On Sat, 2014-10-11 at 11:44 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Mine is more: "A rule says do X to accomplish Z. A higher rule says > "things like X are not sufficient to accomplish Z. Therefore you can't > do X to accomplish Z". > > Now you would say "but I invented X+Y, which is actually *better* than > X!" And I'd say: "fine, but when you get down to it, you're still > doing X, not X+Y, because that's what the rules say you're doing when > you try to invoke that Rule." > > And you say "but Y happens naturally to make X into X+Y as a practical > fact!" And I'd say, "well, the Rules still don't recognize Y." And > you'd say: "doesn't matter. Y is a fact on the ground that practically > modifies X, whether the rule says Y can be done or not." > > Then that's about the point of impasse, maybe?
Pretty close. My argument is: "A rule says, do X to accomplish Z. A high-power rule says, the only way you can do Z is to do Y. However, there are processes that are both an X and a Y. Following them should trigger one rule and not be blocked by the other." If this wasn't written in terms of actions and/or processes, I think it'd be entirely uncontroversial. If we replace X and Y with, say, properties of persons (registration, officerhood, etc.), I think it's pretty uncontroversial that someone who's both an X and a Y can perform the action (and nobody else can). This is because a person is a single, typically well-defined entity; we don't distinguish ais523 the (possible) officer from ais523 the player in Agora. Processes are much less well-defined. Your viewpoint is that the relevant process is "by announcement". Mine is that it can consist of a sequence of steps which culminate in "by announcement" (as, e.g. dependent actions do), and the action is still by announcement. To take the case of a dependent action (which is similar to what's going on here, but less confusing): is a dependent action "with Notice", or "by announcement"? I'd argue it's both. Whether this is one long process, or whether two processes exist (the dependent action as a whole, and the process for resolving it by announcement), is an interesting philosophical point, although not one that's relevant here. -- ais523
