status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4013
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 4013 ===============================
Janet is party to at least one contract whose title begins with
'Riemann is'.
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Caller: Janet
Barred: snail
Judge: G.
Judgement: FALSE
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History:
Called by Janet: 20 Feb 2023 01:11:06
Assigned to G.: 21 Feb 2023 01:06:43
Judged FALSE by G.: 23 Feb 2023 14:57:47
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Caller's Arguments:
I see a few possibilities:
* Each purported consent is unclear due to having an indeterminate
condition attached, so 0 contracts were created.
* Exactly one purported consent worked, based on whether the Riemann
hypothesis is true or false, so 1 contract was created.
* Both purported consents work, as the conditional doesn't affect
whether consent was given, so 2 contracts were created.
The applicable clause of Rule 2519/2 is item 1. This item does not
include any clarity standards for consenting, and it does not explicitly
mention conditionals. We could potentially read the same standard as "by
announcement" into "publicly stated" in order to make the purported
consents fail. Similarly, the rule could be read to make purported
conditional consents consent unconditionally, as I may have "publicly
stated" my consent, even if I attempted to hedge it, thus making both
consents work.
Rule 1742/23 also does not place any clarity standards on the creation
of contracts (other than "publicly"). Paragraph 3 does not apply
because, of the zero or more contracts that exist, their text is fully
public and well-specified (even if their existence is not). So I think
this comes down entirely to which purported consents work, rather than
the consents involving contracts specifically.
Caller's Evidence:
On Sun, Feb 19, 2023 at 5:11 PM Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote:
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is true, I consent to, create, and join the
> following contract entitled "Riemann is True":
>
> {
>
> Well, I guess that's not particularly surprising.
>
> Only Janet can be a party to this contract; if any other person is a
> party, e immediately ceases to be.
>
> }
>
>
> If the Riemann Hypothesis is false, I consent to, create, and join the
> following contract entitled "Riemann is False":
>
> {
>
> Wow! That's amazing!
>
> Only Janet can be a party to this contract; if any other person is a
> party, e immediately ceases to be.
>
> }
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rule 2519/2 (Power=3)
Consent
A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if,
at the time the action took place:
1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the
action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement;
2. e is party to a contract whose body explicitly and
unambiguously indicates eir consent;
3. the action is taken as part of a promise which e created; or
4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to
take place or assented to it taking place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rule 1742/23 (Power=2.5)
Contracts
Any group of one or more consenting persons (the parties) may
publicly make an agreement among themselves with the intention
that it be binding upon them and be governed by the rules. Such
an agreement is known as a contract. A contract may be modified,
including by changing the set of parties, with the consent of all
existing parties. A contract may also be terminated with the
consent of all parties. A contract automatically terminates if the
number of parties to it falls below one. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a
person to become a party to a contract without eir consent.
Parties to a contract governed by the rules SHALL act in
accordance with that contract. This obligation is not impaired
by contradiction between the contract and any other contract, or
between the contract and the rules.
Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, any change that would cause
the full provisions or parties of a contract to become publicly
unavailable is canceled and does not take effect.
The portion of a contract's provisions that can be interpreted
with reference only to information that is either publicly or
generally available are known as its body; the remainder of the
provisions are known as the annex.
A party to a contract CAN perform any of the following actions as
explicitly and unambiguously permitted by the contract's body:
* Act on behalf of another party to the contract.
* By announcement, revoke destructible assets from the contract.
* By announcement, transfer liquid assets from the contract to a
specified recipient.
Any player CAN cause a contract to be terminated (syn. "shred")
without 2 objections. This SHOULD only be done to remove unused
contracts or contracts deemed detrimental to the game as a whole.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judge G.'s Arguments:
First off, the act of consent is an act of free will - whether someone
consents to something is a truth outside the game. While messages may
establish consent for legal purposes, consent can't be manipulated
arbitrarily through such messages, but is instead bound by limits of
thought and common sense. For example, it is nonsense to suggest that
a person's consent alternates infinitely and instantly between
consenting/nonconsenting (the brain doesn't work like that), or that
we as observers alternate infinitely between accepting and denying
consent. So, trying to set up an "infinitely back and forth" legal
fiction or paradox might succeed for an asset (in the absence of
explicit error-trapping in the rules), but when applied to consent
it's noncommunicative nonsense.
