On 7/17/2022 3:46 PM, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote:
On Jul 17, 2022, at 4:31 PM, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion
<agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
secretsnail wrote:
This is my main issue with the judgement; it seems perfectly fine to create
something multiple times in natural language. We do that all the time with
coins, which are fungible, we create something that already exists.
No, we create instances of a class of entities, where the class already
exist but the instances don't.
But
importantly, even if it was against natural language, it's still defined as
possible in the rules.
Rule 2350 (Proposals)
A player CAN create a proposal by announcement,
specifying its text and optionally specifying any of the following
attributes:
So we can't just say you can't do it because of the "plain meaning",
especially when that meaning is contested. If I had used the word "create"
instead of "submit", I would have expected it to work just the same.
Yes, you can create/submit a proposal by announcement. That doesn't mean
you can create *the same* proposal multiple times
I'd like a better explanation as to why that is, because it seems like the
opposite. Because tou can create a proposal by announcement, you can create the
same proposal multiple times by announcement, but that action falls under the
umbrella of creating a proposal by announcement.
That's what "the" means in ordinary language, and what the creation and
existence of entities means in ordinary language (backed up to some
extent by Definition and Continuity of Entities). You can't create *the
same* instance of anything more than once (unless perhaps it's repealed
or something in between, which is n/a here).
If I announced "81 times, I create the coin in my possession", then that
would be equally problematic (even if there was a rule "Murphy CAN
create coins in eir possession by announcement").
You can create/submit multiple proposals with identical attributes, but
you need to spell that out explicitly. It's reasonably within ais523's
purview as judge to find that the clash between the verb expecting
multiple objects ("81 times, I submit") and being given only a single
one ("the proposal _____") is sufficiently confusing that it doesn't
count as "specifying" the required things.
I disagree that the verb expects multiple objects. It makes much more sense to expect a single object since
i'm attempting the same action 81 times. It would be unnecessary for me to need to list the attributes of
every single proposal because, as "81 times" implies, it's going to be the same attributes for each
action, not multiple different attributes. If there's a reason as to why my proposals didn't work, this is
not it. If you could play with the wealth stone multiple times, and you said "5 times, I wield the
wealth stone, specifying secretsnail." That would fail under this interpretation, because it didn't
specify "secretsnail, secretsnail, secretsnail, secretsnail, and secretsnail" which I hope is not
the case.
Okay, more precisely: The verb is replicated 81 times. Announcing "81
times, I create _____." is accepted as shorthand for announcing
{
I create _____.
I create _____.
(78 more instances)
I create _____.
}
(There's precedent pertaining to creating an undue workload for
officers, but let's not worry about that here.)
If _____ were "a proposal with <list of attributes>", then this would
work fine. But when _____ is "*the* proposal with <list of attributes>",
then the expansion becomes:
{
I create the proposal with <list of attributes>.
I create the proposal with <list of attributes>.
(78 more instances)
I create the proposal with <list of attributes>.
}
Now the first of these is worded awkwardly, but still sensible, as long
as no proposal with that list of attributes already existed. The rest
are nonsensical; at that point, a proposal with that list of attributes
*does* already exist, so the remaining statements cannot create *the*
proposal with that list of attributes.
IIRC the original statement was instead "81 times, I submit the proposal
<list of attributes>", which gets into the other area of interpretation
that ais523 identified:
a) If "submit" is synonymous with "create" in the context of
proposals, then this doesn't work, per the above.
b) If "submit" isn't synonymous with "create", then it appears to not
make sense, which is a no-go. Earlier today, I started writing up
an example like this, to question how it would affect authorship:
* Alice sends a purported "proposal" to a-d named Blue Mood with
text <whatever>
* Bob announces "I submit the proposal named Blue Mood that Alice
sent to a-d"
But the rules don't explicitly regulate submitting a proposal, they
regulate *creating* a proposal; in particular, creating a proposal
adds it to the pool. How can you submit a proposal that was neither
previously created, nor becomes created by being submitted? What
Alice sent to a-d is *purported* to be a proposal, and it is an
entity of some sort (a message), but Alice didn't create a
*proposal* because that requires announcement. The only way I can
see that making sense is if submission was clearly defined as
reclassifying something from "some non-proposal type of entity" to
"proposal", but that isn't the case either.
