I've never seen a double minor for roughing. 2 minute minor or 5 minute major.
4 minute double minor is typically when someone is high sticked and they're bleeding because of it.
So yeah, give a co-worker a hand to the face and if the manager catches it you're sitting out of the sprint planning meeting for either 2 or 5 minutes depending.
How so? The study is about leadership, decision making, and risk vs reward. Is there not demonstrable (and multiple levels of) leadership within sports teams?
I'm genuinely curious if you've participated in collegiate above sports - or at maybe even High School level. I would be very surprised if someone who played or participated seriously in sports said they didn't take away lessons about leadership and decision making.
Rule breaking is part of the game in sports. Players will, for example, take a penalty if it is worth it. Hockey has fights, basketball has fouls as a resource that gets expended over the course of the game.
I can easily make a case that professional sports at the highest level (NHL, NBA, PL, etc) are much higher stakes than most peoples' jobs at least in $ dimension
Sure, but the pretense is that the game is a self contained reality and once the game is over, everyone has a life they can go on living. Tripping someone on the way to scoring a goal is _unfair_, and there is a defined penalty for it, but when the game is over, that's the end of the consequences for it.
There are, though, lots of penalties in hockey that are about not hurting or maiming (or even killing) people, and those sorts of penalties are very much not rewarded or encouraged by coaches or players.
I mean, it just seems like a false or unrealistic pretense to me.
For example while a hockey game is a 'game' what about a person making a bet on that game that now loses a bet because of the penalty actions? Or a team loses that would have won because of said penalty and does not go to the world championship. So yea, saying there is no consequences is like rejecting the premise of causality as the game doesn't live in a closed system.
> Or a team loses that would have won because of said penalty and does not go to the world championship.
What if they lost the bet because they missed a goal because they slipped on the ice? What if they missed the goal because they blocked it? Taking a strategic penalty isn't _cheating_, it's acting within the rules of the game. The rules are _if_ you take such an action, _then_ the following consequence occurs.
It's sort of dependent on the game and the penalty, though, what the norms are. In soccer, basketball, hockey and football, strategic fouls/penalties happen all the time to prevent scoring opportunities -- holding, etc. That's not considered cheating, it's just part of the game, you trade a sure goal for a penalty.
There _are_ some actions that are considered cheating though -- think inflategate in the NFL, or stealing signs with cameras in baseball. Stuff that isn't generally caught and penalized in the game -- that's the kind of thing that most players won't do, even at the top level.
This whole thing is based on a serious misunderstanding on the role of penalties and fouls in sports. One can take a penalty strategically, for example to stop an almost sure goal, with the consequence of whatever the penalty is. That's just part of the game, and elite (ie: NHL) players are really smart about how they do it, and _should_ be rewarded for it.
Then there are "dumb" penalties, and worse -- things that aren't penalties at all, that break "unwritten rules", and there's a whole bunch of them, like showboating, dirty shots, etc, and those won't get you the support of the team.
And then there are you, know, team rules -- if you're out there not listening to the coach, you'll absolutely get benched.
Why did I have to scroll down so far to see the correct answer?
"You should understand the reason why the rule exists, so that you can decide when to follow it" -- yeah, then why is the reason not explained in the book containing the rules, including an explicit note that if the situation does not match the example, you are allowed to ignore the rule?
I mean… I’m a supervisor and in that position primarily because I have a good sense of when to bend or break rules. And, yes, the employees that can strategically do the same are noticed.
A more palatable phrasing, "supervisors prefer people that engage with the rules with purpose." That is, choosing to break a rule because you are making a cost call based on what you were able to achieve is not, necessarily, a bad thing.
The "point" where this fails, of course, is where the "cost" call above is such that the supervisor can't agree.
Someone who follows the rule even when it produces a terrible outcome is a painful liability. Just like someone who breaks the rule to do the same thing.
Sometimes, the goal is to create an environment where people must break certain rules to get anything done, which everyone (including supervisors) understands, but by way of imposing those rules responsibility and liability is transferred to subordinates.
The use of private internet access for work is denied. Doing so, shifts all responsibility from the IT-department on the private citizen.
The WiFi is currently out of service.
