Does System Matter?

[David Berg]

Before I knew about the Forge, I used "system" to mean, alternately, "any textual rules" or "the sum of all textual rules."

Then I came here and found this great principle: "the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play".  Wow!  Excellent!  But its name?  "System"?  Hello, open door for semantic confusion!  (And I think that having an actual name, "the Lumpley principle", for this definition is insufficient to solve the confusion.)

It's been my observation in academia that any specifically-defined concept that bears the name of a familiar other concept winds up fighting an uphill battle.  You take two philosophy classes, a sociology class, and a literary criticism class and find four definitions of the word "intentional", and spend half your discussion time floundering because of it.  At that point, I become a fan of adopting a longer, clunkier, but more descriptive term.

The best I can come up with here is "SIS-Creation Method" (less accurate, but needs no acronym) or "Method of Imagined Event Agreement" (MIEA).  Then Mike could have said in this thread, "Does Textual MIEA matter?" and Forge veterans and newcomers alike could have proceeded to discuss this without confusion.

Sorry I couldn't come up with a more elegant term, and no disrespect intended to anyone who thinks "system" is excellent as is.  Just one guy's opinion...

-David

[Ron Edwards]

Mike,

I think the last round of posts illustrates that the thread title has overriden any post or point you've tried to make. I gotta close this one down and urge you to start a new one.

Folks, no more posting here please.

Best, Ron

[Mike Holmes]

You're right, Ron. I may try to repost this with a better written hypothesis at some point.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

It's settled, then.

No more posting to this thread, please.

Best, Ron