This is a hypothetical judgement of CFJs 3726 and 3727, assuming D. Margaux's attempt on 2019-05-26 22:50 to ratify a document without objection was successful. I think it is interesting because it discusses the question of whether when the Rules refer to the past, they are referring to a fictional past that can be modified by ratification. There are past (real) judgements that already consider this question, but I don't think they go into as much detail as this one.
CFJ 3726 was called by Aris, with the statement: "The most recent attempted imposition of the Cold Hand of Justice by Aris was effective."
CFJ 3727 was called by D. Margaux, with the statement: "D. Margaux has more than 0 blots."
There was a long conversation on the discussion list, starting around when D. Margaux called a CFJ (later withdrawn) on the thread "[Referee] Recusal (attn H. Arbitor)" in May 2019, and continuing on the thread "Proto-judgements of CFJs 3726 and 3727" in June 2019. I will not try to repeat everything here.
2019-05-20 01:25
The Referee publishes a weekly report specifying that D. Margaux has 0 blots.
2019-05-20 20:32
D. Margaux publishes the below document and announces intent to ratify it "as true at the time 00:00 GMT on 20 May 2019":
{ For purposes of this document, “Politics Rules” and “Spaaace Rules” have the meaning ascribed to those terms in Proposal 8177.
Any switch created directly by any of the Politics Rules or the Spaaace Rules has its default value.
There are no currently existing entities or switches created by the Clork pursuant to the Politics Rules or by the Astronomor pursuant to the Spaaace Rules. }
2019-05-21 10:20
D. Margaux deputises as Astronomor and Clork to publish the following weekly reports:
{there are no entities in existence for which the Astronomor is the recordkeepor other than those created directly by the Rules. All switches for which the Astronomor is recordkeepor have their default value.}
{there are no entities in existence for which the Clork is the recordkeepor other than those directly created by the Rules. All switches for which the Clork is recordkeepor have their default value.}
2019-05-25 22:02
omd Points eir Finger at D. Margaux for publishing inaccurate information in the above reports.
2019-05-25 22:54
D. Margaux, the Referee, authorizes the Arbitor, Aris, to act on eir behalf to "investigate and conclude the investigation of the finger pointed".
2019-05-26 22:43
Aris attempts to act on D. Margaux's behalf to impose the Cold Hand of Justice on D. Margaux and fine em 2 blots, with the following message:
Alright. There was a clear rule violation here, as the information in the report was inaccurate. The violative conduct was undertaken for the good of the game, but there were also other options available (proposal, or ratification without objection, which would have been unlikely to cause any problems done correctly). Ordinarily, a rule violation for the good of the game would be a forgiveable one blot fine. Under the circumstances though, some additional penalty is warranted for failing to adequately consider and discuss options that would have avoided violating the rules.
I act on behalf of D. Margaux to impose the Cold Hand of Justice on D. Margaux, penalizing em with a forgiveable fine of 2 blots. The required words are {optimize, preferentially, consider, supersubtilize, adjudication, law, good, bad, future, duty}.
2019-05-26 22:50
D. Margaux ratifies the document e earlier announced intent to ratify. (This is fictional; in the actual judgement, I explain why this did not succeed.)
2019-05-27 14:11
D. Margaux calls what is later named CFJ 3727.
2019-05-27 19:58
Aris calls what is later named CFJ 3726.
It is helpful to first consider whether the attempt to levy a fine would have been effective if no ratifications had taken place.
I believe that Aris's attempted imposition of the Cold Hand of Justice by levying a fine (2019-05-26 22:43 message) met the requirements of Rule 2557, so it remains only to check that it does not run afoul of any of the conditions in Rule 2531 ("Any attempt to levy a fine is INEFFECTIVE if...").
Condition 1 of Rule 2531:
The attempt in Aris's message included the value the fine (2 blots) and the name of the person being fined (D. Margaux). The sentence performing the action did not specify the specific reason for the fine (message is copied earlier: "I act on behalf of D. Margaux to impose..."). However, Aris states the message earlier in the same message "...the information in the report was inaccurate" which is part of eir attempt, so Condition 1 does not trigger.
