 3828, but was the key logic used to decide the prior case. Therefore for the question asked in the current CFJ: > It is both possible and true that a > rule named "A coin award" took the game action of increasing the number > of coins R. Lee owned by 1. simply quoting the above section of CFJ 3828's judge's arguments directly and clearly answers the current question; in other words, it is "trivial" to link the current statement to the prior logic. This current case is a direct common-sense forward application from a previous case, really as direct as it gets. So if this current case isn't IRRELEVANT, for reasons of being directly and trivially answerable from a past CFJ, then that triviality clause is pretty meaningless. In terms of R217 tests concerning the definition of "trivial" in this context, under the judicial fairness doctrine mentioned earlier, nerfing IRRELEVANT that much would against Agoran custom, would directly devalue past judgements, and would not be fair to the Arbitor nor to the rest of Agora, thus not for the good of the game. I find IRRELEVANT.
