I'm a "Rule-Follower". Am I a champ or a chump?
I'm a "Rule-Follower". Am I a champ or a chump?
I wait for the WALK sign, I keep it to no more than 5 mph over the speed limit, I use my blinkers, I never jump the line, I keep to the watering schedule, pass the SMOG test every other year, file accurate tax returns...
Champ...or Chump?
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I follow the rules until it's irrational to follow them. Society needs a common framework for cohesion, but also we need intelligent people not robots.
But who decides what is irrational? Seems like a common sense philosophy, maybe one most of us live by… but so do some of the reckless rule-breakers we love to hate. Because their irrational rule may be essential to our safety.
Maybe the metarule should be "assume an established rule makes sense until proven otherwise". I feel like it's hard to go wrong with that in a remotely fair society.
Yeah that’s a good rule of thumb.
You're right, so we should make rules about what is irrational. But what if the people making the rules are irrational? Or corrupt? Then we should rely on the rationality of the person to make the right call in the moment, weighing rules against rationality. But what if.. Ad infinitum.
It's one of those things, we need to rely on both, and not entirely on one or the other.
Do you have an example? I'm struggling to understand and appreciate this
Blanket rules, like:
Slow speeds around schools. Great during the day, pointless at 3am. Same with waiting for the green light. If there's a bunch of dudes coming up to the car and I'm the only one around, I'll be gapping it through the red light.
Hmm another traffic example. Motorbikes don't trigger the light sensors. Sometimes you have to run the red because otherwise you will be there until a car shows up.
I can't think of the other side where an irrational rule is also essential for safety, it's easier to think of rules that make you unsafe in certain circumstances.
People that "drive better intoxicated". No, I bet you don't, it just maybe seems that way from your (intoxicated) perspective. This is pretty common for weed and has been heard for alcohol.
If they actually did drive better that way I'd agree that they should always get bombed before they drive, and that the law is stupid.
Mask mandates would be a good one. The American political right largely deemed those to be irrational, but they had strong support among other portions of the country.
I agree in theory. But then I see people breaking the rules when it doesn't "make sense" (as far as they could see) and then nearly fucking things up. My rule is "if I break this rule and it turns out that I didn't actually have all the important info such that I really should have followed the rule... Well, that'll be on me. So how confident am I that I really do have all the relevant info?"