Subject: Ackanomic Digest V1 #116
From: [email-masked] (Ackanomic Digest)
To: ackanomic-digest

Ackanomic Digest       Wednesday, July 17 1996       Volume 01 : Number 116

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 08:57:25 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: CFJ 235 Verdict

CFJ 235 has been judged TRUE.

Clerk of the Courts

Call For Judgement 235
Subject: Unpermissibility of the Permissibility of the Unprohibited
Initiator: Malenkai
Judge: Brinjal (selected Jul 14, 1996, 18:26h New York Time)

Statement:

/dev/joe's action of making rules dormant was illegal, and therefore did
not occur.

Malenkai's Reasoning:

I am going to make several arguments. The Judge need only argee with
one to find a verdict of TRUE, or agree with none, but concur with the
statement.

/dev/joe used R 558 to make all the rules which were not dormant, dormant.
Therefore, to examine the legality of such action, we must first look at
R 558, to see how he was granted such power. R 558, first part:

> As a special power, entities can be granted the power to make proposals,
> rules and CFJs dormant. When dormant, these cannot be voted on, acted
> upon or passed judgement on. But rules and proposals can be revoked or
> amended as permitted by other rules. Dormant entities have no effect.

The key phrase is "entities can be granted the power". Granted the power
by whom or what? The rules are silent on the issue. There is no extant
game custom, except for the fact that no entity of type player has yet
granted this power to anyone. The rule has been around for a while. Can
the fact that no player has yet granted the power, support an implicit
collective interpretation that no player may grant the power? It can,
indicating a verdict of TRUE.

The above is an argument from negative interpretation, one I believe, but
one that is difficult to deliver. Its a case of "why state the obvious",
and is an important point to make. Lets say all points in rules can be
decomposed into many seperate forms which can be interpreted as X can do Y,
or X cannot do Y, depending on the circumstances defining X and Y. (Even
if all rules don't, this one does). The first is a positive interpretation,
and is confirmed by the continued accepted allowance of X doing Y. The
second is the negative interpreted form, confirmed by the continuance of
X not doing Y over a period of time, because of extant interpretation that
X cannot do Y. The alternative is to continually state the obvious of X
cannot do Y to the public forum. Thats the problem with negative
interpretations, there is no, and cannot be, any confirming action.
 
This ends argument 1, with the claim that R 558's first sentence is of this
form.

The next argument assumes no extant interpretation, which means we must
try to find one. The rules are silent, and there is no game custom, so
all we have is common sense and spirit of the game to determine which
entities can grant such power, and whether /dev/joe is one of those
entities. Common sense indicates that "another rule" is the proper
rendering of what entity can grant the power, but that interpretation
cannot be backed up by fact or rule of law. Its just an interpretation,
and the Judge can choose another. It seems that we must choose *some*
interpretation. What rule of law or game custom gives /dev/joe's any
more weight than mine? If the Judge agrees that the proper rendering is
"another rule", or CFJ, etc, but not a player, then a verdict of TRUE is
necessary. In other words, the Judge just has to interpret that first
sentence or R 558. This ends argument 2.

The next argument takes the previous one a step further, and asserts that
the interpretation in the above is "indeterminate", leading to a thread
split. A multitude of threads spin off from a multitude of possible
interpretations. One such thread is based on an interpretation that only
Left-Handed Lemons may grant such power in the first sentence. 2 of the
more interesting ones are that only rules can, or only rules cannot grant
the power. In the one, where only rules can, we have a verdict of TRUE.
The other will be explored in argument 4, but suffice it to say, even if
it is found FALSE in that thread, which I don't think it will, we can choose
which thread to play out, since we don't have the resources to do both.
Its like the previous argument, sort of, it comes down to choosing the
interpretation you wish to play under, because there is no rule or fact
to indicate such. Who is right? This ends argument 3.

The fourth and final argument examines the case in which players may choose
to grant themselves this power. What rule explicitly grants such power to
a player? Not a single one, with the possible exception of R 115,
"Permissibility of the Unprohibited", which says, in part:

> "Whatever is not explicitly prohibited or regulated by a rule is
> permitted and unregulated ..."

So you either buy that no rule grants the player the power, or this
one does. Why have this rule in the *initial* ruleset in the first
place? To cover the default case, which would exist without it, that you
could not do anything that was not explicitly permitted. That is why this
rule is needed. The problem is that the rule was dormant (assuming the
premise at this point in the argument that it could be used to grant
the power in the first sentence of R 588), because Wayne made it dormant.
 
