On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 11:47 PM Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> > > A discussion question here, inspired by the Proposal Competition > problem. (warning! rules-philosophical hypothetical ahead! if you > don't like those, you can safely ignore the rest of this message). > > Let's say you have two rules: > > R1, Power-3: Officer A SHALL NOT do X. > R2, Power-1: Officer A SHALL do X in a timely fashion. > > In some previous versions of the rules, penalties for ILLEGAL > activities were explicitly "per Rule", e.g., you were penalized for > breaking "a rule" and you could be cited for violating R1 or R2 and > have no way out. This was dealt with by making the actual penalty > when you were trapped a Green Card equivalent (i.e. "accidental"). > > Now, however, cards are for "specific violation of the rules" as a > whole. > > This can be read in two ways. First, it can still be read as the > above; if you violate either one of the two rules, you've violated a > rule and thus violated "the rules". > > The second is a more holistic view: R1 outranks R2, the SHALL NOT > overrides the SHALL, so if you follow R1, you are not in violation of > "the rules" at all. (and this is what we do with CAN and CANNOT, of > course). > > This is an important distinction! It greatly influences arguments on > what is or isn't illegal. > > So I'm wondering if there's any consensus on which way we're playing, > rule text or precedent I've missed, or whether we have to wait for a > court case to decide that. Maybe it's up to individual referees' > discretion now. If nothing else, it's worth recognizing that old > precedents (that assume each Rule is treated separately) may no > longer hold... I favor the CFJ, if one comes out of this, and should thus probably try to hold myself aloof. -Aris > >
