Subject: ackanomic digest V3 #379
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest       Tuesday, October 27 1998       Volume 03 : Number 379

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Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 20:17:27 -0500 (EST)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Interesting...

On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, Mueller wrote:
>>>Ahh, yes, but _which_ length?  There are an infinite number of different
>>>lengths to choose from, and the rules do not specify which.  Do you want
>>>to have to make a random determination for each infinitesimal amount, from
>>>an infinite number of alternatives?
>>
>>That's a non-issue.  Pick one, any one as long as it's an infinitesimal
>>amount of time, and now use that same length infinitesimal everywhere.
>>It doesn't matter whether it's infinitesimal-1 or infinitesimal-5 (out of
>>the infinite possible sizes of infinitesimal things).  If you use one
>>'size' as the size of an infinitsimal amount of time, this ordering
>>problem ceases to be one.  Since the time is infinitesimal, whether I (or
>>you or anyone else) chooses one that's 5 times the length of any other
>>doesn't matter as long as the same length is chosen uniformly across all
>>rules which seems to make the most sense and which completely removes the
>>timing issue you keep trying to bring up.
>
>Remember this:

[snip snip]
>     It is a de facto impossibility to describe something that "happens"
>for an immeasurably small amount of time. In fact, it is absurd to even
>contemplate it as having happened at all. The amount of time that "exists"
>between changes of government is immeasurably small, thus any attempt to
>describe it as a period of time when there is no government is absurd.
>
>     Furthermore, I believe that the rules and game custom support an
>interpretation of "infinitessimal amount of time" as logically equivalent
>to "no time at all".

for purposes of discussing something as occuring 'during' that period of
time, then I would certinly agree, nothing could occur during it.

However, for purposes of ordering (which is why that notation is in the
rules in the first place) there should be a way to determine the ordering
constraints between these to rules.  My argument has been (and continues
to be) that by choosing a 'constant' infinitesimal amount of time
(regardless of how large that instant is as long as it remains
infinitesimal) and appying that constant across all rules, you get a
useful and consistant ordering of events.  Otherwise it's indeterminate if
I have achieved a Winning Condition or not (it's obvious that I no longer
have the goose)

- --JT

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[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
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Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 21:09:04 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked] (John Bollinger)
Subject: Re: Acka: Ackanomic.org

This whole business confuses me somewhat, because I thought
IB had updated the page a couple of weeks ago when I supplied
the URL to him.  In fact, I know I used the ackanomic.org
page last week without difficulty.  Wierd.

Secondly, IB provides the service entirely voluntarilly, as
well as other services such as web-hosting space for some
of the Acka pages and Acka e-mail aliases.  Let's not get
snotty about it.  These are value-added services, after all.
I am grateful to IB for providing them.

ThinMan

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End of ackanomic digest V3 #379
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