On one extreme you have crap like the gig economy where workers have all of the responsibility and none of the control.
On the other extreme you have perverse workplaces where there would otherwise be no individual responsibility for work if people were not taking on that responsibility by working outside the rules.
I do think that having the system and the rules support the way the organization actually runs in reality is better than even a good implementation of systematic rule breaking.
So I'm fascinated with military culture and how systems work on this scale (ie millions of employees). And one interesting aspect is the E4 Mafia [1].
For those that don't know, you're generally either a commissioned officer (with ranks from 0-1 and up) or enlisted (E-1 to E-9). Some branches have warrant officers too but let's ignore that.
So if you join as an enlisted you start off as a private in the Army (it's called something else in different branches). By the time you finish bootcamp you're an E-2 private, possibly an E-3 (Private First Class). If you're not an E-3 it's automatic promotion after ~6 months assumpting you don't have any red flags AFAIK.
By the time you make it to E-4 (Corporal in the Army) you kinda know how things work BUT you're also in the last rank before you're in a leadership position. The next position (E-5, Sergeant in the Army) is a noncomissioned officer ("NCO"). Some people want to avoid that so they kinda hang around E-4 far longer than they should and they build up a body of knowledge on how to get things done. Or they may have been a higher rank and get busted down from an Article 15 (or NJP or whatever the specific branch calls it).
Requisitions can be a huge issue in the military, evne for simple things like office supplies. So you may find that E-4s can "acquire" needed supplies from other units. NCOs, Staff NCOs and command tend to be aware of it but will ignore it because it kinda needs to happen. And those E-4s are called the "E4 Mafia".
This, I believe, is the kind of "rule breaker" this post is referring to.
In the US Army an E-4 is a specialist or a corporal. Most E-4s are specialists. The E-4 is the pay grade, and the specialist or corporal designation is the rank. A corporal is a type of lateral promotion from specialist and as a corporal the soldier is then considered a non-commissioned officer.
One thing I think would've been helpful for the article to address are operational and or program leaders that strive to get things done, respect their team's time, and want to be a good steward of resources. These leaders may ask probing "why" questions trying to do what's arguably common sense.
Cutting through red tape can be seen by others as rule breaking, but often it's just asking the questions others haven't and trying to do something in a new, hopefully better way. That means taking a risk that something could go wrong and that's received in different ways by people.
It’s one of the reasons why organizations that are run by lawyers or accountants almost always suck and often perform poorly. They tend to go back to their roots when uncertain and focus on chickenshit.
The exceptions are usually lawyers who discovered that they despise lawyering.
Scavenging is the result of the low pay. In my experience, officers usually look the other way as they understand what it is, until they can't look away anymore. Many enlisted are paid so low, officers actually go out of their way to encourage them to sign-up for food stamps which many are eligible for. When "shrinkage" becomes a problem, they simply pause all requisitions for a while. Many of these items end up in "army surplus" stores surrounding the army base.
Fundamentally, rules almost always come with compromises — for the sake of making rules understandable by humans, they have to be relatively simple. Simple rules for complex situations will always forbid some amount of good behaviour, and allow some bad behaviour. Many of society's parasites live in the space of "allowable bad behaviour", but there is a lot of value to knowing how to exploit the "forbidden good behaviour" space.
I think you'll never find a case where someone got in trouble for not being a hero.
I've recently found myself in a somewhat related situation where a guy turned violent in a pub... first I tried to calm him down and almost got hit... he then turned to other guys who were nearby, and one of them got punched in the face and fell unconscious. My family was with me and told me to stay the hell out of it, but I thought that would be extremely cowardly so I jumped at the guy to try to keep him down, but he was strong and I got a punch in the eye which cost me a week with a black eye, but could've easily turned out much worse for me. If I had just stayed quiet, would I be "negligent"?? The police told me what I did was good as I was trying to help someone, but I didn't have any obligation to do it.
In the case of a child in a pool, the difference is a matter of degree. What if I am terrified of water myself? Does that justify my inaction? What if I just "froze", which is common in stressful situations. Does anything justify not doing something?
Here in Finland, there is legal obligation to help people in emergencies, but this does not mean that you are required to danger yourself or act beyond your abilities. So usually only thing you are actually legally required to do is to call for help.
