Amend
One rule governs how the rules change.
Nomic on a page.
Seen in Peter Suber, Nomic, 1982
Try it on your work
Write three rules for how you will handle the thing you're working on for the next hour. One of the three must say how a rule gets replaced. Work. Apply the replacement rule once. Work again under the new set. Stop at the hour and keep the rule that replaced something.
Write the three rules your project's text obeys. Add a fourth that says how any of the first three may be changed and by what. Rewrite one paragraph under the amended set. Stop when the amendment has been used once.
Take the standing rules of how you work. Add one rule that names the procedure for changing them: who, when, what vote. Use the procedure once within a month, on the weakest rule. Stop after the first amendment and record whether the procedure held.
How it has been used
Article V of the United States Constitution sets out how the Constitution itself can be changed. An amendment is proposed and ratified through procedures authorised by the existing document; the framework does not need to be discarded in order to alter its future rules. That recursive quality is the heart of the operation: the current arrangement contains a legitimate route to becoming a different arrangement.
Where it leads
Grouped under Let it respond to what happens