status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4017
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 4017 ===============================
snail gained 1 radiance for being co-author of Proposal 8919.
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Caller: G.
Barred: snail
Judge: ais523
Judgement: TRUE
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History:
Called by G.: 14 Mar 2023 19:11:01
Assigned to ais523: 19 Mar 2023 17:11:49
Judged TRUE by ais523: 25 Mar 2023 21:43:41
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Caller's Arguments:
When Proposal 8919 *started* taking effect, R2657 read in part:
Each time a player fulfills a scoring condition, the officer
associated with the condition CAN once by announcement, and SHALL
in an officially timely fashion, add to that player's score the
associated amount of points, rounded down.
Below is a list of scoring conditions and their associated points
and officers.
[...]
* Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1
(Assessor).
When Proposal 8919 *finished* taking effect, R2657 read in part:
Each time a player fulfills a radiance condition, e CAN once by
announcement (specifying any indicated info) gain the associated
radiance.
Below is a list of radiance conditions:
[...]
* Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1 (must
specify proposal number)
I think the "when" is triggered when the proposal *first* starts
taking effect, so e earned the right to be awarded by the old system
(which was then made impossible to give via rule change), but not the
new system. A counterargument is that since the proposal is still
"taking effect" when the new text came into being, that was awarded
somehow too - but interpreting the trigger as continuous is a
self-conflict with the first sentence of the rule that says "each
time", which implies a specific single instant.
Caller's Evidence:
On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 11:46=E2=80=AFAM secretsnail9 via agora-business
<agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> For the adoption of P8919, I gain 1 radiance (co-author).
>
> --
> snail
Proposal 8919:
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
ID: 8919
Title: Radiance v1.1
Adoption index: 3.0
Author: nix
Co-authors: G., 4st, snail
[This proposal reskins points/score as "radiance" and also changes the
scoring conditions to be cashed by players. IE, insteead of the assessor
granting points for proposals, each player must claim them. Also
introduce gains/grants language to get rid of clunkier things, and adds
some requirements to specify your radiance when winning, and where you
gained the radiance from when you do.]
Retitle R2656 to "Radiance".
Amend R2656 to read in full:
A player's Radiance is an integer player switch defaulting to 0,
tracked by the Herald. When a player is "granted" or "gains" a
specified amount of radiance, eir radiance is increased by that
amount.
Upon a correct announcement from a player that eir radiance is 100
or more (correctly specifying the amount), e wins the game. Then,
eir radiance is set to 0, and all other players' radiance are set
to half their current value rounded down.
At the start of every quarter, all radiance switches are set to
half their current value rounded down.
For each player, set eir radiance switch to be equal to the value eir
score switch was at immediately before this proposal was adopted.
Retitle R2657 to "Gaining Radiance".
Amend R2657 to read, in full:
Each time a player fulfills a radiance condition, e CAN once by
announcement (specifying any indicated info) gain the associated
radiance.
Below is a list of radiance conditions:
* Being the author of a proposal that takes effect: 5 (must
specify proposal number)
* Being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect: 1 (must
specify proposal number)
* Having an Agoran Birthday: X, where X is the number of active
players during eir birthday.
* Judging a CFJ that e was assigned to without violating a time
limit to do so, unless at the time of judgement the case was
open due to self-filing a motion to reconsider it: 2 (must
specify CFJ number)
Amend R2659 by replacing "increase eir own score by (X^2)-X points" with
"gain (X^2)-X radiance" and replacing "increase eir own score by (X-1)*2
points" with "gain (X-1)*2 radiance".
In R2670 replacing:
The score of the player that has the most dollaries is increased
by 30. In the event of an N-way tie, instead, each tied
player's score is increased by 30/N points, rounded down.
with:
The player that has the most dollaries gains 30 radiance. In the
event of an N-way tie, instead, each tied player gains 30/N
radiance, rounded down.
In R2675 replace every instance of "score" with "radiance".
Amend R2645 by replacing:
- Score Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player's
(defaulting to the wielder if not specified) Score is increased
by 3.
with:
- Radiance Stone (Weekly, 3): When wielded, a specified player
(defaulting to the wielder if not specified) gains 3 radiance.
and replacing:
When this stone is wielded, the wielder specifies an eligible
player and gains 8 points.
with:
When this stone is wielded, the wielder specifies an eligible
player and gains 8 radiance.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
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Judge ais523's Arguments:
This CFJ was difficult to work out, due to how obscure the wording of
rule 2657 is. The intention of rule 2657 is to create a "CAN" when a
particular event occurs. However, the rule doesn't outright say what
the event is, but instead specifies the event as "each time a player
fulfills a scoring condition" and then lists "being a coauthor of a
proposal that takes effect" as a scoring condition.
One part of the confusion here is down to the scope of "each time" –
the implication is that a player can fulfill the same scoring condition
more than once, but it isn't specified what counts as the same
condition and what doesn't.
