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Comment by bhaney | Hacker News Reader

Nitpick: The summary at the end labels your choices as "You think it is not a vehicle" or "You think it is a vehicle" based on whether or not you said the situation violates the rule, but some of the scenarios were clearly about whether or not something was in the park, rather than whether or not it was a vehicle. I can think a plane or a space station is a vehicle without thinking it violates the rule about not being in the park.

Yes, I'm aware this has nothing to do with the point of the exercise.

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That seems like good analogy to content moderation. You have to ask "is the forbidden content actually on the site?"

For example you can have a rule like "no sharing pornographic content", but then are people allowed to share links to forbidden content? Links to sites that are 100% links to forbidden content? Links to sites that have one link to forbidden content among a lot of other links? Links to sites that have one extremely prominent link to forbidden content among a lot of other links? How prominent? Etc etc etc.

This is why Reddit is banned in Indonesia; because there's a bit of porn. Now laypeople just use Twitter instead...

"a bit"

Hehe, that's a fair take, but I must also mention that I've encountered far more porn unwittingly/unexpectedly on Twitter than I EVER, ever, ever have on reddit. Again speaking to the utility of moderation in general.

How do you encounter porn? It's not even allowed, other than age gated softcore shit.

I assure you there is far more than softcore and often on accounts where it isn’t obvious until you’ve viewed the offending tweet that there may be X-Rated audiovisual content.

I’m sure much of it violates the rules but my initial inclination is always to browse away, not report.

People on certain apps often have links to profiles that I basically can't read because every post is NSFW. I used to be able to at least peek with Nitter but now I just insta close most Twitter links.

I'm pretty sure a few explicit Google searches with "site:twitter.com" should pull up plenty.

And I'm not talking softcore, unless my descriptions are way off base.

Granted those aren't necessarily unwittingly, I can usually guess it's going to be like that, but I've definitely "fallen into a rabbit hole" so to speak at other times.

On reddit, if you're not subbed to porn subreddits, you normally wouldn't see it. Though the homepage was still jacked up enough a few days ago that I was seeing softcore stuff on page 1 or 2 with the country set to Mexico.

Twitter moderation has cratered .. reports to the contrary otherwise.

You'll see a fair degree of NSFW porn if you firehose capture all images, on the "hate speech" front (repeatedly calling disabled, minority, indigenous, queer people names, cyber stalking, etc.) it's reached the point where (for instance) Australia has warned Twitter it will start issuing daily fines of up to $7K AUD [1]

The increased porn & veering into CSAM territory is tailwinding that trend.

[1] https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/esafety-d...

That would be news to many users of twitter. Even the gating is... inconsistent.

Because Twitter has no porn?

It’s because twitter HAS porn.

That is a pretty clear distinction. A separate site has separate administration, can be blocked separately, etc. Otherwise you have additional rules: disallow direct links to forbidden content that causes it to render on the page, disallow linking to specific forbidden content, disallow links to on blacklisted domains, allow only whitelisted domain links.

What if it's a discussion about Terms of Service (ToS), and for some particular reason the Pornhub's ToS is relevant? The site itself is nsfw but if someone makes a claim that their tos says it's okay to kick puppies then you kind of have to link to it to support your claim. And how many ways around linking directly to the domain are there? hub for pron, bay of pirates, etc.

Given that the whole exercise was about meticulous line drawing I think this bit of nitpicking is entirely appropriate. Clearly “is a vehicle” and “is in the park” were the two major axes that each question needed to be plotted on.

Interestingly, some people added others that weren't explicit in the rule. For example, the person riding a skateboard was considered a violation by roughly twice as many people as the person carrying one, despite both being identical on the "is a vehicle" and "in the park" axes. I suppose unless someone's definition of vehicle depends on it being in use.

Despite the instructions explicitly saying not to I suspect many people (like me) could not help but “look through” the stated rule to infer its intent, especially for the more unusual examples. It’s quite a lot harder to imagine a real world rule that prohibits a carried skateboard vs one being used, even if both situations represent the same 2-vector in the rule’s truth table. It’s hard to turn off the part of your brain that applies past experiences to every new situation.

How about some sort of pedestrian sky bridge? No vehicles but also no carried skateboards for fear of dropping it.

It’s funny, I first thought the game was going to be a commentary on the “no mechanical transport in the wilderness” rule that he mentioned at the end. You cannot have a bicycle in the wilderness. You can’t push it or carry it. I guess this simplifies enforcement. If someone is camped with a bike, they can be ticketed.

I have friends that do long bike camping trips, and they sometimes want to pass through areas of wilderness on their trips. What do they do? They take apart the bike and pack it, because you are allowed to have bike parts in the wilderness.

