Kerim Aydin wrote: > On Thu, 7 May 2009, Alex Smith wrote: >> Aaargh. Let's just amend the rules so ratification definitely works, >> then ratify everything we can. (Does everyone agree that the mechanism >> for adopting democratic proposals is definitely what we think it is?) > > There is one good of the game argument I can kind of see just now but > I'm not wholly persuaded. It could be argued that: > No change to the Ruleset can occur that would cause a Rule > to stipulate any other means of determining precedence > between Rules of unequal Power. > means "between any two arbitrary Rules of unequal power". In other > words, a "means" of determining power is only a means if it contains > instructions for every arbitrary pair of rules of unequal power, > not just for ones about Rests. > > Of course, that means R1482 is broken in another way, as that it > would make it possible to pass a power-1 rule that says "lower-powered > rules have precedence over higher-powered rules except for rules > about kumquats" (in other words, you could come arbitrarily close > to being about any two arbitrary rules without actually being so). > Still, that's a way in which R1482 is broken in the future, not > in the past. > > However, I'm not at all convinced that you can willy-nilly insert > "any two arbitrary" in the phrase "between Rules". You could just > as easily insert "any two specific rules (arbitrary or not)" which > is more reasonable to the way it's intended to be used - e.g. > it's intended to stop a power-2 specific rule from claiming > precedence over a power-3 specific rule.
I think the least breaky interpretation is that all those proposals did in fact go through, but that R1482 selectively limits the meanings that the rule texts can take on. That is, when a rule created after the current version of 1482 says "this rule takes precedence over all other rules regarding walruses", we are constrained to interpret that as meaning "this rule takes precedence over all other equal-powered rules regarding walruses". I'm not sure this can be justified in terms of the rules text, but I think that at least in the short run it's the most desirable outcome. Pavitra
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