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It might be important to realise that signs and rules are made up by sign-makers and rule-makers; often to their benefit. Reality doesnt come with a rule about

It might be important to realise that signs and rules are made up by sign-makers and rule-makers; often to their benefit. Reality doesnt come with a rule about leashing dogs on grass. It feels like something is going wrong here in your connecting a dog being off a leash with somehow empathy for the dog. I read your impulse to act here as your mind being hijacked by the sign-maker to conscript you into their preferred system of rules. Evaluate all signs, rules, commands in just the same way you evaluate the most average sort of person reading these things out in front of you. Who are you? Why? What do you want? and so on

themk 3y ago
No, these rules exist so that everyone can have a safe space. Go find an off-leash area for your dog.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  I'd imagine the person walking his dog was making the area no less safe for anyone else. Maybe people might feel safer. The rule, in the abstract, can be given some plausible 'social good' defense -- many rules can, even the most insidious. No doubt, on extreme averages, dogs being on leashes marginally improves the on-average saftey. But this 'on-average' is a radical abstraction. What it says is that the dog's freedom, enjoyment, and that of their owner must be Brought Into Order to fit with a system of values which discounts that entirely. The sign is a symptom of this system of disciplining people; it conscripts them into a value system which may routinely be against their benefit and that of many others. The sign doesnt tell you this; the sign gives you no critical autonomy to engage with its system of values --- in the way a conversation would. That is how I diagnose this commenter's issue: his critical faculties are not being triggered. Rather the sign is seen transparently as a command to be followed. There are no Commands to be Followed. There are only people commanding, and following them is advised only if it is advised.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    For some reason you don’t think of the sign as conversation. Why not? Our community has put up the sign and when I read that sign I engage in that conversation. Rules that are agreed on are not authoritarian unless we have no choice in changing them. Since we vote, we have a say on changing them. What you’re saying is, we should have no laws and do whatever we want. We should have no rules and do whatever we want. I’m an anarchist and I don’t even agree with that. I would feel the same about the dog off the lease whether the sign was there or not. Dogs can be dangerous animals and if I don’t know them, I should be afraid.
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      We can have signs and rules, and the rest of it. But we're talking about you wanting to go to the police to enforce one of them. If a sign is seen as a 'strong suggestion', as 'advisable' or a 'please do this' then there's no issue -- that's what signs are. But you didnt see the sign that way; and that's what i'm responding to. Your impulse was to bring the disciplinary arm of the state to bare to enforce someone's opinion of how a park should be run. This is quite the opposite of being critically engaged with the nature of signs
      - Podgajski 3y ago
        If the laws are not enforced, then people don’t obey the laws. That’s how you get both dog bites and white collar crime. Your assumption is that my “wanting to bring the disciplinary arm of the state“ is based on the rules, and not on my compassion. That’s where you’re wrong. I was using the rules of the state to enforce my compassion, not to enforce the rules. in this case, the rules aligned with my compassion. And in fact, I would not call police if I saw someone shoplifting. And that’s what people don’t understand about those of us with Asperger‘s. It is a sense of right and wrong not based on rules, but based on right and wrong.
        mjburgess 3y ago
        My claim is that your compassion is being hijacked, not that you're blinding following an instruction. Compassion is one of the main emotional mechanisms of social discipline: it is the overbearing mother. Compassion is often the most vicious way of policing people, as its users takes themselves to be moral. The sign couldve been a poster of a dog off a leach running around with another dog, having a good time. That, I imagine, would likewise trigger a positive emotion in you. What i'm advocating for is more of a gap between the sign and the emotion. I dont think the sign would be as effective if it were a command read out by 'some average looking person' the sign here has a special quality in triggering an emotional response, because the usual moderating triggers are absent: those of the falibility of a person
veeti 3y ago
There are literally countless videos online of unleashed dogs attacking other dogs, animals, children and adults. Even if you think your precious Fifi would never do such a thing a leash keeps them safe and close to you in the event something happens or scares them off. For this reason using a leash is not only a recommendation on a sign but the law in many locales.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  I don't have a dog, but i've known many and never a dangerous one. In the UK its very common to have large parks with dogs just running around; I'm not aware of any cases where this has caused a problem. I've no objection to the rule. My issue is with how the rule is being interpreted. If someone were to ask, 'please keep a leash on' i'd expect people to be polite enough to do so. But that's the gravity of the situation here. In almost no universe is the guy we're talking about one of these fringe youtube dog owners you're having some fantasy about. This is the problem with these abstractions: they invite people to have fantasies of catastrophe rather than engage with the reality in front of them And what are these fantasy scenarios but just another mechanism by which a brutal system of values comes to be imposed? Consider the police coming out here and enforcing such a value on this guy walking his dog. Concretely, which is worse: police discipline or a dog in a park ?
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Can you imagine if the whole country was run this way? Please don’t steal things from other peoples houses. In this case, the discipline on the person who would be a fine. What do you think they’re going to do? Beat him and throw him in jail? As I said, I’m an advocate for anarchism, so my view on the police should be clear. But we do not live in an anarchistic society, and this is all I have to work with. unlimited freedom for each individual is untenable. That’s what you are looking for. I’m going to make the obvious observation that you’re probably a libertarian. The truth is that the dog owner was not being compassionate to other people, rather he was focusing so on himself. He was being selfish, and that to me was the moral failing here, it had nothing to do with the rules, as I said, but the rules aligned with my moral beliefs.
verisimi 3y ago