One possible reading of the condition would be as "being a coauthor of
a proposal that has taken effect" – in such a case, this is something
that either is true or it isn't, thus the scoring condition in question
could only be met once ever. However, there are strong clues that that
reading is incorrect (the use of "takes" rather than "taken", the fact
that that reading is easy to specify unambiguously yet wasn't, and
plain common sense), and that reading fails a rule 217 test: this is a
"text is silent, inconsistent or unclear" situation, rather than a case
where the reading is the only one that fits the text of the rules, so
it should be rejected on "common sense" and "best interests of the
game" grounds.
As such, the more sensible reading is to interpret the condition in
such a way that "being a coauthor of a proposal that takes effect" is
fulfilled when the proposal takes effect (and would, e.g., be met twice
if the same proposal somehow took effect twice). So the problem boils
down to working out what precise timing the rules mean when they state
"when a proposal takes effect". This wording doesn't appear directly in
rule 2657, but does in the last paragraph of rule 1006 (which is
similar in that both rules are attempting to cause side effects of the
adoption of a proposal); I'll thus be concentrating mostly on that
paragraph of rule 1006 in this judgement (it's "similar but simpler").
The phrase appears a few times in the rules, and is used somewhat
inconsistently. Rules 105 and 106 both specify changes to the ruleset
as happening "when a proposal takes effect", i.e. the proposal taking
effect is what causes the changes to happen (so if we used a model of
events in which things happen "simultaneously but in sequence", the
proposal taking effect would precede the rule changes). Rule 106 also
has a concept of "when a proposal finishes taking effect", which can
only reasonably be interpreted as happening after all the proposal's
rule changes. Rule 2141 defines rules as "always taking effect",
implying that this can be a continuous process. Meanwhile, rule 1006
has a condition "when a proposal takes effect and creates a new
office"; this can in isolation be interpreted either as "a proposal
creates a new office while taking effect", as "a proposal finishes
taking effect, having created a new office", or as "a proposal a) takes
effect and b) creates a new office" (i.e. there are two separate
requirements that both have to be met).
The method that's most consistent with the wording of these rules,
collectively, is that the "taking effect" part of proposal adoption
works like this: rule 106 specifies that the proposal takes effect, and
then defines specifically what "taking effect" means in this context
(i.e. the proposal applies the changes specified in its text, and rule
105 gives it permission to make rule changes when doing so). However,
trying to generalise the same reasoning to rule 1006 presents a
problem: it's possible to interpret it as trying to modify the effect
of the proposal to also install a player in an office, which is
consistent with the wording of the rules in question and not
inconsistent with the intent behind the rule, but would mean that if a
proposal with power above 2 attempted to create an office, it wouldn't
install a player by default (because rule 1006 would have insufficient
power to modify the way in which the proposal took effect). In general,
it seems that doing something *during* the resolution of a proposal
should require power 3 (or at least power equal to the power of the
proposal), due to rule 2150 part 3 stating that a low-powered entity
can't affect a higher-powered instrument's operation, and rule 106
implying that the effects in a proposal happen sequentially but
instantaneously. (Consider a hypothetical proposal "Create a new
office, the Office of Inanity. If the Office of Inanity is vacant,
repeal rule 1769." A reading in which rule 1006 attempts to fill the
office in the middle of the proposal's resolution seems to be
reasonable and consistent with the text, but would clearly be
interfering with the operation of the proposal. The situation where the
proposal doesn't care about the timing with which the office is filled
isn't so obvious, but seems to be analogous – rule 1006 is still
changing what the proposal does, in terms of what offices it causes to
become filled, and it can't do that with a lower power.)
All this implies that, at least for proposals whose power when they
take effect is greater than 2 (fortunately, proposal 8919 had power 3,
meaning that I don't have to worry about the case of a low-powered
proposal), rules 1006 and 2657 aren't "fast enough" to be able to do
things "when a proposal takes effect" but before its effect has been
fully applied; the only consistent readings that could cause that to
happen would be to a) redefine what "takes effect" means, along the
lines of "a rule that causes a proposal to take effect also causes its
coauthors to be able to gain radiance", or b) change the way in which
the proposal was applied. These are both reasonable readings of the
text of the rules, but with those readings, the rules would fail to
function correctly due to Power considerations.
Reading rules 1006 and 2657 instead as "when a proposal has finished
taking effect" would cause the rules to function correctly, with no
Power considerations required. The problem there is that it involves
reading very similar wording in different rules in different ways,
according to what would allow the rule to function – rule 106's "when a
proposal takes effect" needs to be read as a definition of what it
means for a proposal to take effect in order for the rule to function
correctly, whereas rule 1006's "when a proposal takes effect" needs to
be read as a sort of trigger that applies once the full effects of the
proposal have already been applied. That said, this sort of ambiguity
(where the same phrase can be interpreted in two different ways) is not
unknown in English, and I can't see any reason why the same ambiguous
text /shouldn't/ be interpreted in two different ways if the rule 217
tests produce different results in the two cases.
