Nobody likes rules. Rules are costly: first, they constrict the space of available actions or force you to expend resources to do something. Second, rules are costly to follow: you need to pay attention and remember all relevant rules and calculate all ways they interact. Third, in real life, rules aren’t simple! After you left area of “don’t kill”, every rule has ambiguities and grey areas and strict dependency on judgement of enforcing authority.
If everybody was good and smart, we wouldn’t need rules. We would just publish “hey, lead is toxic, don’t put it into dishes” and everybody would just stop using lead. After that, even if somebody continued using lead, everybody would just ask and conduct analysis and stop buying lead-tainted commodities and everybody still using lead would go bankrupt.
Conversely, if everybody was good and smart, we wouldn’t need authorities! Everybody would just do what’s best.
You don’t need to be utility minimizer to do the damage through rules. You need just to be the sort of person who likes to argue over rules to paralyze functioning of almost every group. Like, 95% of invocations of authority outside of legal sphere can be described as “I decided to stop this argument about rules, so I stop it”. Heck, even Supreme Court functions mostly in this way.
There are different societies. In broad society, whose goal is just “live and let live”, sure, you can go for simple univerally-enforceable rules. In inclusive parts of society, like public libraries and parks and streets—same. it doesn’t work for everything else. Like, there can’t be comprehensive rules why you can(’t) be fired from startup. There are CEOs and HRs and they make judgements about how productive you are et cetera and if their judgement is unfavorable, you get fired. Sure, there is a labor law, but your expences (including reputational) on trying to stay are probably going to be much higher than whatever you can hope to get. There are some countries where it’s very hard to be fired, but such countries also don’t have rich startup culture.
Nobody likes rules that are excessive or poorly chosen, or bad application of rules. I like rules that do things like[1]:
Prohibit others from doing things that would harm me, where either I don’t want to do those things, or I prefer the equilibrium where nobody does to that where everybody does.
Require contributing to common goods. (sometimes)
Take the place of what would otherwise be unpredictable judgments of my actions.
For each of these, the answer about whether the rule is good depends on what margins we’re talking about.
For example, lets take your first point, rules that “prohibit others from doing things that would harm me”. One way in which you could be harmed is by someone selling a drug to you which has negative side-effects which out-weigh the positive side-effects. Therefore should we ban the selling of those drugs?
I think we shouldn’t. Not only do people have a right to put whatever they want in their body which this infringes upon, but the cost of actually following this rule is much higher than the benefit of being able to not (as the seller, selling to many) worry about whether there’s a 1% chance this particular customer regrets their purchase.
You may not agree with the sign of that particular example, however, generally speaking, there are costs to following rules, outside of poorly chosen rules or bad application of rules. If the benefit to your rule is less than the cost of following that rule, then no matter how well the rule is chosen or how benevolent the application, its a bad rule!
And note that as the number of rules grows, the cost of following all of them does too (sometimes super-linearly, as rules can interact), while the benefit of the marginal rule decreases. Therefore there’s an optimal number of rules, and we should expect that on average adding a new rule is just bad[1].
I will also note that this point was made in the comment you were responding to
Second, rules are costly to follow: you need to pay attention and remember all relevant rules and calculate all ways they interact.
When I feel like I have an excuse for why I should get special treatment, even though I wouldn’t say this excuse was reasonable if someone else tried to use it
This seems a bit tautological… since roughly half the population is below average in virtue, and will engage in all sorts of bad behavior if they think they can get away with it. Partly because we define good and bad relative to the population average.
And for most of the rest, strong enough incentives can induce them to behave the same, it happens even on this very forum, so when combined that’s most people already.
Your comment itself gives a counter-example, when it refers to “the sort of person who likes to argue over rules”. Generally this sort of person likes rules. The post you are responding to is another counter-example, Zach writes that “Rules are a critical social technology for helping people live and work together in peace”, which sounds like the words of someone who likes rules. Another counter-example is that I like rules. I am not a rule-maximizer, I don’t like all rules in all contexts, and I have other values, but in general I like rules more than my peers.
We see in various aspects of leisure, where people are less constrained by instrumental concerns, that some people like rules. There are “rules-heavy” and “rules-light” RPGs, and there are people who prefer each. Some forms of music and dance and other art have more rules than others. Some prefer poems that follow rules of rhyme and meter, others prefer free verse poetry. Some prefer complex sports, others prefer to play tag.
I disagree that if everybody was good and smart, we wouldn’t need rules. When good and smart people play chess with each other, they still follow the rules of chess. When good and smart people trade with each other, they still follow property rules. In a world where only good and smart people drive, they would be faster and safer if there were still rules for what side of the road to drive on, who has right of way, how to overtake, etc. In the recently viral red/blue pill hypothetical, where blue pill takers die if less than 50% of people take the blue pill, the risk of death is lower if there is a rule about what pill to take.