Are you legally required to carry a means of communication? If not, how can this possibly be enforced? It sounds like an end run to get to negligence charges.
For example, how fast can I drive to get to a telephone if I don't carry one or otherwise cannot use it?
> It sounds like an end run to get to negligence charges.
It's not anything nefarious like that. US citizens and US law enforcement tend to have an adversarial relationship, unfortunately. Finns generally do not. That law is an expression of expectation for behavior in a civilized society, not an opportunity for prosecutorial promotion, as it might be in the US. One must take reasonable steps to save a drowning child, including calling police. In practice, only the most egregiously callous psychopathic misbehavior is punished. Honestly, who doesn't think that a person shouldn't be in jail who would prefer to film and giggle while a child was drowning? A person like that needs a timeout at least.
> Honestly, who doesn't think that a person shouldn't be in jail who would prefer to film and giggle while a child was drowning? A person like that needs a timeout at least.
The difference is that jail in the US is not "timeout". Prisoners may be required to work against their will, which is the carve out in the fourteenth amendment which abolished slavery. People openly joke about sexual assault in prison with derogatory comments like "don't drop the soap". All in all, I think the bar should be higher to send someone to prison in the US. We already have too many people in prison and, in my opinion, many of them are wrongly in prison.
The difference is that German law is more systematic and includes a general duty to rescue, but this doesn't result in excessive negligence charges, as awards are much smaller.
> In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.
There's video from a few years back that shows very American cops standing outside a burning house at night, knowing there was a young child still in it. A passing pizza delivery dude[1] rescued the 6-year old, handed her to cop, and ended up requiring hospitalization. In the online discussion, everyone called the rescuer a hero, but I don't recall seeing a single condemnation of the cops (a "first-responder") who didn't enter the burning house.
Cops have no legal obligation in the US to protect people from crime. They can watch you be mugged without lifting a finger. They might be fired, but the victim isn't entitled to protection.
It basically comes down to positive and negative rights. Someone is at fault if they harm you, but nobody is required to help you, even the government.
>[...] but the victim isn't entitled to protection.
Which is the my point. If cops don't have an obligation to save anyone from a fire, then why would random Joe get into trouble for similar inaction. GP was mistaken about the laws in America.
If police had a legal obligation to protect people from crime, everyone would have recourse if the police failed to protect them. Bar fight? Sue the police. Domestic violence? Sue the police.
It would literally lead to the collapse of the justice system.
But there was a fire, so the risk of themselves dying was pretty high!
There is a reason why they get extra, literal medals if they go above and beyond.
Hell, there are situations in which even firefighters would not go easily.
In my country you can't watch a kid drowning in a pool* but you are not obligated to help anyone in a burning house, since that would put you in danger too. I assume it is the same ~everywhere in the world, including the US.
* assume rescuing would be fairly safe, you are a good swimmer, you have lifeguard education, the weather is nice and the kid is small. AFAIK rescuing drowning people is dangerous as they can pull you down.
A drowning child is of fairly limited threat to an even halfway competent adult swimmer. Even at maximum panic/flailing, they just don't have the mass or strength to prevent you from at least treading water.
It gets tricky when professions, insurance etc are involved.
Example: After a missile attack on a Dnipro gas station in 2022, my wife and her team arrived to see the station burning and 3 people already confirmed dead, but the paramedics would not go inside (they actually weren't allowed to, due to the danger). Her team was military, however, so it was OK to go in and check for survivors.
The problem is, as always, insurance. Entering an unsafe building in an employment context without adequate PPE will kill off any claims for workplace injury. The pizza driver however will most likely be covered by some kind of government scheme, because him getting injured is not tied to his employment.
It's the same why store clerks are explicitly banned from intervening with thefts or fights among unruly customers. When they get injured because they willfully entered a fight, they have zero claims to make (other than trying to sue a piss poor drug addict, which is pointless) - only a security guard is insured against that.
In France at least, and I believe in the US to, it is illegal to not do something if you can.
It does not mean that you should dive and bring him back. In fact, it is not recommended unless you know what you are doing as you may put yourself in danger and need rescuing yourself. But if there are other people around who can help and you don't alert them, or if you have a working phone and don't call whatever emergency number is appropriate, than that's illegal.
