4 ms·

Sort of similar: elevators in Israel may be programmed to stop at every floor during the Sabbath, as riding the elevator is permitted according to the talmudic

Sort of similar: elevators in Israel may be programmed to stop at every floor during the Sabbath, as riding the elevator is permitted according to the talmudic definition of "work", but summoning the elevator is not.

refactor_master 4y ago
Except if it’s summoned by a kosher switch? ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch
- calgarymicro 4y ago
  >The basic idea is that the switch activates only sometimes, and only after a delay, making the action indirect and uncertain. Several Orthodox poskim have ruled as thus makes the device permissible for general consumer use.[5][6] Others, however, have reached the opposite conclusion.[2] Wow. Well, loopholes are loopholes I guess.
- omginternets 4y ago
  Surely, pushing a button frantically constitutes “work”.
delecti 4y ago
I've always found it fascinating and delightful how Jewish people in particular seem to treat loopholes like that in their religion as features rather than bugs. Christians (the only other religion I've got much exposure to) seem to either ignore their rules entirely, or interpret them more according to a vague vibe of intent.
- bmn__ 4y ago
  The rabbinic explanation goes, if god didn't want his people to show cleverness in exploiting the loopholes, he wouldn't have put them there.
  - deanCommie 4y ago
    While the Judaic God definitely seems more good-natured than the Catholic one (at least in this one regard), as an Atheist, to be so close to the point and still miss it is some /r/selfawarewolves level rage. > he wouldn't have put them there Yes...that's right....he didn't.
    - jakeinspace 4y ago
      Fascinating, tell us more
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Maybe God gave Moses specific guidance on elevator use on sabbaths, it just got lost in translation because Moses had no clue what God was talking about
    - ishvanl 4y ago
      "Thou shalt not... elevator... buttons may not be... oh whatever, just put something in there about adultery."
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    That's a weird take. For the little I know about most religions, intent and the spirit of the law is what's important. God doesn't need evidence or justification, it just knows. Allowing workarounds is encouraging trickery, which seems at odds with the function of religion as moral guidance and social cohesion. I personally don't have any problem with the idea of exploiting loopholes, I mean, it is Hacker News, and cleverness and exploiting loopholes is pretty much the definition of being a hacker. But from a religion perspective, it looks more like an atheist, or even satanist value.
    - bdsa 4y ago
      It's not a weird take, it's an accurate characterisation of some schools of thought.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
I've seen that in New York City too. Probably common in other cities, or at least parts of cities with large Jewish populations. A condo I lived in had a malfunction that put it into a similar mode, and it was over a long holiday weekend so he had to suffer with it until the next business day when elevator repair could come out. Even in a ten-story building, it really adds a lot of extra time to your ride when it has to stop at every floor.
- mwint 4y ago
  If you’re in reasonably good shape, stairs are a deceptively fast mode of transport. Easy to win a race against slower elevators over smallish distances. Also exercise benefits, but I make myself take the stairs under the guise of saving time.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    In Madrid the subway is deep, I had to climb 180 steps to home. I did it running, it’s actually much easier than walking. Best shape I ever was in my life…
    - masklinn 4y ago
      You may want to avoid that if you go to St Petersburg. Deepest station is 80m down. I’m not sure all the stations even have stairs, all I remember are endless escalators (though it dates back 25 years now so…)
      - waqf 4y ago
        Meanwhile, on the London Underground, the lengths of all sets of stairs down to platform level are described as "equivalent to 15 floors" irrespective of how high they actually are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBTvmrRGlbE&t=41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBTvmrRGlbE&t=41s
xattt 4y ago
Similarly, Shabbat mode on kitchen appliances (1). I do wonder, however, whether there are dedicated individuals within religious organizations that assess a given spiritual framework and consider workarounds for things that might be dangerous to the health of their religious community. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode
- BearOso 4y ago
  Wow. That's pedantic. It strikes me that if you're deriving whether an action is safe for your religion based on a technicality like "a signal light turns on", then either: 1. Your religion needs to lighten up a bit. I doubt any deity cares about small technical details like that. or 2. You're in violation of rules anyway. The intent is still there, so even if you're using a loophole, there's no practical difference between those two actions. Both you and whatever deity know you're committing an offense.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    There are religious scholars in Judaism who deal with these issues -- you aren't the first to question it and your concerns are enumerated and addressed thoroughly.
  - lmm 4y ago
    The Jewish belief is explicitly contrary to that: whether you obey the letter of the rule is what matters, not the intention of it, and this is as God wills it.
  - joenot443 4y ago
    I don’t think there are many Orthodox Jews out there who haven’t heard some variation of those two points countless times in their lives. I think your apparent belief that there’s any amount of novelty in what you wrote is actually a lot more telling here.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  This whole discussion strikes me as pure insanity.
ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
You can see this at Cedars-Sinai hospital every week. Although I respect the cleverness of workarounds like this... come on! You're still violating the spirit of the "law!"
dbcurtis 4y ago
I used to write software that used the third-party interface into elevator controllers. I am still unclear what “Korean lunch mode 1” and “Korean lunch mode 2” in Otis controllers do.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  korean lunch mode 1 only takes you to the cafeteria on the bottom floor. it does not take any passengers up. lunch is sacred
- moeffju 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776830
edanm 4y ago
In buildings with many floors, it's actually usually more clever. E.g. the elevator might stop at every second floor on the way up, assuming that you can always go one floor extra and go down the stairs or something. And it might not stop at all floors on the way down in apartments buildings, since you're usually going out of the building and rarely just changing floors.

