On Thu, 2017-07-20 at 22:21 -0700, Aris Merchant wrote: > I'm forwarding this message, which I originally sent to omd, to a-d in > the hopes that it might find an answer here. I feel kind of awkward > doing this, but it needs an answer so I can resolve the case, and I > don't have time at the moment to draft a better email.
It strikes me that the wording of the paragraph in question is ambiguous on its face, and has been for a long time. The oldest version I could find via a quick archive search was 2166/3 (27 March 2008), where the paragraph looked like this: An asset is an entity defined as such by an instrument or contract (hereafter its backing document), and existing solely because its backing document defines its existence. This is identical to the current wording in all the ways that matter. However, it seems to be conflating an asset with a type of asset. Is "a Shiny" an asset, or is "the concept of Shinies" an asset? The rule goes on to imply it's the former (this is the 2166/3 wording, the modern wording is similar): Each asset has exactly one owner. If an asset would otherwise lack an owner, it is owned by the Bank. If an asset's backing document restricts its ownership to a class of entities, then that asset CANNOT be gained by or transferred to an entity outside that class, and is destroyed if it is owned by an entity outside that class. For each of the Shinies I own, can we really say that that particular Shiny exists solely because a specific rule defines it? I'd put most of the credit for the Shiny's existence on the fact that it was part of my salary, rather than on the rule that defines Shinies to be assets. For reference (because it's not online yet), here's what I believe to be the current wording of rule 2483: Shinies (sg. shiny) are an indestructible liquid currency, and the official currency of Agora. They may be owned by Agora, any player, or any organization. The Secretary is the recordkeepor for Shinies. The Secretary CAN cause Agora to pay any player or organization by announcement if doing so is specified by a rule. and the definition of "currency" from rule 2166: A currency is a class of asset defined as such by its backing document. Instances of a currency with the same owner are fungible. So which rule is the backing document for Shinies? Is it rule 2483, or rule 2166, that "defines a Shiny to be an asset"? I'd argue that it's rule 2483 here, most plausibly. I was hoping that rule 2483 was also the cause of most Shinies existing – it talks about Shinies being distributed from Agora – but unfortunately those are actually transfers, and the stock of Shinies that we presently have were created by proposal. The proposal did have power 3, though, and thus should logically be able to override anything in rule 2166. It's at least plausible, therefore, that the proposal set the provenance of the shinies such that they were created by their backing document (because otherwise, they wouldn't be Shinies, because a Shiny is a sort of asset). Unfortunately, I don't think this line of argument works; the situation is different from that of CuddleBeam's (very similar!) recent scam, because a power-3 proposal has a lot more ability to rewrite reality than a power-0 person, but I suspect it falls afoul of the (fairly recently added) second paragraph of rule 217: Definitions and prescriptions in the rules are only to be applied using direct, forward reasoning; in particular, an absurdity that can be concluded from the assumption that a statement about rule-defined concepts is false does not constitute proof that it is true. Definitions in lower-powered Rules do not overrule common-sense interpretations or common definitions of terms in higher-powered rules. So let's try to summarize: a specific Shiny is an asset if it exists solely because its backing document defines its existence, and its backing document is almost certainly rule 2483 (possibly 2166). However, rule 2483 doesn't actually define the existence of any specific Shinies. As such, the ruleset's definition of what constitutes a Shiny appears to be self-contradictory. Does this cause us to start doing a "which rule takes precedence" analysis on the ruleset (Power, then ID number, then position within the rule)? Or does it allow us to conclude that Shinies don't exist, because the rules are fairly unambiguous about what properties a Shiny would have to have but no object has all those properties at once? It's worth bearing in mind that if this is broken, it's probably been broken for a while. It's possible that self-ratification has historically fixed issues with asset holdings (although bear in mind that it was broken for quite some time until it was fixed within the last couple of years); it strikes me that ratification can probably implicitly override the provenance of an object even if a proposal can't implicitly do so (a proposal could, of course, do so explicitly via creating a legal fiction). It's very probable that rule 2034 safeguarded the Ruleset (via changing it to what it would have been if Assets had existed), so even if Assets were broken for a long period of time, the rules are likely as they are at the moment. We might potentially need to see if there were any attempts to change the ruleset via non-proposal means (e.g. scams) that could have been affected by Asset brokenness, but probably only if they affected the ratification rules, which aren't a common target for dictators to change. -- ais523