Therefore we are playing without it, in that harsh world of the
Unpermissibility of the Permissibility of the Unprohibited, which prevents
a lot of stuff we might do, but also prevented /dev/joe's action,
indicating a verdict of TRUE.

Brinjal's Reasoning:

Malenkai`s arguments centre on the proposition that Rule 558 is silent
on the question of who or what may grant the power to make rules
dormant, and that game custom and the dormancy of R115 must be
considered in order to decide which entities are and which are not
permitted to grant this power.

However, where Rule 558 says that "entities can be granted the power to
make proposals,rules and CFJs dormant", it is stating that the granting
of such power is a permitted action. There is nothing to suggest that
the permission is granted to some entities but not to others. In the
form in which it is written, it can only be taken to mean that all
entities are granted permission.

An analogous argument might be that the rule is silent on how many
rules can be made dormant at a time,  that no entity had  ever made
more than one rule dormant at one time, and that therefore by game
custom it is illegal to make more than one rule dormant at a time.
This is spurious because there is nothing in the rule to suggest that
there is any such limit. Such a game custom must be overridden by the
rule in the form in which it is written.

The question of which entities can grant the power of dormancy is not
so clearcut as the above, because it is not unreasonable to assume
that the intention of the rule was to grant this power specifically
to rules and only to rules. But again, this is not what the rule says.
There is nothing in the rule itself to suggest any limit on the
classes of entities which can grant the power of dormancy. I am thus
unable to agree with Malenkai`s arguments.

A further point, which was raised in the public forum, is that R558
conflicts with R104 which says that "proposals made in the proper way
shall be voted on". By R558, dormant proposals cannot be voted on.
There is certainly a potential conflict here, but is it R558 which
conflicts with R104? R558 merely permits the granting of a power,
which if used in a particular way, could lead to a conflict. This is
a thorny question. If some other rule, under the auspices of R558,
granted itself, or even a further rule, the power to make proposals
dormant, and that power was used, we would have to decide whether
the proposal could be voted on (by R104), or not (it being dormant).
Presumably R104 holds sway, but which rule or rules are then, by R108,
"void and without effect"?  My initial intention was to say that R558
should be considered not guilty, being only an enabling rule, and that
only the hypothetical mutable rule which sparked such a conflict would
be voided.
However, I then reread R108, which says "Mutable rules that are
inconsistent in some way with some immutable rule" shall be void and
without effect. "Inconsistent in some way" is such a broad brush with
which to tar mutable rules that I can only conclude that R558 falls
foul of it. Even if R558 is at one or more removes from the
inconsistency, it still cannot escape R108.

I thus conclude that R558, by enabling proposals to be made dormant,
and instructing that they cannot be voted on, is inconsistent with
R104 and is wholly void and without effect.
Thus the statement in the CFJ is TRUE.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 10:51:16 EDT 
From: [email-masked] ()
Subject: Re: CFJ 235 Verdict

> A further point, which was raised in the public forum, is that R558
> conflicts with R104 which says that "proposals made in the proper way
> shall be voted on". By R558, dormant proposals cannot be voted on.
> There is certainly a potential conflict here, but is it R558 which
> conflicts with R104? R558 merely permits the granting of a power,
> which if used in a particular way, could lead to a conflict. This is
> a thorny question. If some other rule, under the auspices of R558,
> granted itself, or even a further rule, the power to make proposals
> dormant, and that power was used, we would have to decide whethe
> r the proposal could be voted on (by R104), or not (it being dormant).
> Presumably R104 holds sway, but which rule or rules are then, by R108,
> "void and without effect"?  My initial intention was to say that R558
> should be considered not guilty, being only an enabling rule, and that
> only the hypothetical mutable rule which sparked such a conflict would
> be voided.
> However, I then reread R108, which says "Mutable rules that are
> inconsistent in some way with some immutable rule" shall be void and
> without effect. "Inconsistent in some way" is such a broad brush with
> which to tar mutable rules that I can only conclude that R558 falls
> foul of it. Even if R558 is at one or more removes from the
> inconsistency, it still cannot escape R108.
>

I would like to commend Brinjal on a fine judgement.  It was well thought
out and very accurate, especially the quoted paragraphs above.  This was
the key arguement to the whole CFJ.

Wayne

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 12:20:00 -0500
From: [email-masked] (John Bollinger)
Subject: Re:  Acka: IP #2 

snowgod wrote:

> I am writing this Impeachment Paper to impeach ThinMan from the office of
>the Financier.
>
>ThinMan has been negligent in performing his duties as Financier.  He has
>issued no reports advising us of the status of finances for almost one
>month.  He has not made a good faith effort to determine the account
>balance of the players (in either thread), nor has he posted information
>concerning the value of PFbonds in any thread.