EDIT: It appears that it is not illegal do do nothing in most of the US. The law only protects you from consequences of trying to help.
It depends what you mean by do. In the US, if you didn't notify police or call for help and just stood and watched while someone died, no jury would pass on convicting you. You're expected to behave reasonably. There need not be a written law. It's called common law.
Unless you are the parent, legal guardian, or someone with some other special legal duty to the child where this might be criminal neglect, yes, this is legal in, AFAIK, every US legal jurisdiction — there is no general legal duty to render aid.
- failure to render assistance ("unterlassene Hilfeleistung") up to one year in prison or a fine
- Exposed to a life-threatening situation ("Aussetzung", § 221 StGB) – If a person leaves someone helpless in a life-threatening situation, they could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison
Edit: Also note that murder would often give you 16 years in germany even though it is called live long.
Or, further, taking waste food to distribute to homeless is also against the rules. I used to work at a pizza hut express, we would have small personal pan pizzas in a ready to go area for like 15-20 min then throw them away if they were unsold. At the end of the day you'd have a trash can full of personal pan pizzas that were honestly fine to eat. You'd get fired for doing anything with them though.
This example does not illustrate what do you think it does.
The first is technically illegal. The second is not only within the law, it's required by the law. The speed limit isn't a limit and in most jurisdictions, the law requires you to reduce to a safe speed when the conditions require it. The speed limit is not the only law that dictates a legal speed.
The worst of all worlds is when a blind application of the rules results in bad behavior.
This situation seems to come up frequently, and I'm very often appalled at how readily otherwise normal people will "follow the rules" even when it's clearly and objectively bad, and there may even be existing pathways to seek exceptions.
> “Rule breaking appears to signal a team member’s commitment—a willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done,” wrote Wakeman, Yang, and Moore, all of whom are hockey fans.
Beyond "taking one for the team", in business, I didn't see the article make some key distinctions:
* What is the origin of the rules? (Originated in the interests of the organization, or came from outside, such as regulatory requirements.)
* How much does the organization care about the rules? (Some rules they just need to make a paper trail show of effort, and worst impact is a transactional cost-of-business fine, or an unflattering news cycle. Other rule violations could dethrone a CEO, or even send them to prison.)
* Would the organization actually love to get away with violating that rule, when the right individual comes along to execute it without getting caught? (Say, some very lucrative financial scheme that's disallowed by regulations.)
* How aligned is the manager with the organization wrt the rules in question? (Say, the company actually really doesn't want people to violate this one rule, but a manager gets bonuses and promotions when their reports have the advantage of breaking the rule.)
Depending on those answers, a manager's claim of "Doing what it takes to get the job done!" can sound very different.
Anecdotally I’ve heard from professional athletes that steroid use is actually liked by coaches because it gives them better control over the locker room. If someone becomes an issue in the locker room, guess who is getting randomly selected for testing without a heads up warning.
If I have to make a rule, it's to prevent the worst people from doing the worst things. If I have an opportunity to use my judgement and you are neither doing the worst thing or someone I consider the worst person, there's bound to be wiggle room.
> “We found that when people broke the rules, teams were less likely to win games. Rule breaking hurts teams, despite the fact that people in positions of power, or coaches, might look at the rule breakers as people who are facilitating a better team,” Wakeman said. “The big caveat is that this is correlational, not causational.”
This is a really surprising piece of commentary considering the finding in the immediately prior paragraph:
> Different situations had different effects on coaches’ assessments of penalized players. Their generally favorable views [were] absent during winning streaks.
So the thought process here is, first we observe that coaches like fouls when the team is losing, and don't like them when the team is winning. And then we say that the coaches must be misguided (unless there's some kind of bias in the sample, but come on, look at the data) because teams committing a lot of fouls are doing worse than teams that aren't.
Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy.
> Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy.
If you aren't absolutely sure those senior people know what they're doing, the this is a great way to end up with originalism.
Frankly, most corporations do not last long enough for this to be a problem. Governments are their own issue, but without the political inertia and staying power of a nation-state, your organization will likely be long dead (or at least irrelevant and dying) before interpretations will drift that far. Most of the time, for most engineers, at least some of the people who made these rules in the first place are still around -- which helps ensure that nothing drifts too too far.
