ais523 wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-09-25 at 16:29 -0500, Ben Caplan wrote:
>> On Thursday 25 September 2008 01:03:46 pm Kerim Aydin wrote:
>>> 1. I do 1.
>>> 2. I do 2.
>>> 3. If 2 failed, I didn't do 1.
>>>
>>> It's very arguable if #3 actually, legally works. The
>>> "simultaneous but sequential" is no longer in the rules but is also
>>> kept by (recent) CFJ and a controversial series of them at best.
>> I believe the way I structured my message avoids that
>> retroactive-cancellation problem.
>>
>> I do apologize for the finicky conditional, but I really don't want to
>> make a major transaction like that and end up losing most of my crops
>> for no benefit.
>
> One of B Nomic's major rules is that it allows Transactions which act
> pretty much exactly as Pavitra attempted. I went and did a trivial
> paradox scam using them in B (which everyone ignored, due to wins having
> been repealed), and I can try something very similar here in Agora
> (which I don't expect to win, but may as well see what happens):
>
> I perform all the actions in the following block of text, if and only if
> they would all be successful, and every non-action statement in that
> block of text would be true at the time it was made:
> {{{
> I call for judgement on the statement "Goethe is wearing a hat."
> The previous action either failed or was never made because either this
> block of text contained an action which would not be successful, or it
> contained a statement that would not be true.
> }}}
> (This is about as close as I can get to the paradox I created in B, but
> using Agoran terminology; I've translated it more or less literally,
> thus causing the extra complexity).
I'm interpreting this as failing due to ambiguity of intent.
Again, let P = "I perform all the actions..."
X = "I call for judgement..."
Y = "The previous action..."
P simply asks "will X and Y both work?", so X and Y are evaluated with
awareness of P, so (P fails, X fails, Y is true) is self-consistent.
B's Transactions rule would ask "would X and Y both work individually?",
so X and Y would be hypothetically evaluated without awareness of P, so
X would hypothetically succeed and Y would hypothetically lack a truth
value (it would collapse to "Y is false"), so P would still fail.
