From - Mon May 29 11:56:22 2000 Return-Path: Received: from gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au ([131.170.42.16]) by fb04.eng00.mindspring.net (Mindspring Mail Service) with ESMTP id sj54ce.23l.37kbi5a for ; Mon, 29 May 2000 11:49:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA12572 for agora-official-list; Mon, 29 May 2000 15:41:03 GMT Received: from fw.serc.rmit.edu.au (fw-in.serc.rmit.edu.au [131.170.42.1]) by gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA12568 for ; Mon, 29 May 2000 15:41:00 GMT Received: (from mail@localhost) by fw.serc.rmit.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.1) id BAA91934 for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 01:49:19 +1000 (EST) Received: from hobbiton.org(216.161.239.42) by fw.serc.rmit.edu.au via smap (V2.1) id xma091931; Tue, 30 May 00 01:48:54 +1000 Received: (from harvel@localhost) by hobbiton.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA00692 for agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au; Mon, 29 May 2000 10:48:56 GMT Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 10:48:55 +0000 From: Michael Slone To: agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au Subject: OFF: CFJ 1215 Judged FALSE Message-ID: <20000529104855.A25702@hobbiton.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7i Sender: owner-agora-official@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au Precedence: bulk Reply-To: agora-discussion@gecko.serc.rmit.edu.au X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-UIDL: sj54ce.23l.37kbi5a ============================== CFJ 1215 ============================== If we post to a Public Forum a message in the form "If and only if t is standing up at the time we wrote this message, we transfer 10 VTs to t.", and t is indeed standing up at the time we wrote the message, and if there are no general conditions preventing any transfer of 10 VTs (such as a lack of funds), then 10 VTs are transferred from us to t. ======================================================================== Called by: Wes Judge: Chuck Judgement: FALSE Judge selection: Eligible: Chuck, Crito, Elysion, Kelly, Murphy, Peekee, Sherlock, Steve, Taral, harvel, t Not eligible: Caller: Wes Barred: - Had eir turn: Palnatoke Already served: lee Defaulted: Harlequin By request: Blob, Michael On Hold: - Zombie: Anthony, Harlequin, Novalis, Schneidster ======================================================================== History: Called by Wes 14 May 2000 14:30:53 -0700 Assigned to lee: 15 May 2000 16:10:29 -0400 lee makes emself ineligible: 19 May 2000 23:48:05 -0500 Reassigned to Chuck: 20 May 2000 09:09:29 -0400 Judged FALSE by Chuck: 27 May 2000 07:58:38 -0500 Judgement published: As of this message ======================================================================== Caller's Arguments: > You can't point a gun at someone and declare, "If you are evil, I > hereby shoot you" and have the gun fire if and only if the person is > evil. Why should speech acts be subjected to a different analysis? On the other hand, if we call our stockbroker and say "if and only if we have not already bought shares of this stock in the last day or two, we want to buy X number of shares." This way, if we leave this message on his office voicemail, home answering machine, pager voicemail and cellphone voicemail, we will only get X shares of the stock, rather than 4X shares of the stock. One may argue that in this case, the stockbroker is atually performing the action rather than the caller. We disagree. One never says that "one's stockbroker bought shares of a stock". One says "we bought shares of a stock". Actions which require cooperation on the part of a third party are still refered to as actions performed by the instigating agent. In fact, if one is not familiar with the nature of buying stocks, one might not even know that the action was not performed directly. It is not obvious to an uninformed observer. Agora is in a similar situation. When we post to a Public Forum that we transfer some Currency, in one way we are directly performing an action. The legal fiction is that the Currency automagically transfers from one account to another without any intervention whatsoever. The reality, evident to those actually in the situation rather than some spectators, is that what we are really doing is instructing the Currency Recordkeepor to adjust some numbers for us. Because we are, in reality, giving instructions to an imperfect agent, there is the potential for various sorts of miscommunications, thus conditional messages like we constructed above are not only necessary, but logical and consistant with the current legal situation. Of course, such instructions are only meaningful if the cooperating agent (the Recordkeepor) can determine without question the truthfulness of the condition. Otherwise, the statement ceases to be a simple action and becomes more akin to Kelly's example where the action's state of fulfullment is uncertain. There is also the simple fact that, as Kelly pointed out, actions in the context of Agora only have meaning as provided by the Rules. The Rules provide a specific effect for those statements made in the form "We transfer X Currency to Y". Since Agora furthermore complies with the basic function of the English language, and since no restrictions are put upon the use of additional language constructs, and since the Rules do specifically permit the unrestricted, one can embed this sort of a statement within a conditional statement, so long as the conditional statement complies with the linguistic rules of the English language. Thus, for a couple of different reasons, statements of a conditional nature would be perfectly effective. ======================================================================== Caller's Evidence: ======================================================================== Judge Chuck's Arguments: There are a number of issues to be addressed in this CFJ. Some of these will be (correctly) seen to be trivial by the reader, but are addressed in order to properly evaluate the CFJ, to forestall questions about the correctness of this CFJ on those grounds, and to make some points which are relevant to subsequent issues. 