One reason not to have rules in the real world is the enforcement cost. In a world where everyone is good, that cost is lower, so we might have more rules. On the other hand, one reason to have rules in the real world is that people make bad decisions. In a world where everyone is smart, there are fewer bad decisions, so we might have fewer rules. And in a world where everyone is good and smart, everyone would agree with me that $SYSTEM is the best way to run the world, haha, which has $IMPLICATIONS for the number of rules. But I don’t think that means no rules.
There are “rules-heavy” and “rules-light” RPGs, and there are people who prefer each.
Hmm, I think that this is not a good example. I like “rules-heavy” RPGs (indeed, I think that designers and fans of “rules-light” RPGs are very often thoroughly confused about what the consequences of “rules-lightness” actually are). But the “rules” of an RPG and the kinds of “rules” that I think @quetzal_rainbow’s comment is talking about are not really the same thing.
The “rules” of an RPG are mostly not constraints that prevent players from doing things, but rather mechanisms that enable players to do things. (For example, the 3rd edition of D&D has rules for crafting magic items; the 5th edition of D&D has no such rules. The effect of this is not that players in 5e are more free and less constrained than players in 3e. The effect, rather, is that players in 3e can do something that players in 5e generally cannot.)
Of course there are some rules in an RPG that are mostly constraints… but, well, those are also the rules that people are least likely to like. (Although they may be necessary in order for the game as a whole to be enjoyable! In this, they mirror the sorts of rules we’re most likely to encounter in real life.)
I’m happy with the example of rules-heavy/crunchy RPGs as evidence that some people like rules, but I agree it is not a good evidence for whether people like constraints. I don’t know what @quetzal_rainbow might have meant by “nobody likes rules”, other than the surface meaning. Maybe they will clarify. I wouldn’t have replied to a statement like “nobody likes to be constrained by complex rules that are costly to follow and have no benefits”, for example, but that’s not what they said.
I completely agree that rules can be mechanisms that enable people to do things. For example, many social partner dances have rules about how the dancers move and dance together. At first glance these look like pure constraints. However, they are also enabling mechanisms for joint movements that otherwise would not work (at all, as well, as easily, etc.) in partnered freestyle. This is one of the things I like about rules.
Nobody likes rules. Rules are costly: first, they constrict the space of available actions or force you to expend resources to do something. Second, rules are costly to follow: you need to pay attention and remember all relevant rules and calculate all ways they interact. Third, in real life, rules aren’t simple! After you left area of “don’t kill”, every rule has ambiguities and grey areas and strict dependency on judgement of enforcing authority.
If everybody was good and smart, we wouldn’t need rules. We would just publish “hey, lead is toxic, don’t put it into dishes” and everybody would just stop using lead. After that, even if somebody continued using lead, everybody would just ask and conduct analysis and stop buying lead-tainted commodities and everybody still using lead would go bankrupt.
Conversely, if everybody was good and smart, we wouldn’t need authorities! Everybody would just do what’s best.
You don’t need to be utility minimizer to do the damage through rules. You need just to be the sort of person who likes to argue over rules to paralyze functioning of almost every group. Like, 95% of invocations of authority outside of legal sphere can be described as “I decided to stop this argument about rules, so I stop it”. Heck, even Supreme Court functions mostly in this way.
There are different societies. In broad society, whose goal is just “live and let live”, sure, you can go for simple univerally-enforceable rules. In inclusive parts of society, like public libraries and parks and streets—same. it doesn’t work for everything else. Like, there can’t be comprehensive rules why you can(’t) be fired from startup. There are CEOs and HRs and they make judgements about how productive you are et cetera and if their judgement is unfavorable, you get fired. Sure, there is a labor law, but your expences (including reputational) on trying to stay are probably going to be much higher than whatever you can hope to get. There are some countries where it’s very hard to be fired, but such countries also don’t have rich startup culture.
Nobody likes rules that are excessive or poorly chosen, or bad application of rules. I like rules that do things like[1]:
Prohibit others from doing things that would harm me, where either I don’t want to do those things, or I prefer the equilibrium where nobody does to that where everybody does.
Require contributing to common goods. (sometimes)
Take the place of what would otherwise be unpredictable judgments of my actions.
not a complete list
For each of these, the answer about whether the rule is good depends on what margins we’re talking about.
For example, lets take your first point, rules that “prohibit others from doing things that would harm me”. One way in which you could be harmed is by someone selling a drug to you which has negative side-effects which out-weigh the positive side-effects. Therefore should we ban the selling of those drugs?
