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I took the doubly pedantic view that the tank was not a vehicle simply on account that I was defining a vehicle to be a vehicle when its function is that of a v

I took the doubly pedantic view that the tank was not a vehicle simply on account that I was defining a vehicle to be a vehicle when its function is that of a vehicle (namely a tool for locomotion by means other than walking). Applying the principle that someone has to be able to ride on it or in it to count, I pedantically conclude that the tank is not a vehicle because it explicitly says in the question that it is not capable of functioning as a tank anymore. Therefore in effect the tank is little more than a vehicle-shaped-statue, not a vehicle per se. It is no more a violation of the rule than a painting of a car would be. By this reasoning, I counted the stroller, ice skates, and roller blades as violations yet did not count the toy cars, RC planes, nor the picnic wagon. Is the pedantic answer really uninteresting if it leads to unintuitive answers? >That’s what made it not interesting, and a better question would be “for each case do you think the police should spend taxpayer money enforcing the rule?” See, but that's what makes it interesting. You can't just make the law equal to some ad hoc poll of "do I want my tax dollars used to discourage this" for every possible behavior within the park. At some point, for lack of better expression, the rubber has to meet the road. The gut opinion on what is appropriate in a park has to be translated into a rule for the park, and the question of if the rule was violated or not has to be able to be determined entirely on the basis of hard evidence should a ticket for it ever go to court. At least part of the point of the exercise is that even for something where there's general agreement on the principle (like "people should use pedestrianized parks appropriately"), the translation into an obvious rule (like "no vehicles in the park") fails to capture that intent and the extent to which there actually is general agreement is inversely proportionally to how fully spelled out things are. The park is interesting because its boring. Its not a hot button issue where people have disagreements on matters of principle like guns or abortion or javascript frameworks. So why is it so hard to write an objective, enforceable rule codifying the seemingly universally agreed and understood idea of what a park is supposed to be? If we can't even get universal agreement on something non-controversial, such as the rules which make a park a park, such as "no vehicles in the park", how can we expect any system of law to work more generally?

jodrellblank 3y ago
> "Is the pedantic answer really uninteresting if it leads to unintuitive answers?" Yes, because then we just get to arguing "is my car no longer a vehicle once it runs out of fuel and cannot function as a car?" then "is it no longer a vehicle if the battery is empty?" or "If the alternator is broken?" then, "does the vehicle-status depend on how quick and easy the fix is?" which are all dragging away from the question of "do people want a WWII tank in a park or not?". And instead of asking "is a WWII tank in a park breaking the rule regardless of whether you object to the tank?" we could directly ask "do you object to the tank?". > "By this reasoning, I counted the stroller, ice skates, and roller blades as violations yet did not count the toy cars, RC planes, nor the picnic wagon." And now we're arguing whether RC planes count as vehicles, when people's objection might be noise in the park where RC planes with engines and drones are out, and RC electric planes/gliders are okay. Or people might think about safety - any plane near people is out, any plane away from people is okay. > "You can't just make the law equal to some ad hoc poll of "do I want my tax dollars used to discourage this" for every possible behavior within the park" Why not? We can poll people on every behaviour seen in the park in the last year, online, in a few minutes, and make a bylaw listing the OK vs not-OK behaviours, democratically chosen. We don't, but I don't see why you say "we can't just do that" when we could do exactly that. Why does it have to be a single rule? > "The park is interesting because its boring. Its not a hot button issue where people have disagreements on matters of principle like guns or abortion or javascript frameworks. So why is it so hard to write an objective, enforceable rule codifying the seemingly universally agreed and understood idea of what a park is supposed to be? If we can't even get universal agreement on something non-controversial, such as the rules which make a park a park, such as "no vehicles in the park", how can we expect any system of law to work more generally?" I'm not accepting that we can't get universal agreement on "no vehicles in the park" by nitpicking on what a vehicle is. On the ambulance it can be that some people answer "it's a vehicle so the rule is broken" because that's what the question tells them to answer even though they want ambulances allowed, other people answer "it's not a vehicle" because they want ambulances allowed and that's the only way to get them allowed, so we have a manufactured disagreement even if everyone wants them allowed. I'm conjecturing that we could get near-universal agreement on whether ambulances are okay (yes) by asking "are ambulances okay?" not "are ambulances vehicles?". Or even asking "is it okay if ambulances break the no-vehicles rule?". Maybe there's agreement on most, or all, of the questions if asked like that instead. I also suspect bikes would be different depending if they are pedal or ebike, ridden slowly by little old ladies, or ridden by a racing peloton, or ridden as a busy through-commute every day. "bikes: yes/no?" isn't enough to classify those things differently. Bike racing: yes, no? Bike commuting: yes/no? etc.

jodrellblank 3y ago

> "Is the pedantic answer really uninteresting if it leads to unintuitive answers?" Yes, because then we just get to arguing "is my car no longer a vehicle once it runs out of fuel and cannot function as a car?" then "is it no longer a vehicle if the battery is empty?" or "If the alternator is broken?" then, "does the vehicle-status depend on how quick and easy the fix is?" which are all dragging away from the question of "do people want a WWII tank in a park or not?". And instead of asking "is a WWII tank in a park breaking the rule regardless of whether you object to the tank?" we could directly ask "do you object to the tank?". > "By this reasoning, I counted the stroller, ice skates, and roller blades as violations yet did not count the toy cars, RC planes, nor the picnic wagon." And now we're arguing whether RC planes count as vehicles, when people's objection might be noise in the park where RC planes with engines and drones are out, and RC electric planes/gliders are okay. Or people might think about safety - any plane near people is out, any plane away from people is okay. > "You can't just make the law equal to some ad hoc poll of "do I want my tax dollars used to discourage this" for every possible behavior within the park" Why not? We can poll people on every behaviour seen in the park in the last year, online, in a few minutes, and make a bylaw listing the OK vs not-OK behaviours, democratically chosen. We don't, but I don't see why you say "we can't just do that" when we could do exactly that. Why does it have to be a single rule? > "The park is interesting because its boring. Its not a hot button issue where people have disagreements on matters of principle like guns or abortion or javascript frameworks. So why is it so hard to write an objective, enforceable rule codifying the seemingly universally agreed and understood idea of what a park is supposed to be? If we can't even get universal agreement on something non-controversial, such as the rules which make a park a park, such as "no vehicles in the park", how can we expect any system of law to work more generally?" I'm not accepting that we can't get universal agreement on "no vehicles in the park" by nitpicking on what a vehicle is. On the ambulance it can be that some people answer "it's a vehicle so the rule is broken" because that's what the question tells them to answer even though they want ambulances allowed, other people answer "it's not a vehicle" because they want ambulances allowed and that's the only way to get them allowed, so we have a manufactured disagreement even if everyone wants them allowed. I'm conjecturing that we could get near-universal agreement on whether ambulances are okay (yes) by asking "are ambulances okay?" not "are ambulances vehicles?". Or even asking "is it okay if ambulances break the no-vehicles rule?". Maybe there's agreement on most, or all, of the questions if asked like that instead. I also suspect bikes would be different depending if they are pedal or ebike, ridden slowly by little old ladies, or ridden by a racing peloton, or ridden as a busy through-commute every day. "bikes: yes/no?" isn't enough to classify those things differently. Bike racing: yes, no? Bike commuting: yes/no? etc.