As I read the rules, only the second allegation above would be, if true,
a failure to carry out the duties of the OotF.  The other two allegations,
although true, do not describe failures to perform the duties snowgod
lists below.  It was CnH's habit to regularly post account balances, which
I have gotten out of with all of the recent confusion, but it is not required
by the rules.  Likewise, it is not required that I post PFBond values, but
I note for the record, that with all of the game-winning and PFBond cycles
being reset by R666, only one complete bond cycle has passed during the last
month, and it was not even clear that that had happened until a few days ago. 

>I will quote from the rules:
>
>...The Financier is responsible for the proper maintenance of the accounts
>of the players, (bonds, currencies, whatever...), whether or not that
>task is delegated to someone or some other entity...
>
>...The Financier will be directly responsible for the upkeep of the FM.
>He/she may delegate any work to assistants, but is still ultimately
>responsible for it. The financier is also responsible for making sure
>the records of every transaction are publicly available...

>...The Financier will report directly to the Players concerning his
>handling of the job, especially on matter concerning his decisions in
>resolving disagreements...

I do not interpret this as a directive to issue reports, but rather a
declaration of the accountability of the office -- that is, he must answer
to the players.

>...The Financier is publicly accountable and can be voted out of office by
>two thirds of the votes of the Players. The Financier may also resign...
>
>...Should any player disagree with the Financier's
>decision, he/she may call a CFJ to impeach the Financier on that matter
>until it is dropped or a rule is passed clearing up the situation....

ThinMan

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 12:40:32 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: CFJ 235 Verdict

> However, I then reread R108, which says "Mutable rules that are
> inconsistent in some way with some immutable rule" shall be void and
> without effect. "Inconsistent in some way" is such a broad brush with
> which to tar mutable rules that I can only conclude that R558 falls
> foul of it. Even if R558 is at one or more removes from the
> inconsistency, it still cannot escape R108.
> 
> I thus conclude that R558, by enabling proposals to be made dormant,
> and instructing that they cannot be voted on, is inconsistent with
> R104 and is wholly void and without effect.

A nice, well-thought-out judgement, except that after concluding that
Rule 558 is (and always had been) void and without effect, you have to
invoke Protection (or Rule 115, about changing the rules) to conclude:

> Thus the statement in the CFJ is TRUE.

The statement was:
  /dev/joe's action of making rules dormant was illegal, and therefore did
  not occur.
If Rule 558 was void, then only the fact that rules are protected (and
possibly Rule 115, if you interpret making them dormant (which has no
effect without Rule 558) as "changing the rules" makes that action illegal.
Rule 558's voidness alone just makes the action have no effect.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 16:37:46 -0800
From: [email-masked] (Phil Ackley)
Subject: Re:  Acka: IP #2

At 12:20 PM 7/16/96, John Bollinger wrote:
>snowgod wrote:
>
>> I am writing this Impeachment Paper to impeach ThinMan from the office of
>>the Financier.
>>
>>ThinMan has been negligent in performing his duties as Financier.  He has
>>issued no reports advising us of the status of finances for almost one
>>month.  He has not made a good faith effort to determine the account
>>balance of the players (in either thread), nor has he posted information
>>concerning the value of PFbonds in any thread.
>
>As I read the rules, only the second allegation above would be, if true,
>a failure to carry out the duties of the OotF.  The other two allegations,
>although true, do not describe failures to perform the duties snowgod
>lists below.  It was CnH's habit to regularly post account balances, which
>I have gotten out of with all of the recent confusion, but it is not required
>by the rules.  Likewise, it is not required that I post PFBond values, but
>I note for the record, that with all of the game-winning and PFBond cycles
>being reset by R666, only one complete bond cycle has passed during the last
>month, and it was not even clear that that had happened until a few days ago.

The fact remains that for over a month players have had no clear
understanding of where their accounts stand in any thread.  My arguement
for impeachment consists of a violation of the duties of the financier,
plus supporting arguments.  The rule clearly states that if the players are
not happy with the job that the financier has been preforming, they may
impeach him.  Any unhappiness is grounds for impeachment, and you have
given us plenty to be unhappy about.

You _have not_ :

1) informed players of the balance of their accounts.

2) made any attempt to calculate account balances (in the most probable
thread, or any other)

3) calculated the value of PFbonds (with or without the n win scenario)

4) delegated any of these duties to an assistant so that it may be done.