Conditions 2 and 3 of Rule 2531:
The officer reports were false at the time they were published. For example, The Astronomor's 2019-03-05 weekly report states that many players own Spaceships, and that part of the report has long since self-ratified (under Rule 2166), but D. Margaux's report claims no Spaceships exist.
Therefore, ignoring the ratification of the more recent reports, D. Margaux did commit a rule-breaking action, so these two conditions do not apply.
Conditions 4 through 8 are straightforward.
Therefore, if D. Margaux's document and reports were never ratified, the attempted imposition would have been EFFECTIVE, and D. Margaux would have blots.
When D. Margaux ratified eir document on May 26, according to Rule 1551, the gamestate was "modified to what it would be if, at the time the ratified document was published, the gamestate had been minimally modified to make the ratified document as true and accurate as possible".
(D. Margaux specified 2019-05-20 00:00 GMT as being the time the document was true, but since the time was not part of the document itself, it does trigger Rule 1551's clause "if the document explicitly specifies a different past time...". In any case, I think the document was published close enough to that time that the effect is the same.)
To understand how Rule 1551 modified the gamestate, the first step is to understand the minimal modification that is hypothetically applied at the time the document was published. This minimal modification is clear: all switches created directly by the Politics and Spaaace Rules are modified to be at their default values, and all entities and switches created by the Clork or Astronomor according to those respective Rules are removed so that they do not exist in the minimally modified gamestate.
Having understood the hypothetical minimal modification, the next step is to understand what would have happened from that point in time onward. We end up with the following timeline:
In this hypothetical timeline, the appropriate judgement of CFJ 3726 would be FALSE, since Aris's attempted imposition was INEFFECTIVE, and the appropriate judgement of CFJ 3727 would be FALSE as well, since D. Margaux did not gain any blots after the 2019-05-20 referee report, which self-ratified before CFJ 3727 was called.
After D. Margaux ratified eir document, the gamestate was modified to what it would be in the hypothetical timeline above. Our task now is to determine how that modification affects the value of the two CFJs.
I think it is clear that blot holdings are part of the gamestate. For one thing, they only exist because the game defines em, and are part of the state that we keep track of, so the terms "game" and "state" fit. For another, blots are an asset tracked by some recordkeepor (the Referee), and Rule 2166 states that the portion of a recordkeepor's report that lists assets is self-ratifying, which wouldn't mean much if such assets weren't part of the gamestate. Therefore at the end of this message I would judge CFJ 3727 FALSE if this whole thing weren't fictional.
The harder question is whether the change to the gamestate affects CFJ 3726. I believe it comes down to this question:
Does the gamestate include information about past events, such as whether the attempted imposition of the Cold Hand of Justice was effective, and is CFJ 3726 referring to the information contained in the gamestate?
If the answers are no, then CFJ 3726 should be judged TRUE, as argued in Section 3 above. If the answers are yes, then CFJ 3726 should be judged FALSE, according to the timeline described in Section 4.
I believe the answers are yes, and so at the end of this message I will judge CFJ 3726 TRUE. Before I say why, I'd like explain why there could be doubt about this.
When the rules talk about a concept that isn't defined by the rules, we generally assume they're referring to the concept in reality. For example, the rules don't define what a message is, and they don't define the meaning of fundamental words like "is", "for", etc.
Therefore it's natural to assume that when the rules discuss what "was", they are referring to past events. I think it's defensible to assume that even if the past event being referred to is a legal fiction, the rules are referring to what the Rules had to say about the legal fiction in the past, rather than some new legal fiction the Rules currently define about the past.
To instead say that whenever the Rules refer to the past, they are referring to some fictitious past defined by the rules, could be said to be a very drastic statement, requiring strong evidence to back it up.
However, I think sufficient evidence does exist to say the gamestate contains information about past actions, and that the Rules refer to the gamestate when they talk about the past.
To understand the meaning of the term "gamestate", the first place to look is the Rules. The term is never directly defined, so we must satisfy ourselves by inferring meaning from context.
