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June 26, 2005
Revisiting the rule of law
Geoff Arnold blogged in consternation about those of us who run red lights and stop signs when cycling. The comments ranged from, "We have laws about this and these folks should follow them," to, "Why in the world should I allow this law to dicate my behavior in situations to which it very obviously does not apply?" All of that can be debated, and was, in the context of cycling within or outside of the rules of the road.
Rob and I had an equivalent discussion at work the other day about standards and conformance in software, with the specific context being management frameworks. Agreements always seem to break on the equivalent of cyclists running red lights. The thing is, most of the cyclists doing that agree in principle with the laws they're breaking. Had they taken part in establishing the law, they'd probably have come to the same conclusions as the representatives who voted on the text.
In places outside the US, like France where I live, there's a fatalistic acceptance of the gulf between theory and reality. As a result when French officials came up with a plan to reduce the number of traffic accidents on French roads, they decided simply to more strictly enforce existing laws and begin a huge scare campaign. The results were dramatic reductions in the number of people dying and getting injured on the roads. So you can more effectively force application of the theory...
...but when there's an alternative, people will opt out. Even in areas of high population density, we've managed to make commuting with the car almost inevitable. A crackdown therefore breaks people, forcing them to behave according to the law. It won't work as well in situations of choice. Yet that's exactly where we want to arrive at protocols, agreements on how we'll operate, that must be respected voluntarily.
Jon Bosak may say we can get to such agreements following Robert's rules of order. What we do, however, is come up with rule of law plus bodies of legislation. Then we find situations where specific legal prescriptions do not apply, and otherwise upstanding members of the community become temporary outlaws.
Would increased participation be enough? In other words, am I more likely to respect a law I personally had a hand in devising? If you'd answer unequivocally, "Yes," to that question, do you do it when you write software? Or do you tend to want to adapt your design ever so slightly when you're coding?
The rule of law seems to be a good approximation to the right system. Yet it also seems to break in ways that suggest the design is fundamentally flawed.
Posted by Mark at June 26, 2005 08:00 AM
Comments
I could go on and on about bicycle etiquette, but I won't.
Instead, I looked at Geoff's blog that you linked to and found a link to a fascinating article.
You've mentioned your Philosophy Club too often for me not to guess its existance, so I think you will enjoy this. What I particularly enjoy is the reference to history as valid correlation for the analysis of today. It reminds me of Asimov's psychohistory in the Foundation series, which I found to be very compelling (the idea of psychohistory, not the books themselves).
I often think we view ourselves far too superior to our ancestors, and then prove ourselves wrong when we repeat their mistakes. I recently had the chance to bring this up in reply threads on James Howard Kunstler's blog, yet again about peak oil. Scroll down, down, down to the 2nd to last comment, then go back and read the post itself.
Many of the reasons for Kunstler's appeal are examined in the comments, one of of which I replied to in the middle of the whole thread. But JWZ, the person who linked me to his blog in the first place said it best "Kunstler rants good." JWZ is Jamie Zawinski, one of the original programmers of Netscape Navigator, and his blog is a very interesting look into the world of Generation X computer boomers that you and I both work in.
In googling that link above, I found the rather strange, non-fictional psychohistory that is applied to individuals.
And because this is a linkfest day, here is a psychohistorical analysis of psychohistory itself.
Ob.Joke (particularly appropriate to the psychohistory reference): Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. Math too.
Posted by: Andy at June 29, 2005 04:26 AM
Paul Graham's article hit me the same day as did references to Steve Jobs talking at Stanford. Nothing gets beyond the event horizon of my negativity. Lack of sleep alone?
My own motives leave me nauseated. Then -- yet another science fiction reference -- I start seeing the Black Iron Prison everywhere, emanating from California. Steve Jobs selling the American Dream, Silicon Valley Edition. Paul Graham selling nerd mythology. Scott McNealy selling The Participation Age. Dad selling me Michael Crichton selling snake oil.
I once sold something. I still feel like a rapist about that. Like any good multirecidivistic criminal, I keep going back for more. Starting with the children, of course, and continuing at work, or here in this blog that, thankfully, very few people read.
From your link to non-fictional psychohistory, I get to Lloyd deMause's online book, Chapter 5, which starts out with a good quote:
"Trauma demands repetition."
-Selma Fraiberg
Posted by: Mark at June 29, 2005 06:02 AM
I read the post where you mentioned it the first time, but the quote wasn't compelling to me, so I didn't follow it. It wasn't until another of your links to Geoff that I saw his reference to that encouraged me to read the whole thing.
I also think you are wrong about the nerds. You are not a nerd, and the nerds he is referring to are the hard-core ones such as my brother (whom I don't think you've met). You're referring to posers who dress down on purpose. And I actually think that using nerds in the article is a bad example, true nerds are marginal and therefore don't have any influence. He really meant non-conformists, which connotates purpose. The two of us are educated non-conformists, in that we know we are non-conforming, but we do it for reasons other than non-conformity.
Forgive me if I sound pompous, I confess I just made up everything in that last paragraph. Point is, there are too many boxes to put people in, and the labels don't match what's in the boxes.
Now to reply to this thread, no sense being so negative. You do what you gotta do to get through life, one day at a time. All the rest is just froth. Are humans self-aware? Yes, some of them are, all have the potential. Does it matter? Yes, it probably is the key to many things. Is it the only thing in life? Well if you have a key, you still need to find a door and a lock, and you'll probably then find there are tons of door and locks requiring other keys.
Regarding selling something, I could never do anything but collect modest profit on a product that people already know is good for them and the earth. Which is why I don't do it.
As for non-fictional psychohistory, it looked spooky to me: some good ideas, lots of twisting, and some perverted conclusions.
Posted by: Andy at June 29, 2005 09:18 PM
Lem's book on the "message" from space, ostensibly narrated from the point of view of a nerd -- What other category of mathematician would accept professional incarceration in Nevada? -- leads to the conclusion that humans are inextricably bound within our human way of thinking. But it's worse than that.
Neither you nor I fit the definition of nerd. I'm not even non-conformist. Being a natural conformist has made it easier for me to get along with people. Non-conformists can be scary, so I have a lot of crazy ideas that I don't share. When ideas don't get shared, they dry up. It's another in a series of vicious circles.
Paul Graham was contending that people who fit the nerd definition are less controlled by convention. Okay, perhaps. For some aspects of life that in the big picture are appear basically insignificant. Has their ability to concentrate on technical issues allowed them to live outside scarcity mentality, for example? I'm not so sure.
The locks and doors metaphor seems to fit. My natural inclination is to wonder, "What feature of locks can we exploit to have a pass key?" From the outset, I find the individual key fitting an individual lock an uninteresting problem in general, which is why I never cut it as an engineer and have a hard time as a technical writer. Unfortunately, the pass key idea is a feature of the name "lock," which creates a category of similiar mechanisms, all of which must be different in some essential way. I'm getting all tripped up over my incapacity to understand even the language that's most familiar.
Most animals, including us, can go through life one day at a time. Maybe the negativity stems from the rut of being human itself. As far as we can tell, the distinguishing feature of the human animal could be awareness that we are aware. Built-in meta-awareness leads to (comes from?) God, mathematics, language, tools, everything we have extruded, but also to eternal frustration because we can name the truly general-purpose solution without it even existing.
Posted by: Mark at June 30, 2005 06:26 AM