On Sat, 8 Nov 2008, Pavitra wrote: > Even considering the presumably non-legal-fictional example of "flap > my arms and fly by announcement", we have the precedent in the > current Rules that statements of this form are indeed > self-fulfilling: I can "sit up" by announcement. Doing so may have no > effect on my real-world physical posture, but the Rule creates the > legal fiction that, by so doing, I become Sitting.
Actually we're in agreement. I think that when a rule *says* something in its text, it overrides the physical reality with a legal fiction. If the rules gave flapping arms a significance, it would work. The flap arms example was used as a case where (1) the rules don't say we can do it but (2) the rules say we can do unregulated things. But the fact that the rules allow us unregulated things doesn't allow us, where the rules are silent, to manufacture the legal fiction that we can fly and have it be a "true" legal fiction in Agora. In other words, Agoran rules override physical reality with legal fictions, but where the rules are silent, we can't override physical reality with extra-rules legal fictions. > By default, we should always assume that anything a Rule says is true, > and that this can only be overridden by another Rule, subject to the > precedence Rules. Again, I agree. The monster case is one where it *isn't* written in the rule that it's true, and it isn't written in the rule that it's false, either, and other rules say it might potentially be true (but don't say that it is). Under those circumstances, we don't manufacture that the ability exists for the Monster just because it isn't prohibited. -Goethe
