Comment by l0b0
3 years ago
Same - I used the simple "rule" that basically everything that's in the park and used to carry people or goods is a "vehicle" at least by some people's standard. But you can fly a plane across the globe without going through 15 separate immigration rituals, so for most practical purposes (obviously excluding things like no-fly zones or bomber planes) the plane is not "in" any of the areas it passes over.
> But you can fly a plane across the globe without going through 15 separate immigration rituals, so for most practical purposes (obviously excluding things like no-fly zones or bomber planes) the plane is not "in" any of the areas it passes over.
But you were specifically instructed to not use any laws local to your jurisdiction, and that's why this can happen. The 15 countries it flew over are members of the ICAO, which delegated some of their sovereignty to the common good of easy air travel. It could have easily worked out some other way; fly over our country without stopping for immigration, and we blow up your plane. (You can see this in action if you fly your plane from Canada to do a low approach over the White House. You probably won't be home for dinner.) Similarly, in the US, the FAA decides who can fly over your property and how low. These are not universal constraints on existence, just actual laws that people wrote down because nobody could agree on the details. I'd venture a guess that if you asked the average property owner if airplanes could fly over their property and stare at them in their hot tubs, they'd say "no". However, the law simply doesn't agree with them, and a satellite is photographing your underwear as we speak!
> specifically instructed to not use any laws local to your jurisdiction,
To me, that doesn't change the answers much. You still have to have some definition of vehicle that inevitably assumes some context.
That to me means any human-propelled thing smaller than say a motorbike is not a vehicle.
So I only said 'is indisputably a vehicle' to cars and similar (even if was an ambulance or police car)
But it's not really a local thing; I'd be shocked if there was a park which meaningfully controlled it's airspace. Practically the bounds of a park only go so high.
That's how you see it, but not how most people see it. The "corner crossing" lawsuit got a LOT of coverage on Hacker News. Landowners claimed that merely floating over their property was trespassing. The courts disagreed.
Trust me, if there weren't any laws, people would be shooting down airplanes above their farms, or at the very least, writing a lot of angry letters to the FAA. The laws that we have right now allowing the freedom of air travel were hard-won and unpopular among those affected.
Therefore, the park in this exercise would mostly like try and shoot down the International Space Station, or else risk the reputation of not being strict against surfers carrying surfboards. It's exactly the same thing.
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I mean, while it's not technically just the park, I'm sure there are several parks on US Military bases where the airspace is restricted. Also, we can be the change we wish to see in the world: any park can be a park with a controlled airspace if you bring enough surface-to-air missiles into the park.
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You can fly a plane across the globe but the plane's flight path must be approved by each of the 15 countries before it is allowed in their airspace.
The countries often ask for passenger lists and manifests before they allow your plane to do so and have, in the past forced planes to land to get to passengers or suspected passengers on the plane they have an interest in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
countries yes - because countries have airspaces. Parks typically do not - anymore than people flying over my house are not tresspassing.
If you live in the U.S., people flying very low over your house probably are trespassing, you have air rights. (True in other countries too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights Before commercial flight was common, air rights used to extend into space. Now they’re limited, but you have at least a few hundred feet.
Parks do have airspaces, obviously and literally, and more to the point, in the U.S. there’s existing legislation defining the altitudes that are considered “in” and out of the park.
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Funnily enough, by your wide standard, any footwear would also be considered a vehicle.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vehicle
Other definitions include an agent of transmission (e.g. for and infection) and a medium though which something is displayed (dance is the vehicle for my creativity). Would have been interesting to see the different definitions exploited vs more strained classification of shoes or skates or whatnot as vehicles.
Oh hahaha! This one didn’t occur to me, but ‘no vehicles in the park’ can literally be translated to mean no people in the park. I’m a vehicle for my musical ideas. They are vehicles for their heart & lungs. People are vehicles of cold viruses.
That would depend on your definition of "carry." I personally wouldn't say that shoes "carry" people any more than floors do (which is to say, they don't).
By the same logic, wouldn't rollerblades also not carry people (and by extension, not be vehicles)?