Of course there are exceptions, probably even upwards of 20% of the time, but we're talking generalities.
I saw this put really, really well not too long ago:
> A lot of us got the message earlier in life that we had to wait for other's permission or encouragement to do things, when in fact, all you need is the ability to understand the situation and deal with the consequences
> It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Of course this can be used to justify all sorts of terrible things, but I've mainly seen it as pretty innocent in work environments when applying common sense.
As a manager the way I approach rules with my reports is I always tell them to understand the "chesterton's fence" behind any rule. I looks at rules like business logic in code, the "logic" was added there for a reason but there are often edge cases where that logic does not apply. I don't tell my reports to either break or follow any particular rule, but to understand why that rule is there before they decide if they need to either follow or break it.
And from personal experience i find that when you give people that level of autonomy, they will almost always approach what I told them about rule breaking in good faith.
As a supervisor I didn’t resonate with this until I remembered in some jobs I have communicated the company attendance policy but didn’t enforce it unless someone was a poor performer. I trust adults to manage their own time until they give me a reason to believe otherwise.
For my part, I’d rather trust people’s judgment and intrinsic motivation than enforce the rules. Enforcement is annoying, tedious, and distracting to my mission. However once I decide their judgement can’t be trusted I use rules to extrinsically motivate them.
And while this works for you, labor and employment attorneys use your non-standard application of the rules as a way to win lawsuits when brought against the company. Another way we end up with annoying, tedious, and distracting compliance (U.S. based take here).
What has really come with experience and what has made me a great software engineer is knowing when rules matter, when to bend where to make things move more quickly.
Being mission focused can help in this regard. Knowing what you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it can guide you when to break the rules. This requires you to understand the business/organization and how the organization works. If a rule was set up to protect the company from breaking the law, you do not break those rules (unless you work in finance). If a rule was set up because someone with bad judgment did something dumb in the past which caused a snafu, make sure you aren’t being dumb.
If you aren’t sure if you are being dumb or not, you are probably dumb. If you are sure you are not dumb, you are probably dumb. If you think you may not be dumb, you may in fact not be dumb.
Every job I have worked, there's the rules, and the actual rules.
The rules are what is written down, the actual rules is what is enforced.
If the company wants you out or considers you low value/high maintenance, they use the rules.
If the company likes you, they use the actual rules.
If you are on the promotion track, they use the actual rules.
Also, it turns out the actual rules actually have serious revisions as you go up the corporate ladder - things that would get you fired might not get your boss fired, and definitely wont get the CFO fired.
The key is understanding the purpose of the rules, its pros and cons, and recognizing the impact of your behavior, both its benefits and harm, considering the feelings of others at the same time. That's essential and most challenging part - the part that requires wisdom.
"We found that when people broke the rules, teams were less likely to win games."
This seems like a prima facie bad conclusion to their hockey study, considering that the Panthers won the cup while being effectively tied for the lead in penalty minutes, with #3 not being particularly close. Yes there's a weak correlation between penalties and losing, but considering that the absolute best teams usually have a high rat index, there's a big lost opportunity to go into the rat factor in hockey and how it translates to the corporate world!
167 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadI've never seen a double minor for roughing. 2 minute minor or 5 minute major.
4 minute double minor is typically when someone is high sticked and they're bleeding because of it.
So yeah, give a co-worker a hand to the face and if the manager catches it you're sitting out of the sprint planning meeting for either 2 or 5 minutes depending.
Going to be a lot of sore faces when this rule comes into effect.
I've seen a double minor for roughing when both players involved get the roughing minor but one player gets the double for instigating
Second one in a game is a game misconduct.
I'm genuinely curious if you've participated in collegiate above sports - or at maybe even High School level. I would be very surprised if someone who played or participated seriously in sports said they didn't take away lessons about leadership and decision making.
That's a new one for me today.
There are, though, lots of penalties in hockey that are about not hurting or maiming (or even killing) people, and those sorts of penalties are very much not rewarded or encouraged by coaches or players.