Yes, well said. Is it awareness and an application of injustice, or awareness of certain rules that are being applied only partially - the rules could go further. Because justice and riles are assuredly not the same thing. Who knows the truth to determine what is just for others? Ultimately, justice is best expressed by the golden rule: Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated. Dogs are at a different level to people too, so that is a further 'justice complexity' to be navigated by the individual. Perhaps autistic people struggle with some of the nuances, and prefer the rules rather than the idea of justice or doing right. I think most people are like that.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  no, the nuance is not about rules, the nuance is about right and wrong. It’s wrong for someone to walk around with an animal that could be dangerous or could harm other people or itself. In this case, the rules aligned with my moral understanding. Ashan sense of right and wrong is not based on outside rules, but it are internal perception. This is why many of us have anti-authoritarian tendencies. https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/?amp https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/...
  - verisimi 3y ago
    Great article, thanks for sharing and attempting to correct a misunderstanding. I'm going to submit it here actually - I liked it so much. (Except for the singular political snipe - '#AutisticWhileBlack'.) > Autistic children in school are somewhat notorious for finding it hard to adapt to the authority of teachers– some teachers more than others. This is not because they’re evil little ragamuffins, as some teachers would have it, but because their natural state is to assume equanimity. Autistic students (and I speak from long experience) will not bow to authority for authority’s sake. Great! The reverse speaks to the problem that I think is common place - people going along with behaviour that they know to be wrong/immoral. Eg coding software that will restrict and restrain others for money. The last few years gave so many examples too. In all honesty, if this really is the common case, perhaps autistic people might be the best of us - there is no governance structure in their heads, just reasoning. If that's it, I hope that some autistic folk also do not settle very easily, but continue to research the state of play, refuse to trust 'authority' or conventional knowledge, investigate what their philosophical outlook is, work out what they really know personally.
metaphor 3y ago
This struck me as so absurdly anti-social with a pinch of blatant dismissal for why certain rules in public spaces exist to begin with that it reads like you're intentionally trolling the parent in bad faith. You know what also doesn't care about the rules of ordered society and the potentially deadly consequences of breaking them? Animals. Disagree? Only a fool spitting into the wind would permit me to unleash my seemingly subservient Dobermann into the "reality" of instinct for just a minute while we had that hot debate in a public park. I care about its life---and the lives of peaceful strangers there to also enjoy the public space, and the lives of birds making a pitstop on a long migratory journey, and the lives of squirrels that call a resident tree home, and even your life when you decide to raise your voice in a way that may or may not be perceived as threatening---to recognize the unabashed arrogance of doing so. That's the empathy perspective you're missing.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  [flagged]
- vlovich123 3y ago
  That’s a petty aggressive and condescending response. I have a pretty big dog (GS mix) and she’d likely never be fast enough to catch a squirrel or bird unless she’s lucky (I also trained that response out of her very early on) and she was definitely faster than Dobermans at the park in her prime. Also, even if she did, it’s not like she’s that foreign a concept - dogs are everywhere and squirrels and birds already deal with predators. I honor it in parks that are protected reserves but if there’s a local park with such signage I’d probably ignore it, particularly if no one else is around (more about making them uncomfortable than anything else). > You know what also doesn't care about the rules of ordered society and the potentially deadly consequences of breaking them? Animals. You say that like it’s some curse word. Hate to break it to you, but doesn’t matter how many rules you create and try to enforce to “civilize” humans, humans are animals. Always have been, always will be. I would say that developing an understanding of why rules might be implemented and correctly evaluating the “harm” (societal and to any given individual) of breaking it is what being a functional adult human is. Similarly owning the consequences if your rule breaking behavior resulted in some harm is also called for. Heck, you’re on a website with close ties to YCombinator, an accelerator for Silicon Valley startups often famous for “disrupting” by blatantly ignoring old laws and seeing if they can grow and corner the market before the regulators catch on so that they get entrenched as the incumbents once the regulators do do something.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
> It feels like something is going wrong here in your connecting a dog being off a leash with somehow empathy for the dog. If that dog bites someone it dies, how is that not empathetic? dogs are typically required to be on leashes in parks and public areas for a reason.
- omginternets 3y ago
  There is such a thing as a well-behaved dog. I don't see the social benefit of enforcing every last little law on the books all the time. I think laws (the kind we're talking about, anyway) are best seen as a tool for maintaining public order. If police encounter something dangerous or immediately disorderly, they can express their reasons for intervening in terms of laws. If you run open headers on your car and cause an actual disturbance, you can be cited. When that relationship between order and law is inverted, the result is cops nickle-and-diming the populace when there was no actual underlying problem. The real application of law requires, you know ... nuance, discretion and situational awareness. That's the standard we should hold police to, not throwing every single page of the book at people all the time.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    Ok, let's say your dog is well behaved. I think we can agree that lots of other people who think that their dog is well behaved actually have a dog that is potentially dangerous. How am I supposed to know by looking at you and your dog which it is? So now I get to feel in danger so that you can feel slightly more at home. How does that make sense? This is an excellent example of 'ridiculous government overreach' that actually makes perfect sense and some people just don't like.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      >How does that make sense? In a word: discernment. If it's a miniature poodle, you can probably chill. If it's a big dog, it's probably worthwhile to enforce the law. It actually is a pretty good example of overreach insofar as you're advocating the removal of any judgement call from the equation. That is the surest way to build a relentless bureaucratic machine that makes everyone miserable without actually protecting anyone. The human in the loop is a feature, not a bug.

