701–710 of 1001 posts
I'm fascinated by the fact that my takeaway is the precise opposite of what the author intended. To me, the answer to all of the questions was crystal-clear. Yes, you can academically wonder whether an orbiting space station is a vehicle and whether it's in the park, but the obvious intent of the sign couldn't be clearer. Cars/trucks/motorcycles aren't allowed, and obviously police and ambulances (and fire trucks) do…
I'm fascinated by the fact that my takeaway is the precise opposite of what the author intended. To me, the answer to all of the questions was crystal-clear. Yes, you can academically wonder whether an orbiting space station is a vehicle and whether it's in the park, but the obvious intent of the sign couldn't be clearer. Cars/trucks/motorcycles aren't allowed, and obviously police and ambulances (and fire trucks) do…
I agree 100% with the spirit of your point and I think imagining a forced bet scenario can help to clarify things. There are three main concepts we want to interpret within the context of the phrasing of the rule: (1) the intended referrent of 'vehicle'; (2) the intended meaning of 'in' the park; (3) the actual intention of the rule regarding emergency vehicles. This is the scenario: imagine you're forced to wager a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a vehicle entering the park would directly endanger lives--rather than just being a nuisance--the sign would (should) give the extra context to make a stronger discouragement. Otherwise, it is fair game to assume the "intent" of any such sign is to make guidelines to enhance the public's mutual enjoyment/safety at the park, and that such guidelines may be discarded when lives are endangered (police/ambulance). As…
I voted that a police car/ambulance driving into the park _was_ breaking the rules, though breaking the rules may be justifiable in some circumstances. The smoke signal example you gave is similar - if I’m lost, I care more about being found than the punishment for starting a fire. If the ‘no campfires’ rule was punishable by death (and enforced), perhaps I wouldn’t risk a smoke signal
You could argue that the sign should include enough context to convince the reader to follow its instructions, but (a) you end up with signs with tons of writing in tiny font that everyone just ignores because TLDR (and yes, these do actually happen quite frequently in parks around here), and (b) if there is some combination of letters you can put on a sign that works to stop people lighting fires, the meadow guy will put that on his sign because he doesn't want fires and those syllables work. So you've just pushed the problem one level back, but the real question remains the same: do you risk doing the thing you want to, or do you respect the sign?
The number at the end is unclear - it says I agreed with the majority 11%, but then it shows a bunch of charts. Yet the three I said were vehicles (the car, the police vehicle, and the ambulance) are the only 3 above 50% support, so it seems I agreed with the majority 100%. I even opened a second session in another browser and hit yes to everything to see if the numbers in the chart was the amount that agree with me,…
But breaking things down into the very specific definition of "self propelled method of transport" is exactly what doesn't happen for a lot of moderation and enforcement. An offense brought to moderation is often several of those very specific definitions that don't get broken apart into their constituent parts for examination. We stopped using mercury to starch felt hats because the mercury was the problem. If instead we didn't break it down into components to identify the one causing the issue, would we have banned all felt hats or likely just felt altogether? Modern moderation policy dictates bias towards the latter.
The idea of nebulosity as described is precisely why reforms constantly have to be made to enforcement, why automated enforcement is harmful, and why blanket policies on enforcement are a bad idea. Public nudity is generally agreed to be a crime and distasteful, but should somebody be arrested because their clothes were stolen at a changing station? Should a bumper sticker saying "Shoot your local meth dealer" get the driver pulled over because of either threats of violence or public indecency laws that are considered relics of the 19th century and are no longer widely enforced? Moderation in reality is a very simple issue of applying societal biases as rules that becomes horribly unwieldy when scaled beyond a few thousand people. That's because the best moderation is done on a case-by-case basis, as circumstances and context are more important than the infringing action because it's simply one component in a string of them. Obviously you can't do that when you have tens of thousands of users or more and the number of possible offenses grows every picosecond.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Now you're assuming the intent. That's true but without assuming intent you end up blindly following rules. Something struck me when first moved to UK from Turkey: Every rule in UK seemed to have an intent and that's why I think Turkey is full of rules which no one follows but in UK the rules are less numerous but followed. In Turkey, Turks like to think that the rules are not followed because the fines are too smal…
Two things really jump out at me.. I grew up in America which is fairly rule-obeying. Lived in Australia and New Zealand which are disgustingly, obsequiously devoted to following tiny guidelines. Spent a few weeks in Munich where I was shouted at for crossing a totally empty street against a crosswalk light. On the plus side, I lived in Argentina and Spain for a long time where basically there is no enforcement of an…
I don't understand this. I live near Munich, people cross against a red light all the time. Maybe you were doing it near children? That's a real social faux-pas, because they're not supposed to normalize jaywalking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Now you're assuming the intent. That's true but without assuming intent you end up blindly following rules. Something struck me when first moved to UK from Turkey: Every rule in UK seemed to have an intent and that's why I think Turkey is full of rules which no one follows but in UK the rules are less numerous but followed. In Turkey, Turks like to think that the rules are not followed because the fines are too smal…
The intent of moderation is "don't be horrible to each other and/or the space". Unfortunately, people who are horrible to other people and/or spaces generally refuse to accept this, and therefore either need more specific examples of what being horrible entails to compare their behaviours against - leading to proliferation of edges, epicycles and rule-gaming - or you have a codicil along the lines of "the decision of…
I don’t think that is the only possible outcome. Where moderation is done well lot of people, in fact most people, simply don’t notice it. They just have a pleasant time with other pleasant people. So no, “everyone whining“ is not the best possible outcome. “Most people having a good time, a minority whining” is the best possible outcome. And of course it takes hard work, and maybe even a little bit of luck with the initial conditions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cars/trucks/motorcycles aren't allowed, and obviously police and ambulances (and fire trucks) doing their jobs don't have to follow the sign. Obviously emergency vehicles are going to do what they need to do, but even if they are allowed to break the rule they are still breaking the rule. I also think a park sign that says no vehicles also applies to bicycles and skateboards.
> even if they are allowed to break the rule they are still breaking the rule. This is exactly right, I think, and in fact those who are focusing on the "intent" of the rule or on whether a violation of the rule is justified seem to have missed the clear wording of the instructions: > Again, please answer the question of whether the rule is violated (not whether the violation should be allowed). So the only questions…
However, the tank was not functional. Since it cannot convey it is therefore not a conveyance and therefore not a vehicle. It’s only shaped like a familiar one.
I matched the majority only 11% of the time.
The park may only have one rule, but the quiz has several , including disregarding exceptions to the rule. Yet there are people arguing here that rule shouldn’t count because they disagree with it. Even on a meta level, this is an interesting exploration of how people interpret rules.