Sunday, October 27, 2019

Call for Judgment: Tiff and only if

Reaches quorum, 5-0. Enacted by pokes.

Adminned at 28 Oct 2019 01:18:34 UTC

If I understand what happened: the interaction of

An EM may take an Annual Action if they have not taken any Annual Actions or Leap Actions since the Year was most recently Advanced.

and (among other Annual Actions)

This action is Propaganda, and is an Annual Action.

was concerning enough to TyGuy6 to write up the Finity CfJ, and then was used by Kevan to Propaganda many times in one year, the reasoning being that “an EM may X, if Y” doesn’t imply that not-Y means that an EM may not X.

I disagree with this interpretation because (cribbing off my Finity comments):
* I interpret “The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.” as meaning that actions are not allowed by default, which does mean that not-Y means that an EM may not X.
* “an EM may X, if Y” would be meaningless otherwise. Grice’s maxim of quantity applies here; usual usage is that not-Y implies may-not-X, because why write it if it didn’t imply it?

If we did want to read everything as being very literal, Propaganda may not even be an action that can be taken at all. Nothing says you may do it, just that it’s an effect of having Influence- but how does one activate the effect? Down the road of trying to rigorously interpret English lies madness.

Set the Year to 2153, the MGTA to 333, and all GNDT values to those before Kevan’s 26/10 11:19 change. Then, advance the year.

Comments

TyGuy6:

27-10-2019 06:38:18 UTC

I very much agree that English doesn’t interpret well when taken literally. I prefer reverting to the oil rig nuke and rule wipe route.

Also, it would be lovely to define here what we’re reverting to. The GNDT history is terribly unwieldy to scroll through, (esp. without an End button,) having over a year of history now. for

Madrid:

27-10-2019 08:24:53 UTC

for alrighto

Farsight:

27-10-2019 09:34:19 UTC

for

Kevan: he/him

27-10-2019 09:47:20 UTC

for