Secondly, consent is an important social concept that shouldn't be
taken lightly. To the extent that Agora is a community as well as a
game, it is in the best interests of Agora that we (as much as the
rules allow) assert the general principle that silence does NOT equal
consent. Leaving aside real world reasons, silence != consent is in
keeping with Agoran custom. Ever since the Mousetrap of 1995[0],
Agorans have carefully crafted rules to ensure that players could not
be drawn into subcontracts and so forth without wilful, expressed
consent. Further, there is a current exception that proves the rule:
"Without Objection" is literally a silence=consent process, but this
process is our most carefully and stringently wordsmithed, and is the
only process for which we award a full championship for demonstrating
a bug. This shows that Agorans have acknowledged the danger of
assuming silence=consent in an Agora gaming context, and we've adopted
explicit legislation to guard against its consequences.
Taking the position that silence != consent also means assuming that
uncertainty != consent. In many cases in Agora, we have legislated
away the law of excluded middle - just because something isn't true
doesn't mean it's false, it may be logically indeterminate. However,
in dealing with consent, we should generally avoid such logic and
maintain that a lack of clear consent means NO consent exists, at
least to the extent that the rules allow.
So, with this "good of the game" bias in mind, how do the rules apply
to this case? Determining consent is governed by R2519/2, in which
four numbered clauses describe different means for communicating
and/or inferring consent. Clauses #2 and #3 (preexisting contracts and
promises) are not relevant here, so simplifying somewhat:
> R2519/2 [excerpt]
> A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if,
> at the time the action took place:
> 1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the
> action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement; or
> 4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to
> take place or assented to it taking place.
Note that whenever clause #1 is true, clause #4 is also true, because
what could be "clearer from context" than a direct positive statement
of agreement? With that in mind, I find that clause #1, on its own,
does not allow for conditionals. Clause #1 clearly says that a
statement of agreement must be made, and given the bias above towards
uncertainty not equalling consent, this should be interpreted as a
strict requirement. Clause #1 requires a direct statement of agreement
that does not allow for conditionals.
However, clause #4 *does* allow for conditionals. A simple statement
"I agree with this contract if Janet transferred a coin to me
yesterday" together with the public record of actions provides
sufficient context for assent if and only if the conditions can be
reasonably and clearly shown to be true. So, if the caller's attempt
to join a contract succeeded, it would be through clause #4, not
clause #1.
This has a couple of consequences. First, it is subject to the
"reasonably clear" standard which outright rejects conditionals based
on the Riemann hypothesis[1]. Second, clause #4 doesn't ask about the
reasonable clarity of a particular *statement* but rather of the full
context. And the context includes the entire message. So instead of
forcing us to interpret a single statement within a message, that
might contain logical contradictions or uncertainty when examined in
isolation, we look at the message as a whole to ascertain assent.
And the context of the whole message is: clearly there's some trickery
going on. The caller has set up some conditionals based on a "fact"
that, unless e's about to reveal a proof and win the Fields Medal, e
doesn't know, we don't know, and e knows we don't know (that's also
part of the context). How can consent for one of those contracts "at
the time of the message" be inferred from that? E knows that Agora
can't assign em to one or the other with actual knowledge of the
"correct" answer, so e isn't truly consenting to be in either, at
least not with that message.
So, since the message in question contains no direct, unconditional
statement of agreement, and it was not reasonably clear from the
overall context of the message and surrounding facts that consent for
anything was actually meant, neither clause #1 nor clause #4 are
satisfied, and therefore no consent has been given for joining these
alleged contracts. I judge FALSE.
[0] https://agoranomic.org/Herald/theses/txt/1996-XX-XX-Swann.txt
[1] https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1460
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