> because you are allowed to have bike parts in the wilderness.

I would love for someone to try disassembling less of the bike and still getting ticketed, just to see how that line ends up getting drawn. Is a bike without a seat still a bike? What about a bike with no tires? Does 50% of the bike need to be "contiguous" to be considered a bike? If it can be ridden? What if there are no pedals? Is a unicycle considered a bike?

A unicycle is definitionally not a bicycle, but any rule for bikes in this hypothetical would surely also apply to unicycles.

There should be a question then, "4 people carry a small car into the park"

Yeah applying a very loose, or perhaps pedantic, definition of vehicle (it doesn't specify size, for example) combined with a reasonable understanding of "in" ie including air space in proportion to the size of a regular park led me to say most things were in violation of the rule. Those were the only relevant factors, all the other info was fluff.

I considered ISS to be outside it, and that was pretty much it. My views weren't shared with too many, about 11%.

You draw the line between ISS and commercial airplane? That seems like an odd place for it. I would think the limit of "in" would be at the prevailing treeline or maybe requires ground contact (I haven't fully decided yet), and beyond that it's "above" rather then "in."

The problem with treeline (or any similar threshold) is that even having that defined doesn't solve for the fact that we don't know the altitude of the quadcopter. That's why I'm leaning more toward ground contact.

Does touching water or snow count as ground contact?

Yes, any liquid or solid works to maintain contact. Gas eliminates contact. Otherwise you could say shoes prevent contact!

Just like "contactless" payment cards, which for some reason involves the word "tap" as well, even though tapping is the act of making brief contact, and is not required for the communication to succeed, and that successful communication could be referred to as making contact, but I digress.

Things don't even actually touch each other though. At no point does an atom of my stuff make contact with an atom of your stuff, right? things can be uncomfortably close to each other but the Van der Waals forces mean it'll never actually touch. to be pedantic.

Commercial airlines need permission from the country they are flying over. That would fit into the “ignore your local jurisdiction” caveat

International agreement says that objects at the altitude if the ISS are not counted in the park, that’s not local jurisdiction

But commercial airlines do not need permission to “trespass” over my property when they fly over it - because my property is not considered to extent infinitely into the sky (in the same way that, under any reasonable definition, a park isn’t). Countries are different because we have considered it and explicitly defined airspace boundaries.

The instructions say to ignore all other rules/laws besides "no vehicles in the park" because the jurisdiction is unknown. International agreement doesn't seem like it should break through this barrier, although I understand why others may disagree.

The notion of permissions afforded by "airspace rights," even those internationally agreed, therefore cannot be used when deciding how to answer the questions in this game. Even if we could lean on that here, airspace rights actually were infinite for a very long time -- there's even a Latin phrase saying "up to Heaven and down to Hell" -- until modern air travel began.

Instead of rights/laws, we must focus only on what it means to be "in the park" by common use of the phrase. At some point you're above it rather than in it, perhaps. It may happen to be the case that people do most often think of this altitude threshold roughly equivalent to modern airspace rights, but personally I'm not so sure.

Ah I forgot about commercial airline, that was another no for me.

If I stab someone in the eye with a pencil, then the pencil was clearly a weapon. However, I'm not violating a "no weapons" policy simply by carrying a pencil.

True, but a pencil's primary use is non-weapon. A skateboard is only used for skating.

And posing. In some areas it’s mostly about posing.

It is funny that you say so because for me the primary axis was about whether the rule was violated or not.

This is why some people (including myself) chose that an ambulance driven into a park wouldn't be a violation of the rule.

But it is a violation. I guess from my perspective it was a justified violation of the rule, but it was still a violation

Depends on the meaning of rule and violation I guess. I interpreted it as a sign posted at the entrance of the park. I interpreted violation as something that would be stopped by the park rangers.

Their point is that "was the rule violated" is a combination of "is a vehicle" and "in the park", hence both axes are relevant factors. If pushed, I would concede that the ISS is a vehicle, but I would consider the bounds of the park to end far lower than where the ISS orbits, so despite being "a vehicle" it doesn't violate the rule because I don't consider it "in the park". "Is it in the park" isn't relevant for most of the questions, but it's still an important part of the premise.

Similarly, the question asks "does it violate the rule" not "should the vehicle be allowed in the park". Of course driving an ambulance into the park violates the rule - but it's ok the break the rule for emergencies!

Which of course illustrates that in the real world there are always multiple conflicting rules that apply. Especially in content moderation.

> in the real world there are always multiple conflicting rules that apply

I think it might be worse than that, there are sometimes rules which aren't actually rules which can still (sometimes!) override rules which are.

