3 ms·

> And yet, the author could have stipulated motor vehicles and a 400 ft FAA air ceiling boundary to the park, and most of the trick questions in that survey tha

> And yet, the author could have stipulated motor vehicles and a 400 ft FAA air ceiling boundary to the park, and most of the trick questions in that survey that generated disagreement would suddenly flip to everyone answering them correctly. Sure; but people don't read a screed of small-print legalese when walking into a park with a matchbox car in their pocket. And similarly, people don't read 20 pages of legalese terms-of-use before posting to a forum. The rules for getting on with those around us need to be as simple as the Ten Commandments. Violating rules about what's allowed in a park generally doesn't lead to litigation, so you don't need a litigation-proof legal code to express those rules. Many schools have a small set of concise rules constructed by the students, and I wish national laws were more like that.

dahart 3y ago
This is a new different goalpost, right? The survey was about how clear the rule is, about whether the rule can be understood, not whether people will read or follow it. Btw I feel like I didn’t propose a screed of small-print legalese. I’m asking why the actual survey couldn’t say ‘no motor vehicles in the park, up to 400ft AGL’, and compare the results to ‘no vehicles in the park’. That statement without any legalese or fine print would have covered most of the tricky answers, and this whole survey could have been used to show how easy it is to make progress with relatively simple refinements.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  1. "In the park" shall be construed as meaning below 400ft. 2. "A vehicle" shall include: 2.1 any conveyance with two or more wheels, suitable for transporting one or more adult humans 2.2 any powered flying object, whether or not it is capable of conveying people of whatever size 3. This rule does not apply to the following vehicles: 3.1 Emergency vehicles attending an emergency 3.2 Wheelchairs, when being used by a registered disabled person I could go on ad nauseam; you simply can't cover all the cases. You have to accept that rules have to be interpreted; and once you accept that, it's clear that simpler rules are better. Ideally, The Golden Rule would be enough: treat others as you would expect to be treated yourself. But a lot of people treat that rule as the specimen example that proves that rules are made to be broken.
  - dahart 3y ago
    Not sure if we’re talking past each other; I’m not arguing that “all” cases can be covered, nor whether rules have to be interpreted. I agree with you that simple rules are better, which is why I tried giving an example of one that is much simpler than your example (“no motor vehicles in the park below 400 ft AGL”). Yes it’s clear that you can, if you want, construct a very long and complicated list, but that doesn’t prove anything, right? Most parks and swimming pools and gyms have a longer list than your example. What would be interesting, and what I wish the ‘no vehicles in the park’ author had done, is measuring how much better adding 1 word or 5 words or 100 words is compared to leaving the rule super vague. I would predict there’s easy low-hanging fruit with just a few words that would correct the majority of their trick questions, and then diminishing returns with a longer and longer list. A carefully worded middle ground is probably going to best balance trying to maximize conciseness and simplicity and clarity while minimizing confusion. That said, your example rule list above, if it was used for ‘no vehicles in the park’, would undermine the author’s point and answer most of the questions definitively without confusion. Your example would demonstrate that adding rules increases clarity and reduces confusion.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      My example was meant as satire, making fun of your "400ft AGL" amendment. And I don't think my example answers questions "without confusion"; the more specific you make the rules, the more cracks and gaps you create for litigious-minded park users to squeeze through. As far as this applies to moderation: having simple rules, with an overarching "Use your common sense" rule, seems more practical than trying to make rules that cover all cases. Of course, that requires moderators that possess common sense.
      - dahart 3y ago
        > litigious-minded park users to squeeze through Again, new/different goal post, this wasn’t the question being asked. Litigious-minded people often aren’t arguing the rule was unclear, sometimes they argue the rule is wrong or the intent was misguided or the rule was clear but didn’t cover their needs. It’s a valuable question in real world parks, but not what we were talking about here, not relevant to the ‘no vehicles in the park’ survey or Dan’s blog post. > My example was meant as satire, making fun of your “400ft AGL” amendment. I don’t get it, could you explain it? I don’t see how doing the opposite of what I suggested and adding a bunch of new rules makes fun of what I offered. That explanation just makes it seem like you didn’t quite understand my suggestion. > I don’t think my example answers questions “without confusion” You should go back through the survey again and just see for yourself. You partially defined what “vehicle” means, and you partially defined what “in the park” means, and you carved out some meaningful exceptions. This fixes a bunch of the actual trick questions in the survey that depend on not having defined what those words mean. If your point is that the survey author could have asked other different trick questions, then you’re implicitly acknowledging that your rule set improved the clarity of the rule ‘no vehicles in the park’. > the more specific you make the rules, the more cracks and gaps you create Are you suggesting that the size of the gaps doesn’t matter and that the coverage of the rule doesn’t matter either? Number of cracks is independent of overall rule clarity. The question is about coverage, about rule clarity. It doesn’t matter if you create more cracks and gaps, if they’re smaller, if the sum-total surface area of the cracks is smaller than what you had before, and if the clear and unambiguous coverage of the rule gets larger. That said, I don’t think it’s even true that you’re creating more gaps. Think of it like this: every separate individual usage of a ‘vehicle in the park’ is a crack or potential exception to the rule. “no vehicles in the park” is not well defined, and it leaves a HUGE number of individual cracks. See it not as one large gap but thousands or millions of unique use-cases. Adding specificity to “no vehicles in the park” can limit a lot of the potential use-cases without adding any new ones. This is what adding the single word “motor” does - it rules out all motor vehicles without adding any new vehicles, because the prior rule was all vehicles. Adding “motor” doesn’t add any cracks or gaps, it removes thousands of otherwise ambiguous cases.
spc476 3y ago
When I was in high school [1] students were given a rule book on the first day of school each year. It was always amusing to read the weapons rule: "No weapons are allowed, which include, but are not limited to ... " followed by a paragraph long list of "weapons." Many of the rules were like that, "blah blah which includes, but limited to ... " I can only conclude that such lists were the result of some student somewhere arguing that "this isn't a weapon." [1] In the, at the time, second or third largest school district in the US.