For example while a hockey game is a 'game' what about a person making a bet on that game that now loses a bet because of the penalty actions? Or a team loses that would have won because of said penalty and does not go to the world championship. So yea, saying there is no consequences is like rejecting the premise of causality as the game doesn't live in a closed system.
What if they lost the bet because they missed a goal because they slipped on the ice? What if they missed the goal because they blocked it? Taking a strategic penalty isn't _cheating_, it's acting within the rules of the game. The rules are _if_ you take such an action, _then_ the following consequence occurs.
It's sort of dependent on the game and the penalty, though, what the norms are. In soccer, basketball, hockey and football, strategic fouls/penalties happen all the time to prevent scoring opportunities -- holding, etc. That's not considered cheating, it's just part of the game, you trade a sure goal for a penalty.
There _are_ some actions that are considered cheating though -- think inflategate in the NFL, or stealing signs with cameras in baseball. Stuff that isn't generally caught and penalized in the game -- that's the kind of thing that most players won't do, even at the top level.
Then there are "dumb" penalties, and worse -- things that aren't penalties at all, that break "unwritten rules", and there's a whole bunch of them, like showboating, dirty shots, etc, and those won't get you the support of the team.
And then there are you, know, team rules -- if you're out there not listening to the coach, you'll absolutely get benched.
Same supervisor when caught breaking rules: Rogue employee. Nothing to do with me. Will fire them.
Looking at uber, any number of social media companies, etc., having some good lobbyists works wonders.
"You should understand the reason why the rule exists, so that you can decide when to follow it" -- yeah, then why is the reason not explained in the book containing the rules, including an explicit note that if the situation does not match the example, you are allowed to ignore the rule?
The "point" where this fails, of course, is where the "cost" call above is such that the supervisor can't agree.
“They didn’t break the rule! They engaged in the rules with purpose unlike those rule followers.”
Though I’m not advocating your approach is incorrect.
It is called malicious compliance for a reason.
Making people think about the rules? That is fine and good. Setting them to be broken, though? That just sounds broken.
On one extreme you have crap like the gig economy where workers have all of the responsibility and none of the control.
On the other extreme you have perverse workplaces where there would otherwise be no individual responsibility for work if people were not taking on that responsibility by working outside the rules.
I do think that having the system and the rules support the way the organization actually runs in reality is better than even a good implementation of systematic rule breaking.
For those that don't know, you're generally either a commissioned officer (with ranks from 0-1 and up) or enlisted (E-1 to E-9). Some branches have warrant officers too but let's ignore that.
So if you join as an enlisted you start off as a private in the Army (it's called something else in different branches). By the time you finish bootcamp you're an E-2 private, possibly an E-3 (Private First Class). If you're not an E-3 it's automatic promotion after ~6 months assumpting you don't have any red flags AFAIK.
By the time you make it to E-4 (Corporal in the Army) you kinda know how things work BUT you're also in the last rank before you're in a leadership position. The next position (E-5, Sergeant in the Army) is a noncomissioned officer ("NCO"). Some people want to avoid that so they kinda hang around E-4 far longer than they should and they build up a body of knowledge on how to get things done. Or they may have been a higher rank and get busted down from an Article 15 (or NJP or whatever the specific branch calls it).
Requisitions can be a huge issue in the military, evne for simple things like office supplies. So you may find that E-4s can "acquire" needed supplies from other units. NCOs, Staff NCOs and command tend to be aware of it but will ignore it because it kinda needs to happen. And those E-4s are called the "E4 Mafia".
This, I believe, is the kind of "rule breaker" this post is referring to.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEgh-w4FIFc
One thing I think would've been helpful for the article to address are operational and or program leaders that strive to get things done, respect their team's time, and want to be a good steward of resources. These leaders may ask probing "why" questions trying to do what's arguably common sense.
Cutting through red tape can be seen by others as rule breaking, but often it's just asking the questions others haven't and trying to do something in a new, hopefully better way. That means taking a risk that something could go wrong and that's received in different ways by people.
The exceptions are usually lawyers who discovered that they despise lawyering.
- emotional support animals - take a penny, leave a penny - ‘discretion’ and speed limits - qualified immunity
Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital.
Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool.
There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.
