Michael wrote:
You can deem all you like, but the rules will pay you no attention.
There is a counterexample. The rules say nothing about choosing
nicknames. But if I deem my nickname to be something, the Rules
pay attention (CFJ 1361). The fact that there is one demonstrable
counterexample implies there may be others.
It comes down to a principle we could call "may implies can." It
goes like this: "If the rules allow a person to perform an action
but don't specify a method, the person may perform it by
announcement." The rules are silent on whether this is true,
although I would argue that R101(i) strongly implies it, because
in our world, the right and ability to do something are equivalent
to the ability to communicate the doing to appropriate recordkeepors
(which an announcement legally does) and have the recordkeepors'
requirement to record it be legally binding. Afer all, all we do
is post messages[*] and records that result from messages, right?
Of course there are many actions for which "by announcement" is
directly specified. But another example where it isn't (and we
assume the above principle) is in patent titles.
Conditions under which patent titles may or must be "awarded" are
listed, but no where does it say that it is done by announcement.
Assuming this is agoran custom. There are probably other
activities like this, that's just the first one I noticed.
So either we believe the "may implies can" principle, or these
activities are broken. If so, no problem, but if we go along with
that, we should evaluate all these activities, such as patent
titles, that we're used to doing by announcement, because your
logic would break them.
-Goethe
[*]Kelly's "I say I do" prohibition, as we currently use it, is
actually a prohibition against an additional abstraction layer,
i.e. prohibiting "I say I say I do." Though that may not
have been eir original argument.