Let's think about what would happen if rule 1006 had precedence over
rule 106, and both rules had their text interpreted in the same way.
The resulting Rules situation there would be "when a proposal takes
effect, if it doesn't create a new office, it applies the changes
specified by its text in order; if it does create a new office, it
instead installs the proposal's author into the office" (because both
rules are trying to define what it means for a proposal to take
effect). This is clearly absurd, contrary to both common sense (if it
isn't applying the changes in its text, it couldn't create a new
office, leading to a paradox) and the best interests of the game (we
want the proposal system to be reliable and not randomly fail for
proposals that would have side effects).
As a consequence, the best conclusion here genuinely does seem to be to
interpret the phrase in question as ambiguous, with the ambiguity
resolved differently in different rules:
It's definitely in the best interests of the game for rule 106 to work
correctly (if the definition of "a proposal takes effect" becomes
broken in such a way that the proposal doesn't make rule changes, Agora
is ossified: in that situation, neither the mechanism in rule 106, or
the backup mechanism in rule 2034, would be sufficient to make rules
changes because both make them because the former causes proposals to
take effect and the latter simulates what would happen if they took
effect). In fact, it isn't possible for the definition of "takes
effect" to break in a way that would prevent rules 106 and 2034
working, because rule 1698 causes prevents any ruleset or gamestate
changes that could break it to never happen in the first place. Rule
106 is fundamental to Agora (something that is reflected in the fact
that it was part of Agora's original ruleset, and has never been
repealed or renumbered, although there have been plenty of amendments).
No rule 217 test can possibly interpret rule 106 in a way that would
break it, even if this introduces inconsistencies with other rules; the
"best interests of the game" are overriding in this case. (Besides,
interpreting rule 106 to do something other than what it obviously does
would also defy common sense.) All that said, rule 106 doesn't seem to
be ambiguous in any way that would affect rule 106 itself, so a rule
217 tiebreak isn't needed here: looking at rule 106 in isolation, it's
clear what happens when a proposal is adopted, and the only ambiguity
is as to timing details that would only affect other rules (rather than
itself).
Meanwhile, the interpretation that makes rule 106 work is highly
problematic in the case of rule 1006, and by analogy 2657. Unlike rule
106, which is defining the primary effects of adopting a proposal,
these rules are intending to define side effects of adopting a
proposal, and are clearly "supposed to" be separate from the proposal
adoption process, rather than attempting to define a competing proposal
adoption process; again, this is a "best interests of the game" and
"common sense" argument. The text is silent about exactly when the
effects happen, and the wording ambiguous (meaning that we come down to
a rule 217 test here): but "after the proposal has finished taking
effect" is the only timing that actually functions within the rules.
It's generally in the best interests of the game for the rules to do
what they seem to rather than actually doing nothing due to being
broken in an astonishing way, in cases where both readings are
reasonable and consistent with the rules, and the other rule 217 tests
don't obviously apply here. (Of course, one reading of the rules is a
much better fit for the wording than another, you go with the literal
wording of the rule, as rule 217 tells you to, but that doesn't seem to
have happened here.)
The conclusion is that rule 2654 should be read in such a way that it
isn't trying to a) redefine the process for adopting proposals or b)
interfere with the process for adopting proposals. If it does neither
of those things, then because it doesn't do its thing before the
proposal has taken effect, it won't get a chance to do anything until
after the proposal has taken effect. The consequence is that the new
version of the rule will be able to see that the proposal that created
it has taken effect.
This is a very complex situation, though, which would ideally be
cleaned up legislatively; I think there are a lot of rule 217 calls to
be made here (not with respect to rule 106, which is pretty clear with
respect to *what* it does even if not *how*, but with respect to the
other rules involved), and those calls are inherently somewhat
subjective. (I can't see an argument to decide either way based purely
on the wording of the rules.) My initial reaction was similar to the
caller's: "both rules 106 and 1006 use the same wording, so surely they
have the same timing?", but they seem to need to be interpreted
differently in order for them both to function correctly; but rule 217
implies that that this sort of case-by-case interpretation can
sometimes be correct, and its tests seem to be in favour of using it
here. If anything, the wording in rule 2657 (which is different, and
confusing in its own right) is more tilted towards an "after the
proposal has finished taking effect" timing than the wording in rule
1006; so if rule 1006 is interpreted as occuring with that timing, rule
2657 should be too.
All this means that the radiance grant worked. I judge CFJ 4017 TRUE.
(But I have lower confidence than usual that I've got this CFJ
judgement correct, because the situation is so complicated.)
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