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Comment by resolutebat | Hacker News Reader

I fully agreed with the GP for the same reasons: in my book everything except the Civic was OK, because that matches the intent of the sign.

In both law and real life, there is a common understanding (to use your term) that rules may be violated for the greater good. Does driving an ambulance into the park violate the letter of the rule? Yes, but it's still OK because we give emergency vehicles wide leeway to break rules so they can save lives. Judaism even encodes this in a general principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh

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The game was pretty clear that the question was not if it "should be allowed to violate the rule", but if it violates the rule in the first place.

Does something violate the rule if it’s allowed based on common sense? I don’t think so.

Lots of people are in jail or fired after following that logic.

And some people who didn’t follow that logic allowed millions of people to be killed.

This all ain’t easy.

Obviously, it does. The rule says "No vehicles in the park" and tells you specifically not to moralize , justify, or apply local laws.

It does not tell me not to moralize. It just tells me to not take any other rules into account that might exist, i.e. to not construct a legalistic argument.

But I don’t need to to allow ambulances. I think this is the core of what many engineers fundamentally don’t get about rules and laws in society?

The framing of the rules clearly places this rule firmly in the real world, in a real park.

Depends on the definition of "common sense".

I've heard it said that common sense is just what naive people assume is obvious.

I'm not sure about that but I do know that people often disagree on what is and isn't common sense.

I guess this is why English Common Law works. We use precedence to argue about how the words of the law should be interpreted and at least try to flush out ambiguity.

> In both law and real life, there is a common understanding (to use your term) that rules may be violated for the greater good. Does driving an ambulance into the park violate the letter of the rule?

The instructions specifically say not to apply this kind of logic.

Well my view was that the answer is yes the ambulance violates the rule, but violating the rule is morally fine there. But still pedantically yes the ambulance does violate the no vehicles rule.

Yes, the instructions say to not moralize, justify, or apply local laws. Strictly enforce the stated rule.

It's amazing how many people can't follow the instructions, without realising their proving the creators point. Even while arguing the creator is wrong!

> matches the intent of the sign

GGP made up the sign. The instructions describe a rule, not a sign.

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