Comment by atchoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atchoo | Hacker News Reader

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"break" / "violate" have same semantic ambiguity. You can't separate language from the rest of one's comprehension of the world e.g. most would probably agree that in general, "a rule" cannot prevent someone from saving a life. Overriding moral necessity is built into the understanding of the limitations of "a rule". It's implicit and does not need to be spelled out explicitly.

When you face this sort of thing in philosophy, the clarifying step is to move past language and look at behaviour which would be the enforcement.

> You just need to answer, if the rule has been violated

You can't dismiss ambiguity with a "you just need to"!

In conventional language we get the ambiguity expressed as distinctions like "technically you have a broken a rule but..." i.e. there are "technical" interpretations of rules that are specific/pedantic/unrealistic that in practice are not what is meant or enforced.

I expect there will be a desire here to over value "technical" interpretations as if they were more accurate having stripped cultural conventions and such but that is a means to misinterpret language not find truth.

Please note that I have 0 interest in inciting anger in this absolutely (to me) fascinating topic. The way I present my arguments are very strongly detached from how this should be handled in any real world scenario. On that part from, what you wrote, I am relatively certain that we would be in easy and relaxed agreement. I don't want people to die in parks because EMTs are vehicles. Please keep that in mind while reading on :)

> You can't dismiss ambiguity with a "you just need to"!

Granted, ambiguity is built into language – for example, what exactly is a vehicle seems to not be conclusively answered for every edge case, and I would allow for the confusion around that – but if you are creating additional ambiguity by overloading the task you have been given and adding "technical" distinctions and "implicit" rules, you are not only no longer playing the game, which is for you to judge if the proposed rule has been violated.

You can of course chose to not judge if this rule has been violated in favor of something else you think more interesting. In that case you are playing a different game.

Interpretation is a tough one. Something might be technical or implicit to me. It might not be technical or implicit to you. Or vice versa. Mostly, on most things, we might agree – but if we do it this way, there are bound to be cases, where we don't, which is precisely the dilemma the creator of the experiment is talking to.

> detached from how this should be handled in any real world scenario

When interpreting laws, there is often a concept of the "Reasonable person" standard. The "Reasonable Person" understands that parks banning vehicles is not to stop EMTs. How you are acting in the "real world scenario" is reasonable and what is assumed in the drafting of laws.

You might claim this game is excluding such a concept as being a "local rule" but maybe that can be called... unreasonable :)

Oh well. I reckon that some of our argument could stem from the games instructions, albeit fairly concise at first and second glance, not being specific enough after all.

No room of 100 people will ever agree if a rule that was broken was only technically broken. What should be an exception is in fact an opinion.

Rules can absolutely prevent you from saving a life, for example a rule preventing rescue workers from entering a dangerous area like a cave until conditions improve. Or a police no chase rule.

Both those examples (rescue/no-chase) are in order to save lives... but I agree there are examples like not interfering with a state execution. My point was about the general case and not denying there is tiny minority of exceptional counter-examples. I expect between 99-100% of park rules will not be enforced to save a life.

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