Thursday, September 28, 2006

Proposal: Cultural Influence

5-1, timed out. Enacted by Elias IX.

Adminned at 30 Sep 2006 20:37:43 UTC

Append the following to “Politics in the Garden”:

Often, a Vegetable may make an attempt to change the Inclination of another Vegetable, provided the targeted Vegetable has a lower Tastiness.  A Vegetable does this by posting the following in the GNDT: “Influencing XXXX: DICE5”, where XXXX is the targeted Vegetable’s name.  If the DICE5 outcome is a 1 or 2, the Vegetable may now change the Targeted Vegetable’s Inclination to whatever legal value e wishes.  In addition, e may add 1 to eir own Tastiness.  If the DICE5 outcome is a 5, the Vegetable must change eir own Inclination to match the Targeted Vegetable’s Inclination, and subtract 1 from eir own Tastiness.

Comments

Elias IX:

28-09-2006 23:25:07 UTC

I don’t know if it makes sense to change it to whatever value e wishes, rather than to eir own value?

Well, this is unless Inclinations were placed in a continuum of sorts, and it brought the influenced closer to eir own. I’ll reserve voting on this, though.

Cayvie:

28-09-2006 23:27:07 UTC

Well, I figure you could argue whatever position you want regardless of what you actually believe.

Angry Grasshopper:

28-09-2006 23:27:52 UTC

The text reads “to whatever legal value e wishes,’ and we have thoughtfully specified a list of all legal values in one rule or another.

This gives us something to do with the Inclinations, and will add complications flesh them out a bit. I have some plans for that. ;)

for

Elias IX:

28-09-2006 23:28:44 UTC

for

Angry Grasshopper:

28-09-2006 23:28:50 UTC

Will add complications <u>as we</u> flesh them out a bit.

Me English, that’s unpossible. ;P

Hix:

28-09-2006 23:43:32 UTC

against

gazebo_dude:

29-09-2006 00:25:56 UTC

for

Thelonious:

29-09-2006 08:27:56 UTC

for

Hix:

29-09-2006 17:57:28 UTC

May I ask how the conflict between the proposed line “If the DICE5 outcome is a 5, the Vegetable must change eir own Inclination to match the Targeted Vegetable’s Inclination, and subtract 1 from eir own Tastiness.” and the already-existing line “Vegetables with a Exoticity below one may not change their Inclination.” is meant to be resolved?

If this were a conflict between a “may” and a “may not”, there wouldn’t really be a problem, since we’ve generally held that a “may not” takes precedence (unless otherwise specified).  But here, we have a conflict between a “must” and a “may not”.  I’d say that the “may not” takes precedence, as usual, but that leads to some strange behavior—a Veggie with less than 1 Exoticity can make the conversion attempt with no risk of eir own Inclination changing on em.

Cayvie:

29-09-2006 19:48:34 UTC

don’t we normally settle contradictions by giving the more specific rule privilege over the more general rule?

Hix:

29-09-2006 20:09:21 UTC

Neither is more or less specific than the other.  Once concerns Vegetables with less than 1 Exoticity (regardless of what action is being taken), and the other concerns whichever vegetable is doing the watering (regardless of Exoticity).

Cayvie:

30-09-2006 21:34:26 UTC

the one that refers to one particular vegetable is more specific than the one that refers to a set of vegetables.