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Comment by dasyatidprime | Hacker News Reader

Currently, I don't drive, so I have no empirical answer.

Some people who know me have joked that I would hate learning to drive (here in the US) because of the issue where most drivers break the speed limit most of the time and expect others to do the same. I think I could get used to it or find a way to deal with it, but it's possible it would stress me out for a while at the beginning.

As I sorta-mentioned, I'm not sure my original level of tendency to follow the rules is actually adaptive here. The point was more the existence proof. And between cultures it may vary even more widely than this.

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If you or your parents grew up as anything other than a straight White Christian in the southern US, you would understand why I don't necessarily hold an unquestioned respect for the law or the justice system....

Please don't do this.

You've gone from “implying that an attitude is out of the acceptable/plausible range” to “implying that the visible counterexample doesn't understand why anyone else might hold a different one” in the span of three posts.

I can imagine several reasons why this might be a hot-button topic for you, especially given what you've just said, but I am not putting my nature up for attack here. If you expect me to have a generalized disregard for or incomprehension of people who don't share my tendencies, I don't think it's true, though I don't expect you to believe me. If you feel like my attitude or existence is a shock or an affront, I'm sorry. If you resent feeling stuck with the institutions that surround you because they're not serving you well, I'm sorry. I would ask that you not extrapolate my personal attitudes about alcohol and speed limits to assuming that I follow social institutions “unquestioningly”, if that's what you were doing, and especially that you not extrapolate it to much wider and deeper issues.

This will be my last comment on this topic.

Two sub threads going on at once here.

That was more aimed at the statement (that you didn’t make)

That's the most intellectually dishonest answer I've seen to "I followed the law in a specific scenario".

My apologies. I attributed that statement to you.

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