Dunno about other jurisdictions but the written Polish law actually has some quite prominent references to unwritten, socially defined rules, both in the civil and the criminal law.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, ..."

The instructions explain that, so it shouldn't interfere with the decision making, but the thing that the instructions don't talk about is whether the park extends indefinitely into the sky. One need not even consider the legal aspect of this (airspace rights: historical versus modern) but merely consider what it means to be in the park! Personally, I think that if the vehicle is making contact with the ground then it's "in" the park, but if it's not making contact with the ground then it's "above" the park.

When you jump, do you leave the park? If you jump really high? Or are flung via trebuchet?

That's absurd generally, but for purposes of this rule specifically, I think it works out totally fine, yes. Because if you replace the human jumping with a vehicle jumping (being that the rule is regarding vehicles, not humans) then the answer to the question of whether a violation has occurred is "yes" -- repeated violations does not matter when answering. For flying vehicles, only taking off or landing in the park is a violation.

How about hovering? at what height does it become not the park? 10 centimeters above the park is one thing and space is at 100 kilometers, but there's a lot of room in between those for disagreement.

At what point is a helicopter hovering above the park in violation?

This is why you need a lawyer familiar with the local regulations, which clarify these things. Thus this test is invalid because there should be an “there is not enough information to answer” answer.

I think getting lawyers involved is more for if you want to know what the law is. For this, we just want to know what is. It's very common for legal definitions to differ from normal definitions.

> Yes, I'm aware this has nothing to do with the point of the exercise.

No actually I do think it does and is captured beautifully in the game. Things that clearly once vehicles are arguably no longer - like the war tank.

Like Michelangelo's David, is the nudity porn? is it obscene? for who? Is this a website about art? or a porn site? education site? a site for children?

Each one of those sites have differing views of the exact same thing.

Love this exercise.

It's exactly the point of the exercise. Whether something is a vehicle and whether said thing is "in" the park are both separate dimensions of logic that each individual applies differently towards their decision making. This is exactly why content moderation has trouble to stay consistent and rarely pleases everyone, because so many nuances from non-intersecting aspects of logic/context/culture/opinions are forced to consolidate into a binary choice (violation vs. non-violation).

No, you missed the point entirely. The question was whether the scenario is a violation but the answers were not labeled accordingly.

For an exercise that is, by it's own admission, pedantic by design that's a pretty glaring fault

Tell me you've never done (or thought about) content moderation without telling me you've never done or thought about content moderation.

Rules are pedantic by their nature, that's the whole point of interpreting them.

You've missed the point of my comment too. We all agree that the exercise is pedantic by design, and that the goal of the exercise is to show how much variance there is in interpreting them.

The point, that you've missed twice now, is that the results are presented using incorrect language.

A point that does not exist is a point that's not possible to be missed. It's okay to admit you don't know anything about content moderation, and frankly it's a blessing to not know anything about it. Best of luck.

Same - I used the simple "rule" that basically everything that's in the park and used to carry people or goods is a "vehicle" at least by some people's standard. But you can fly a plane across the globe without going through 15 separate immigration rituals, so for most practical purposes (obviously excluding things like no-fly zones or bomber planes) the plane is not "in" any of the areas it passes over.

Funnily enough, by your wide standard, any footwear would also be considered a vehicle.

That would depend on your definition of "carry." I personally wouldn't say that shoes "carry" people any more than floors do (which is to say, they don't).

We need to go deeper!

I would say those two things are very different. The ground (floors are inside) is the cooperating object upon which leading objects carry.

The shoes carried the person on the ground, the car carried the person on the ground, the horse carried the person on the ground, etc;

An interesting dilemma does occur if we are walking barefoot: our feet carry us but are part of our whole, so we cannot reasonably consider them or ourselves a vehicle. But in a general day-to-day sense we would say they carry us.

It is very interesting what you brought up because I think it shows some people consider their outfit as an extension of themselves. Then again, many people also do for their car :)

I would say those two things are very different. The ground (floors are inside) is the cooperating object upon which leading objects carry.

Since we're already taking it too far, I want to point out that you can have outside floors, and you can have floors that are not supported by the ground.

An airplanes floor in flight, or a dance floor in your backyard are examples of both.

A more obvious example is a pregnant woman, or a woman holding a baby. Both can reasonably be called “carrying a human”.

Just to pick the nit, what about stilts? Are they shoes or vehicles?

By the same logic, wouldn't rollerblades also not carry people (and by extension, not be vehicles)?

Rollerblades, skis, snowboards, skateboards, scooters, bikes.

