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godelski

Allow me to introduce you to the dictionary[0]

Vehicle (noun)

1. a means of carrying or transporting something

...such as

... a: motor vehicle

... b: a piece of mechanized equipment

2 : an agent of transmission : carrier

3: a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed

----------------

You're thinking of specifically a __motorized__ vehicle. Which is a different thing than "vehicle". I think you'll agree that a bicycle and skateboard carry people and transport them. This is the same reason a wagon violates the rule. Almost everything on there was a vehicle. I think the only ambiguous ones are paper airplane, matchbox car, toy boat, and kite and I said those weren't because they can't transport things and are not motorized. But hey, technically they can be a medium through which someone expresses their joy.

No painting or dancing in the park.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vehicle

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“No rhetorical vehicles in the park” is … quite the interpretation

It's honestly blowing my mind right now that anyone could interpret as a bike as anything but a vehicle. What else would it be? What is a railroad handcar? What is a paddleboat? What is a cycle saloon?

It is a mix of pedantry, iamverysmart, ackshully, treating dictionaries as prescriptive (the English dictionary is _descrptive_ and the French dictionary is _prescriptive_) and a bunch of other nonsense.

The entire world agrees bicycles are vehicles and it's encoded in the law almost everywhere. This is no true Scotsman, sure, but IMO if you're trying to argue a bicycle is NOT a vehicle you're only doing it to argue and flex your vast knowledge of the English dictionary to randoms on the internet. It's a completely unreasonable position to hold.

I really hate to break this to you, but in no case would I see a sign that said “no vehicles” and hesitate to ride my bicycle right past it. If it applied to bikes, it would say so. This doesn’t take vast knowledge nor is it a flex, I’m saying this is uniformly what I would expect cyclists in all US cities in which I’ve lived to understand as well.

That's fine - and I would ignore the sign too but that wasn't the question being asked in this quiz. It explicitly said do you consider a bicycle a vehicle and it is a vehicle by law nearly everywhere.

Many roads nowadays have a "one way only - bicycles excepted" to indicate the road is a one way road but bicycles are an exception to the rule and there's a contraflow bike lane. Most parks that have a no vehicles allowed sign is likely to have a bicycle excepted sign underneath.

Bicycles are vehicles and there is no ackshully that will change that. If you're trying to win an argument with the technicality that everyone would ignore a "no vehicles" sign on a bike that isn't an argument that disproves a bike is a vehicle. All it shows is that a bike is a special vehicle with special rules and exemptions to "no vehicle" signs.

The sign said “no vehicles in the park” it didn’t say “and by the way use a specific and pedantic definition of vehicle”. Bicycles are not vehicles to many people; others would disagree. That’s rather the point, and it’s not a vacuous one.

> by the way use a specific and pedantic definition of vehicle

There is no pedantry in calling a bicycle a vehicle. It's obviously a vehicle - it's entire purpose is to be a lightly-mechanized means of transit! Now if we see a sign in a park that says "no vehicles" many people - using our cultural knowledge and context - will interpret the intent of the sign as a reference to "[motorized] vehicles".

> Bicycles are not vehicles to many people

Those people are wrong. It's as simple as that. In the eyes of the law bikes are vehicles nearly everywhere. It's settled and not up for debate or discussion.

I believe the entire point of the exercise is to demonstrate people will argue that the sky isn't blue.

I would definitely ride my bike in that park and were I a mod I wouldn't give a shit. But as the to directions of the game, the answers were different. But that too is part of the point of the game.

I would do the same. The park will likely add a "bicycles excepted" sign to indicate bicycles are exempt because implicitly most people know that.

I think the point of the game is to demonstrate there are some people who will argue the sky isn't blue. That is one thing we should all be able to agree on but if you were to pose that question to the internet you'd definitely get "I'm colorblind and what you call blue I call green ergo the sky is not blue".

Those people aren't worth your time and will disagree just for the sake of disagreeing and getting a rise out of people. I'll admit I'm guilty of doing the same in some circumstances.

Yeah I agree. I really think the game is about how language is fuzzy, which I said a bit more over here[0]. I had a more detailed comment but the person deleted their post by the time I hit reply ;.;

Really what surprises me is how few people seem to understand that language is incredibly fuzzy. That there's an imperfect encoder (language) and decoder (listening/reading) system. That people are working off of different priors that bias these systems. That we aren't perfectly aligning the intent of our messages with the reception of them. That this system becomes even more fuzzy as the audience increases (increased variance in priors). It is a bit more surprising to me that in a community full of nerds where we communicate online, where we're exposed to many priors, that this is still a relatively unknown phenomena despite it being fairly easy to conclude simply through experience (besides also being fairly well discussed). I for one think the fuzziness of language is incredibly cool.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36456951

By this rule I can't bring a newspaper into the park

> 3. a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed

A "gotcha" comment, but that only adds to the author's point. Which luckily this wasn't one of the examples. Though see back to my comment about the items I said no for (that aren't confused for being outside the part like the ISS)

So no one can bring their legs into the park, as they are a means of transporting things?

"Carrier" is also a very broad term, no human carrying anything is allowed in the park then.

I know this is a "gotcha" comment, but it actually only adds to the author's point: language is fuzzy and imprecise. Moreso, that we assume it has far higher precision than it actually does.

We can think of communication as having 3 main components. 1) the intended concept being intended to convey. This is in the person's head. 2) The fuzzy compression mode (language) that is used to convey said thought. Be that words, writing, or interpretive dance. 3) The fuzzy decoder that turns the language into a thought in another being's head. This is filled with priors and assumptions that fill in many of the gaps.

The thing about this is that we usually learn to speak in pretty localized groups, meaning that our priors align and we have a lot of good faith (attempting to interpret intent rather than interpreting the words). But with a larger audience we have higher variance that makes what is obvious a priori a disastrous outcome. "Everybody knows" is not something everyone knows. https://xkcd.com/1053/

Are shoes a vehicle ?

are the shoes carrying you? Or are you carrying the shoe?

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