themk 3y ago

No, these rules exist so that everyone can have a safe space. Go find an off-leash area for your dog.

mjburgess 3y ago
I'd imagine the person walking his dog was making the area no less safe for anyone else. Maybe people might feel safer. The rule, in the abstract, can be given some plausible 'social good' defense -- many rules can, even the most insidious. No doubt, on extreme averages, dogs being on leashes marginally improves the on-average saftey. But this 'on-average' is a radical abstraction. What it says is that the dog's freedom, enjoyment, and that of their owner must be Brought Into Order to fit with a system of values which discounts that entirely. The sign is a symptom of this system of disciplining people; it conscripts them into a value system which may routinely be against their benefit and that of many others. The sign doesnt tell you this; the sign gives you no critical autonomy to engage with its system of values --- in the way a conversation would. That is how I diagnose this commenter's issue: his critical faculties are not being triggered. Rather the sign is seen transparently as a command to be followed. There are no Commands to be Followed. There are only people commanding, and following them is advised only if it is advised.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  For some reason you don’t think of the sign as conversation. Why not? Our community has put up the sign and when I read that sign I engage in that conversation. Rules that are agreed on are not authoritarian unless we have no choice in changing them. Since we vote, we have a say on changing them. What you’re saying is, we should have no laws and do whatever we want. We should have no rules and do whatever we want. I’m an anarchist and I don’t even agree with that. I would feel the same about the dog off the lease whether the sign was there or not. Dogs can be dangerous animals and if I don’t know them, I should be afraid.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    We can have signs and rules, and the rest of it. But we're talking about you wanting to go to the police to enforce one of them. If a sign is seen as a 'strong suggestion', as 'advisable' or a 'please do this' then there's no issue -- that's what signs are. But you didnt see the sign that way; and that's what i'm responding to. Your impulse was to bring the disciplinary arm of the state to bare to enforce someone's opinion of how a park should be run. This is quite the opposite of being critically engaged with the nature of signs
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      If the laws are not enforced, then people don’t obey the laws. That’s how you get both dog bites and white collar crime. Your assumption is that my “wanting to bring the disciplinary arm of the state“ is based on the rules, and not on my compassion. That’s where you’re wrong. I was using the rules of the state to enforce my compassion, not to enforce the rules. in this case, the rules aligned with my compassion. And in fact, I would not call police if I saw someone shoplifting. And that’s what people don’t understand about those of us with Asperger‘s. It is a sense of right and wrong not based on rules, but based on right and wrong.
      - mjburgess 3y ago
        My claim is that your compassion is being hijacked, not that you're blinding following an instruction. Compassion is one of the main emotional mechanisms of social discipline: it is the overbearing mother. Compassion is often the most vicious way of policing people, as its users takes themselves to be moral. The sign couldve been a poster of a dog off a leach running around with another dog, having a good time. That, I imagine, would likewise trigger a positive emotion in you. What i'm advocating for is more of a gap between the sign and the emotion. I dont think the sign would be as effective if it were a command read out by 'some average looking person' the sign here has a special quality in triggering an emotional response, because the usual moderating triggers are absent: those of the falibility of a person