IMO the definition of a vehicle comes down to how wieldy, how large, and how powerful the device is - for instance car is obviously a vehicle as it's very powerful, has a large turning radius, and large area. The interesting thing about this is that there's an argument that scooters are not vehicles but skateboards are - scooters are far easier to control (i.e. more wieldy) whereas skateboards have a tendency to launch the user in one direction and the skateboard in the other, which makes it rather unwieldy.

I would argue it's able mechanical advantage. Everything you listed is a vehicle. Also, skateboards are far more agile than scooters when used by people who know how to ride them. Scooters are just easier for novices.

I would only consider skates to be slightly ambiguous because they are shoes that are mounted but worn. but still, i say vehicle

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vehicle

Other definitions include an agent of transmission (e.g. for and infection) and a medium though which something is displayed (dance is the vehicle for my creativity). Would have been interesting to see the different definitions exploited vs more strained classification of shoes or skates or whatnot as vehicles.

Oh hahaha! This one didn’t occur to me, but ‘no vehicles in the park’ can literally be translated to mean no people in the park. I’m a vehicle for my musical ideas. They are vehicles for their heart & lungs. People are vehicles of cold viruses.

So that includes wheelchair?

Yep. Obviously this is a thought experiment, and the site did tell users to take the problem as stated very literally. So I basically went with two simple rules:

- Would anyone call it a vehicle?

- Is it in the park?

So that includes wheelchair? Would anyone call it a vehicle?

Yes, I think it's reasonable to consider a wheelchair to be a vehicle. Especially the motorized ones.

I said, no. A wheelchair is not a vehicle. In my opinion, the wheelchair is an extension of the person, and not a separate object as long as it is being used by someone who needs it.

This seems a fun direction of thought. So does it cease to become a vehicle as soon as someone sits in it, and resume its functionality as a vehicle as soon as it is abandoned?

So whether it's a vehicle depends on how well the person in it can walk? I don't know about that. I'd rather just give exceptions.

Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I have older parents who can walk short distances but I'd rather they have the choice to use a wheelchair at an airport.

In general, no testing. Unless some people are being jackasses and doing something absurd like standing on wheelchairs jousting with long sticks holding up everyone in line.

What is your definition of need? If I need to meet friends in the park in five minutes I clearly need a car to get there in time. So the car would not be a vehicle in that case?

Does a wheelchair become a vehicle if somebody who _can_ walk without it sits in it? Does that mean everyone in wheelchairs must be harassed (to find out if they need it)?

Since the preamble mentioned this was a test of language literalness, before I answered the question, I looked up the definition of “vehicle”: “A means of carrying or transporting something” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vehicle

While it might be uncommon to call a wheelchair a vehicle, it fits the literal definition. I don’t understand the ‘extension of the person’ rationale, you’re still using the word ‘wheelchair’, and it’s obviously a separate object from a person. How would that rationale differ if you were talking about cars? Can I argue a car is an extension of me as long as I’m using it while I need it?

It's a common sentiment among wheelchair users that the freedom they enable makes them feel like an extension of a person. In that context, for the purpose of the "vehicle" question, there's not much difference between a wheelchair, prosthetic leg, or eyeglasses.

I wouldn't say I'm entirely convinced, but it's at least convincing enough that I said that a wheelchair did not violate the "vehicle" rule. I can't define "vehicle" in a way that would satisfactorily justify that decision, but I'm comfortable with that.

The Merriam-Webster definition tends towards a vehicle being something with a power source (something where the power source is not manual/manus/human) capable of moving other things. That would include any sort of powered chair, but not be a problem for a standard wheelchair. Interestingly the Oxford American dictionary explicitly includes a cart as a primary example however, and Wikipedia’s primary example of a vehicle is a bike.

Roller skates are clearly not a vehicle. Similarly, neither is a wheelchair. They are not reasonably separable form the person using them.

A bicycle actually goes on roads, follow rules and get a ticket for jumping a red light.

It isn't so clear to me. If it conveys a human in any way that humans don't naturally move unassisted then in my mind it qualifies as a conveyance and hence a vehicle, especially in the sense of the the French véhicule, from Latin vehiculum (“a carriage, conveyance”), from vehere (“to carry”)

Stilts? How tall? Platform shoes? How tall?

The person riding the bicycle does those things, the bicycle is a tool. A tool can't follow rules.

You can take roller skates off, get out of a wheelchair, and get off a bicycle.

Imagine you were wearing roller skates being pulled by a dog.

Imagine you were sitting in a chair, with a roller skate bound to each leg of the chair, rolling down a hill.

Imagine you were a flea in a roller skate rolling down a hill.

