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Comment by vrosas | Hacker News Reader

My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.

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My favourite in this genre comes from a physics DPhil student I knew in Oxford: He insisted that it was permissible for him to work in the lab on Shabbat because after all he was really just studying the works of God and so it was no different in character from reading the Torah.

I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Friday evenings (after dusk).

I'm pretty sure 99.999% of observant Jewish people would consider this work but there is a lot of room for interpretation in Judaism and in the end it's between you, your belief, and God. An interesting piece of trivia there is that in Yom Kippur you can atone for sins to god but you can not atone for sins to other people without getting reconciliation.

But did he write down anything?

Just asked my wife about this, who grew up Jewish and also loves debating these things as she's a programmer. Apparently the rules describe certain activities that one is not allowed to do, which in practice block most people from doing their profession. Reading books is not on that list, but nowhere does it say that the book needs to be the Torah. So it would definitely be allowed to read research papers, as long as you don't take notes (because writing is forbidden). Even a book critic could be reading books during shabat without any issues.

Operating a particle accelerator (ie actually pressing the buttons) would probably be a no-go, but if you set it up beforehand and it runs through the weekend without interaction then that would be fine.

Starting a particle accelerator would be forbidden, as the electricity alone would be akin to starting a fire.

Yes. But not if you set up a timer to do it automatically. (As long as you set up the timer before shabat obviously)

There is also apparently a slightly more technologically minded sub-sect of Judaism which considers only electricity generators that actually burn things (coal, oil, gas, biomass, etc) to be "fire". Battery powered devices are therefore OK, as would be things purely powered by solar power (as the sun is technically not "on fire") nucear power or even hydroelectric power. For the vast majority of electricity grids though, at least a percentage of generation will be from fueled generators and so forbidden on shabat.

This is not a mainstream view though.

In general a lot of scientists who are followers of theistic religions do think there is a religious motivation in their work, it that it is the study of God's creation so I would take it seriously.

I would argue that even a non-believer who studies the sciences in pursuit or truth and appreciates the beauty they reveal is doing God's work.

I am not the brightest spark as it took me a few months of living in a heavily Jewish area to realise that the pedestrian traffics light were configured to run every cycle so they didn't have to press the button. Probably a lot more details I also missed.

Could be coincidence. Many of those buttons are "placebo buttons" and aren't actually hooked up, particularly at busy intersections.

Buttons in pedestrian traffic lights are far from universal, my country is not Jewish and pedestrian lights without a button are very common.

Actually I dislike those with buttons. They send the message that cars passing and pedestrians stopping is the "default", and ensure that a lone pedestrian always has to stop, regardless of luck, while establishing the ritual that pedestrians need to "beg" for being allowed to cross. In my view, cars already have too many privileges in cities, it's not the end of the world if they have to stop at an empty crossing from time to time (something that pedestrians also have to do often).

Cars have much more inertia and often more traffic than pedestrians, it makes sense to give them right of way and reduce the ambiguity with traffic control devices in most places.

If you take sidewalks away completely and turn everything into a big highway you’ll have even less pedestrian traffic. That doesn’t make it good policy.

In my area at least, if there is a pedestrian crossing across a single road, it will not be automatic, but if it's near a junction, where the lights would need to toggle anyway, the button does nothing, and it's just on a fixed timer

I doubt very much this is related to any local Jewish population. Most traffic buttons are placebos these days; the pedestrian signals automatically signal alongside the traffic lights.

The exception would be low-pedestrian-volume areas with lights and crossings reserved specifically for pedestrians.

You're probably correct, but having lived in northern Brooklyn for almost a decade, I wouldn't be surprised if those communities had a hand in that type of infrastructure. They already have their own police force.

I've been a "Sabbath Goy" a couple of times for some of my friends :)

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