On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 01:24 -0800, Ed Murphy wrote:
> Gratuitous Arguments by Goethe:
>
> To see why, take the simple phrase "you must get a coin before you
> can spend it." That doesn't mean getting a coin is a "requirement"
> otherwise I could just spend 1,000,000 coins and claim "I have until
> after the holiday to obtain them." Or take the following reducio-ad-
> absurdum :
>
> "Before Goethe can win by Zotting, e is required to change the
> Rules so that e can win by Zotting." This is trivially true, but
> it doesn't mean I could legally win by zotting (and have the win
> count) then later say, "oops, I broke a rule by not changing the
> Rules so I could win by zotting, but I still won".
It's probably worth pointing out that some of the recent B scams
attempted to scam rules based on this principle. (One argument was that
their version of R101 was sufficiently garbled that it was not only
possible to bind other people to contracts against their will, but that
being bound to a contract against your will was illegal!) Not really
relevant to the Agoran court case on the matter, though.
--
ais523