Imagine you were a dog in a wheelchair rolling down a hill.

Imagine you were a flea on a dog in a chair with roller skates on its legs rolling down a hill.

> Roller skates are clearly not a vehicle

I don't think that's particularly clear and I think a non-negligible number of people would disagree

A wheelchair is used for transporting a person.

Personally I wouldn't call a wheelchair a vehicle for purposes of this question, but I think some people would call a wheelchair a vehicle, yes.

After all, bicycles are clearly vehicles, and bicycles and wheelchairs are both things with metal frames, wheels and seats designed to convey humans around under their own power.

Other than the placement of the wheels, the main difference is the character of its use.

Speed and impact on the user are meaningful differences. I don't like bikes in parks (except those designed for them) because the bikes are moving much faster than anything else. For that reason I might feel that a small child on a bike is more permissible than an adult. Also that the carried skateboard is not a violation - I understand the rule to be about vehicle use more than presence

> I understand the rule to be about vehicle use more than presence

Which I guess is part of the point - the rule specifically does not say anything about use, only presence - but people (including me) are still interpreting the rule with a "usage" axis. Perfect demonstration that the "simple rules for Internet content that are easy to apply" assertion has fallen over at the first hurdle.

> I think some people would call a wheelchair a vehicle

I think, just being overly annoying and literal, that the game shouldn't be answered by asking whether anyone would call a wheelchair a vehicle, but whether a wheelchair is a vehicle in the sense meant in the rule statement. I don't think it is, personally, though it's probably the closest non-vehicle in the list.

Strictly speaking, by the definition of "would anyone call this object a vehicle", every single thing on the list is a vehicle, because apparently at least ~2% of the quiz respondents said they were vehicles - including kites!

Would anyone not call it a vehicle?

Because the vernacular definition of 'vehicle' in this context does not include crutches, wheelchairs, kites, or slippers.

It might include a powered mobility scooter.

What’s the difference between a powered mobility scooter and a modern wheelchair?

Weight and top speed that most of their occupants reach, although I haven't looked closely at a lot of 'modern wheelchairs', so I may be off the mark.

So no effective difference, then.

There's be a pretty big difference for someone that they ran into, just like I'd much rather be ran over by a golf cart, than by a Honda Civic.

Kites, toy cars and toy boats are toys (to me). Slippers, skis and skates are footwear. A toboggan isn't normally attached to a person's body, so a vehicle.

Drones and balloons I would say are in the park, whereas aircraft (at normal altitudes) I would say are not. Unfortunately: I'd like more parks to have a protected square inch of silence.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Square_Inch_of_Silence

1. https://onesquareinch.org/

I wouldn't ordinarily define a wheelchair as a vehicle. But I looked up a definition:

a thing used for transporting people or goods

On this basis, I conclude that wheelchairs, roller skates and carried skatebords are vehicles, and horses are not (as thing implies non-sentience).

And what about after we get AGI on a computer in a car? Is Nightrider's KITT not a vehicle?

An excellent question!

What if the user wasn’t disabled?

Or if it was motorised?

Let's say that in your opinion: (a) it's a vehicle, (b) it's in the park, (c) but the park authority doesn't have jurisdiction over the activity.

Is the correct resolution to deny (b)?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what "in the park" represents within the analogy.

Humans carry all kinds of goods and often carry people. Even if we limit "goods" to exclude our personal effects, someone carrying takeout across a park—especially for someone else—could be considered a vehicle by that definition.

Additionally strollers, wagons, and other baby or child conveyances would also qualify.

> But you can fly a plane across the globe without going through 15 separate immigration rituals, so for most practical purposes (obviously excluding things like no-fly zones or bomber planes) the plane is not "in" any of the areas it passes over.

But you were specifically instructed to not use any laws local to your jurisdiction, and that's why this can happen. The 15 countries it flew over are members of the ICAO, which delegated some of their sovereignty to the common good of easy air travel. It could have easily worked out some other way; fly over our country without stopping for immigration, and we blow up your plane. (You can see this in action if you fly your plane from Canada to do a low approach over the White House. You probably won't be home for dinner.) Similarly, in the US, the FAA decides who can fly over your property and how low. These are not universal constraints on existence, just actual laws that people wrote down because nobody could agree on the details. I'd venture a guess that if you asked the average property owner if airplanes could fly over their property and stare at them in their hot tubs, they'd say "no". However, the law simply doesn't agree with them, and a satellite is photographing your underwear as we speak!

But it's not really a local thing; I'd be shocked if there was a park which meaningfully controlled it's airspace. Practically the bounds of a park only go so high.

