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Reasonable Person Principle

cs.cmu.edu

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#61
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you insist on following an honor code while competing against people who are ready to take an unfair advantage of you, you lose.

> If you insist on following an honor code while competing against people who are ready to take an unfair advantage of you, you lose. "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them.

War crimes have entered the chat.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed that u/immibis was being sardonic.

Not at all. That's exactly how CoCs are used in practice. Have you ever witnessed a CoC-related dispute?

If you're going to be arbitrary then you might as well not use a detailed CoC. Pretending to not be arbitrary when you are being arbitrary just makes you phony and lame.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#63
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you insist on following an honor code while competing against people who are ready to take an unfair advantage of you, you lose. "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them.

War crimes have entered the chat.

> War crimes have entered the chat.

Good point, but I believe war crimes mainly come when you substitute ‘a people’ for ‘a person’ in:

> "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them.

But I did specifically mean a person, just one. (I also was envisioning, like, struggling for top spot in a class, not struggling to take San Juan Hill. But I'm not immediately sure I can sign on to an ethical principle that says that you are not entitled to respond to one specific competitor with as much fierceness as they bring to the competition, even when that competition becomes deadly.)

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#64
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you insist on following an honor code while competing against people who are ready to take an unfair advantage of you, you lose. "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them.

So, tit-for-tat?

> So, tit-for-tat?

That's a reasonable reading, but I think that there is a difference between competition and punishment. In the heat of the competition, I think I am comfortable with the idea that it is permissible to meet the fierceness of your competitor with equal ferocity. If afterwards someone is found to have exceeded their remit and punishment needs to be dealt, then I think that should be governed by a separate ethical principle.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure one should believe that - everyone with even mild experience of public spaces knows that at the end of the day rules are enforced by people. Doesn't matter if you pour a few liters of woke over the system, it's still the same system. I'm ready to believe in a conspiracy theory around codes of conduct, actually.

Making unspoken rules public saves everyone time and heartache. Except perhaps where there are too many contrarians, folks looking for a problem, authors who are being intentionally vague, or acts of malicious compliance.

And yet in real life it looks like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/hamline-university-isl...

A member of the Somalian community instrumentalizing anti-black and anti-Muslim feelings to boost the standing of his own group, and the Code of Conduct fails to protect academic freedom. Well done!

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#66
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War crimes have entered the chat.

> War crimes have entered the chat. Good point, but I believe war crimes mainly come when you substitute ‘a people’ for ‘a person’ in: > "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them. But I did specifically mean a person, just one. (I also was envisioning, like, struggling for top spot…

All good points. So how about the shifting alliances and goals of Squid Game ?

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#67
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. That's exactly how CoCs are used in practice. Have you ever witnessed a CoC-related dispute?

If you're going to be arbitrary then you might as well not use a detailed CoC. Pretending to not be arbitrary when you are being arbitrary just makes you phony and lame.

If you are overtly arbitrary, people will tell you not to be arbitrary.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#69
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War crimes have entered the chat. Good point, but I believe war crimes mainly come when you substitute ‘a people’ for ‘a person’ in: > "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them. But I did specifically mean a person, just one. (I also was envisioning, like, struggling for top spot…

All good points. So how about the shifting alliances and goals of Squid Game ?

> So how about the shifting alliances and goals of Squid Game ?

I couldn't comment, since I haven't seen it, but I think the mandate of fairness makes sense even in the presence of shifting goals, and probably governs the extent to which it's reasonable to switch alliances.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making unspoken rules public saves everyone time and heartache. Except perhaps where there are too many contrarians, folks looking for a problem, authors who are being intentionally vague, or acts of malicious compliance.

And yet in real life it looks like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/hamline-university-isl... A member of the Somalian community instrumentalizing anti-black and anti-Muslim feelings to boost the standing of his own group, and the Code of Conduct fails to protect academic freedom. Well done!

Congrats on finding an exception? Would it have been easier to diagnose if such rules were unwritten?

I still prefer communities that document their rules and expectations over those that don't.

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