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Comment by semiquaver | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

How about some sort of pedestrian sky bridge? No vehicles but also no carried skateboards for fear of dropping it.

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.

> because you are allowed to have bike parts in the wilderness.

I would love for someone to try disassembling less of the bike and still getting ticketed, just to see how that line ends up getting drawn. Is a bike without a seat still a bike? What about a bike with no tires? Does 50% of the bike need to be "contiguous" to be considered a bike? If it can be ridden? What if there are no pedals? Is a unicycle considered a bike?

A unicycle is definitionally not a bicycle, but any rule for bikes in this hypothetical would surely also apply to unicycles.

There should be a question then, "4 people carry a small car into the park"

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.

Does touching water or snow count as ground contact?

Yes, any liquid or solid works to maintain contact. Gas eliminates contact. Otherwise you could say shoes prevent contact!

Just like "contactless" payment cards, which for some reason involves the word "tap" as well, even though tapping is the act of making brief contact, and is not required for the communication to succeed, and that successful communication could be referred to as making contact, but I digress.

Things don't even actually touch each other though. At no point does an atom of my stuff make contact with an atom of your stuff, right? things can be uncomfortably close to each other but the Van der Waals forces mean it'll never actually touch. to be pedantic.

Commercial airlines need permission from the country they are flying over. That would fit into the “ignore your local jurisdiction” caveat

International agreement says that objects at the altitude if the ISS are not counted in the park, that’s not local jurisdiction

But commercial airlines do not need permission to “trespass” over my property when they fly over it - because my property is not considered to extent infinitely into the sky (in the same way that, under any reasonable definition, a park isn’t). Countries are different because we have considered it and explicitly defined airspace boundaries.

The instructions say to ignore all other rules/laws besides "no vehicles in the park" because the jurisdiction is unknown. International agreement doesn't seem like it should break through this barrier, although I understand why others may disagree.

The notion of permissions afforded by "airspace rights," even those internationally agreed, therefore cannot be used when deciding how to answer the questions in this game. Even if we could lean on that here, airspace rights actually were infinite for a very long time -- there's even a Latin phrase saying "up to Heaven and down to Hell" -- until modern air travel began.

Instead of rights/laws, we must focus only on what it means to be "in the park" by common use of the phrase. At some point you're above it rather than in it, perhaps. It may happen to be the case that people do most often think of this altitude threshold roughly equivalent to modern airspace rights, but personally I'm not so sure.

Ah I forgot about commercial airline, that was another no for me.

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.

And posing. In some areas it’s mostly about posing.

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.

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