refactor_master 4y ago

Except if it’s summoned by a kosher switch? ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch

calgarymicro 4y ago
>The basic idea is that the switch activates only sometimes, and only after a delay, making the action indirect and uncertain. Several Orthodox poskim have ruled as thus makes the device permissible for general consumer use.[5][6] Others, however, have reached the opposite conclusion.[2] Wow. Well, loopholes are loopholes I guess.
omginternets 4y ago
Surely, pushing a button frantically constitutes “work”.

delecti 4y ago

I've always found it fascinating and delightful how Jewish people in particular seem to treat loopholes like that in their religion as features rather than bugs. Christians (the only other religion I've got much exposure to) seem to either ignore their rules entirely, or interpret them more according to a vague vibe of intent.

bmn__ 4y ago
The rabbinic explanation goes, if god didn't want his people to show cleverness in exploiting the loopholes, he wouldn't have put them there.
- deanCommie 4y ago
  While the Judaic God definitely seems more good-natured than the Catholic one (at least in this one regard), as an Atheist, to be so close to the point and still miss it is some /r/selfawarewolves level rage. > he wouldn't have put them there Yes...that's right....he didn't.
  - jakeinspace 4y ago
    Fascinating, tell us more
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Maybe God gave Moses specific guidance on elevator use on sabbaths, it just got lost in translation because Moses had no clue what God was talking about
  - ishvanl 4y ago
    "Thou shalt not... elevator... buttons may not be... oh whatever, just put something in there about adultery."
- GuB-42 4y ago
  That's a weird take. For the little I know about most religions, intent and the spirit of the law is what's important. God doesn't need evidence or justification, it just knows. Allowing workarounds is encouraging trickery, which seems at odds with the function of religion as moral guidance and social cohesion. I personally don't have any problem with the idea of exploiting loopholes, I mean, it is Hacker News, and cleverness and exploiting loopholes is pretty much the definition of being a hacker. But from a religion perspective, it looks more like an atheist, or even satanist value.
  - bdsa 4y ago
    It's not a weird take, it's an accurate characterisation of some schools of thought.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

I've seen that in New York City too. Probably common in other cities, or at least parts of cities with large Jewish populations. A condo I lived in had a malfunction that put it into a similar mode, and it was over a long holiday weekend so he had to suffer with it until the next business day when elevator repair could come out. Even in a ten-story building, it really adds a lot of extra time to your ride when it has to stop at every floor.

mwint 4y ago
If you’re in reasonably good shape, stairs are a deceptively fast mode of transport. Easy to win a race against slower elevators over smallish distances. Also exercise benefits, but I make myself take the stairs under the guise of saving time.
- eastbound 4y ago
  In Madrid the subway is deep, I had to climb 180 steps to home. I did it running, it’s actually much easier than walking. Best shape I ever was in my life…
  - masklinn 4y ago
    You may want to avoid that if you go to St Petersburg. Deepest station is 80m down. I’m not sure all the stations even have stairs, all I remember are endless escalators (though it dates back 25 years now so…)
    - waqf 4y ago
      Meanwhile, on the London Underground, the lengths of all sets of stairs down to platform level are described as "equivalent to 15 floors" irrespective of how high they actually are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBTvmrRGlbE&t=41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBTvmrRGlbE&t=41s

xattt 4y ago

Similarly, Shabbat mode on kitchen appliances (1). I do wonder, however, whether there are dedicated individuals within religious organizations that assess a given spiritual framework and consider workarounds for things that might be dangerous to the health of their religious community. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode

BearOso 4y ago
Wow. That's pedantic. It strikes me that if you're deriving whether an action is safe for your religion based on a technicality like "a signal light turns on", then either: 1. Your religion needs to lighten up a bit. I doubt any deity cares about small technical details like that. or 2. You're in violation of rules anyway. The intent is still there, so even if you're using a loophole, there's no practical difference between those two actions. Both you and whatever deity know you're committing an offense.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  There are religious scholars in Judaism who deal with these issues -- you aren't the first to question it and your concerns are enumerated and addressed thoroughly.
- lmm 4y ago
  The Jewish belief is explicitly contrary to that: whether you obey the letter of the rule is what matters, not the intention of it, and this is as God wills it.
- joenot443 4y ago
  I don’t think there are many Orthodox Jews out there who haven’t heard some variation of those two points countless times in their lives. I think your apparent belief that there’s any amount of novelty in what you wrote is actually a lot more telling here.
midoridensha 4y ago
This whole discussion strikes me as pure insanity.

ShadowBanThis01 4y ago

You can see this at Cedars-Sinai hospital every week. Although I respect the cleverness of workarounds like this... come on! You're still violating the spirit of the "law!"

dbcurtis 4y ago

I used to write software that used the third-party interface into elevator controllers. I am still unclear what “Korean lunch mode 1” and “Korean lunch mode 2” in Otis controllers do.

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
korean lunch mode 1 only takes you to the cafeteria on the bottom floor. it does not take any passengers up. lunch is sacred
moeffju 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776830

edanm 4y ago

In buildings with many floors, it's actually usually more clever. E.g. the elevator might stop at every second floor on the way up, assuming that you can always go one floor extra and go down the stairs or something. And it might not stop at all floors on the way down in apartments buildings, since you're usually going out of the building and rarely just changing floors.