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> "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 onc
by 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.
- IIAOPSW 3y ago>"is my car no longer a vehicle once it runs out of fuel and cannot function as a car? If your car runs out of fuel in the park, it is no longer breaking the vehicle rule, though it is now likely breaking some other rule about littering in the park. My fundamental disagreement is that if you allow for rules to be enforced in terms of what they were intended to say rather than what they actually say, then there actually isn't a rule at all. There's a pretense of law but in actuality its a dictatorship of whoever gets to judge what was "clearly" intended to be.
- Nevermark 3y ago> If your car runs out of fuel in the park, it is no longer breaking the vehicle rule Unless you put some fuel in it. To get it out of the park. But then that would be violation, so leave it there? I think all this meta disagreement, and the diverse counterintuitive reasoning arrived at by different attempts at consistency, demonstrate how hard it is to reach convergent agreement. The hyperlogical pedantic reading makes the most sence from a game rule perspective. But agreement on initial perspective is difficult to obtain, even given “clear” instructions.
- jodrellblank 3y ago> "it is no longer breaking the vehicle rule, though it is now likely breaking some other rule about littering in the park." Why isn't the WWII tank breaking the littering rule? Again your approach is leading to more and more pedantry instead of clearer rules. > "My fundamental disagreement is that if you allow for rules to be enforced in terms of what they were intended to say rather than what they actually say..." So let's make the rule actually say what we collectively intend it to say, then that problem goes away. We're in this stupid situation where the rules "cannot" say "ambulances are allowed" but you haven't given a reason why the rules cannot say that. "Emergency services are exempt from park rules". If there comes a time of an epidemic of off-duty emergency service workers driving WWII era tank shells modified with blue lighs and sirens and electric unicycle propulsion through the park at high speed on their commute to their second jobs, that's a bridge to cross when it becomes the next most pressing issue in the park. It should be that we can get past the easy cases "ambulances allowed" and we should be struggling with "what counts as loud and annoying music?" or "are flying drones more fun or more noisy and dangerous?". But instead we're falling over at "are ambulances really vehicles?" and "are statues vehicles?" because of ... bad question design.