You _have_:

1) determined (against the better judgement of the players) that no further
effort should be made to collect the coke is it! money from coca-cola
(perhaps, simply to conceal your embarrasment at harrasing a huge company
with such a trivial request?)

>>...The Financier will report directly to the Players concerning his
>>handling of the job, especially on matter concerning his decisions in
>>resolving disagreements...
>
>I do not interpret this as a directive to issue reports, but rather a
>declaration of the accountability of the office -- that is, he must answer
>to the players.

I believe you interpreation here is incorrect.  The goal of this section is
to provide a directive to isssue reports (or maintain a web page?) or
someother means of keeping the players in touch with the ackanomic
financial beat.  The sections that describe your accountabilty to the
players are the ones which follow:

>>...The Financier is publicly accountable and can be voted out of office by
>>two thirds of the votes of the Players. The Financier may also resign...
>>
>>...Should any player disagree with the Financier's
>>decision, he/she may call a CFJ to impeach the Financier on that matter
>>until it is dropped or a rule is passed clearing up the situation....

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 21:34:07 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: What Phoebe Says (was game custom)

I was clicking through my correspondance, trying to add something 
constructive to the discussion of game custom and external concepts,
and could not. Stuck, I noticed in the back of mind's I a small matchbox.
Mentally, I opened same, and out popped the Steel Flea Phoebe, who added
her small thoughts to the thought by snowgod which I was currently
considering:

(snowgod): 
> Again, I agree... But you cannot create a rule that places something
> outside the reach of the rules, and there may be no other solution.
> Possibly, instead of saying that game custom is unregulated, we could say
> that "game custom cannot be regulated by any other rule than this one, or
> rules which this one defers to on the matter of the creation of game
> custom."

I think you have to take for granted that things exist outside the rules
which can affect their interpretation. For example, the definition and
grammar of the English language. It also seems reasonable for the rules
to *refer* to these "external concepts", ie, a rule could say: "The rules
must be construed and interpreted using the rules of English syntax and
semantics".

The act of "referring" to external concepts does not, in and of itself,
regulate them (at least until possibly CFJ 113). I believe "game custom"
and "spirit of the game" should be, and were, examples of these external
concepts. The fact that a few rules *referred* to them is ok. The one
potential bug is R 216 and R 545, which *add* things to game custom. 
IMHO, that is ok as well. Following the English anology, its seems 
reasonable for a rule to explicitly add the word "Torkola" to the
English language, for purposes of interpretation vis-a-vis the game,
without *regulating* it, per se. (Or the I.R.S. had the bug of
internalizing an external concept). 

The problem CFJ 113 presented, I guess, is the following language from
its reasoning: "You can do anything you want if the rules have nothing
to say on the issue". I render "nothing to say" as regulate, thereby
alleviating the problem. Others can render it to just mean "mention" it,
thereby construing it to bring it into the rules, as (I think) ThinMan
did. The fact that CFJ 113's reasoning, is itself implicit game custom at
best, IMHO, compromises ThinMan's (CFJ 222) argument, but we've been
through that, and I acknowledge that ThinMan disagrees that his argument
is compromised in the way. Anyway,  CFJ 113 is irrelavent, given the
Protection thing. I'm just a Sleel Flea, I cannot fully grasp these things
anyway.

R 660 obviously regulates game custom as /dev/joe cleverly pointed out.
This sinks the ship. I do not necessarily argee that it leads to a
paradox, it more "locks in" extant custom when Protection Bugfix passed,
but that is for the Supreme Court to decide. In any case, the game will
be difficult to play with "locked in" or "indeterminate" game custom.

The fix, it would seem, is to fix R 660, and formally *recognize* the 
idea of external concepts, and *define* some of them. pTang attempted to
the latter with CFJ 231; his mistake was using the term "game custom",
rather than "linguistic and customary interpretations" or something
like that. The other mistake, of course, was that GC *was* regulatd by
R 660. If it were not for R 660, I would have to say the verdict of CFJ 231
was in error, R 216 and R 545 notwithstanding.  

Thus spoke Phoebe. As I attempted to intice her to elaborate further,
she and her matchbox faded into the recesses of my mind, and where lost.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 22:05:49 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Misc: What Phoebe Says

I was clicking through my correspondance, trying to add something
constructive to the discussion of game custom and external concepts,
and could not. Stuck, I noticed in the back of mind's I a small matchbox.
Mentally, I opened same, and out popped the Steel Flea Phoebe, who added
her small thoughts to the thought by snowgod which I was currently
considering:

(snowgod):
> Again, I agree... But you cannot create a rule that places something
> outside the reach of the rules, and there may be no other solution.
> Possibly, instead of saying that game custom is unregulated, we could say
> that "game custom cannot be regulated by any other rule than this one, or
> rules which this one defers to on the matter of the creation of game
> custom."

