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It's easy to believe, though, and most of us do it every day. For example, our commute to work is marked by the trust that other drivers will cooperate, followi
by 0xEF 1y ago
It's easy to believe, though, and most of us do it every day. For example, our commute to work is marked by the trust that other drivers will cooperate, following the rules, so that we all get to where we are going.
There are varying degrees of this through our lives, where the trust lies not in the fact that people will just follow the rules because they are rules, but because the rules set expectations, allowing everyone to (more or less) know what's going on and decide accordingly. This also makes it easier to single out the people who do not think the rules apply to them so we can avoid trusting them (and, probably, avoid them in general).
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 1y agoI love the culturally specific implication that 'commute' == 'commute in the car' :)
- 0xEF 1y agoI apologize for that. I try to mitigate my US-centricness in my comments as much as possible, understanding completely that I am speaking with a global audience, but I am definitely not perfect at it :D I suppose the same goes if you take the tube, ride a bike, walk, etc? There's still rules in terms of behavior, flow of traffic (even foot traffic), etc, that helps set a number of expectations so everyone can decide and behave accordingly. Happy to hear different thoughts on this!
- pjmlp 1y agoIn Southern Europe, and countries with similar cultures, we don't obey rules because someone says so, we obey them when we see that is actually reasonable to do so, hence my remark regarding culture as I also experienced living in countries where everyone mostly blindly follow the rules, even if they happen to be nonsense. Naturally I am talking about cultures where that decision has not been taken away from their citizens.
- pmezard 1y agoAs a French, being passed by the right by Italian drivers on the highway really makes me feel the superiority of Southern Europeans judgment over my puny habit of blindly following rules. Or does it? But yes, I do the same. I just do not come here to pretend this is virtue.
- pjmlp 1y agoNot sure if it is a virtue, but standing as a pedestrians in an empty street at 3 AM waiting for a traffic light to turn green doesn't make much sense either, it isn't as if a ghost car is coming out of nowhere. It should be a matter of judgement and not following rules just because.
- zajio1am 1y agoIt makes sense as it allows to walk city streets safely on autopilot while thinking about other things.
- EPendragon 1y agoI kind of agree. The rules for safety should be simple, straightforward, and protect you in the "edge cases", i.e. following while not paying 100% of attention, protect you with a malicious actor in mind aka reckless driver, etc. Ideally, in a system like that it should be a difficult and intentional behavior if one wanted to break the rules rather than to follow them.
- paganel 1y agoOne should not pass any street on “auto-pilot”, no matter if there’s a green light for pedestrians.
- EPendragon 1y agoI agree. I mostly mean that it is good to strive towards a system of rules that will be easy to follow and difficult to break by default. That is an ideal case. In reality, it is never that simple.
- bigfishrunning 1y ago> For example, our commute to work is marked by the trust that other drivers will cooperate, following the rules, so that we all get to where we are going. That trust comes from the knowledge that it's likely that those drivers also don't want to crash, and would rather prefer to get where they're going.