I think we shouldn’t. Not only do people have a right to put whatever they want in their body which this infringes upon, but the cost of actually following this rule is much higher than the benefit of being able to not (as the seller, selling to many) worry about whether there’s a 1% chance this particular customer regrets their purchase.
You may not agree with the sign of that particular example, however, generally speaking, there are costs to following rules, outside of poorly chosen rules or bad application of rules. If the benefit to your rule is less than the cost of following that rule, then no matter how well the rule is chosen or how benevolent the application, its a bad rule!
And note that as the number of rules grows, the cost of following all of them does too (sometimes super-linearly, as rules can interact), while the benefit of the marginal rule decreases. Therefore there’s an optimal number of rules, and we should expect that on average adding a new rule is just bad[1].
I will also note that this point was made in the comment you were responding to
Assuming we in a rule-optimal society, I think few would argue we make too few rules in general.
Yes, but for most people, in practice a “bad application” of rules means “the rules being applied to me.”[1]
That’s the primary sense in which people don’t like rules.
When I feel like I have an excuse for why I should get special treatment, even though I wouldn’t say this excuse was reasonable if someone else tried to use it
This seems a bit tautological… since roughly half the population is below average in virtue, and will engage in all sorts of bad behavior if they think they can get away with it. Partly because we define good and bad relative to the population average.
And for most of the rest, strong enough incentives can induce them to behave the same, it happens even on this very forum, so when combined that’s most people already.
I disagree that nobody likes rules.
Your comment itself gives a counter-example, when it refers to “the sort of person who likes to argue over rules”. Generally this sort of person likes rules. The post you are responding to is another counter-example, Zach writes that “Rules are a critical social technology for helping people live and work together in peace”, which sounds like the words of someone who likes rules. Another counter-example is that I like rules. I am not a rule-maximizer, I don’t like all rules in all contexts, and I have other values, but in general I like rules more than my peers.
We see in various aspects of leisure, where people are less constrained by instrumental concerns, that some people like rules. There are “rules-heavy” and “rules-light” RPGs, and there are people who prefer each. Some forms of music and dance and other art have more rules than others. Some prefer poems that follow rules of rhyme and meter, others prefer free verse poetry. Some prefer complex sports, others prefer to play tag.
I disagree that if everybody was good and smart, we wouldn’t need rules. When good and smart people play chess with each other, they still follow the rules of chess. When good and smart people trade with each other, they still follow property rules. In a world where only good and smart people drive, they would be faster and safer if there were still rules for what side of the road to drive on, who has right of way, how to overtake, etc. In the recently viral red/blue pill hypothetical, where blue pill takers die if less than 50% of people take the blue pill, the risk of death is lower if there is a rule about what pill to take.
One reason not to have rules in the real world is the enforcement cost. In a world where everyone is good, that cost is lower, so we might have more rules. On the other hand, one reason to have rules in the real world is that people make bad decisions. In a world where everyone is smart, there are fewer bad decisions, so we might have fewer rules. And in a world where everyone is good and smart, everyone would agree with me that $SYSTEM is the best way to run the world, haha, which has $IMPLICATIONS for the number of rules. But I don’t think that means no rules.
Hmm, I think that this is not a good example. I like “rules-heavy” RPGs (indeed, I think that designers and fans of “rules-light” RPGs are very often thoroughly confused about what the consequences of “rules-lightness” actually are). But the “rules” of an RPG and the kinds of “rules” that I think @quetzal_rainbow’s comment is talking about are not really the same thing.
The “rules” of an RPG are mostly not constraints that prevent players from doing things, but rather mechanisms that enable players to do things. (For example, the 3rd edition of D&D has rules for crafting magic items; the 5th edition of D&D has no such rules. The effect of this is not that players in 5e are more free and less constrained than players in 3e. The effect, rather, is that players in 3e can do something that players in 5e generally cannot.)
Of course there are some rules in an RPG that are mostly constraints… but, well, those are also the rules that people are least likely to like. (Although they may be necessary in order for the game as a whole to be enjoyable! In this, they mirror the sorts of rules we’re most likely to encounter in real life.)
I’m happy with the example of rules-heavy/crunchy RPGs as evidence that some people like rules, but I agree it is not a good evidence for whether people like constraints. I don’t know what @quetzal_rainbow might have meant by “nobody likes rules”, other than the surface meaning. Maybe they will clarify. I wouldn’t have replied to a statement like “nobody likes to be constrained by complex rules that are costly to follow and have no benefits”, for example, but that’s not what they said.
I completely agree that rules can be mechanisms that enable people to do things. For example, many social partner dances have rules about how the dancers move and dance together. At first glance these look like pure constraints. However, they are also enabling mechanisms for joint movements that otherwise would not work (at all, as well, as easily, etc.) in partnered freestyle. This is one of the things I like about rules.