Another reason someone might stick to the rules is if they think the rules carry more wisdom than their own judgement. Suppose you knew you weren’t great at verbal discussions, and could be persuaded into a lot of different positions by a smart fast-talker, if you engaged with the arguments at all. You also trust that the rules were written by smart wise experienced people. Your best strategy is to stick to the rules and ignore their arguments.
Someone comes along with a phone that’s almost out of battery and a sob story about how they need it to be charged. They ask if they can just plug it in to your computer for a bit to charge it. If you refuse, citing “rule 172) no customer can plug any electronics into your computer. ” then you look almost like a blankface. If you let them plug the phone in, you run the risk of malware. If you understand the risk of malware, you could refuse because of that. But if you don’t understand that, the best you can do is follow rules that were written for some good reason, even if you don’t know what it was.
There’s a sense in which a lot of rules are attempts to solve coordination problems across time. A rule may work most of the time, but not in specific edge cases. But it may be the case that even in those edge cases its best to continue to follow the rule, because the benefit you get from consistency is higher than the harms of enforcing it in the edge cases, or the costs of building in more discretion.
E.g. if you allow for this reasonable excuse you then have to allow for all equally reasonable excuses, removing the benefit of the rule. Or if you allow the lowest level decision maker more discretion you risk them using that discretion corruptly or incompetently. And either accept those costs or build in additional oversight structures which are costly.
Often what seems like blind rule following from the outside is someone who has correctly made a utilitarian tradeoff, you are just on the wrong side of it.
Another reason someone might stick to the rules is if they think the rules carry more wisdom than their own judgement. Suppose you knew you weren’t great at verbal discussions, and could be persuaded into a lot of different positions by a smart fast-talker, if you engaged with the arguments at all. You also trust that the rules were written by smart wise experienced people. Your best strategy is to stick to the rules and ignore their arguments.
Someone comes along with a phone that’s almost out of battery and a sob story about how they need it to be charged. They ask if they can just plug it in to your computer for a bit to charge it. If you refuse, citing “rule 172) no customer can plug any electronics into your computer. ” then you look almost like a blankface. If you let them plug the phone in, you run the risk of malware. If you understand the risk of malware, you could refuse because of that. But if you don’t understand that, the best you can do is follow rules that were written for some good reason, even if you don’t know what it was.
There’s a sense in which a lot of rules are attempts to solve coordination problems across time. A rule may work most of the time, but not in specific edge cases. But it may be the case that even in those edge cases its best to continue to follow the rule, because the benefit you get from consistency is higher than the harms of enforcing it in the edge cases, or the costs of building in more discretion.
E.g. if you allow for this reasonable excuse you then have to allow for all equally reasonable excuses, removing the benefit of the rule. Or if you allow the lowest level decision maker more discretion you risk them using that discretion corruptly or incompetently. And either accept those costs or build in additional oversight structures which are costly.
Often what seems like blind rule following from the outside is someone who has correctly made a utilitarian tradeoff, you are just on the wrong side of it.
This strategy reminds me of epistemic learned helplessness.