The rule says, “No vehicles in the park” • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:28 AM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #448

sundvor wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah applying a very loose, or perhaps pedantic, definition of vehicle (it doesn't specify size, for example) combined with a reasonable understanding of "in" ie including air space in proportion to the size of a regular park led me to say most things were in violation of the rule. Those were the only relevant factors, all the other info was fluff. I considered ISS to be outside it, and that was pretty much it. My vi…

You draw the line between ISS and commercial airplane? That seems like an odd place for it. I would think the limit of "in" would be at the prevailing treeline or maybe requires ground contact (I haven't fully decided yet), and beyond that it's "above" rather then "in." The problem with treeline (or any similar threshold) is that even having that defined doesn't solve for the fact that we don't know the altitude of t…

Does touching water or snow count as ground contact?

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

#462

Post by xigoi » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:30 AM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #388

sltkr wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

think the fundamental difference is that “vehicle” can be broken down into a number of concrete subcategories that cover the vast majority of vehicles that people use in practice, while “hate speech” and “speech glorifying violence” are often very nebulous and hard to define. It's true that “vehicle” can be vague, but it's also true that in many contexts it's well-defined. The very common ”no entry for vehicular traf…

I don’t know why we insist on pretending that there’s no way to figure out what counts as “hate speech” or “glorifying violence”. If you look on any social network you’ll find you can report people for saying things that clearly fall under those categories. Like if you’re calling someone a slur, or threatening them, or telling them to kill themselves, those are all pretty clearly out of bounds! And, I mean, to be cle…

On many social networks, something like “kill all white people” wouldn't be considered hate speech.

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

#463

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:32 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #410

andrewflnr wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people don't agree on it, then the clarity you feel is an illusion. The point of rules is common understanding of what is acceptable. Notably, you pulled a bunch of special cases and refinements from thin air. The way I read the setup, it was "crystal clear" that the rule was violated by emergency services, even if we could agree afterwards not to enforce it there. And, yes, of course, moderation questions are muc…

> If people don't agree on it, then the clarity you feel is an illusion. Well, no, people can just be wrong.

Wrong people can have quite a lot of influence in an internet forum, so that's a distinction without much difference.

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

#464

Post by jvanderbot » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:34 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #383

cmdli wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way as the above comment. If you were an actual administrator in charge of fining people for violating the rule, almost none of these examples should give you pause. You wouldn't be trying to give a ticket to planes flying overhead, for example. With these examples, there really isn't much disagreement on whether action should be taken, so any discussion of whether a rule is technically violated is mo…

> You wouldn't be trying to give a ticket to planes flying overhead except you have just applied an assumption (which is often true) that may not be true depending on circumstances - that the planes were excluded because it couldn't have caused any negative effect. For example, if the park had been https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Isolation_and_unco... , and the intention was to keep the indigenous peoples i…

Planes are usually required to fly above the height defined by property laws, and so it makes sense that "park" is deines by the areas that planes don't fly in.

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

#465

Post by RheingoldRiver » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:34 AM UTC

Macha wrote: post #16

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,…

What, exactly, is the graph showing? % of people who said "Yes this is a vehicle in the park" or % of people who agree with you ? It's very difficult to tell as I said yes only to the car and the memorial...

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

#466

Post by xigoi » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:35 AM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #219

seized wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about common sense. Police/fire/ambulances are there for emergencies, their drivers have better training (theoretically) in safe driving, and the vehicles bring attention to themselves. Uncle Jim Bob trying to drive his Buick around is what's obviously prohibited as that's the vehicle/driver most likely to cause harm...

> Police/fire/ambulances are there for emergencies, their drivers have better training (theoretically) in safe driving, and the vehicles bring attention to themselves. By this logic, it’s ok for a police officer to drive through the park’s green on his way to work, with no emergency.

I'd argue that:

* if the siren is off, then “the vehicles bring attention to themselves” doesn't apply.

* if the siren in on, then they're not violating the park's rules, but they are violating the rules of their emergency vehicle.

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

#467

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:35 AM UTC

adrr wrote: post #98

bhaney wrote: post #20

Nitpick: The summary at the end labels your choices as "You think it is not a vehicle" or "You think it is a vehicle" based on whether or not you said the situation violates the rule, but some of the scenarios were clearly about whether or not something was in the park , rather than whether or not it was a vehicle. I can think a plane or a space station is a vehicle without thinking it violates the rule about not bei…

Posting “racial epithets” is banned on social networks but if I post a video of a politician saying a racial epithet to raise awareness. Does that violate the rule? We aren’t debating whether or not it was a racial epithet.

I didn’t get that question.

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

#468

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #198

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…

Good point. The intro to the quiz asks you to answer the questions literally, but by asking this the author kind of assumes their own conclusion. I wonder how much consensus there would be if the intro asked you to go by the intent of the rule as you understand it, rather than what it literally says.

The first time I went through the quiz, I followed the instructions and had to think about definitions a lot. Then I read your comment and went through the quiz again and just used common sense (dangerous phrase, but I believe it worked in all 27 cases). There was only one violation: someone drove a Honda Civic through the park. What was that person thinking!

On HN we've always tried to avoid hair-splitting arguments by appealing to general values rather than trying to nail down the precise list of disallowed behaviors [1, 2]. Trying to be precise seems like a ticket to bureaucratic, soul-destroying hell [3]. I'd rather just say that there aren't precise rules, just an intended spirit and a few pointers, and yeah that means there's a lot of interpretation involved. There's going to be a lot of interpretation involved no matter what you do, so why pretend otherwise? Just make it clear up front. Then you can say "someone's got to interpret the rules, and that happens to be my job, and I'm interpreting them this way". People will get mad, but people are going to get mad no matter what you do, and at least you won't have to argue about whether a bicycle is a vehicle.

That doesn't mean there aren't edge cases and disputes about which calls are fair. There are tons of those. But if you don't try to be precise then at least you don't get into semantic hell. Except when you do. Boy this work's hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lStcwT_RGrQ#t=132.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11301437

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

#469

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

Qwertious wrote: post #397

nocoiner wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, defined terms are critical. As the exercise went on, I kept refining my mental model of what a “vehicle” was in the context of the park sign. I eventually came up with a mental model that was something like “an artificially powered or mechanically advantaged means of conveyance or transport, especially one that creates negative externalities to other park goers inconsistent with typical use and enjoyment of publ…

>But that wasn’t absolute - the non-functional tank was, in my mind, quite obviously a vehicle, and so was prohibited. Was, or is? The non-functional tank was a vehicle, but is currently a non-functional lump of steel and is thus no different to a statue. A statue is obviously not a vehicle, and a statue of a car is still not a vehicle.

How was the tank moved though?

Seems unlikely to have been pushed by people.

“Matthew, head of an organization of WWII veterans, puts a non-functioning WWII-era tank into the park as a war memorial.”

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

#470

Post by hsjqllzlfkf » Sat, Jun 24, 2023, 6:46 AM UTC

smitop wrote: post #316

hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definition looks like it only applies to highways, whereas this exercise is much broader.

In a legal context "highway" has a broader meaning than in everyday use. From the link above: highway "includes every road, street, lane or right of way designed or intended for or used by the general public for the passage of vehicles"

Ok, looks like that doesn't include a park in which vehicles are forbidden then.