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Reasonable Person Principle

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Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#51

Post by Arizhel »

anigbrowl wrote: post #49
Arizhel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We solve this dilemma in one of two ways. Blood and fire until 'they' are gone or learning to live together despite having differing moral structures. The first method is the only workable one. The second is impossible: many peoples' morality absolutely requires that they impose their moral values on everyone around them. So "learning to live together" would require living by the moral codes of people you fundamenta…

There's always the third option of marginalizing the absolutists and ignoring their demands until they die off from old age and no longer form a powerful constituency. I'm not saying it always works or is inherently better, but it certainly has worked in some places.

Isn't that still the same as "blood and fire"?

Sure, you can just ignore the moralists you don't like, but what if they don't go quietly? Then you have to use something stronger against them. With the abortion issue for example, it's been a never-ending tug-of-war in politics, with each side constantly working to change the makeup of the SCOTUS to either maintain the status quo or to overturn it. While not an actual, physical battle, it's been a constant political one, for decades now. It's never been settled. And with the latest election, the "let's wait for them to die off" idea obviously isn't working so well: the anti-abortion people are winning politically (at least for now), so I reject the idea that the people with strict religious moral codes are dying out. (Notice that, in the US at least, it's religious people who typically have far more kids than non-religious people.)

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#52

Post by webnrrd2k »

Its sounds more like the definition of a prosocial person, not reasonable. I think there needs to be something in there about, say, enlightened self-interest as it relates to the community, rather than simply asserting that reasonable people think about the common good.

In the economic sense, a common approach is to model reasonable people as trying to maximize their gain or utility, without much regard to the common good.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#53

Post by rdtsc »

Makes sense. Good summary. I've heard it mentioned as "don't be a jerk", "don't first assume when others act like jerks they always meant to". The last part, avoids quick escalations of misunderstandings.

Interestingly just last year I remember someone posted the syllabus to the Advanced Database Systems: http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/ (latest version). Really good stuff there.

But one thing I noticed there was plenty of red triangles. Apparently those are trigger warnings. So I opened some of those papers, for example: http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/papers/04-occ/tu-... , expecting to see some horrible things, but I couldn't see what would be triggering there. There are transaction ids, commit phases, reads, writes, B+trees ...

So given that it is coming from same school, shouldn't the same "reasonable-ness" apply. Is it reasonable to sprinkle trigger warnings onto distributed database readings? I understand history, psychology, anthropology, literature, art might have disturbing contexts, but computer science?

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#54

Post by ComodoHacker »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #23
saycheese wrote: post #19

Expecting everyone within a group to be reasonable is not reasonable.

No, that's the thing, you all have to expect them to be reasonable. They know this, and its social pressure to actually be reasonable . That's how the whole thing works. And then of course, you forgive someone who for whatever emotional reason cannot be reasonable for some brief time. Because, all human.

And this expectation actually have to be emotional. Because, paradoxically, human behavior is guided by emotions, not reason.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#55

Post by libria »

Isamu wrote: post #44
libria wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How apt. Here is a principle that tries to define sane communication within a community and espouses flexibility and understanding. A hyperliteral reading of a statement that has a very reasonable interpretation (i.e., that it has been implicitly understood up to the point it was put to writing) is precisely why things like this exist. We are not debuggers and are expected to look beyond words and grasp intent.

Hey, I didn't even get into the dissonance between "Everyone will be reasonable" but then "Do not be offended if someone suggests you are not being reasonable."

To be clear, I'm not addressing you specifically since you're clearly posting out of humor. When someone composes a message with errors, we can engage 1) the erroneous message or 2) the message without errors or 3) the meaning behind the message. It's unfortunate how news aggregation boards with short-lived posts - reddit, HN included - tend to reward slams at levels 1 & 2 when the conversation should really start at level 3.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#57

Post by theseatoms »

Arizhel wrote: post #43
branchless wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable person gets you Ted Danson. A rational person is Larry David.

What's wrong with Ted Danson? (genuinely curious; all I remember about him is his role on Cheers)

What's wrong with reasonableness? (Check out the HBO show Bored to Death.)

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#58

Post by lliamander »

rrggrr wrote: post #37

Reasonableness requires self-awareness and an appreciation for the common good. Its staggering how absent those qualities are in many people, and how these attributes evaporate in the face of strong emotion. Regardless, the "Reasonable Person" is a staple in litigation, used as a benchmark for conduct where the specifics are too complicated or variable to consider individually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonabl…

There is a lot of cynicism on this thread, and while I do think it is often justified I think it also misses the point.

This is not (necessarily) statement about fundamental human nature. It is not a political platform. It is not a legal standard. It is not an architecture for a perfect society.

It is merely a personal choice. A strategy or protocol for working with other people. We simply evaluate it on the grounds of its effectiveness versus the alternatives. By effectiveness, I mean whether it enhances or reduces our ability to live peacefully and collaborate with others.

I have found that simply giving people the benefit of the doubt and resolving issues privately mostly works.

There's certainly questions about how to deal with social predators or the emotionally immature, but I think that the correct approach is to build off of this principle rather than to reject it.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#60

Post by diet_mtn_dew »

TTPrograms wrote: post #50

Side point, but am I to understand from this that there is an email list "cs.opinion" which is "no-holds barred and often both agressive and personal"? That seems like a terrible idea in a professional environment.

From the name, it is more likely to refer to a local newsgroup. I would assume it is/was also for students, not just staff.
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