[Nomic] Exception that proves the rule

[Adam Biltcliffe]

On Sep 23 2004, Stuart Moore wrote:

> The "dissapeared in a puff of logic" Rule
> 
> If a change to the rules is about to be, or has been, made under the 
> "Mutability of the Rules" rule, and someone can demonstrate that this 
> interacts with existing rules to give contradictory behaviour, then the 
> rules do not change and the change becomes "pending". If at some point 
> in the future a "pending" rule change does not have contradictory 
> behaviour, it becomes part of the ruleset. This explicitly overrides the 
> "Mutability of the Rules" rule.

Too unpredictable. As written, if I can demonstrate that a change made a 
month ago caused the rules to become inconsistent, either that change is 
immediately retracted, even if it no longer makes sense for this to happen 
and possibly invalidating other changes that have occured in the meantime, 
or the rule is retroactively removed from existence, which makes it a 
bloody nightmare to know what the state of the game actually is. Also, you 
haven't explained a procedure for declaring that a rule change has been 
made pending, and someone will have to be saddled with the responsibility 
of checking the list of pending rules every time the rules change to see if 
any of them can now be enforced.

See my recent post for my suggestion for dealing with contradictions.

adam