On Sun, 9 Jul 2017, Ørjan Johansen wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Jul 2017, Cuddle Beam wrote:
>
> > Additionally, such a Ratification would've attempted to Ratify the Ruleset
> > (as in, the whole Ruleset), at once. But it wouldn't have been able to
> > happen, because, " The number of the new rule cannot be specified by the
> > enacting instrument; any attempt to so specify is null and void.", and
> > since it would've attempted to specify the number of the would-be new rule,
> > the attempts of Ratification of the Ruleset would've all been null and void.
>
> Hm. Your argument is starting to have teeth. (More so than PSS's
> counterargument, in my opinion.) But surely there must be some precedent on
> whether the Ruleset can be ratified.
>
> Greetings,
> Ørjan, waiting for G. to dredge up something.
Well ok then... I'm not sure about the ratification bit, but the case that
Vacant is the rules-specified Default is pretty straightforward to make by
reading 1006:
1. By R1006, if the game has no players, the only possible value for the
switch is Vacant (in common language, it "defaults" to vacant), and vacant
is always a possible value.
2. Also in R1006, if an officeholder is "ever not a player" (i.e. in R2162
language it would "fail to have a possible value" other than vacant, or
is indeterminate), the switch is set to (again, "defaults" to) Vacant.
3. These properties of Vacant are specified by the rules, and are sufficiently
identical to the behavior of a default. Further, there are no other
Officer switch values with default-like properties, and there are no
properties of the Vacant value inconsistent with it being the default, so
(for the good of the game, where the rules are silent, etc.), it should be
found that the current rules are sufficient to designate Vacant as the
default, as required to be a switch.
It's a general "if it walks like a duck" argument - if the rules require
an Object to have property P in general, but instead define specific property
Q that acts just like P and only like P (and nothing else acts like P), then
Q is the "Agoran synonym" for P for that object, especially if the good of the
game is at stake.
Offhand the precedent I remember is one I judged where:
1. All proposals were required to have a 'unique name' (this was before
'titles').
2. A rules mechanism auto-generated certain proposals, but didn't specify
any unique title or name for generated proposals.
3. But the Promotor assigned ID numbers to the generated proposals, as
e did with any proposal.
4. I found that, since ID numbers had all the properties of a 'name',
(unique, used to refer to the proposal, etc.) that the ID number was
in fact the 'name'.
(can't remember exact CFJ statement text so will have to dig, but will post
it when I find it).
