[Retros] history and convention, cylinders aside

[Pastmaker at aol.com]

Dear friends,

    Of course history must be  borne in mind, and we do it all the time.  As 
any lawyer knows, because laws often change, it is a familiar exercise to 
determine the law applicable at the time of the acts in question. Past acts 
generally do not become unlawful if a change in law would make such acts 
unlawful if engaged in now.   (In the legal context, the issue is 
sufficiently important to have been specifically addressed in the U.S. 
Constitution.)  
    But we also draw on history routinely in other contexts. Imagine judging 
the behavior of Shakespeare's characters only by the standards of today's 
social conventions.
    If the 50 in the 50-move rule is changed tomorrow to 250, would one 
conclude that all the compositions hitherto composed using that rule to show 
a drawn position were unsound?  That is an odd, and confusing, use of the 
term "unsound". It groups a large number of compositions that were sound when 
composed together with those that were not.  Imagine instead that the rules 
are changed to allow Pawns to move both up and down the board (with whatever 
promotion convention).  How many problems would become '"unsound"?
    If A utters the true statement "X's most recent birthday is his 50th.", A 
does not become a liar in that regard when X reaches his 51st birthday.  This 
does not mean that the statement  "The Earth is flat" was not false when 
made, for it was an incorrect statment of fact.  But a statement correctly 
reporting facts as in effect at the time the statement is made does not 
become a false statement when the facts change (as in the case of X's 
attaining another birthday).  Once again this will be very familiar to 
lawyers in the context of a representation's being true and correct when 
made, in which the party making the representation has no resonsibility for 
subsequent changes of fact if the facts as represented were correctly 
represented at the time (e.g., "the company has $N of assets", if true when 
made, does not become a misrepresentation when the assets subsequently 
decline).
    Putting aside cylinders, which may involve conventions not agreed upon 
(and with with I am not familiar in any event), a problem sound under agreed 
conventions (for example, a position in which it is demonstrable that in the 
past 55 moves neither side has moved a Pawn or captured (or castled, if that 
matters) with the stipulation "draw?"), does not become unsound in any 
reasonable sense of that term when the rule is subsequently changed from 50 
to 60.
    I know it is an impatient world, but, whatever extra work it may entail, 
I think we should not yet discard the lens of history. 

Tom Volet