Comment by semiquaver
3 years ago
Given that the whole exercise was about meticulous line drawing I think this bit of nitpicking is entirely appropriate. Clearly “is a vehicle” and “is in the park” were the two major axes that each question needed to be plotted on.
Interestingly, some people added others that weren't explicit in the rule. For example, the person riding a skateboard was considered a violation by roughly twice as many people as the person carrying one, despite both being identical on the "is a vehicle" and "in the park" axes. I suppose unless someone's definition of vehicle depends on it being in use.
Despite the instructions explicitly saying not to I suspect many people (like me) could not help but “look through” the stated rule to infer its intent, especially for the more unusual examples. It’s quite a lot harder to imagine a real world rule that prohibits a carried skateboard vs one being used, even if both situations represent the same 2-vector in the rule’s truth table. It’s hard to turn off the part of your brain that applies past experiences to every new situation.
It’s funny, I first thought the game was going to be a commentary on the “no mechanical transport in the wilderness” rule that he mentioned at the end. You cannot have a bicycle in the wilderness. You can’t push it or carry it. I guess this simplifies enforcement. If someone is camped with a bike, they can be ticketed.
I have friends that do long bike camping trips, and they sometimes want to pass through areas of wilderness on their trips. What do they do? They take apart the bike and pack it, because you are allowed to have bike parts in the wilderness.
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How about some sort of pedestrian sky bridge? No vehicles but also no carried skateboards for fear of dropping it.
If I stab someone in the eye with a pencil, then the pencil was clearly a weapon. However, I'm not violating a "no weapons" policy simply by carrying a pencil.
True, but a pencil's primary use is non-weapon. A skateboard is only used for skating.
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Yeah applying a very loose, or perhaps pedantic, definition of vehicle (it doesn't specify size, for example) combined with a reasonable understanding of "in" ie including air space in proportion to the size of a regular park led me to say most things were in violation of the rule. Those were the only relevant factors, all the other info was fluff.
I considered ISS to be outside it, and that was pretty much it. My views weren't shared with too many, about 11%.
You draw the line between ISS and commercial airplane? That seems like an odd place for it. I would think the limit of "in" would be at the prevailing treeline or maybe requires ground contact (I haven't fully decided yet), and beyond that it's "above" rather then "in."
The problem with treeline (or any similar threshold) is that even having that defined doesn't solve for the fact that we don't know the altitude of the quadcopter. That's why I'm leaning more toward ground contact.
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There should be a question then, "4 people carry a small car into the park"
It is funny that you say so because for me the primary axis was about whether the rule was violated or not.
This is why some people (including myself) chose that an ambulance driven into a park wouldn't be a violation of the rule.
But it is a violation. I guess from my perspective it was a justified violation of the rule, but it was still a violation
Depends on the meaning of rule and violation I guess. I interpreted it as a sign posted at the entrance of the park. I interpreted violation as something that would be stopped by the park rangers.
Their point is that "was the rule violated" is a combination of "is a vehicle" and "in the park", hence both axes are relevant factors. If pushed, I would concede that the ISS is a vehicle, but I would consider the bounds of the park to end far lower than where the ISS orbits, so despite being "a vehicle" it doesn't violate the rule because I don't consider it "in the park". "Is it in the park" isn't relevant for most of the questions, but it's still an important part of the premise.