Hacker News Reader

Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

Aren't all rules imaginary?

> Every time someone in the management chain has axed the proposal with some variation of "this policy can not be changed because this is our policy and thus can not be changed", possibly with a "due to security reasons" thrown in there somewhere.

That's circular, no doubt there. We've decided this rule must remain in place, because it's a rule. This decision-making process doesn't make any sense, but I still don't see the sense in calling the rule 'imaginary'.

Is the real point here that sometimes bad rules remain in place until some external event forces a change? Doesn't sound so profound.

View on HN

No, in short, the real point seems to be while the actual workers (non-management) would benefit the most from the rule change, managers (and further up the chain) mostly sees the risk and not the benefits, so they are the most likely to avoid changing the rules. Since the chance of getting blamed for changing the rules and impacting something negatively is bigger than getting blamed for _not_ changing the rules, and they are the ones actually allowed to making changes, you don't see a lot of the rules changing.

The management could be keeping the real reason from the contracters. It's not good for moral to say "No - cause we don't trust you".

That is usually true, hidden agendas play a big role here. In Germany similar rules about contractors are often in place to prevent outsourcing. Contractors shouldn't be too comfortable and cheap, so the workers council and union enforce such rules so their established clientele still has some advantages over the external people.

> Aren't all rules imaginary?

Rules are agreements between people. They're binding in the sense that we value our reputations, and we value not having to pay the consequences - often formally recorded - of not abiding by them.

Did the people making the agreements imagine doing so, or did it really happen?

Are the consequences real, and enforced, or are they just words?

If the rule is enforced, it is not imaginary at all.

> We've decided this rule must remain in place, because it's a rule.

This is the sane default position. If you don't understand a rule enough to be convinced it is problematic, it's safer to leave it in place than allow someone to erode it. Certainly the people in charge of rules should be able to understand them, but I'll take people who don't understand the rules and yet faithfully follow them over people who don't understand them and throw them away.

> Aren't all rules imaginary?

No. The Laws of Football and the Laws of Australia are imaginary in the sense you mean, but the Law of Gravity isn't.

Mother Nature's rules are different than ours, stubborn far beyond all reason and not recorded anywhere for our inspection.

Video games are interesting because we make them, yet for the most part some of their rules are like Ma's rules not ours. Watching Mario Maker 2 troll levels, the fact is that even if the player, and the viewer, and even the people at Nintendo who made the game think that Skipsqueak can't jump through that platform, if the game was coded such that it does, it will anyway.

Anyway, I think part of what you're missing is that the people in this story often don't know the rule is imaginary. Sometimes it's an excuse, but sometimes they honestly just assumed there was a reason for things being as they are and never stopped to go find out why. Not everybody has the sort of inquisitive nature that would afford that, some lines of business crush that right out of you.

> No. The Laws of Football and the Laws of Australia are imaginary in the sense you mean, but the Law of Gravity isn't.

I'm not a scientist but should the law of gravity not be seen as a human understanding of what gravity is rather than the handed down from God definition of gravity?

I get the point you're making though.

The laws of physics are the human interpretation of God's definition of the world. And the corporate policies are the human interpretation of the CEO's definition of the world. It all makes sense! \o/

Yeah I think OP is referring to the reality and not the model we made to represent it

>Is the real point here that sometimes bad rules remain in place until some external event forces a change? Doesn't sound so profound.

The author's example shows the very glaring case focused on: a rule totally disconnected from security. He was told "no remote work for contractors." One would assume any reasons for this rule (valid or not) would also be reflected in reality. In this case, maybe only regular employees had filled the legal paperwork and passed whatever security checks.

But the rule disappeared in less than a day. So it only existed on paper and punishment. I doubt the security concerns disappeared or were fixed in less a day.

These kind of rules, when exposed, can have a big impact on how well people follow other rules. I should know: I started ignoring a bunch (and sometimes later learned the risks I pooh-poohed).

I've found this type of circular reasoning is also somewhat common in with regards to laws. Doing X is wrong, because it is illegal, because it is wrong. (and other variants).

Murdering people is wrong (at a surface level that requires no moral understanding), because it is illegal (and therefore you'll face consequences from other people), because it is wrong (because it is immoral).

There's no circular logic there at all. The second "because it is wrong" is shorthand for more complex moral reasoning that most people don't need to know - who cares if they know it, when the goal is simply to cut down on the murdering?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com