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Humans and Rules
May. 21st, 2021 06:59 pmI made this rant over on FB, and people are sharing, so I suppose it should also be here or something.
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I am starting to see some people arguing about various laws again - so I wanted to offer a test that I use when I write policy for a client.
Let's look at gun control as an example (and just an example, I don't want to open the discussion here). Look at the phrase "if you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns". It's nice and pithy and feels like a valid argument ... only that's not how humans interact with rules.
It's never going to be "good guys vs bad guys". It's going to usually break down like: 80% of people wouldn't do a thing anyway so the law doesn't matter, 15% of people would do the thing - but they're reasonable people and would be reasonably safe about it, 4% of the people would do the thing dangerously and be lucky when no one got hurt, 0.8% of the people would do the thing dangerously and hurt others, and 0.2% of the people would the thing maliciously specifically to hurt people.
You don't write a policy for the 80%, because it doesn't matter. You don't write a policy for 0.2%, because it wouldn't change their behavior. You write a policy in a way that allows 15% to achieve most of what they want - recognizing the need for their freedom. You write it so the 80% understand the 15% and form a 95% block to put pressure on those 4% to shift them over to safer behavior. You write it to drive culture around "reasonableness" so the rabid frothing-at-the-mouth "freedom or death" people look like fucking frothing-at-the-mouth "freedom or death" people to the rest of the group. Your goal is to make the dangerous behavior culturally unacceptable.
Whether you actually catch and punish anyone is NOT the point.
So here's the test. When someone floats a rule change at you, don't look at it as "us vs them". Ask yourself "Who does this protect?" Then ask yourself "Remember that one annoying person that I refuse to play board games with now? If that person saw this law, how could they use it to really fuck over people?"
If the answer is "This rule change protects people who would otherwise be at risk and a miserable conniving untrustworthy piece of shit can't abuse this rule without everyone else clearly knowing what's going on and coming down on them hard" ... then it's a good rule. If that's not the answer, you probably need to rework the rule a bit.
---
I am starting to see some people arguing about various laws again - so I wanted to offer a test that I use when I write policy for a client.
Let's look at gun control as an example (and just an example, I don't want to open the discussion here). Look at the phrase "if you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns". It's nice and pithy and feels like a valid argument ... only that's not how humans interact with rules.
It's never going to be "good guys vs bad guys". It's going to usually break down like: 80% of people wouldn't do a thing anyway so the law doesn't matter, 15% of people would do the thing - but they're reasonable people and would be reasonably safe about it, 4% of the people would do the thing dangerously and be lucky when no one got hurt, 0.8% of the people would do the thing dangerously and hurt others, and 0.2% of the people would the thing maliciously specifically to hurt people.
You don't write a policy for the 80%, because it doesn't matter. You don't write a policy for 0.2%, because it wouldn't change their behavior. You write a policy in a way that allows 15% to achieve most of what they want - recognizing the need for their freedom. You write it so the 80% understand the 15% and form a 95% block to put pressure on those 4% to shift them over to safer behavior. You write it to drive culture around "reasonableness" so the rabid frothing-at-the-mouth "freedom or death" people look like fucking frothing-at-the-mouth "freedom or death" people to the rest of the group. Your goal is to make the dangerous behavior culturally unacceptable.
Whether you actually catch and punish anyone is NOT the point.
So here's the test. When someone floats a rule change at you, don't look at it as "us vs them". Ask yourself "Who does this protect?" Then ask yourself "Remember that one annoying person that I refuse to play board games with now? If that person saw this law, how could they use it to really fuck over people?"
If the answer is "This rule change protects people who would otherwise be at risk and a miserable conniving untrustworthy piece of shit can't abuse this rule without everyone else clearly knowing what's going on and coming down on them hard" ... then it's a good rule. If that's not the answer, you probably need to rework the rule a bit.
