It's not irrelevant just because of the phrasing. People judge rules based on intention, and even more so with the rules they are already familiar with.
> If it is both a vehicle and in the park, is justified?
> Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation?
reply
Given the introductory text, neither is relevant:
> 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).
My exact thought. Ambulances and police cars are vehicles. And they would violate the rules. But some rules sometimes can be violated under certain circumstances.
Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.
Also all the questions about verticality at least under my jurisprudence land is only owned vertically up to a certain extent after that is considered state property to be administered by authorities.
>>Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.
Well no, it specifically says it's a memorial - at that point it's a statue, like an art installation, especially if the tank is non functional(bonus question - what if it was never an actual tank in the first place, it's just some metal bent to look like a tank?). If the memorial was of a Napoleonic soldier on a horse, you wouldn't say it violates a "no weapons allowed" rule just because the statue is holding a sword.
I didn't get to the tank in question but also: Let's assume the city or whoever wrote the rule because it's their park, so they are usually allowed to break their own rules anyway. (Maybe I am missing the point of this example, but even in our parks with something of that rule the utilities have golf carts to grab the trash and no one objects to that rule...)
The instructions specifically tell you to ignore any of these "the rule exists but we are allowed to break it" situations. It's what trips people up with the questions about police cars and ambulances too - they also violate the rule. Whether they are allowed to or not is not the question.
> Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.
That completely depends on your definition of a vehicle. According to your definition an object that once met the conditions to be a vehicle will always be a vehicle. You can apply Theseus's ship to the WW2 tank replacing it's parts and then at what point does it seize to be a vehicle?
If your definition on vehicle depends on transporting humans than a wagon seizes to be a vehicle. If your definition depends on transporting objects in a self-propelled way than humans become vehicles.
> So yes, francesca's car being a vehicle and in the park is a violation.
I think you missed their joke :) the joke is that in europe (hence the Mediterranean) people often use "hazards on" as a justification for parking / stopping anywhere, especially where they aren't allowed to.
I liked this as an idea, and I agree with the point at the end that content moderation is quite difficult.
That said, I'm not sure the game proved the point it intended to, for me at least.
My answers agreed 89% with the majority, and more importantly, on the visualization showing proportions of people classifying various examples as "a vehicle in the park" had a clear cut off point, before which I hadn't classified anything as a violation, and after which, I had classified everything as a violation.
The suggestion is (I'm not saying this is proven, only suggested), to me at least, that if you gave people the instructions:
> No vehicles are allowed in the park. A wagon being pulled is not a vehicle, but a rowboat is.
A very high number would come to the exact same determination as me.
Just for context, I'm just talking about the game itself, I definitely agree that moderation is a very tricky issue full of grey areas, and we'd all find it very hard to agree fully on a set of guidelines and then agree on when they're being enforced correctly.
Try playing the game to win rather than playing it "straight". Or try finding the rules of the game or finding whether it's possible to win or lose, can you get 100% can you get 0%. What does winning mean?
In other words finding the game in the game can be a game.
Well, I would say that most of the questions are very well chosen to highlight the intricacies of moderation, as evidenced by the fact that the only question where over 90% agree that it definitely violates the rule is someone driving their personal car into the park. All of the others are below 65%, because for every one of them you could make an argument that they should be exempted:
- police car and ambulance: definitely reasonable exceptions (the only thing that surprised me is that slightly more people would allow the police car than the ambulance)
- memorial: you could argue that a static vehicle installed as a memorial does not count as a vehicle anymore.
- rowboats: if there is a lake in the park, and if there are rowboats on the lake, you would assume that it's allowed to use them?
> For me this clearly means police cars and ambulances violate the rule.
From a purely logical viewpoint (think; mathematics or programming, et cetera), that's absolutely true. In programming you'd have to do a properly coded `if/else if/else/finally` type situation or somesuch to allow the ambulance and/or police, otherwise the rule is violated by any vehicle that's not been explicitly allowed.
