status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4024
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 4024 ===============================
This means the same thing as "each and every".
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Caller: 4st
Judge: snail
Judgement: TRUE
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History:
Called by 4st: 02 May 2023 17:13:03
Assigned to snail: 08 May 2023 16:53:45
Judged TRUE by snail: 15 May 2023 00:17:58
Motion to reconsider group-filed: 16 May 2023 12:42:48
Judged TRUE by snail: 18 May 2023 03:19:11
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Caller's Evidence:
On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 9:38 AM Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote:
> I support all intents to award anything.
> Discussion has taken place and the appropriate people have placed their
> intents, I trust those people and my opinion was considered.
> (We can award more than one thing too if you want to add MORE intents :D )
Caller's Arguments:
Arguments FOR: This is extremely clear and unambiguous language.
Arguments AGAINST: This only provides support for one tabled intent, one
that doesn't exist.
Please find this CFJ as FOR. I find it ridiculous I have to ask this.
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Gratuitous Arguments by G.:
For context, this came up on discord. There was an assertion that
supporting "all" intents is a single atomic action where if any of
them would fail, they all do. So if 4st previously supported one of
the intents and can't do so again, they all would fail. But using the
term "every" avoids this problem and makes them fail or succeed
together.
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Judge snail's Arguments:
I once again judge CFJ 4024 TRUE, but for different reasoning.
For any action taken using written language, there is an undeniable amount
of ambiguity, inexactness, because all words have different meanings to
different people. All talks of "unambiguity" in Agora are really about what
we can take as "practically" unambiguous. Ambiguity is more of a spectrum,
from "nobody agrees on what this means" to "every person on the planet
agrees it means this" (the impossible, unambiguous end of the spectrum).
For something to be "practically" unambiguous in Agora, we only need all
players to agree to play as if it is the case. New players coming to Agora
adds new possible interpretations to action text, and brings back ambiguity
in cases where there used to be none. Fortunately we have tools in Agora to
reach an agreement on what a particular message meant. A player can say
something, intending to take one action, but then after discussion, CFJs,
and rule clarification, come to the conclusion that they didn't actually do
what they intended: the setting forth of intent in by-announcement actions,
then, is augmented by this procedure of coming to an agreement. This is
what we sign up for when we join Agora: our actions may be reinterpreted
retroactively through judicial process, and our intent when sending
messages must include that. This unfortunately makes most of a player's
intent when sending an action negligible, besides the fact it must be clear
they want to attempt to do something, regardless of what thing it is.
So the relevant part of "specifying the action and setting forth intent to
perform that action by sending that message, doing both clearly and
unambiguously" is the specification of the action, as the intent to do
something is clearly there.
Is it ambiguous if the action was specified? It is clear there is
disagreement about what the specified action was, so practical unambiguity
has not yet been met. But of course, to resolve this ambiguity, we use the
tools for that, CFJs, and the 4 factors we use for them.
"Best interest of the game" here seems to be relevant: the failure to
object to certain powerful intents like those of RWO's could be disastrous.
On the contrary, actions doing things you didn't explicitly specify could
be a violation of consent: but remember we already do this to degree when
we reinterpret actions via cfj, as "explicit" is such a subjective term.
The best interests of the game could serve to be clarified in the rules,
but it seems to lean toward success of supports and objections in this case.
"Game Custom" is important in all action text cases: we copy what other
people do when we see them take actions. We ascribe meanings to our actions
in one case based on what could be wildly different cases, but cases that
feel the same. The closer an example we can get, the better. "I object to
all intents to declare apathy" has been used by multiple players, multiple
times, such that they might fail from an apathy intent already being
objected to. But game custom is that these actions are fine. There is some
custom to use "each and every" to further specify the actions are fine, but
it is not wide-reaching custom and need not have a bearing on "all"'s
effect. Game custom supports a ruling of success, as objections and
supports ought to function the same. We should, though, as a community,
properly establish our customs, and share them with other players so as to
make things more quickly resolvable.
Common sense is also important here, since we are determining the meaning
of a pretty common phrase, and bulk actions happen frequently. The caller
emself said "I find it ridiculous I have to ask this." I agree with this
sentiment: others may not, of course, but we must establish a common sense
of what this action does, and I will explain my reasoning to this end, as
all should when something like this comes into doubt: it seems like what
4st meant to do when saying "I support all intents to award anything" was
to support as many intents as e could, as that is a very 4st thing to do.
As such, without some harder evidence that it actually does nothing, I
think it should do the something e intended.
I hold that "I support/ object to all intents" works as much as it can in
cases where it isn't obvious the opposite is true.
I hold that the specification of the action and intent was "unambiguous" in
that practical unambiguity should be reached as of the judging of this cfj,
and applies retroactively, as all judgements do.
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