It is not unusual to infer meanings of terms in this way. For example, the rules never directly define what a CFJ is; e.g. you won't find text like "A Call for Judgement is a ...", but nonetheless we are able to infer that they are associated with statements, can be judged, etc. I believe this is supported by Rule 217's instruction to use common sense.
In two places, the text of the Rules implies that the concept of gamestate includes the past, by talking about the closely-related concept of ratification:
Rule 1551 says:
Text purportedly about previous instances of ratification (e.g. a report's date of last ratification) is excluded from ratification.
Rule 2034 says that certain messages constitute self-ratifying claims of several facts about the past: "such a decision existed", "it had the number of voters indicated", etc.
In both cases, the rules talk about ratifying facts about the past. Ratification involves a hypothetical gamestate minimally modified to make these facts about the past true, which clarifies for us that the definition of gamestate includes facts about the past. It also seems likely that the new gamestate after the ratification is intended to include these facts about the past, which is another way to arrive at the same clarification.
Rule 217 instructs us that when the text of the rules is silent, inconsistent or unclear, we should augment it with past judgements (among other things).
omd pointed out that the judgement CFJ 3337 [0] relied on past events being part of the gamestate. Judge G.'s judgement of that CFJ relied on the assertion that after a document stating the past date of a player's registration was ratified, that player became eligible to vote in a decision they otherwise would not have been eligible for, because the text of the ratified document implied that they were registered at the start of the voting period.
The judgement of CFJ 2491 [1] also relied on the past being part of the game state: Judge Yally's judgement was that since a document was ratified implying that Rodlen became an officer sufficiently long ago for em to be awarded a green ribbon, e should be awarded a green ribbon.
Both of these judgements support the conclusion that the past is part of the gamestate.
Rule 217 also instructs us to consider the best interests of the game.
Generally, the purpose of gamestate changes such as the effect of ratification is to clarify the current situation in the game in order to allow play to continue smoothly. Consider the following examples where rules make actions possible or required depending on what happened in the past:
Rule 2555: "If a player has neither gained blots nor expunged any blots from emself in the current Agoran week, e CAN expunge 1 blot from emself by announcement."
Rule 2496: Whether a player can earn a reward depends on whether they have fulfilled the condition in the past 7 days, and also on whether e has already claimed that reward.
Many rules allow or require a player to take an action "in a timely fashion" after a past event.
When a ratification event clarifies the current situation in the game, it would be helpful if the above examples are among the things that are clarified. For example, after ratification of a document implying whether or not a player has gained blots in the current week, that player can confidently know whether they are able to expunge a blot. All other things being equal, I think it is in the best interests of the game if ratification clarifies these examples.
(There may be best-interests-of-the-game arguments going the other way, e.g. maybe it's easier to untangle some situations if ratification isn't mucking around with the past. But 7A and 7B still apply.)
We could at this point try to pick and choose just those elements of the past are directly relevant: e.g. since D. Margaux didn't have any blots to begin with, CFJ 3726 is not relevant to whether e can expunge any blots, so CFJ 3726 may not matter to the best interests of the game. But I think that would be overcomplicating things. If the gamestate includes the effectiveness of some past actions, it is natural to assume it includes the effectiveness of all of them.
There's still a question of interpreting CFJ 3726 itself. I have concluded that when the Rules refer to the effectiveness of past actions, they are referring to information in the gamestate about the past. But CFJ 3726 is not a rule. What does "was effective" mean in the statement in CFJ 3726?
Rule 591 has guidance on delivering judgements:
The valid judgements for an inquiry case are as follows, based on the facts and legal situation at the time the inquiry case was initiated, not taking into account any events since that time:
FALSE, appropriate if the statement was factually and logically false
TRUE, appropriate if the statement was factually and logically true
I believe "legal situation" means I should base my decision on what the rules say. Moreover, the CFJ process is more useful if judgements on statements agree with what the rules say about those statements.
So, I will interpret "was effective" as referring to information about the past contained in the gamestate.
I would judge CFJ 3726 FALSE if this weren't all hypothetical. I would judge CFJ 3727 FALSE if this weren't all hypothetical.
[0] https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3337 [1] https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2491