I think you have to take for granted that things exist outside the rules
which can affect their interpretation. For example, the definition and
grammar of the English language. It also seems reasonable for the rules
to *refer* to these "external concepts", ie, a rule could say: "The rules
must be construed and interpreted using the rules of English syntax and
semantics".

The act of "referring" to external concepts does not, in and of itself,
regulate them (at least until possibly CFJ 113). I believe "game custom"
and "spirit of the game" should be, and were, examples of these external
concepts. The fact that a few rules *referred* to them is ok. The one
potential bug is R 216 and R 545, which *add* things to game custom.
IMHO, that is ok as well. Following the English anology, its seems
reasonable for a rule to explicitly add the word "Torkola" to the
English language, for purposes of interpretation vis-a-vis the game,
without *regulating* it, per se. (Or the I.R.S. had the bug of
internalizing an external concept).

The problem CFJ 113 presented, I guess, is the following language from
its reasoning: "You can do anything you want if the rules have nothing
to say on the issue". I render "nothing to say" as regulate, thereby
alleviating the problem. Others can render it to just mean "mention" it,
thereby construing it to bring it into the rules, as (I think) ThinMan
did. The fact that CFJ 113's reasoning, is itself implicit game custom at
best, IMHO, compromises ThinMan's (CFJ 222) argument, but we've been
through that, and I acknowledge that ThinMan disagrees that his argument
is compromised in the way. Anyway,  CFJ 113 is irrelavent, given the
Protection thing. I'm just a Sleel Flea, I cannot fully grasp these things
anyway.

R 660 obviously regulates game custom as /dev/joe cleverly pointed out.
This sinks the ship. I do not necessarily argee that it leads to a
paradox, it more "locks in" extant custom when Protection Bugfix passed,
but that is for the Supreme Court to decide. In any case, the game will
be difficult to play with "locked in" or "indeterminate" game custom.

The fix, it would seem, is to fix R 660, and formally *recognize* the
idea of external concepts, and *define* some of them. pTang attempted to
the latter with CFJ 231; his mistake was using the term "game custom",
rather than "linguistic and customary interpretations" or something
like that. The other mistake, of course, was that GC *was* regulatd by
R 660. If it were not for R 660, I would have to say the verdict of CFJ 231
was in error, R 216 and R 545 notwithstanding.

Thus spoke Phoebe. As I attempted to intice her to elaborate further,
she and her matchbox faded into the recesses of my mind, and where lost.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 22:28:08 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: Game Custom Overhaul

Simon Clarke wrote:
> 
> 
> The reason, as I see it, to give Game Custom a role in the legal
> framework of the game, is to allow rules to be written in plain
> language instead of in obscure legalese. Some of us may be unable or
> unwilling to couch every rule in the precise and complex language of
> real world legal documents. By adopting customary interpretations of
> our rules, and giving these interpretations some legal force, we avoid
> this necessity.

I agree with this. I also believe (or Phoebe does actually), that game
custom should not, indeed cannot, be internalized in the rules. (see other
post).

A problem aries that some people take a quite literal interpretation of
the rules, whereas others use "custom". One can be called "nit-picking"
by some folks, the other can be called "handwaving" by other folks.

The real problem, IMHO, is consistency. I think its difficult to *regulate*
the way the rules should be interpreted. The rules try, but I believe they
fail, or we sometimes fail, from time to time, to follow those rules.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 22:17:03 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Acka: Phoebe (Kelly Martin)

Thank you, Malenkai, for sharing that bit of Phoebe's wisdom with us.

Kelly Martin has found Phoebe's matchbox.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 00:06:17 -0400
From: Randy Hall <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Appointer's Report

The Nomination period for Inventor is over. The following candidate(s)
have volunteered, from which one will be elected:

	snowgod

The election for the office of Inventor ends Sat, Jul 21, 00:05 EDT.
Send votes to [email-masked]. Elections are regulated by R 611.

Good luck to all the candidates!

Just a reminder, nominations for the following offices end today (Wed)
at 19:30 EDT.

Senate (1 seat)
Appointer

Malenkai
Acting Appointer

------------------------------

End of Ackanomic Digest V1 #116
*******************************