8 ms·

Same - I used the simple "rule" that basically everything that's in the park and used to carry people or goods is a "vehicle" at least by some people's standard

• pix128 3y ago
  The plane question stated the plane was `over` the park which implies it is not in the park. If the question instead said `through` the park, the answer would differ.
  • patmcc 3y ago
    What if I fly a helicopter 10 feet off the ground, in the area of the park. Is that 'over' or 'through'?
    • Qwertious 3y ago
      Given that a helicopter at that speed is a clear hazard to anyone below it and will blow a person below it off their feet, and could easily be pushed around or into the ground at any time (sudden gusts of winds do happen, although I have no real experience with helicopters so I may be wrong on some specifics), that is through. "the park" includes not only the ground, but also a certain area above the ground - otherwise someone riding a bike through the park wouldn't be in the park (as they are not touching the ground) but their bike would be. That would be absurd.
      • patmcc 3y ago
        Ok. What about 20ft off the ground? 50? 100? 200? 350? You see the issue, yah?
        • notyoutube 3y ago
          Given that the whole point of the website and the discussion is the fuzziness that any such rule implies, I'm pretty sure they _do_ see the point, but decided to play the interpretation game anyway. What's your point?
        • kazinator 3y ago
          Let's say we imagine a dome over the park which is geometrically a convex hull that encloses all the tree tops. Everything in that dome is in the park.
        • dahart 3y ago
          Your list of altitudes didn’t go high enough to change the answer. ;) Drones (in the US and the UK) must be limited to 400ft/120m and are still considered “in” the airspace of the ground they’re over. Commercial aircraft flying at 35,000ft AGL are not considered to be in the airspace of a specific park or private property when over the U.S. (and most of the world, I suspect), but they are considered to be inside the country’s airspace, since park & private property airspace has a limited ceiling, but country airspace extends up to space.
      • fragmede 3y ago
        What if it's using antigravity technology or magic to hover instead, posing no threat to the people below due to wind.
    • ckolkey 3y ago
      Through, no question. If someone in the park is able to interact with it, you're in it.
      • fragmede 3y ago
        What if it is a digital vehicle? If we're all wearing AR glasses, and can interact with it, is it there?
    • flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
      Depends on how you word the question. If you say the helicopter is flying 10 feet over the park, by the rules of this game it's objectively not a violation. If you say it's 10 feet above the ground inside the park, objectively a violation.
    • dahart 3y ago
      In the U.S., by FAA law, flying a helicopter 10 feet off the ground in a public park is both over the ground and through (or “in”) the park. There’s no either-or.
  • dahart 3y ago
    The question intentionally left out the altitude of the vehicle in order to trick us into thinking it’s a harder question to answer than it really is. I agree that ‘over’ tends to somewhat imply out, and ‘through’ tends to imply in, and would indeed change the distribution of answers. In at least some countries (such as the U.S., and I would speculate practically all countries in the age of commercial flight and private drones, but I don’t know that for a fact) there are laws that define whether flying “over” a public park means in our out, and the park’s bounding volume is defined with a specific altitude ceiling. (It may be different depending on the type of aircraft, e.g., civilian drone vs emergency helicopter vs commercial airliner, etc.) The author’s trick worked. People are arguing over whether a hypothetical airplane is in the hypothetical park without knowing the altitude or location, rather than pointing at the fact that he question is intentionally under-specified and the right answer depends on important details that were left out.
• jorvi 3y ago
  Funnily enough, by your wide standard, any footwear would also be considered a vehicle.
  • bhaney 3y ago
    That would depend on your definition of "carry." I personally wouldn't say that shoes "carry" people any more than floors do (which is to say, they don't).
    • jorvi 3y ago
      We need to go deeper! I would say those two things are very different. The ground (floors are inside) is the cooperating object upon which leading objects carry. The shoes carried the person on the ground, the car carried the person on the ground, the horse carried the person on the ground, etc; An interesting dilemma does occur if we are walking barefoot: our feet carry us but are part of our whole, so we cannot reasonably consider them or ourselves a vehicle. But in a general day-to-day sense we would say they carry us. It is very interesting what you brought up because I think it shows some people consider their outfit as an extension of themselves. Then again, many people also do for their car :)
      • dec0dedab0de 3y ago
        I would say those two things are very different. The ground (floors are inside) is the cooperating object upon which leading objects carry. Since we're already taking it too far, I want to point out that you can have outside floors, and you can have floors that are not supported by the ground. An airplanes floor in flight, or a dance floor in your backyard are examples of both.
    • mathgeek 3y ago
      A more obvious example is a pregnant woman, or a woman holding a baby. Both can reasonably be called “carrying a human”.
    • klyrs 3y ago
      Just to pick the nit, what about stilts? Are they shoes or vehicles?
• megablast 3y ago
  So that includes wheelchair?
  • l0b0 3y ago
    Yep. Obviously this is a thought experiment, and the site did tell users to take the problem as stated very literally. So I basically went with two simple rules: - Would anyone call it a vehicle? - Is it in the park?