veeti 3y ago

There are literally countless videos online of unleashed dogs attacking other dogs, animals, children and adults. Even if you think your precious Fifi would never do such a thing a leash keeps them safe and close to you in the event something happens or scares them off. For this reason using a leash is not only a recommendation on a sign but the law in many locales.

mjburgess 3y ago
I don't have a dog, but i've known many and never a dangerous one. In the UK its very common to have large parks with dogs just running around; I'm not aware of any cases where this has caused a problem. I've no objection to the rule. My issue is with how the rule is being interpreted. If someone were to ask, 'please keep a leash on' i'd expect people to be polite enough to do so. But that's the gravity of the situation here. In almost no universe is the guy we're talking about one of these fringe youtube dog owners you're having some fantasy about. This is the problem with these abstractions: they invite people to have fantasies of catastrophe rather than engage with the reality in front of them And what are these fantasy scenarios but just another mechanism by which a brutal system of values comes to be imposed? Consider the police coming out here and enforcing such a value on this guy walking his dog. Concretely, which is worse: police discipline or a dog in a park ?
- Podgajski 3y ago
  Can you imagine if the whole country was run this way? Please don’t steal things from other peoples houses. In this case, the discipline on the person who would be a fine. What do you think they’re going to do? Beat him and throw him in jail? As I said, I’m an advocate for anarchism, so my view on the police should be clear. But we do not live in an anarchistic society, and this is all I have to work with. unlimited freedom for each individual is untenable. That’s what you are looking for. I’m going to make the obvious observation that you’re probably a libertarian. The truth is that the dog owner was not being compassionate to other people, rather he was focusing so on himself. He was being selfish, and that to me was the moral failing here, it had nothing to do with the rules, as I said, but the rules aligned with my moral beliefs.

verisimi 3y ago

Yes, well said. Is it awareness and an application of injustice, or awareness of certain rules that are being applied only partially - the rules could go further. Because justice and riles are assuredly not the same thing. Who knows the truth to determine what is just for others? Ultimately, justice is best expressed by the golden rule: Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated. Dogs are at a different level to people too, so that is a further 'justice complexity' to be navigated by the individual. Perhaps autistic people struggle with some of the nuances, and prefer the rules rather than the idea of justice or doing right. I think most people are like that.

Podgajski 3y ago
no, the nuance is not about rules, the nuance is about right and wrong. It’s wrong for someone to walk around with an animal that could be dangerous or could harm other people or itself. In this case, the rules aligned with my moral understanding. Ashan sense of right and wrong is not based on outside rules, but it are internal perception. This is why many of us have anti-authoritarian tendencies. https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/?amp https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/...
- verisimi 3y ago
  Great article, thanks for sharing and attempting to correct a misunderstanding. I'm going to submit it here actually - I liked it so much. (Except for the singular political snipe - '#AutisticWhileBlack'.) > Autistic children in school are somewhat notorious for finding it hard to adapt to the authority of teachers– some teachers more than others. This is not because they’re evil little ragamuffins, as some teachers would have it, but because their natural state is to assume equanimity. Autistic students (and I speak from long experience) will not bow to authority for authority’s sake. Great! The reverse speaks to the problem that I think is common place - people going along with behaviour that they know to be wrong/immoral. Eg coding software that will restrict and restrain others for money. The last few years gave so many examples too. In all honesty, if this really is the common case, perhaps autistic people might be the best of us - there is no governance structure in their heads, just reasoning. If that's it, I hope that some autistic folk also do not settle very easily, but continue to research the state of play, refuse to trust 'authority' or conventional knowledge, investigate what their philosophical outlook is, work out what they really know personally.