In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue
In the case of a child in a pool, the difference is a matter of degree. What if I am terrified of water myself? Does that justify my inaction? What if I just "froze", which is common in stressful situations. Does anything justify not doing something?
For example, how fast can I drive to get to a telephone if I don't carry one or otherwise cannot use it?
It's not anything nefarious like that. US citizens and US law enforcement tend to have an adversarial relationship, unfortunately. Finns generally do not. That law is an expression of expectation for behavior in a civilized society, not an opportunity for prosecutorial promotion, as it might be in the US. One must take reasonable steps to save a drowning child, including calling police. In practice, only the most egregiously callous psychopathic misbehavior is punished. Honestly, who doesn't think that a person shouldn't be in jail who would prefer to film and giggle while a child was drowning? A person like that needs a timeout at least.
The difference is that jail in the US is not "timeout". Prisoners may be required to work against their will, which is the carve out in the fourteenth amendment which abolished slavery. People openly joke about sexual assault in prison with derogatory comments like "don't drop the soap". All in all, I think the bar should be higher to send someone to prison in the US. We already have too many people in prison and, in my opinion, many of them are wrongly in prison.
The difference is that German law is more systematic and includes a general duty to rescue, but this doesn't result in excessive negligence charges, as awards are much smaller.
Obviously not... If you have no means to communicate you are not required to communicate. I don't know why you'd think otherwise.
> For example, how fast can I drive to get to a telephone if I don't carry one or otherwise cannot use it?
This would obviously depend on circumstances and how safe you're able to drive without causing more incidents.
This is also why we have courts, and judges, and juries. They look at the totality of circumstances and arrive at judgement.
Very much depends on country: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue
There's video from a few years back that shows very American cops standing outside a burning house at night, knowing there was a young child still in it. A passing pizza delivery dude[1] rescued the 6-year old, handed her to cop, and ended up requiring hospitalization. In the online discussion, everyone called the rescuer a hero, but I don't recall seeing a single condemnation of the cops (a "first-responder") who didn't enter the burning house.
edit: 1. the hero's name is Nick Bostic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBlE52qKKuw
It basically comes down to positive and negative rights. Someone is at fault if they harm you, but nobody is required to help you, even the government.
Which is the my point. If cops don't have an obligation to save anyone from a fire, then why would random Joe get into trouble for similar inaction. GP was mistaken about the laws in America.
It would literally lead to the collapse of the justice system.
Seems very convenient, what am I paying taxes for then?
In my country you can't watch a kid drowning in a pool* but you are not obligated to help anyone in a burning house, since that would put you in danger too. I assume it is the same ~everywhere in the world, including the US.
* assume rescuing would be fairly safe, you are a good swimmer, you have lifeguard education, the weather is nice and the kid is small. AFAIK rescuing drowning people is dangerous as they can pull you down.
Example: After a missile attack on a Dnipro gas station in 2022, my wife and her team arrived to see the station burning and 3 people already confirmed dead, but the paramedics would not go inside (they actually weren't allowed to, due to the danger). Her team was military, however, so it was OK to go in and check for survivors.
It's the same why store clerks are explicitly banned from intervening with thefts or fights among unruly customers. When they get injured because they willfully entered a fight, they have zero claims to make (other than trying to sue a piss poor drug addict, which is pointless) - only a security guard is insured against that.
The law serves to stop people from damaging each other, not make them help each other.
Most of common law is based on the premise you dont owe anyone anything but to be left alone.
It does not mean that you should dive and bring him back. In fact, it is not recommended unless you know what you are doing as you may put yourself in danger and need rescuing yourself. But if there are other people around who can help and you don't alert them, or if you have a working phone and don't call whatever emergency number is appropriate, than that's illegal.
EDIT: It appears that it is not illegal do do nothing in most of the US. The law only protects you from consequences of trying to help.
Really? What would be the charge?
Then you're living in a fantasy world.
- failure to render assistance ("unterlassene Hilfeleistung") up to one year in prison or a fine
- Exposed to a life-threatening situation ("Aussetzung", § 221 StGB) – If a person leaves someone helpless in a life-threatening situation, they could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison
Edit: Also note that murder would often give you 16 years in germany even though it is called live long.