> (obviously in the real world, there would be terms and conditions, but it's an interesting way to talk to clients about definitions in their data)
Not necessarily, you can't apply terms and conditions to a sign. But original intent does matter, you can reason over why the shop owners put the sign there in the first place. Which is likely to allow their customers to park while making a purchase.
Or if it's a club and the club has a car park for patrons only but the club is closed for renovations, or only opens at the weekend. But the club car park is very near a supermarket you go to which only has paid car parking. Can a club member park at the club when the club is shut to only go to the shop?
Would it also matter if the club had paid membership or anyone could belong to it for free?
Not interesting even as a thought experiment. From context, "vehicle" is clearly inferred to mean "automobile" rather than literally "vehicle". All of the subsequent pedantry about vehicles then misses the point, because the common understanding is that you clearly meant automobiles. It is weird one can be so pedantic and yet fail to draw the obvious connection that the word is effectively substituted for a different word in context. Surely one could come up with a better example to use for your game.
If "vehicle" here clearly means "automobile" _to you_, then that just proves the point the game is trying to make because the results show that it does not clearly mean that to everyone.
In terms of the majority answer, there is a clean break between the three automobiles and everything else. This is what's known as "having common sense". It is this common sense that leads the majority to answer that a bicycle is not violating the rule. Is that because they believe, in their heart of hearts, that a bicycle is not a vehicle? Could it truly be that 55% of people don't know what a vehicle is? Or is it because they are capable of inferring from context that vehicle was an imprecise supertype and the rule clearly referred to subtype automobiles?
I think the most interesting finding from this is that some people experience their sense of what should be allowed so strongly that it blinds their sense of whether a particular action technically violates a particular rule.
To me a vehicle carries a human or goods on the ground and movement is generated via mechanical action, powered by either by a motor or a human being. Motorbike, car, cycle, rowboat. Pushing or pulling the object without a mechanism does not count as these are just extensions of 'pedestrian', buggy, wagon, skateboard, ice skates. If it does not carry a human it does not count. Toy car, drone. If it is not touching the park, it is not 'on the park'. Commercial airliner, ISS. A non functioning object that used to be a vehicle is now art or a monument, so long it has been approved to be in the park as such. Otherwise it is littering.
Emergency vehicles are exempt, like police or ambulance.
To me this shows how even a simple prompt can be complicated. Not necessarily in the context of content moderation, but in general.
I've been working as a software developer for a while now, and this feels a lot like when a customer says I want feature A and I have to ask 20 more questions to filter out edge-cases the customer hadn't thought of yet.
Interesting that less than half of people think a cycle is a vehicle. In the UK it is legally a vehicle and the rider has to obey all the rules that other vehicles have to obey, road signs, speed limits, red lights etc.
Conceptually very interesting and revealing, but I found it frustrating being forced to binarize the outcome without sufficient context (ill-posed). A lot of those questions have both valid yes and no answers, depending on the context.
I jumped at this because I I've been thinking about clarifying rules a lot. Actually, I have been thinking about clarifying beliefs but it's similar.
When someone tells you what they believe in they might think it is clear but a little digging will show how ambiguous any moral or religious proclamation is.
I have been trying hard to figure out a way to force people to be explicit about their beliefs. What I came up with is https://forgemybeliefs.etewiah.workers.dev/. Would love some feedback about how I can improve it.
What's with the "trial" ness of it? It's a bit weird. Since you're on Cloudflare you're fitting in their free plan, so why make it seem like a subscription thing that costs money when there's no facility for that? Also the overemphasis on having no account is weird.
I hit the page and started typing an answer into the box without reading any of the rest of the page. "THE BUNDLE YOU WERE HANDED" was rather presumptuous. It seems you could just ask those five questions as agree disagree from 1-5 like every other psychology test and not use any AI.
The game tries to make the case that the problem with the rule "no vehicles in the park" isn't underspecification, but I feel it misses some important dimensions when it does that. Specifically, it only looks at specifying the subject of the rule i.e. what constitutes a vehicle. It doesn't consider the intent behind the rule, or the balance of interests affected by the rule's application.