metaphor 3y ago

This struck me as so absurdly anti-social with a pinch of blatant dismissal for why certain rules in public spaces exist to begin with that it reads like you're intentionally trolling the parent in bad faith. You know what also doesn't care about the rules of ordered society and the potentially deadly consequences of breaking them? Animals. Disagree? Only a fool spitting into the wind would permit me to unleash my seemingly subservient Dobermann into the "reality" of instinct for just a minute while we had that hot debate in a public park. I care about its life---and the lives of peaceful strangers there to also enjoy the public space, and the lives of birds making a pitstop on a long migratory journey, and the lives of squirrels that call a resident tree home, and even your life when you decide to raise your voice in a way that may or may not be perceived as threatening---to recognize the unabashed arrogance of doing so. That's the empathy perspective you're missing.

mjburgess 3y ago
[flagged]
vlovich123 3y ago
That’s a petty aggressive and condescending response. I have a pretty big dog (GS mix) and she’d likely never be fast enough to catch a squirrel or bird unless she’s lucky (I also trained that response out of her very early on) and she was definitely faster than Dobermans at the park in her prime. Also, even if she did, it’s not like she’s that foreign a concept - dogs are everywhere and squirrels and birds already deal with predators. I honor it in parks that are protected reserves but if there’s a local park with such signage I’d probably ignore it, particularly if no one else is around (more about making them uncomfortable than anything else). > You know what also doesn't care about the rules of ordered society and the potentially deadly consequences of breaking them? Animals. You say that like it’s some curse word. Hate to break it to you, but doesn’t matter how many rules you create and try to enforce to “civilize” humans, humans are animals. Always have been, always will be. I would say that developing an understanding of why rules might be implemented and correctly evaluating the “harm” (societal and to any given individual) of breaking it is what being a functional adult human is. Similarly owning the consequences if your rule breaking behavior resulted in some harm is also called for. Heck, you’re on a website with close ties to YCombinator, an accelerator for Silicon Valley startups often famous for “disrupting” by blatantly ignoring old laws and seeing if they can grow and corner the market before the regulators catch on so that they get entrenched as the incumbents once the regulators do do something.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

> It feels like something is going wrong here in your connecting a dog being off a leash with somehow empathy for the dog. If that dog bites someone it dies, how is that not empathetic? dogs are typically required to be on leashes in parks and public areas for a reason.

omginternets 3y ago
There is such a thing as a well-behaved dog. I don't see the social benefit of enforcing every last little law on the books all the time. I think laws (the kind we're talking about, anyway) are best seen as a tool for maintaining public order. If police encounter something dangerous or immediately disorderly, they can express their reasons for intervening in terms of laws. If you run open headers on your car and cause an actual disturbance, you can be cited. When that relationship between order and law is inverted, the result is cops nickle-and-diming the populace when there was no actual underlying problem. The real application of law requires, you know ... nuance, discretion and situational awareness. That's the standard we should hold police to, not throwing every single page of the book at people all the time.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Ok, let's say your dog is well behaved. I think we can agree that lots of other people who think that their dog is well behaved actually have a dog that is potentially dangerous. How am I supposed to know by looking at you and your dog which it is? So now I get to feel in danger so that you can feel slightly more at home. How does that make sense? This is an excellent example of 'ridiculous government overreach' that actually makes perfect sense and some people just don't like.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    >How does that make sense? In a word: discernment. If it's a miniature poodle, you can probably chill. If it's a big dog, it's probably worthwhile to enforce the law. It actually is a pretty good example of overreach insofar as you're advocating the removal of any judgement call from the equation. That is the surest way to build a relentless bureaucratic machine that makes everyone miserable without actually protecting anyone. The human in the loop is a feature, not a bug.