G. 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...
Proto: Rock and a Hard Place
(AI = 3, co-author = G.)
Create a rule "Catch-22" with Power 3 and this text:
If one clause in the ruleset states that someone SHALL perform an
action, and another states that e SHALL NOT perform it, then it
counts as a conflict, and only the clause that takes precedence
is effective.