1. Whether "I transfer 10 VTs to t", posted to a Public Forum, constitutes a Transfer Order. Rule 1598 states, in part, A Transfer Order is an Order requiring the Recordkeepor of a Currency to note the transfer of units of that Currency from one entity to another. Rule 1793 states, in part, An Order is a command, executed by a Player and directed to some entity requiring that entity to perform exactly one action, or to refrain from performing one or more actions. It is not immediately clear from the Rules and the sentence posted, that anyone is required to do anything, or that the statement is directed to anyone in particular. However, there is a very strong Game Custom that this does constitute a Transfer Order. It is therefore reasonable to interpret this to implicitly be directed to the VT Recordkeepor, and to require em to note the transfer of 10 VTs to t. Therefore, I find that (as long as other requirements for valid Transfer Orders are satisfied) such a sentence constitutes a valid Transfer Order. 2. Whether "We transfer 10 VTs to t", posted by Wes to a Public Forum, constitutes a Transfer Order. Rule 1598 also states, in part, A valid Transfer Order specifies exactly one source entity... While it is sorely tempting to find that Wes' use of "we" indicates a plural, and thus does not specify exactly one source entity, once again Game Custom compels us to accept Wes' use of the royal "we" as a reference to emself, since it has been so accepted in the past. It should be noted that the statement of this CFJ specifies that the hypothetical message is "in the form" shown. I take this to mean that the hypothetical message consists *only* of the text quoted in the CFJ. If additional text were present (such as something to indicate that the message is the product of a committee), it might alter this conclusion. Thus, "We transfer 10 VTs to t", posted by Wes, and in the absence of any other conditions which would invalidate it, constitutes a valid Transfer Order. 3. Whether "If we have not already done so this Nomic Week, we transfer 10 VTs to t", posted by Wes, and if e had not already made such a transfer this week, constitutes a Transfer Order. Is this a command "executed by a Player and directed to some entity requiring that entity to perform exactly one action" and, if so, does it require "the Recordkeepor of a Currency to note the transfer of units of that Currency from one entity to another", as is required in order to be a Transfer Order? Certainly, it does neither explicitly; but then, neither did the statement in (1), so that alone cannot be sufficient reason to conclude this is not a Transfer Order. Again, I find that this sort of statement has been interpreted as a valid Transfer Order in the past and thus has the support of Game Custom. Despite my misgivings about whether this interpretation is in the best interests of the game, I find that Game Custom is strong enough--such Orders have been made and accepted without challenge many times--to trump such concerns. I find that this statement, in the absence of any other conditions which would invalidate it, constitutes a valid Transfer Order. 4. Whether "If and only if t is standing up at the time we wrote this message, we transfer 10 VTs to t.", posted by Wes to a Public Forum, and if t is standing up at the time Wes wrote the message, constitutes a Transfer Order. I begin by noting that the validity of the quoted statements in (1), (2), and (3) as Transfer Orders are *all* based on Game Custom--even (1) is not clearly and unambiguously a Transfer Order based clearly on the Rules alone. I further note that there is *no* Game Custom to support the reading of this statement as a Transfer Order. This statement differs from (3), in that the conditional part of (3) is based on information which is generally recorded by the Accountor (the Office to which the Order is directed), while the conditional part here is not. I thus turn to the best interests of the game, and find that to interpret this statement as a Transfer Order would be very much against the best interests of the game, due to the difficulty, and likely impossibility, of determining whether t was standing up at the time the message was written. Indeed, t emself may not know this--I certainly could not say whether or not I was standing exactly 12 hours ago. It is very much against the best interests of the game for it to be impossible to determine whether or not a given statement is a Transfer Order, and thus I find that this statement does not constitute a Transfer Order. I note that Caller's analogy to the stockbroker also supports this interpretation--while "if and only if we have not already bought shares of this stock in the last day or two, we want to buy X number of shares" would be accepted by the stockbroker, this is only because the stockbroker is generally responsible for knowing whether or not the trader has bought shares recently. A statement such as "if and only if t is standing, we want to buy X number of shares" would be rejected by the stockbroker. 5. Whether there exists a single consistent interpretation of Rules 1598 and 1793 which supports the conclusions of both (3) and (4). One may reasonably ask, what consistent interpretation of the text of Rules 1598 and 1793 is there which would allow the statement in (3) to be a Transfer Order, but not the statement in (4)? I seem to have offered a test (whether the person or Office to which the putative Order is directed is also the person or Office generally responsible for maintaining the information required to evaluate the truth of the conditional) which is unsupported by the Rules. Indeed, the test is intended to determine whether or not the conditional falls into the set supported by Game Custom as in (3), but such a test has no direct support by the Rules. I offer no consistent interpretation of Rules 1598 and 1793 to support my conclusions; perhaps there is none. While it may well be in the interests of the game to have a consistent interpretation of Rules 1598 and 1793, I find that such interests are trumped by a very strong game custom in (3), and the stronger interests of being able to determine whether or not a statement constitutes a Transfer Order in (4). I find the statement of this CFJ to be FALSE. ======================================================================== Judge Chuck's Evidence: ======================================================================== Clerk of the Courts harvel