Rollerblades, skis, snowboards, skateboards, scooters, bikes.
IMO the definition of a vehicle comes down to how wieldy, how large, and how powerful the device is - for instance car is obviously a vehicle as it's very powerful, has a large turning radius, and large area. The interesting thing about this is that there's an argument that scooters are not vehicles but skateboards are - scooters are far easier to control (i.e. more wieldy) whereas skateboards have a tendency to launch the user in one direction and the skateboard in the other, which makes it rather unwieldy.
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A more obvious example is a pregnant woman, or a woman holding a baby. Both can reasonably be called “carrying a human”.
We need to go deeper!
I would say those two things are very different. The ground (floors are inside) is the cooperating object upon which leading objects carry.
The shoes carried the person on the ground, the car carried the person on the ground, the horse carried the person on the ground, etc;
An interesting dilemma does occur if we are walking barefoot: our feet carry us but are part of our whole, so we cannot reasonably consider them or ourselves a vehicle. But in a general day-to-day sense we would say they carry us.
It is very interesting what you brought up because I think it shows some people consider their outfit as an extension of themselves. Then again, many people also do for their car :)
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Just to pick the nit, what about stilts? Are they shoes or vehicles?
Even for no-fly zones, we don't say 'in' the place. We say in the zone. We're over the place, but in the zone.
Is an airplane in your park if you put a roof over it? Is an airplane in your house?
The plane question stated the plane was `over` the park which implies it is not in the park. If the question instead said `through` the park, the answer would differ.
The question intentionally left out the altitude of the vehicle in order to trick us into thinking it’s a harder question to answer than it really is. I agree that ‘over’ tends to somewhat imply out, and ‘through’ tends to imply in, and would indeed change the distribution of answers.
In at least some countries (such as the U.S., and I would speculate practically all countries in the age of commercial flight and private drones, but I don’t know that for a fact) there are laws that define whether flying “over” a public park means in our out, and the park’s bounding volume is defined with a specific altitude ceiling. (It may be different depending on the type of aircraft, e.g., civilian drone vs emergency helicopter vs commercial airliner, etc.)
The author’s trick worked. People are arguing over whether a hypothetical airplane is in the hypothetical park without knowing the altitude or location, rather than pointing at the fact that he question is intentionally under-specified and the right answer depends on important details that were left out.
What if I fly a helicopter 10 feet off the ground, in the area of the park. Is that 'over' or 'through'?
Given that a helicopter at that speed is a clear hazard to anyone below it and will blow a person below it off their feet, and could easily be pushed around or into the ground at any time (sudden gusts of winds do happen, although I have no real experience with helicopters so I may be wrong on some specifics), that is through.
"the park" includes not only the ground, but also a certain area above the ground - otherwise someone riding a bike through the park wouldn't be in the park (as they are not touching the ground) but their bike would be. That would be absurd.
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In the U.S., by FAA law, flying a helicopter 10 feet off the ground in a public park is both over the ground and through (or “in”) the park. There’s no either-or.
Depends on how you word the question. If you say the helicopter is flying 10 feet over the park, by the rules of this game it's objectively not a violation. If you say it's 10 feet above the ground inside the park, objectively a violation.
Through, no question. If someone in the park is able to interact with it, you're in it.
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Humans carry all kinds of goods and often carry people. Even if we limit "goods" to exclude our personal effects, someone carrying takeout across a park—especially for someone else—could be considered a vehicle by that definition.
Additionally strollers, wagons, and other baby or child conveyances would also qualify.
So that includes wheelchair?
Yep. Obviously this is a thought experiment, and the site did tell users to take the problem as stated very literally. So I basically went with two simple rules:
- Would anyone call it a vehicle?
- Is it in the park?
So that includes wheelchair? Would anyone call it a vehicle?
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Backpack? Dog? Dog with a backpack? Horse? Riding a horse?
I say none are vehicles but I could see how one might.
Let's say that in your opinion: (a) it's a vehicle, (b) it's in the park, (c) but the park authority doesn't have jurisdiction over the activity.
Is the correct resolution to deny (b)?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what "in the park" represents within the analogy.