I mean, while it's not technically just the park, I'm sure there are several parks on US Military bases where the airspace is restricted. Also, we can be the change we wish to see in the world: any park can be a park with a controlled airspace if you bring enough surface-to-air missiles into the park.

Do the missiles count as vehicles? Might not be able to bring them in.

Do you consider them a conveyance for the warhead? Then yes.

But what if it's a single unit (no warhead) which only works via kinetic contact, then perhaps not a vehicle.

That hypothetical airspace is restricted due to it being a military base... Which means you're applying other rules beyond what's written

That's how you see it, but not how most people see it. The "corner crossing" lawsuit got a LOT of coverage on Hacker News. Landowners claimed that merely floating over their property was trespassing. The courts disagreed.

Trust me, if there weren't any laws, people would be shooting down airplanes above their farms, or at the very least, writing a lot of angry letters to the FAA. The laws that we have right now allowing the freedom of air travel were hard-won and unpopular among those affected.

Therefore, the park in this exercise would mostly like try and shoot down the International Space Station, or else risk the reputation of not being strict against surfers carrying surfboards. It's exactly the same thing.

Ignoring the fact that many of the corner crossing cases were bad faith arguments by landowners intentionally attempting to abuse the situation, I don't think anyone would argue that the park boundary is a prism that extends vertically to infinity.

So where do you draw the line?

It definitely extends to infinity. Why would it stop somewhere?

Why wouldn't it? If you think most people would consider a satellite passing overhead, an airplane flying high overhead, the Moon, the Sun, other objects in space etc. when directly overhead to be "in" a park, I think you'd be mistaken. And the results here bear that out, at least to the limited extent there were relevant questions.

Similarly a subway train passing underneath the park is not "in" the park, nor are vehicles that are at the antipode of the park on the polar opposite side of the Earth.

So you're saying that, for parks in there right location, for brief periods of time, parts of other plants, stars, and space are "part of the park"

> specifically instructed to not use any laws local to your jurisdiction,

To me, that doesn't change the answers much. You still have to have some definition of vehicle that inevitably assumes some context.

That to me means any human-propelled thing smaller than say a motorbike is not a vehicle.

So I only said 'is indisputably a vehicle' to cars and similar (even if was an ambulance or police car)

You can fly a plane across the globe but the plane's flight path must be approved by each of the 15 countries before it is allowed in their airspace.

The countries often ask for passenger lists and manifests before they allow your plane to do so and have, in the past forced planes to land to get to passengers or suspected passengers on the plane they have an interest in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

countries yes - because countries have airspaces. Parks typically do not - anymore than people flying over my house are not tresspassing.

If you live in the U.S., people flying very low over your house probably are trespassing, you have air rights. (True in other countries too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights Before commercial flight was common, air rights used to extend into space. Now they’re limited, but you have at least a few hundred feet.

Parks do have airspaces, obviously and literally, and more to the point, in the U.S. there’s existing legislation defining the altitudes that are considered “in” and out of the park.

US laws aren't relevant to the game, though.

Whether any airspace is included in the park is completely ambiguous in the game.

I agree the question is intentionally ambiguous. I disagree that laws aren’t relevant, precisely because they will disambiguate. This isn’t specific to US laws, most countries globally have flight regulations. The game is using words and concepts to ask questions that can only be defined and answered by laws. The altitude and location matter, if you want to answer the question correctly. You cannot moderate the situation, and the question cannot be answered correctly without knowing the altitude and location and laws that apply, and that doesn’t mean that moderation is hard, it means the author is fabricating unnecessary amounts of ambiguity.

Asking intentionally ambiguous questions that existing laws already answer in order to make a point about the difficulty of moderation kind-of undermines the author’s intent here. He was trying to prove that unanswerable corner cases always exist, but it’s not true for the specific case of airlines over parks once you know the laws.

How about quadcopter drones though? How about ones big enough to hold a human?

What about them? Both of those can violate air rights, and in the US both have FAA regulations that apply. I’m using the US as an example because I live in the US, but many many countries have similar regulations. Small drones need a remote pilot license, and drones large enough to carry a human require an actual aircraft pilot’s license just like any other airplane or helicopter. In a public park in the US, small drones are required to stay under 400 ft altitude above ground, inside the airspace of the park. (Small drones are also required to not fly directly above other people.) Aircraft with people in them are required to fly higher than that, which thus defines an altitude threshold above which is considered outside of land-based public and private property boundaries.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/become_a_drone_...

The question in the quiz about flying airplanes over a park can be correctly answered with 3 pieces of information: the aircraft type, the park’s location, and the altitude. The question cannot be answered without that information. Contrary to the author’s attempted point, the correct answer to the question is not a matter of language ambiguity.

