Rules about driving on the left or right side of the road are arbitrary. At the same time, having those rules is very useful because it means that people can coordinate around the rule.
Rules about how to format code are similar. If you work with other people on the same project and you don’t have rules for formatting that produces a mess. Programming languages that are opinionated about how to format code are good because that means you don’t have to talk about the conventions with your fellow programs at the start of a project.
I don’t yet have any opinions about the arbitrariness of those rules. It is possible that I would disagree with you about the arbitrariness if I was more familiar.
Still, you claim that those rules are arbitrary and then defend them; what on Earth is the point of that? If you know they are arbitrary then you must know there are, in principle, less arbitrary policies available. Either you have a specific policy that you know is less arbitrary, in which case people should coordinate around that policy instead as a matter of objective fact, or you don’t know a specific less arbitrary policy, and in that case maybe you want people with better Strategic Goodness about those topics to come up with a better policy for you that people should coordinate around instead.
You can complain about the inconvenience of improving, sure. But the improvement will be highly convenient for some other people. There’s only so long you can complain about the inconvenience of improving before you’re a cost-benefit-dishonest asshole and also people start noticing that fact about you.
It is better to be predictably good than surprisingly bad, and it is better to be surprisingly good than predictably bad; that much will be obvious to everyone.
I think it is better to be surprisingly good than predictably good, and it is better to be predictably bad than surprisingly bad.
EDIT: wait, I’m not sure that’s right even by deontology’s standards; as a general categorical imperative, if you can predict something will be bad, you should do something surprisingly good instead, even if the predictability of the badness supposedly makes it easier for others to handle. No amount of predictable badness is easier for others to handle than surprising goodness.
EDIT EDIT: I find the implication that we can only choose between predictable badness and surprising badness to be very rarely true, but when it is true then perhaps we should choose to be predictable. Inevitably, people with more intelligence will keep conflicting with people with less intelligence about this; less intelligent people will keep seeing situations as choices between predictable badness and surprising badness, and more intelligent people will keep seeing situations as choices between predictable badness and surprising goodness.
Focusing on predictability is a strategy for people who are trying to minimize their expectedly inevitable badness. Focusing on goodness is a strategy for people who are trying to secure their expectedly inevitable weirdness.
A policy that could be better — could be more good — is arbitrarily bad. In fact the phrase “arbitrarily bad” is redundant; you can just say “arbitrary.”
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
It’s not about whether the choice is good or bad but that it’s not made because of reasons that speak in favor.
There is no real reason to choose either the left or right side of the road for driving but it’s very useful to choose either of them.
The fact that the number 404 for a “page not found” and 403 for “client is forbidden from accessing a valid URL” is arbitrary. There’s no reason or system why you wouldn’t switch the two numbers.
The web profits from everyone accepting the same arbitrary numbers for the same type of error.
If one person says I don’t really need that many error codes, I don’t want to follow arbitrary choices and send 44 instead of 404, this creates a mess for everyone who expects the standard to be followed.
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
The more considerate and reasoned your choice, the less random it is. If the truth is that your way of being considerate and systematic isn’t as good as it could have been, that truth is systematic and not magical. The reason for the non-maximal goodness of your policy is a reason you did not consider. The less considerate, the more arbitrary.
There is no real reason to choose either the left or right side of the road for driving but it’s very useful to choose either of them.
Actually there are real reasons to choose left or right when designing your policy; you can appeal to human psychology; human psychology does not treat left and right exactly the same.
If one person says I don’t really need that many error codes, I don’t want to follow arbitrary choices and send 44 instead of 404, this creates a mess for everyone who expects the standard to be followed.
If the mess created for everyone else truly outweighs the goodness of choosing 44, then it is arbitrary to prefer 44. You cannot make true arbitrariness truly strategic just by calling it so; there are facts of the matter besides your stereotypes. People using the word “arbitrary” to refer to something that is based on greater consideration quality are wrong by your dictionary definition and the true definition as well.
You are wrong in your conception of arbitrariness as being all-or-nothing; there are varying degrees, just as there are varying degrees of efficiency between chess players. A chess player, Bob, half as efficient as Kasparov, makes a lower-quality sum of considerations; not following Kasparov’s advice is arbitrary unless Bob can know somehow that he made better considerations in this case;
maybe Bob studied Kasparov’s biases carefully by attending to the common themes of his blunders, and the advice he’s receiving for this exact move looks a lot like a case where Kasparov would blunder. Perhaps in such a case Bob will be wrong and his disobedience will be arbitrary on net, but the disobedience in that case will be a lot less arbitrary than all his other opportunities to disobey Kasparov.
Rules about driving on the left or right side of the road are arbitrary. At the same time, having those rules is very useful because it means that people can coordinate around the rule.