-aaronsw
Going 5mph UNDER in a neighborhood with kids playing around on the street is too fast.
The first is technically illegal. The second is not only within the law, it's required by the law. The speed limit isn't a limit and in most jurisdictions, the law requires you to reduce to a safe speed when the conditions require it. The speed limit is not the only law that dictates a legal speed.
This situation seems to come up frequently, and I'm very often appalled at how readily otherwise normal people will "follow the rules" even when it's clearly and objectively bad, and there may even be existing pathways to seek exceptions.
There are also “rule breakers” who can’t fathom being told what to do.
Both types of people are insufferable.
> Both types of people are insufferable.
He says, on "Hacker" News
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
GP is just talking about inefficient rules
Beyond "taking one for the team", in business, I didn't see the article make some key distinctions:
* What is the origin of the rules? (Originated in the interests of the organization, or came from outside, such as regulatory requirements.)
* How much does the organization care about the rules? (Some rules they just need to make a paper trail show of effort, and worst impact is a transactional cost-of-business fine, or an unflattering news cycle. Other rule violations could dethrone a CEO, or even send them to prison.)
* Would the organization actually love to get away with violating that rule, when the right individual comes along to execute it without getting caught? (Say, some very lucrative financial scheme that's disallowed by regulations.)
* How aligned is the manager with the organization wrt the rules in question? (Say, the company actually really doesn't want people to violate this one rule, but a manager gets bonuses and promotions when their reports have the advantage of breaking the rule.)
Depending on those answers, a manager's claim of "Doing what it takes to get the job done!" can sound very different.
90% of my best bosses just tanked the bad news when things went wrong but otherwise loved it when you do your best to work around the system.
This is a really surprising piece of commentary considering the finding in the immediately prior paragraph:
> Different situations had different effects on coaches’ assessments of penalized players. Their generally favorable views [were] absent during winning streaks.
So the thought process here is, first we observe that coaches like fouls when the team is losing, and don't like them when the team is winning. And then we say that the coaches must be misguided (unless there's some kind of bias in the sample, but come on, look at the data) because teams committing a lot of fouls are doing worse than teams that aren't.
If you aren't absolutely sure those senior people know what they're doing, the this is a great way to end up with originalism.
Of course there are exceptions, probably even upwards of 20% of the time, but we're talking generalities.
> A lot of us got the message earlier in life that we had to wait for other's permission or encouragement to do things, when in fact, all you need is the ability to understand the situation and deal with the consequences
> You never need permission to do a good job.
But of course, it takes the experience to understand the nuances of what a good job is in the domain at hand, in the organisation and society at hand.
If you don't mind, I will steal this one.
> Only ask for permission if you want to be told “no”
> It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Of course this can be used to justify all sorts of terrible things, but I've mainly seen it as pretty innocent in work environments when applying common sense.
And from personal experience i find that when you give people that level of autonomy, they will almost always approach what I told them about rule breaking in good faith.
For my part, I’d rather trust people’s judgment and intrinsic motivation than enforce the rules. Enforcement is annoying, tedious, and distracting to my mission. However once I decide their judgement can’t be trusted I use rules to extrinsically motivate them.
I prefer forgiveness over permission ...
If you aren’t sure if you are being dumb or not, you are probably dumb. If you are sure you are not dumb, you are probably dumb. If you think you may not be dumb, you may in fact not be dumb.
If the company wants you out or considers you low value/high maintenance, they use the rules. If the company likes you, they use the actual rules. If you are on the promotion track, they use the actual rules.
Also, it turns out the actual rules actually have serious revisions as you go up the corporate ladder - things that would get you fired might not get your boss fired, and definitely wont get the CFO fired.
This seems like a prima facie bad conclusion to their hockey study, considering that the Panthers won the cup while being effectively tied for the lead in penalty minutes, with #3 not being particularly close. Yes there's a weak correlation between penalties and losing, but considering that the absolute best teams usually have a high rat index, there's a big lost opportunity to go into the rat factor in hockey and how it translates to the corporate world!
Supervisors will care if their own unofficial rules are broken.
If you have a supervisor, pay attention to their own personal set of rules more than the org rules.