On Fri, 27 Oct 2017, VJ Rada wrote:
> I was with you all the way until the last paragraph.
Thanks for making it that far...
> Rule 101 states
> this "Agora is a game of Nomic, wherein Persons, acting in accordance
> with the Rules, communicate their game Actions and/or results of these
> actions via Fora in order to play the game. The game may be won, but
> the game never ends.". A game is a competitive activity, Competition
> is a state in which a person tries to defeat others. It is the case
> that a game with no players is no rule 101 game.
A game that hasn't started yet, that still has players, is still a game.
Your interpretation would also prevent the "last person" from deregistering.
However, if there are no players (but persons time and fora exist) then
someone can always "start" the game by registering.
> It's also true that
> rule 101 defines a game as an activity invlolving "persons, acting in
> accordance with the rules". In this hypothetical, the rest of the
> gamestate defines a game in which there are no players, at a lower
> power than the rule which mandates players (or persons). Rule 101's
> power-4 requirement of persons would override the hypothetical
> power-3.9 action causing the rest of the game to recognize no persons,
> at least to the extent that it, within the gamestate, destroys
> humanity. (And the removal of Fora would also contradict rule 101).
R101 describes the things needed to play the game - I disagree that this
mandates that they must exist.
> It's the same with Rule 1698. You say that there is no time in this
> hypothetical, so it has no effect. However, rule 1698 is power-4, it
> overrides the rest of the ruleset, and its ordinary-language
> definition of "weeks" can override the definition of time at 3.9 if it
> must.
What to do with "time" was the hardest part for me - the rest of the
judgement was relatively straightforward. If persons and fora are gone,
but time still exists, R1698 would be protective (because without persons
or fora, you'd let the 4 weeks pass and show that nothing was possible).
I chose my interpretation after going and reading a few articles on how
Plato dealt with time. But in any case, I didn't consider whether the
mere presence of the word "weeks" in R1698 implicitly overrules the
destruction of time. I'll wait for more discussion but I'm open to
revisiting that part.
