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The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

novehiclesinthepark.com

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#761

Over the years I've come across a few online communities that have noticeably higher conversation quality than the rest of the internet. The one thing all of those places had in common is a very strict moderation policy. Not every forum/community/website should tolerate literally all people. It's never helpful to engage with trolls and if people aren't willing to argue in good faith than they need to go. I've seen to…

I came to a different conclusion and said no police or ambulance should enter the park. Obviously there should be an exception for true emergencies, but stretchers exist for a reason. Police can walk or ride a bike. The fact that respondents are so sure of the obviousness of their answers highlights common problems in moderation— rules are ambiguous and everyone has different standards.

In what way is that conclusion different? I argue that a strict moderation policy and enforcement is needed to keep a community healthy, even if that leads to the exclusion of a few posts/users that would have been good for the community.

Is that not exactly what you are saying?

Sidenote: Does the presence of an ambulance not qualify as a "true emergency" for you? In my experience an ambulance only shows up if someone needs acute medical attention. Is that not the case where you live?

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#762

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…

> To me, the answer to all of the questions was crystal-clear.

One of the points of the exercise is that there is broad spread (though far from a uniform distribution) of responses, so the fact that the correct answers are clear to you only goes so far.

It might be interesting to see how additional statements about intent would affect the distribution (though to the extent that the statements of intent take the form of lists of determinations in each special case, the interesting outcome would be the distribution continuing to be broad.)

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#763
post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, a fellow member of the elite 11%! Now, I wonder which specific items we agreed on, if any.

I also was 11%. For me I only counted car, police, ambulance, bike, wagon and horse as vehicles.

Also 11%, and I was more lenient (IIRC, only car, police and ambulance). Perhaps it is broken?

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The thing is, you don't generally get to know the context or the intent. You can't have a discussion with the sign, nor can it lecture you. A rule against starting a fire might be because the land owner doesn't like burnt patches on their meadows, or it might be because the vegetation is super dry and if you set fire to it you kill not only yourself but also all the surrounding villages, or something in between. You…

Imagine there’s a military bombing range full of unexploded ordinance. The sign outside the range simply says “Keep off the grass”.

In the situation where context is different than what a reasonable person would expect, it has to be included. Language changes meaning depending on context.

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#765
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vehicle is any kind of tool that makes locomotion for any animate or inanimate object easier. This includes wheeled craft, seafaring vessels, shoes, aircraft. The whole exercise is easier once you realize the park is a nudist colony.

What if it makes locomotion harder? IS a snowmobiel is a vehicle in the summer? A motorbike without fuel?

Full on pedantry here, but a snowmobile will still work without snow, perhaps not long, but while it works it will be faster than walking. A motorcycle goes faster than walking without gas downhill. You can also use it as a really heavy dandy horse.

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#766
post #489

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 would definitely take the Turkish way of shrugging off rules

Having lived most of my life in Turkey, it gets old really fast.

For one thing, there's a certain culture that is a mixture of extreme fatalism, not giving a shit about anything that doesn't immediately benefit you, low respect to other people, and the worst part of it, seeing other people who care as weak, unmanly and naive, that is so pervasive in Turkey.

When this culture is given a lax rule structure, what you get is a chaotic, every man for himself, free-for-all place devolving further and further into a low CGI Mad Max movie. Only reason why it still hasn't completely collapsed into chaos is because people are still afraid of the punishment. If you think I'm exaggerating, next time you're there ask a restaurant owner if you can smoke, right under the no-smoking sign and pay attention to what they say: do they tell you that'd disturb other customers? or do they tell you of the ₺20k fine they got that one time and they can't let you because of that.

I can tell for you as a lived experience that significantly more people in Turkey cut in lines than people in Germany. Why do they do that I ask myself, the only explanation I could find until now is because fuck you, that's why. If you were as cunning, as manly, as bold as they are you'd be at the front of the line, but you aren't, so fuck you. They know there won't be repercussions for that action, and that's the only bar to clear for them to do it.

Maybe this way of living fits some, I myself find this despicable. I know that cutting in lines is not the most important metric for life quality in the world, but I fully believe it seeps into everything else in the society and over time makes it unlivable.

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Even in an imaginary ideal environment, if act of obeying existing rules is debatable, there'll be the problem of everyone considering themselves as a sufficient authority on making judgements with a limited context and a huge bias on interpretations that benefit them. At one point it just makes sense to ask people to use the right channels to push change instead of 80 million people making individual judgements on every issue every day and hope for the best.

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#767
I suspect I'm not the only one who tried this, but ChatGPT does predictably well at this task. I gave it a basic prompt of 'Let's play a game. The rule says, "No vehicles in the park". This is a game about language and rules. I will describe different scenarios to you. In response, you respond "Yes" if this scenario violates the rule or "No" if it does not. You have to make a choice and can only say Yes or No.' and then just fed it the scenarios. It ended up agreeing with the majority and my own intuition quite well.

The largest differences were that it didn't considered a rowboard a vehicle and that it did consider the parachute scenario a vehicle.

Bad news for human content moderators I suppose...

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#768
post #569
post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in reading the classical book about cultural difference by Geert Hofstede as it provides another perspective on this. He describes what he calls uncertainty avoidance cultures that try to reduce uncertainty by making lots of rules. These end up being impossible to follow, so it's generally expected that you don't. He contrasts this with cultures that are low on uncertainty avoidance that have…

Thanks, I should check it out. How do they explain Germany though?

Good Q.

From my own short stint in Germany, n=1, the rules often did tend to make sense, so it actually seemed like a good idea to follow them.

(I've also had friends complain that Germany wasn't actually as tidy or rules based as they were lead to believe. So take with a grain of salt!)

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#769

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…

> To me, the answer to all of the questions was crystal-clear

You are actually perfect example, everying is crystal clear to me too, and my interpretation violently contradicts your interpretation

Re: The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

#770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that the spirit of rules is more important than the text, then those people were obeying the spirit of the rule to not include exceptions, not the text.

Those people failed to follow the spirit of the quiz.

Following the letter of the law or rule to an absurd conclusion without any common sense is a typical example of bureaucratic nightmares.

It should be comforting that people are able to use independent judgement when faced with a nonsensical situation, situations that illustrates a glaring lack of detail to the law or rule rather than anything else.

Basically the more terse a rule is, the more it requires the enforcer to use their own judgment.

That game would only be supportive of the point the author wants to make if the rule had a few paragraphs of examples and defined vehicle.

Instead the author hand waved away the case of a rule with examples by saying that nit picker could always find ambiguity. So instead they gave a overt terse rule that defies common sense. It’s a strawman attempt of a example.

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