Interesting! But you didn't answer the question of if you consider a small quadcopter is a vehicle or not, just that there are rules about them. Small ones don't carry a person, or much of anything really.

Is a quadcopter at 399 ft in the park then? If it's at 401 ft, then it's not?

Yeah I saw all those rules. The FAA killed flying drones as a legal hobby for me.

Oh yeah I think a quadcopter can easily count as a (tiny) vehicle, if it’s, say, carrying a camera. I liked how someone pointed to the Merriam Webster page for “vehicle”, which includes things like “an agent of transmission” and “a medium through which something is expressed”. People fit the literal definition of vehicle!

Even for no-fly zones, we don't say 'in' the place. We say in the zone. We're over the place, but in the zone.

Is an airplane in your park if you put a roof over it? Is an airplane in your house?

The plane question stated the plane was `over` the park which implies it is not in the park. If the question instead said `through` the park, the answer would differ.

What if I fly a helicopter 10 feet off the ground, in the area of the park. Is that 'over' or 'through'?

Given that a helicopter at that speed is a clear hazard to anyone below it and will blow a person below it off their feet, and could easily be pushed around or into the ground at any time (sudden gusts of winds do happen, although I have no real experience with helicopters so I may be wrong on some specifics), that is through.

"the park" includes not only the ground, but also a certain area above the ground - otherwise someone riding a bike through the park wouldn't be in the park (as they are not touching the ground) but their bike would be. That would be absurd.

Ok. What about 20ft off the ground? 50? 100? 200? 350?

You see the issue, yah?

Given that the whole point of the website and the discussion is the fuzziness that any such rule implies, I'm pretty sure they _do_ see the point, but decided to play the interpretation game anyway. What's your point?

Let's say we imagine a dome over the park which is geometrically a convex hull that encloses all the tree tops. Everything in that dome is in the park.

Your list of altitudes didn’t go high enough to change the answer. ;) Drones (in the US and the UK) must be limited to 400ft/120m and are still considered “in” the airspace of the ground they’re over. Commercial aircraft flying at 35,000ft AGL are not considered to be in the airspace of a specific park or private property when over the U.S. (and most of the world, I suspect), but they are considered to be inside the country’s airspace, since park & private property airspace has a limited ceiling, but country airspace extends up to space.

What if it's using antigravity technology or magic to hover instead, posing no threat to the people below due to wind.

Through, no question. If someone in the park is able to interact with it, you're in it.

What if it is a digital vehicle? If we're all wearing AR glasses, and can interact with it, is it there?

Depends on how you word the question. If you say the helicopter is flying 10 feet over the park, by the rules of this game it's objectively not a violation. If you say it's 10 feet above the ground inside the park, objectively a violation.

In the U.S., by FAA law, flying a helicopter 10 feet off the ground in a public park is both over the ground and through (or “in”) the park. There’s no either-or.

The question intentionally left out the altitude of the vehicle in order to trick us into thinking it’s a harder question to answer than it really is. I agree that ‘over’ tends to somewhat imply out, and ‘through’ tends to imply in, and would indeed change the distribution of answers.

In at least some countries (such as the U.S., and I would speculate practically all countries in the age of commercial flight and private drones, but I don’t know that for a fact) there are laws that define whether flying “over” a public park means in our out, and the park’s bounding volume is defined with a specific altitude ceiling. (It may be different depending on the type of aircraft, e.g., civilian drone vs emergency helicopter vs commercial airliner, etc.)

The author’s trick worked. People are arguing over whether a hypothetical airplane is in the hypothetical park without knowing the altitude or location, rather than pointing at the fact that he question is intentionally under-specified and the right answer depends on important details that were left out.

Backpack? Dog? Dog with a backpack? Horse? Riding a horse?

I say none are vehicles but I could see how one might.

Seems like a very fair nitpick to me considering the semantic nature of the game in the first place!

Posting “racial epithets” is banned on social networks but if I post a video of a politician saying a racial epithet to raise awareness. Does that violate the rule? We aren’t debating whether or not it was a racial epithet.

I didn’t get that question.

I was thinking along these lines as well but after reading the explanation at the end of the game, I’m not so sure.

The rule is no vehicles in the park. I’ve also concluded that an ambulance or police responding to a call didn’t violate the rule but saw that a lot of people seemed to think it did. And it made me think.

The rules say to not apply any other rule but the stated one. And if you follow the rule to the letter, a police car in the park is a vehicle in the park , violates the rule. It’s dumb but it does.

Common sense says it shouldn’t but the rule says it does and the instructions say to only consider the rule with no nuance.

