Rules are like abstraction of a software library, or OKR of a team. It is for people to follow with good enough result. But the abstraction need to be constantly reviewed, by library author, team leader, and legislative body to be useful and relevant. That's when rules become outdated, library got rotten, and OKRs complained
Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
81–90 of 168 posts
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#82Of course they do, if someone below them break the rules and make more money, they profit. And if that same person then breaks the rules again but makes a mistake or loses money, they will use the rule breaking as an excuse to shed both inter-political and legal liability from themselves onto the lower employee with the excuse that they broke the rules.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
For which side? Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital. Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.
> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.
In France at least, and I believe in the US to, it is illegal to not do something if you can.
It does not mean that you should dive and bring him back. In fact, it is not recommended unless you know what you are doing as you may put yourself in danger and need rescuing yourself. But if there are other people around who can help and you don't alert them, or if you have a working phone and don't call whatever emergency number is appropriate, than that's illegal.
EDIT: It appears that it is not illegal do do nothing in most of the US. The law only protects you from consequences of trying to help.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#84Fundamentally, rules almost always come with compromises — for the sake of making rules understandable by humans, they have to be relatively simple. Simple rules for complex situations will always forbid some amount of good behaviour, and allow some bad behaviour. Many of society's parasites live in the space of "allowable bad behaviour", but there is a lot of value to knowing how to exploit the "forbidden good behav…
In law there is the concept of "rules VS. Standards" which seems to relate to what you explain.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.
> In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy. There's video from a few years back that shows very American cops standing outside a burning house at night, knowing there was a young child still in it. A passing pizza delivery dude[1] rescued the 6-year old, handed her to cop, and ended up requiring hospitalization. In the online discussion, everyone called the rescuer a hero, but I…
It gets tricky when professions, insurance etc are involved.
Example: After a missile attack on a Dnipro gas station in 2022, my wife and her team arrived to see the station burning and 3 people already confirmed dead, but the paramedics would not go inside (they actually weren't allowed to, due to the danger). Her team was military, however, so it was OK to go in and check for survivors.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you legally required to carry a means of communication? If not, how can this possibly be enforced? It sounds like an end run to get to negligence charges. For example, how fast can I drive to get to a telephone if I don't carry one or otherwise cannot use it?
> It sounds like an end run to get to negligence charges. It's not anything nefarious like that. US citizens and US law enforcement tend to have an adversarial relationship, unfortunately. Finns generally do not. That law is an expression of expectation for behavior in a civilized society, not an opportunity for prosecutorial promotion, as it might be in the US. One must take reasonable steps to save a drowning child…
> Honestly, who doesn't think that a person shouldn't be in jail who would prefer to film and giggle while a child was drowning? A person like that needs a timeout at least.
The difference is that jail in the US is not "timeout". Prisoners may be required to work against their will, which is the carve out in the fourteenth amendment which abolished slavery. People openly joke about sexual assault in prison with derogatory comments like "don't drop the soap". All in all, I think the bar should be higher to send someone to prison in the US. We already have too many people in prison and, in my opinion, many of them are wrongly in prison.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#87Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#88Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy.
I saw this put really, really well not too long ago: > A lot of us got the message earlier in life that we had to wait for other's permission or encouragement to do things, when in fact, all you need is the ability to understand the situation and deal with the consequences
The one I'm familiar with is:
> It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Of course this can be used to justify all sorts of terrible things, but I've mainly seen it as pretty innocent in work environments when applying common sense.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#89productivity (making money) is better than following rules
unless your break rules that negatively impact productivity
This is why businesses will break laws when fines are less than profits.
Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point
#90Fundamentally, rules almost always come with compromises — for the sake of making rules understandable by humans, they have to be relatively simple. Simple rules for complex situations will always forbid some amount of good behaviour, and allow some bad behaviour. Many of society's parasites live in the space of "allowable bad behaviour", but there is a lot of value to knowing how to exploit the "forbidden good behav…
Example?
Making food in public for homeless people runs afoul of food safety laws