Rules about how to format code are similar. If you work with other people on the same project and you don’t have rules for formatting that produces a mess. Programming languages that are opinionated about how to format code are good because that means you don’t have to talk about the conventions with your fellow programs at the start of a project.
I don’t yet have any opinions about the arbitrariness of those rules. It is possible that I would disagree with you about the arbitrariness if I was more familiar.
Still, you claim that those rules are arbitrary and then defend them; what on Earth is the point of that? If you know they are arbitrary then you must know there are, in principle, less arbitrary policies available. Either you have a specific policy that you know is less arbitrary, in which case people should coordinate around that policy instead as a matter of objective fact, or you don’t know a specific less arbitrary policy, and in that case maybe you want people with better Strategic Goodness about those topics to come up with a better policy for you that people should coordinate around instead.
You can complain about the inconvenience of improving, sure. But the improvement will be highly convenient for some other people. There’s only so long you can complain about the inconvenience of improving before you’re a cost-benefit-dishonest asshole and also people start noticing that fact about you.
You don’t need to have a rule about whether to drive on the left or right side. Allowing people to drive where they want is less arbitrary.
You have that in a lot of cases. An arbitrary law allows people to predict the behavior of other people and that increase in predictability is useful.
Generally, most people like to have the world around them to be predictable.
It is better to be predictably good than surprisingly bad, and it is better to be surprisingly good than predictably bad; that much will be obvious to everyone.
I think it is better to be surprisingly good than predictably good, and it is better to be predictably bad than surprisingly bad.EDIT: wait, I’m not sure that’s right even by deontology’s standards; as a general categorical imperative, if you can predict something will be bad, you should do something surprisingly good instead, even if the predictability of the badness supposedly makes it easier for others to handle. No amount of predictable badness is easier for others to handle than surprising goodness.EDIT EDIT: I find the implication that we can only choose between predictable badness and surprising badness to be very rarely true, but when it is true then perhaps we should choose to be predictable. Inevitably, people with more intelligence will keep conflicting with people with less intelligence about this; less intelligent people will keep seeing situations as choices between predictable badness and surprising badness, and more intelligent people will keep seeing situations as choices between predictable badness and surprising goodness.
Focusing on predictability is a strategy for people who are trying to minimize their expectedly inevitable badness. Focusing on goodness is a strategy for people who are trying to secure their expectedly inevitable weirdness.
Good policy is better than bad policy. That’s true but has nothing to do with arbitrariness.
A policy that could be better — could be more good — is arbitrarily bad. In fact the phrase “arbitrarily bad” is redundant; you can just say “arbitrary.”
That’s not how the English language works.
The dictionary defines arbitrary as:
It’s not about whether the choice is good or bad but that it’s not made because of reasons that speak in favor.
There is no real reason to choose either the left or right side of the road for driving but it’s very useful to choose either of them.
The fact that the number 404 for a “page not found” and 403 for “client is forbidden from accessing a valid URL” is arbitrary. There’s no reason or system why you wouldn’t switch the two numbers.
The web profits from everyone accepting the same arbitrary numbers for the same type of error.
If one person says I don’t really need that many error codes, I don’t want to follow arbitrary choices and send 44 instead of 404, this creates a mess for everyone who expects the standard to be followed.
The more considerate and reasoned your choice, the less random it is. If the truth is that your way of being considerate and systematic isn’t as good as it could have been, that truth is systematic and not magical. The reason for the non-maximal goodness of your policy is a reason you did not consider. The less considerate, the more arbitrary.
Actually there are real reasons to choose left or right when designing your policy; you can appeal to human psychology; human psychology does not treat left and right exactly the same.
If the mess created for everyone else truly outweighs the goodness of choosing 44, then it is arbitrary to prefer 44. You cannot make true arbitrariness truly strategic just by calling it so; there are facts of the matter besides your stereotypes. People using the word “arbitrary” to refer to something that is based on greater consideration quality are wrong by your dictionary definition and the true definition as well.
You are wrong in your conception of arbitrariness as being all-or-nothing; there are varying degrees, just as there are varying degrees of efficiency between chess players. A chess player, Bob, half as efficient as Kasparov, makes a lower-quality sum of considerations; not following Kasparov’s advice is arbitrary unless Bob can know somehow that he made better considerations in this case;
maybe Bob studied Kasparov’s biases carefully by attending to the common themes of his blunders, and the advice he’s receiving for this exact move looks a lot like a case where Kasparov would blunder. Perhaps in such a case Bob will be wrong and his disobedience will be arbitrary on net, but the disobedience in that case will be a lot less arbitrary than all his other opportunities to disobey Kasparov.