Ruling on Robonauts Balance

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I don't believe "you can't grab, grasp, or grapple" was ambiguous, and it is patently unreasonable to expect the GDC to define every word used in the rules -- especially since people will then pick apart the words used in the provided definitions, and then perhaps the words in the clarification of the meaning of the words in the definitions of the original words, and so forth.

It would be nice if it were possible to create a positivist document. It's not.

In light of that, the "reasonably astute observer" standard is something you have to live with, and by "live with" I mean "take into account when making your design decisions".

The GDC's fallacy is in the application of the "reasonably astute observer" standard.

I concur and am at peace with the fact that every word can be dissected...but that's not to imply that every such dissection is the same. When interpreting a rule, some ambiguities are more ambiguous than others. The aim is hopefully to provide a document that replaces big ambiguities with small ones, whenever possible—and does so in a way that's also reasonable to understand, follow and enforce.

In that respect, the knee-jerk application of the "reasonably astute observer" standard to so many different situations leaves a lot of big ambiguities. Refusing to further describe them preserves the symmetry of using the same standard everywhere, but also leaves us questioning whether there's a fundamental set of conditions that implies that this standard is appropriate. This dilutes the value of the standard, because we can't even articulate why the standard is right for a specific set of circumstances.