On Thu, 9 Dec 2010, ais523 wrote: > On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 16:51 +1100, Michael Norrish wrote: > > On 7/12/10 9:52 AM, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > On Mon, 6 Dec 2010, omd wrote: > > >> On the other hand, submitting a proposal with an intentional loophole > > >> is bordering on dishonesty and violation of trust, and, indeed, can be > > >> illegal unless the title is sufficiently vague and the proposal isn't > > >> Disinterested. > > > > > I disagree vehemently with this sentiment; I think getting a loophole > > > through is the fundamental gameplay of a Nomic, and Agora is a Nomic. > > > > In my view, this (common) view makes nomic an uninteresting game of > > pedantic, and unrealistic legalese-wrangling. I personally find scams > > super-boring, and would much prefer it if Agora was a game of politics > > rather than legislation. But politics requires a grounding in some > > other activity. > > I think a certain level of scamming is necessary for any realistic > political simulation.
We may be all in a certain type of agreement here: I think the scams that are "interesting" are fundamentally political in nature; a group realizes that a loophole gives them more political power than they would otherwise have, and use it. But I should state that I think that 3/4 of scams tried here are a trivial attempt at misunderstanding legal procedures as mathematical logic, which would be laughed out of court but maintain a credence here. Reminds me of this famous story, actually: 'In 1949, when Gödel applied to become a U.S. citizen, he had an impressive list of sponsors: Albert Einstein, Oskar Morgenstern and John von Neumann. They were a bit apprehensive about how Gödel would handle the simple citizenship interview with a judge. All he had to do was answer a few elementary questions about the American Constitution. On eve of the interview, Gödel announced that he had discovered a logical loophole that would enable a dictatorship to be established. He was told that this was absurd, but his friends were concerned that he would bring this up in the interview and be denied citizenship. John Casti, quoted in John D. Barrow’s Pi in the Sky (1992), gives the following account of what happened then: “At the interview the judge was suitably impressed by the sterling character and public personas of Gödel’s witnesses, and broke with tradition by inviting them to sit in during the exam. The judge began by saying to Gödel, “Up to now you have held German citizenship.” Gödel corrected this slight affront, noting that he was Austrian. Unfazed, the judge continued, “Anyhow, it was under an evil dictatorship … but fortunately that’s not possible in America.” With the magic word dictatorship out of the bag, Gödel was not to be denied, crying out, “On the contrary, I know how that can happen. And I can prove it!” By all accounts it took the efforts of not only Einstein and Morgenstern but also the judge to calm Gödel down and prevent him from going into a detailed and lengthy discourse about his “discovery.” '
