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Comment by smabie | Hacker News Reader

What is good, hard, honest work, exactly? I certainly work hard, but is it honest? I'm not sure. I certainly don't intentionally go around breaking all the rules I can, but I do try and use my brain to figure out every possible loophole and advantage I can. I don't think exploiting loopholes is dishonest, but I'm sure some would disagree.

For example, when playing board or card games, I always try and discover some dominant, completely broken strategy that is definitely not in the "spirit" of the game. Some people have gotten very angry at me because of this, but isn't this how games are supposed to be played? The same applies to life, I think.

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>For example, when playing board or card games, I always try and discover some dominant, completely broken strategy that is definitely not in the "spirit" of the game. (...) isn't this how games are supposed to be played?

IMHO, there are 2 necessary criterion on whether or not a game should be played in a certain manner:

1. Is it fun? 2. Will people continue to play with me if play this way?

The first is obvious, don't do things that aren't fun. The second has to do with exhausting the people who might want to play with you - after all, if no one plays with you it's unlikely you'll be able to keep playing the game.

I don't imagine these criterion are complete, however. A dog might want to "play" by chasing a cat, and the cat might continue to "play" if it fears for its life. This is not a thing I allow. There needs to be some criterion for consent, or for the game being "good" for all parties involved.

In the case of card games, I've been very turned off of them before because of broken strategies. I'm not in principle against discovering new strategies that happen to be much stronger than intended ones, but if the game that comes out of that discovery is no longer fun, then I have no incentive to learn how to play the game.

These two criteria are not sufficient when winning the games offer life-changing sums of money and prestige.

A star NFL quarterback with a $100 million contract may well still play the game even if it's unfun and if people don't want to play with them.

More generally, competitive games quite often degenerate into a "whatever is within the rules" mindset, and that's perfectly fine.

Since this is top of mind right now, and since perhaps someone out there may have not read it yet, it's worth linking to David Sirlin's "Playing To Win" - http://www.sirlin.net/ptw - the book is about competitive fighting arcade games like Street Fighter but it covers many other games and the philosophy is enthralling.

Maybe this is a necessary evil in a day and age when a society is not all on the same page with respect to morals and values. It sure would be nice to have everyone proactively choose to act in a way that matches the "spirit" of the law or rules, and maybe this did used to happen in more homogeneous/authoritarian societies? But without that synchronization it seems to fall to the legislative bodies to codify as much as possible of the various moral behavior which is very hard in practice and easy to exploit.

This is hard to discuss with precision because there is a lot of subjective judgment involved. Cutting lines is not against the law, so should you do it to avoid wasting time waiting? Occasionally a rightmost lane is in practice used mostly for right turns, but marked as both straight and turn. Majority of people seem to understand it's a jerk move to block that lane for the turning traffic, so it's usually empty, but every now and then some greedy SOB takes it to overtake the herd. Personally I find this kind of thing despicable and do what I can to prevent it.

I'm sure there is some evolutionary biology connection to fairness and why we behave/feel this way.

Every society that I can think of that had that kind of homogeneity did it by marginalizing, often violently, the crap out of anyone who stepped out of line. No thank you.

> It sure would be nice to have everyone proactively choose to act in a way that matches the "spirit" of the law or rules, and maybe this did used to happen in more homogeneous/authoritarian societies? But without that synchronization it seems to fall to the legislative bodies to codify as much as possible of the various moral behavior which is very hard in practice and easy to exploit.

I suggest you read into the history of common law as it pertains to the history of legal practice in the UK and many of its former colonies. It is still strong today in both the US and the UK, though I am not familiar with other commonwealth nations.

In a common law legal system, laws are discovered through trial rather than ordained by legislation. Precedent is built through case law.

This is a system that is all about the "spirit" of the law.

> a way that matches the "spirit" of the law or rules,

Rather, I'd say the spirit of some of the laws and rules.

Most laws and rules are worthy, in that if everyone respects them, everyone is better off. They are positive sum. Those need to be followed.

But arbitrary, explicitly defined games might be gamed at the same time.

Games should be played so everyone playing has fun. These angry people were right and you were fooling yourself. Think of it as a short-term pleasure instead of long-time winning friends.

This seems pretty hard, or at least tedious. Much bigger time investment than a normal 9-5.

"He began to spend every waking minute in front of a television, watching infomercials and game shows, in hopes of identifying some kind of opportunity to get rich quick."

> I don't think exploiting loopholes is dishonest

What is "dishonest"? It's a word. That's all; just a word. The meaning it has is based solely on the context in which you use it. There is not an ontological reality for the meanings of words. It means what you want it to mean.

We could argue what is and what is not dishonest. We could go back to the etymology of the word. We could see how it came to be. We could see how most people have used it. We could argue what meaning would be least surprising for most people. But in the end, when you utter the word "dishonest", you have a meaning in mind and, for you, the word has that meaning.

In fact, this is just the same as every other game you play. It's just a loophole. It's an advantage you can hold over others. You spoke. It is your meaning. I can misinterpret what you said, but it is forever my fault for not understanding your meaning. I can argue until the cows come home that I don't think it should mean what you want it to mean, but it's useless because the sentence you spoke is meaningless unless it has the meaning you intended it to have.

Most of your post is a tautology - I do not think it is "wrong" because I do not define "wrong" as being this. Discussion is not necessary.

> but I'm sure some would disagree

And this is where life gets interesting. "Some would disagree". Isn't that how games are supposed to be played? With others? Isn't the goal of a game to enhance everyone's well being, not just one "winner". Aren't the rules there to coax the maximum possible extraction of fun for all involved? Wouldn't be an extreme debasement of this concept if we abused the intent of the rules simply because we could?

You can do what you want, but don't be surprised if I have more fun than you even if I don't "win" ;-)

>There is not an ontological reality for the meanings of words. It means what you want it to mean.

Obviously there is a possible range of meaning for a word for a culture at any point in time, but there is in the end a limit to what the word dishonest can mean in our present context. This is why I do not expect to get served a cheddar and jalapeno omelet when I walk into a funeral home and order a dishonest.

What I was perhaps clumsily saying is that no matter what argument I make to say that I think exploiting loopholes is dishonest, there will be an argument based on a different definition of the word that will refute my argument. Any min-maxer worth their salt will surely use that approach and so no meaningful dialog is possible on that front.

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