The below CFJ is 3933. I assign it to G.
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The Device is off.
Called by ais523: Wed 06 Oct 2021 11:41:35
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On 2021-10-06 22:41, ais523 via agora-business wrote:
I act on behalf of the Device to cause em to deactivate emself.
CFJ: The Device is off.
Evidence: the first sentence of this message, the fact that the Device
was on prior to this message, and:
{{{{
Excerpt from rule 2654:
{{{
When the device is on:
[...]
A Device CAN activate or deactivate emself by announcement.
}}}
Excerpt from rule 2655:
{{{
The Mad Engineer CAN act on behalf of the device to take any
action that the device may take, and SHALL act on behalf of the
device to ensure that the device fulfills all of its duties.
}}}
Excerpt from rule 2646:
{{{
Activity is a player switch tracked by the Registrar, with values
Active (default) and Inactive. To flip a player's activity to
active (inactive) is to activate (deactivate) em.
}}}
Excerpt from rule 2466:
{{{
When a rule allows one person (the agent) to act on behalf of
another (the principal) to perform an action, that agent CAN
perform the action if it is POSSIBLE for the principal to do so,
taking into account any prerequisites for the action.
[...]
Allowing a person to act on behalf of another person is secured
at power 2.0.
}}}
}}}}
Arguments:
{{{{
There are two issues here, related to the fact that the Device is a
switch, not a player or a person.
The first is: what happens when you act on behalf of a non-person
object? Our current "act on behalf" rules cover only the case of a
person acting on behalf of another person, and this is an attempt to
act on behalf of something else. However, a power-1 rule states that
this attempt is possible (with a CAN), and no higher-power rule seems
to prevent the attempt (acting-on-behalf is secured at power 2 but only
when acting on behalf of a person). So I conclude that the attempt to
do this necessarily works (in the sense of it being a possible action),
but am not sure what effect that action would have if performed (if
indeed it does anything at all).
The second is: assuming the act-on-behalf works similarly to acting on
behalf of a person, what does it mean for the Device to deactivate
emself? Rule 2646 gives us a definition of "deactivate" in the context
of Agora, but the definition is specific to players. Does this mean
that we should fall back to the normal English meaning of "deactivate"
when the ruleset applies the rules to other sorts of objects? If so,
how does that meaning apply to Agoran switches?
The device has two possible states, "on" and "off". It seems pretty
plausible that "deactivate" is a synonym for "turn off". On the other
hand, it seems a bit weird to describe the act of turning off a switch
as deactivating the *switch*; normally the word would be used to
describe the act of turning off the switch as deactivating whatever it
is that the switch controls. (Although I can see a pretty plausible
argument that Agora's Device is a switch that controls itself! Or
possibly, it's a switch that controls rule 2654.)
}}}}
I know that we've been talking about the Device as "this is inevitably
going to become a player at some point and Agora can't be stopped from
making it happening", but the Device being a non-player has created
some interesting gameplay too.