Replace the rule with its intent - the grass shouldn't be damaged - and its balance of interests - the grass's short-term wellbeing should take less precedence than a person's - and you get a claim that is pretty straightforward to evaluate.
Instead of defending blanket propositions, perhaps content moderation should defend predicates - does X harm property Y? - and weights - does X injure Z?
Is this variation still subject to ambiguity? I don't know - I think it's subject to bias, but it's pretty much unambiguous.
Ah, content moderation policy again. I guess I'll take my shot at mentioning the Something Awful forums. For specific background: you had to pay a one-time fee of $10 to register and bans were handed out early and often. It was capricious and the policy amounted to "if I think you're causing trouble, you're gone". Overuse of memes, whining, etc were all fair targets.
For people who hold free speech as a cherished principle, this is abhorrent. But it (and other forums following suit) encouraged a more resilient Internet, IMO. The Internet was an archipelago of forums. You had to sign up individually and each had their own culture. And there were just some places you just. didn't. go. Stormfront's trash stayed over there and everyone liked it that way.
Then skip ahead in time: we have Reddit's Big Tent free speech approach and now we have to see if a skateboard is a vehicle. Moderation is a thankless unpaid job and the support just isn't there. Sometimes people are dragging your community/site into the sewer except all you have are downvotes, which are a total joke. It's just feeding the trolls. Hey, it wasn't an explicit call to violence against specific people so you can say whatever you want!
Is a skateboard a vehicle? I dunno. But if it's a private park at private expense and all non-skateboarders have left because they felt uncomfortable being there, it doesn't really matter.
So, this is actually my wheelhouse. I did Philosophy of Language in grad school (multiple grad schools) focusing on ambiguity and implicature.
The interesting issue here is that we have a reversal of the function of language. Language is effectively a complicated form of pointing at things: what is a "bridge" we can point at bridges where we agree. Here, we're starting with the word and trying to point at all the things that word applies to, hence we're doing it backwards. We'll start fighting when we get to the corner cases because the rule of "bridge" isn't meant to be stretched to corner cases. This isn't an issue in life because the function of jargon is to cover corner cases. It's all well and good to that thing on your skin a "mole," but when you're in the doctors office, it's much easier for them to adjust the precision of their language between a "common nevus" and a "dysplastic nevus."
Here again, we're just pointing at things with language, but the resolution is turned up. The language should be serving the concepts, not the other way around. When language fails us -- when we don't have a word for what we're pointing at -- it's trivial to coin a new term or adopt a loan word from another language.
In a sense, here, the reason legalese exists is exactly because lawmakers want to adjust the resolution to prevent these types of problems. Otherwise they the same process will happen, but it will happen in the courts.
For me "vehicle" means "a singular thing designed and able to move people around under it's own power or via a powering mechanism that people generate themselves" and "in the park" means "touching the park": hence the memorial is not a vehicle because it no long able to move people around. However I see the sled and the surfboard as vehicles because they are designed to move people under the power of gravity/waves.
My definition, however, is fairly arbitrary and not actually significant except to the way I communicate. J.L. Austin, if I remember correctly, wanted to create a Descriptivist dictionary where they would literally just go around regions and countries asking people what they meant by words... unfortunately, he died very young and the project never happened.
Where I disagree most with the linguists I talk to is that I believe that the concept of "correctness" is instinctual to language, insofar is people care passionately about prescriptive rules. I just think that we can be descriptivists, and see language as a map where people are arguing about borders. That we believe these borders real, and are "correct" or "incorrect" in our tribe is important to the usefulness of the language and our survival, even if they are ultimately entirely arbitrary. Thus, I've always speculated that an instinctual "correctness" value would show up, and we very much see it everywhere -- like in this game -- and the concept basically has to be unlearned by most people when they really get into learning about language.
55 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 46.7 ms ] thread- What counts as "in the park"
- What counts as a "vehicle"
- If it is both a vehicle and in the park, is justified?
- Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation?
This is explicitly irrelevant, the game makes this clear.
> Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation? reply
Given the introductory text, neither is relevant:
> 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).
Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.
Also all the questions about verticality at least under my jurisprudence land is only owned vertically up to a certain extent after that is considered state property to be administered by authorities.
Well no, it specifically says it's a memorial - at that point it's a statue, like an art installation, especially if the tank is non functional(bonus question - what if it was never an actual tank in the first place, it's just some metal bent to look like a tank?). If the memorial was of a Napoleonic soldier on a horse, you wouldn't say it violates a "no weapons allowed" rule just because the statue is holding a sword.
If it's a real tank that just happens not to work any more then it's a vehicle even if it as a monument as well.
That completely depends on your definition of a vehicle. According to your definition an object that once met the conditions to be a vehicle will always be a vehicle. You can apply Theseus's ship to the WW2 tank replacing it's parts and then at what point does it seize to be a vehicle?
If your definition on vehicle depends on transporting humans than a wagon seizes to be a vehicle. If your definition depends on transporting objects in a self-propelled way than humans become vehicles.
Probably more relevant, such services usually get legal carve outs for purpose.
But the game specifically instructs the player to ignore any such consideration.
"Francesca drives her car into the park with hazards lights on"
Does this violate the rule?
It only asks two questions, strictly: is it a vehicle, and is it in the park.
So yes, francesca's car being a vehicle and in the park is a violation.
no, it asks if the rule is violated in each situation
I think you missed their joke :) the joke is that in europe (hence the Mediterranean) people often use "hazards on" as a justification for parking / stopping anywhere, especially where they aren't allowed to.
That said, I'm not sure the game proved the point it intended to, for me at least.
My answers agreed 89% with the majority, and more importantly, on the visualization showing proportions of people classifying various examples as "a vehicle in the park" had a clear cut off point, before which I hadn't classified anything as a violation, and after which, I had classified everything as a violation.
The suggestion is (I'm not saying this is proven, only suggested), to me at least, that if you gave people the instructions:
> No vehicles are allowed in the park. A wagon being pulled is not a vehicle, but a rowboat is.
A very high number would come to the exact same determination as me.
Just for context, I'm just talking about the game itself, I definitely agree that moderation is a very tricky issue full of grey areas, and we'd all find it very hard to agree fully on a set of guidelines and then agree on when they're being enforced correctly.
In other words finding the game in the game can be a game.
- police car and ambulance: definitely reasonable exceptions (the only thing that surprised me is that slightly more people would allow the police car than the ambulance)
- memorial: you could argue that a static vehicle installed as a memorial does not count as a vehicle anymore.
- rowboats: if there is a lake in the park, and if there are rowboats on the lake, you would assume that it's allowed to use them?
etc. etc.
For me this clearly means police cars and ambulances violate the rule. Maybe violating the rule is ok, but that doesn't mean they don't violate it.
From a purely logical viewpoint (think; mathematics or programming, et cetera), that's absolutely true. In programming you'd have to do a properly coded `if/else if/else/finally` type situation or somesuch to allow the ambulance and/or police, otherwise the rule is violated by any vehicle that's not been explicitly allowed.
- Am I a customer when I go into the shop?
- How about if I don't buy anything this time?
- When I receive a marketing email from the shop, based on my previous purchases, am I still a customer?
- How about 1 year later and I haven't bought anything, am I still a customer?
So when can I park there?
(obviously in the real world, there would be terms and conditions, but it's an interesting way to talk to clients about definitions in their data)
Maybe not if you have an appointment and will be there for an hour.
If you’re there for 15 minutes, open season.
Not necessarily, you can't apply terms and conditions to a sign. But original intent does matter, you can reason over why the shop owners put the sign there in the first place. Which is likely to allow their customers to park while making a purchase.
Would it also matter if the club had paid membership or anyone could belong to it for free?
Emergency vehicles are exempt, like police or ambulance.