The instructions beforehand were very clear that you should answer whether the scenario violated the rule, not whether it should be allowed.

I suppose that's the beauty, intentional or not, of this exercise... Since the point was to highlight human behavior your response is still a valid, important datapoint despite you "failing" to complete the exercise according to the instructions.

Yeah it raises potential ontological issues about the words "vehicles", "in", "rule" and probably others.

They’ve updated the labels now I think. Unless there are some other labels I am not seeing.

The labels at the end now say:

> You think it is not a vehicle in the park

> You think it is a vehicle in the park

Ha, so they have

You aren't challenging your assumption of "in"

How far does the airspace extend?

If "in the park" is meant as an analogy for "on the platform" in content moderation, then curiously enough Twitter suspended @RealDonaldTrump for off-park action (Jan 6).

Nobody provided the definition of vehicle either. The summary references lawyers using a variation of this game, but most legalese I've seen as a layperson usually starts by defining terms.

I don't think it really matters. The point I guess was that an ambulance or police car is obviously a vehicle, and obviously in the park. And yet enforcing this seemingly simple and logical rule becomes so absurd that some people would decide that a police car is not a vehicle just because it should be allowed in.

why is that the solution, and not that the police are allowed to break the rules?

The first page said to not make your own assumptions about the local laws, but to simply select if the rule as written has been violated.

Yes, defined terms are critical. As the exercise went on, I kept refining my mental model of what a “vehicle” was in the context of the park sign.

I eventually came up with a mental model that was something like “an artificially powered or mechanically advantaged means of conveyance or transport, especially one that creates negative externalities to other park goers inconsistent with typical use and enjoyment of public park space.” But that wasn’t absolute - the non-functional tank was, in my mind, quite obviously a vehicle, and so was prohibited. Someone at a higher pay grade is going to have to make an exception there. The skydiver - ehhh, it was a stretch to call him a vehicle, but by my heuristic he broke the sign’s rule.

>But that wasn’t absolute - the non-functional tank was, in my mind, quite obviously a vehicle, and so was prohibited.

Was, or is? The non-functional tank was a vehicle, but is currently a non-functional lump of steel and is thus no different to a statue. A statue is obviously not a vehicle, and a statue of a car is still not a vehicle.

How was the tank moved though?

Seems unlikely to have been pushed by people.

“Matthew, head of an organization of WWII veterans, puts a non-functioning WWII-era tank into the park as a war memorial.”

Not relevant. Assembled there and welded the moving parts. Doesn't matter. Is it a vehicle? No, it is a statue / art installation.

I had almost exactly the same definition, but interestingly I let the skydiver go free, and I figured the tank would be okay because it was stationary (and I think in my head I assumed someone else had allowed the memorial!)

In the end, I only banned the car and the boat, and the boat was only really on a technicality. In retrospect, I might have been being too lenient, but I think it had a lot to do with just the stuff that I wanted to see in the park, which is pretty interesting from a moderation perspective.

Horse is a fun one. I started to wonder does putting saddle and reins on one change things... So if you ride without them it is fine, but if you put those on it becomes a vehicle...

Travois is other one I kinda struggled... Just a a-frame even if you drag it in clearly is not one to me.

No, I felt a bit "betrayed" by this as well but also probably the point of the exercise? I dunno. Obviously there is rhyme to reason as to why you're offered to skip after 7 questions. I'm not sure why, but somewhere after 10 I started to feel like I wanted to go back and re-answer.

Did this change? For me it says "You think it is (not) a vehicle in the park," which doesn't match with your description of your issue with the results.

The "pulled a wagon" one is another aspect. Is the answerer assuming a vehicle pulled the wagon? I immediately wondered if the wagon was pulled by hand or animal or a vehicle.

Wagons are vehicles in the strictest since.

Why use a strictest sense? Why not a sense considered appropriate assuming the context?

The context is:

> You might know of some rule in your jurisdiction which overrides local rules, and allows certain classes of vehicles. Please disregard these rules; the park isn't necessarily in your jurisdiction. Or perhaps your religion allows certain rules to be overridden. Again, please answer the question of whether the rule is violated (not whether the violation should be allowed).

That doesn't affect at all what you consider a vehicle or what the meaning of 'in' is.

If I bring a box of chocolate cars into the park and eat them, that's a violation too, right?

(If Schrodinger brings a backpack into the park but doesn't know what's in it, is that a violation? Did you pack your own luggage today, sir/maam?)

This lead me to question about size. Clearly a traditional animal dragged sized one is a vehicle. But those small ones pulled by hand are not.

Same goes for things like kites and quadrocopters.

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