dahart 3y ago

This is a new different goalpost, right? The survey was about how clear the rule is, about whether the rule can be understood, not whether people will read or follow it. Btw I feel like I didn’t propose a screed of small-print legalese. I’m asking why the actual survey couldn’t say ‘no motor vehicles in the park, up to 400ft AGL’, and compare the results to ‘no vehicles in the park’. That statement without any legalese or fine print would have covered most of the tricky answers, and this whole survey could have been used to show how easy it is to make progress with relatively simple refinements.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
denton-scratch 3y ago
1. "In the park" shall be construed as meaning below 400ft. 2. "A vehicle" shall include: 2.1 any conveyance with two or more wheels, suitable for transporting one or more adult humans 2.2 any powered flying object, whether or not it is capable of conveying people of whatever size 3. This rule does not apply to the following vehicles: 3.1 Emergency vehicles attending an emergency 3.2 Wheelchairs, when being used by a registered disabled person I could go on ad nauseam; you simply can't cover all the cases. You have to accept that rules have to be interpreted; and once you accept that, it's clear that simpler rules are better. Ideally, The Golden Rule would be enough: treat others as you would expect to be treated yourself. But a lot of people treat that rule as the specimen example that proves that rules are made to be broken.
- dahart 3y ago
  Not sure if we’re talking past each other; I’m not arguing that “all” cases can be covered, nor whether rules have to be interpreted. I agree with you that simple rules are better, which is why I tried giving an example of one that is much simpler than your example (“no motor vehicles in the park below 400 ft AGL”). Yes it’s clear that you can, if you want, construct a very long and complicated list, but that doesn’t prove anything, right? Most parks and swimming pools and gyms have a longer list than your example. What would be interesting, and what I wish the ‘no vehicles in the park’ author had done, is measuring how much better adding 1 word or 5 words or 100 words is compared to leaving the rule super vague. I would predict there’s easy low-hanging fruit with just a few words that would correct the majority of their trick questions, and then diminishing returns with a longer and longer list. A carefully worded middle ground is probably going to best balance trying to maximize conciseness and simplicity and clarity while minimizing confusion. That said, your example rule list above, if it was used for ‘no vehicles in the park’, would undermine the author’s point and answer most of the questions definitively without confusion. Your example would demonstrate that adding rules increases clarity and reduces confusion.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    My example was meant as satire, making fun of your "400ft AGL" amendment. And I don't think my example answers questions "without confusion"; the more specific you make the rules, the more cracks and gaps you create for litigious-minded park users to squeeze through. As far as this applies to moderation: having simple rules, with an overarching "Use your common sense" rule, seems more practical than trying to make rules that cover all cases. Of course, that requires moderators that possess common sense.
    - dahart 3y ago
      > litigious-minded park users to squeeze through Again, new/different goal post, this wasn’t the question being asked. Litigious-minded people often aren’t arguing the rule was unclear, sometimes they argue the rule is wrong or the intent was misguided or the rule was clear but didn’t cover their needs. It’s a valuable question in real world parks, but not what we were talking about here, not relevant to the ‘no vehicles in the park’ survey or Dan’s blog post. > My example was meant as satire, making fun of your “400ft AGL” amendment. I don’t get it, could you explain it? I don’t see how doing the opposite of what I suggested and adding a bunch of new rules makes fun of what I offered. That explanation just makes it seem like you didn’t quite understand my suggestion. > I don’t think my example answers questions “without confusion” You should go back through the survey again and just see for yourself. You partially defined what “vehicle” means, and you partially defined what “in the park” means, and you carved out some meaningful exceptions. This fixes a bunch of the actual trick questions in the survey that depend on not having defined what those words mean. If your point is that the survey author could have asked other different trick questions, then you’re implicitly acknowledging that your rule set improved the clarity of the rule ‘no vehicles in the park’. > the more specific you make the rules, the more cracks and gaps you create Are you suggesting that the size of the gaps doesn’t matter and that the coverage of the rule doesn’t matter either? Number of cracks is independent of overall rule clarity. The question is about coverage, about rule clarity. It doesn’t matter if you create more cracks and gaps, if they’re smaller, if the sum-total surface area of the cracks is smaller than what you had before, and if the clear and unambiguous coverage of the rule gets larger. That said, I don’t think it’s even true that you’re creating more gaps. Think of it like this: every separate individual usage of a ‘vehicle in the park’ is a crack or potential exception to the rule. “no vehicles in the park” is not well defined, and it leaves a HUGE number of individual cracks. See it not as one large gap but thousands or millions of unique use-cases. Adding specificity to “no vehicles in the park” can limit a lot of the potential use-cases without adding any new ones. This is what adding the single word “motor” does - it rules out all motor vehicles without adding any new vehicles, because the prior rule was all vehicles. Adding “motor” doesn’t add any cracks or gaps, it removes thousands of otherwise ambiguous cases.

spc476 3y ago

When I was in high school [1] students were given a rule book on the first day of school each year. It was always amusing to read the weapons rule: "No weapons are allowed, which include, but are not limited to ... " followed by a paragraph long list of "weapons." Many of the rules were like that, "blah blah which includes, but limited to ... " I can only conclude that such lists were the result of some student somewhere arguing that "this isn't a weapon." [1] In the, at the time, second or third largest school district in the US.