I've been working as a software developer for a while now, and this feels a lot like when a customer says I want feature A and I have to ask 20 more questions to filter out edge-cases the customer hadn't thought of yet.
When someone tells you what they believe in they might think it is clear but a little digging will show how ambiguous any moral or religious proclamation is.
I have been trying hard to figure out a way to force people to be explicit about their beliefs. What I came up with is https://forgemybeliefs.etewiah.workers.dev/. Would love some feedback about how I can improve it.
I hit the page and started typing an answer into the box without reading any of the rest of the page. "THE BUNDLE YOU WERE HANDED" was rather presumptuous. It seems you could just ask those five questions as agree disagree from 1-5 like every other psychology test and not use any AI.
Replace the rule with its intent - the grass shouldn't be damaged - and its balance of interests - the grass's short-term wellbeing should take less precedence than a person's - and you get a claim that is pretty straightforward to evaluate.
Instead of defending blanket propositions, perhaps content moderation should defend predicates - does X harm property Y? - and weights - does X injure Z?
Is this variation still subject to ambiguity? I don't know - I think it's subject to bias, but it's pretty much unambiguous.
For people who hold free speech as a cherished principle, this is abhorrent. But it (and other forums following suit) encouraged a more resilient Internet, IMO. The Internet was an archipelago of forums. You had to sign up individually and each had their own culture. And there were just some places you just. didn't. go. Stormfront's trash stayed over there and everyone liked it that way.
Then skip ahead in time: we have Reddit's Big Tent free speech approach and now we have to see if a skateboard is a vehicle. Moderation is a thankless unpaid job and the support just isn't there. Sometimes people are dragging your community/site into the sewer except all you have are downvotes, which are a total joke. It's just feeding the trolls. Hey, it wasn't an explicit call to violence against specific people so you can say whatever you want!
Is a skateboard a vehicle? I dunno. But if it's a private park at private expense and all non-skateboarders have left because they felt uncomfortable being there, it doesn't really matter.
The interesting issue here is that we have a reversal of the function of language. Language is effectively a complicated form of pointing at things: what is a "bridge" we can point at bridges where we agree. Here, we're starting with the word and trying to point at all the things that word applies to, hence we're doing it backwards. We'll start fighting when we get to the corner cases because the rule of "bridge" isn't meant to be stretched to corner cases. This isn't an issue in life because the function of jargon is to cover corner cases. It's all well and good to that thing on your skin a "mole," but when you're in the doctors office, it's much easier for them to adjust the precision of their language between a "common nevus" and a "dysplastic nevus."
Here again, we're just pointing at things with language, but the resolution is turned up. The language should be serving the concepts, not the other way around. When language fails us -- when we don't have a word for what we're pointing at -- it's trivial to coin a new term or adopt a loan word from another language.
In a sense, here, the reason legalese exists is exactly because lawmakers want to adjust the resolution to prevent these types of problems. Otherwise they the same process will happen, but it will happen in the courts.
For me "vehicle" means "a singular thing designed and able to move people around under it's own power or via a powering mechanism that people generate themselves" and "in the park" means "touching the park": hence the memorial is not a vehicle because it no long able to move people around. However I see the sled and the surfboard as vehicles because they are designed to move people under the power of gravity/waves.
My definition, however, is fairly arbitrary and not actually significant except to the way I communicate. J.L. Austin, if I remember correctly, wanted to create a Descriptivist dictionary where they would literally just go around regions and countries asking people what they meant by words... unfortunately, he died very young and the project never happened.
Where I disagree most with the linguists I talk to is that I believe that the concept of "correctness" is instinctual to language, insofar is people care passionately about prescriptive rules. I just think that we can be descriptivists, and see language as a map where people are arguing about borders. That we believe these borders real, and are "correct" or "incorrect" in our tribe is important to the usefulness of the language and our survival, even if they are ultimately entirely arbitrary. Thus, I've always speculated that an instinctual "correctness" value would show up, and we very much see it everywhere -- like in this game -- and the concept basically has to be unlearned by most people when they really get into learning about language.