On Wed, 2008-10-08 at 12:52 -0700, Ed Murphy wrote:
> ais523 wrote:
>
> > Well, I think the democratisation didn't work for slightly different
> > reasons; woggle intended to make a non-existent (at the time) Agoran
> > decision democratic. As it happens, a proposal was assigned the number
> > 5707, and there was an Agoran decision about it; but a different
> > proposal (there were 7 in the pool at the time IIRC) could have been
> > assigned that number, or the number might not have been used due to a
> > Promotor mistake, for instance. So I don't think that the intent was
> > unambiguous, and unambiguity is needed for an intent to work.
>
> woggle stated eir intent in response to the Monster's alleged deputy
> distribution of 5707, which was only later determined to have been
> invalid because the Promotor wasn't required to distribute it until the
> following week. That's unambiguous enough in my book, especially since
> that same proposal did get ID number 5707 when the PNP distributed it.
>
> I'm curious, I looked up this context in the archives and you made this
> comment:
>
> > I act on behalf of the Monster to deputise for the Promotor to assign
> > this proposal the ID number 5707 (believing a lower number would be
> > confusing, as the PerlNomic Partnership has already reserved all lower
> > numbers for proposals it's tried and failed to distribute).
>
> but I don't remember the PNP publishing any invalid attempts to
> distribute (except for an early test run, and one of my proposals where
> someone entered the wrong AI). Were you referring to someone activating
> a "publish what's in the pool" script containing some "not until more
> time passes and/or more proposals are added" logic, or what?
There were 6 proposals in the pool at the time (7 after the proposal),
and the PNP tends to distribute proposals in the order they were
submitted unless there are at least 10 in the pool. The PNP wasn't told
about 5707 until after 5701-6 had been distributed so that it would
distribute it in a distribution by its own, but that was simply because
it was the most convenient way to do it; that part of the scam could
equally well have been done by removing 5701-6 from PerlNomic's notion
of what the pool was, distributing 5707, and re-adding them (and thus
the proposal called 5707 in the current gamestate would instead have
been 5701), and the only reason it wasn't done that way was that it
would have been more typing. In other words, which proposal would get
the number 5707 was far from certain until it was actually distributed.
--
ais523
