On Sat, 2022-05-28 at 11:29 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > On 5/28/2022 2:03 AM, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > > The main question, therefore, is whether I can succeed 100 times in > > assigning the Device to myself. A power-1 rule says that I CAN, and no > > rule seems to imply that I can't, as long as "[the] Device has no judge > > assigned". (I also need to be eligible to judge the Device, but I am > > eligible to judge generally, and there is no reason why the Device > > would be a special case.) If I do succeed in doing this successfully, > > then everyone gains 100 of every Card, and I win as a result of being > > able to convert my Win Cards to Winsomes faster than everyone else can. > > Counterarguments: I think common language holds that when you've assigned > something to yourself, assigning it to yourself again isn't an actual > action (it does nothing so you can't do it, because the thing is *already* > assigned to you, and trying to assign it you yourself again is ISIDTID). > As evidence, we have to explicitly say in the rules where "a change that > is no change is actually an action" (e.g. with switches).
Counter-counter-argument: this definitely isn't ISIDTID; the rule gives specifies not only the action, but the mechanism (which is "without 3 objections"). ISIDTID is normally applied to situations in which no rule exists, so there's no particular reason why "by announcement" would be more effective than any other mechanism. Actually, now I'm wondering whether a rule stating that something is possible is sufficient on its own to override this sort of argument. Most rules that explicitly permit something that would be common- language not-an-action avoid the issue by using qualifiers to prevent the action succeeding in that situation. There are some exceptions, though, e.g., rule 2168 says "[...] the vote collector for the decision [...] CAN end its voting period by announcement [...]", with no qualifiers that care about whether the voting period is still ongoing or not. I would therefore expect, when the conditions in rule 2168 are met, for it be possible to end a decision's voting period twice, even though this is counter to common sense. This could theoretically end up mattering (if the voting period for an election is ended but one of the candidates deregisters after the ending, and then the election is ended again, it affects the timing of when the candidate is eliminated). The main counterargument I can see is that the higher-powered rule 208 says "the end of the voting period", implying that it only ends once – however, we have no such rules for Device assignment. This may well come down to a rule 217 test, but rule 217 explicitly states that the text of the rules override common sense, and rule 2152 is quite specific that "CAN" means "Attempts to perform the described action are successful". So as far as I can tell, the only explanation consistent with the text of the rules is that if you attempt to do something that's inherently impossible (as opposed to being rules- defined IMPOSSIBLE or contradicting a rule that wins precedence battles), using a mechanism specifically specified in the rules as working, then the rules view the action as having succeeded (this might create a legal fiction if necessary, but the action *was* successful). If you attempt to assign something in a way that's a no-op, then the action inherently can't do anything; but if a rule says you CAN and gives a mechanism, and you use that mechanism, then even though it's impossible to have a meaningful assignment, the rules still view the assignment as having occurred, because that's what CAN means. The action can't have failed, because the rules say that it succeeded, and the rules win all arguments; and to resolve this, we have to create a legal fiction that the action succeeded, even though it was (lowercase) impossible. -- ais523