    • madeofpalk 3y ago
      So that includes wheelchair? Would anyone call it a vehicle?
      • bhaney 3y ago
        Yes, I think it's reasonable to consider a wheelchair to be a vehicle. Especially the motorized ones.
        • mcny 3y ago
          I said, no. A wheelchair is not a vehicle. In my opinion, the wheelchair is an extension of the person, and not a separate object as long as it is being used by someone who needs it.
          • manwe150 3y ago
            This seems a fun direction of thought. So does it cease to become a vehicle as soon as someone sits in it, and resume its functionality as a vehicle as soon as it is abandoned?
          • Dylan16807 3y ago
            So whether it's a vehicle depends on how well the person in it can walk? I don't know about that. I'd rather just give exceptions.
• talaketu 3y ago
  Let's say that in your opinion: (a) it's a vehicle, (b) it's in the park, (c) but the park authority doesn't have jurisdiction over the activity. Is the correct resolution to deny (b)? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what "in the park" represents within the analogy.
• cgriswald 3y ago
  Humans carry all kinds of goods and often carry people. Even if we limit "goods" to exclude our personal effects, someone carrying takeout across a park—especially for someone else—could be considered a vehicle by that definition. Additionally strollers, wagons, and other baby or child conveyances would also qualify.
• jrockway 3y ago
  > But you can fly a plane across the globe without going through 15 separate immigration rituals, so for most practical purposes (obviously excluding things like no-fly zones or bomber planes) the plane is not "in" any of the areas it passes over. But you were specifically instructed to not use any laws local to your jurisdiction, and that's why this can happen. The 15 countries it flew over are members of the ICAO, which delegated some of their sovereignty to the common good of easy air travel. It could have easily worked out some other way; fly over our country without stopping for immigration, and we blow up your plane. (You can see this in action if you fly your plane from Canada to do a low approach over the White House. You probably won't be home for dinner.) Similarly, in the US, the FAA decides who can fly over your property and how low. These are not universal constraints on existence, just actual laws that people wrote down because nobody could agree on the details. I'd venture a guess that if you asked the average property owner if airplanes could fly over their property and stare at them in their hot tubs, they'd say "no". However, the law simply doesn't agree with them, and a satellite is photographing your underwear as we speak!
  • monocasa 3y ago
    But it's not really a local thing; I'd be shocked if there was a park which meaningfully controlled it's airspace. Practically the bounds of a park only go so high.
    • gmane 3y ago
      I mean, while it's not technically just the park, I'm sure there are several parks on US Military bases where the airspace is restricted. Also, we can be the change we wish to see in the world: any park can be a park with a controlled airspace if you bring enough surface-to-air missiles into the park.
      • bhaney 3y ago
        Do the missiles count as vehicles? Might not be able to bring them in.
• themaninthedark 3y ago
  You can fly a plane across the globe but the plane's flight path must be approved by each of the 15 countries before it is allowed in their airspace. The countries often ask for passenger lists and manifests before they allow your plane to do so and have, in the past forced planes to land to get to passengers or suspected passengers on the plane they have an interest in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
  • monkeywork 3y ago
    countries yes - because countries have airspaces. Parks typically do not - anymore than people flying over my house are not tresspassing.
    • dahart 3y ago
      If you live in the U.S., people flying very low over your house probably are trespassing, you have air rights. (True in other countries too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights Before commercial flight was common, air rights used to extend into space. Now they’re limited, but you have at least a few hundred feet. Parks do have airspaces, obviously and literally, and more to the point, in the U.S. there’s existing legislation defining the altitudes that are considered “in” and out of the park.
      • NegativeK 3y ago
        US laws aren't relevant to the game, though. Whether any airspace is included in the park is completely ambiguous in the game.
        • dahart 3y ago
          I agree the question is intentionally ambiguous. I disagree that laws aren’t relevant, precisely because they will disambiguate. This isn’t specific to US laws, most countries globally have flight regulations. The game is using words and concepts to ask questions that can only be defined and answered by laws. The altitude and location matter, if you want to answer the question correctly. You cannot moderate the situation, and the question cannot be answered correctly without knowing the altitude and location and laws that apply, and that doesn’t mean that moderation is hard, it means the author is fabricating unnecessary amounts of ambiguity. Asking intentionally ambiguous questions that existing laws already answer in order to make a point about the difficulty of moderation kind-of undermines the author’s intent here. He was trying to prove that unanswerable corner cases always exist, but it’s not true for the specific case of airlines over parks once you know the laws.
• emmelaich 3y ago
  Even for no-fly zones, we don't say 'in' the place. We say in the zone. We're over the place, but in the zone. Is an airplane in your park if you put a roof over it? Is an airplane in your house?
• sethammons 3y ago
  Backpack? Dog? Dog with a backpack? Horse? Riding a horse? I say none are vehicles but I could see how one might.