YHK - yet another hacker news clone

No Vehicles in the Park

57 points n_plus_1_acc 2 hours ago 78 comments

_petronius 1 hour ago | parent

Cool concept; lots of valence to each question:

- What counts as "in the park"

- What counts as a "vehicle"

- If it is both a vehicle and in the park, is justified?

- Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation?

duckerduck 1 hour ago | parent

> Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation?

This is mentioned on the page:

> answer the question of whether the rule is violated (not whether the violation should be allowed)

isqueiros 1 hour ago | parent

I guess the rule is kept intentionally ambiguous as to test what each person thinks should pass.

I personally answered "not breaking the rule" to emergency vehicles and second-guessed the skateboard and bike ones.

If I were to rephrase the rule, I'd write it as "No motorized vehicles in the park unless for emergencies". This way you have less ambiguity for justification.

maratc 1 hour ago | parent

> No motorized vehicles in the park unless for emergencies

Well, let's play "what is emergency in the park" now. It's a game about language and rules. It consists of 27 questions, but after the first seven, you can skip to the end.

lambdaone 1 hour ago | parent

The game does not say "motorized" or "emergencies". But then it does not say "functional" or "full-size", or several other things, either.

maratc 56 minutes ago | parent

I've only pointed out that GP created a new ambiguity as a result of their effort to resolve all ambiguities.

jstanley 1 hour ago | parent

But the game wasn't asking what your preferred rule is? It was only asking whether they break the stated rule, which a police car or ambulance plainly do.

lambdaone 57 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if there is a correlation between "soft-hearted" and "hard-hearted" voters and their answers to the questions. I regard myself as soft-hearted, but answered the questions as literally as I could as that was given explicitly as part of the rules of the game.

jstanley 50 minutes ago | parent

I don't think heartedness is particularly relevant, I think it comes down to whether you are able to evaluate logical propositions dispassionately.

I think calling it a "rule" with a "violation" is bringing in some emotional baggage that some people can't see past.

If instead of "does this violate the rule?" the game simply asked "is this a vehicle in the park?" the disagreement would be resolved.

Some people seem to interpret "does this violate the rule?" as asking something more like "is this a vehicle that shouldn't be in the park?", even though the rule doesn't say anything about "should".

maratc 34 minutes ago | parent

> If ... the game simply asked "is this a vehicle in the park?" the disagreement would be resolved.

But the question is not "is this a vehicle in the park," it's "whether or not this situation constitutes 'a vehicle in the park' for the sole purpose of what was the lawmakers' intent when they made a 'no vehicles in the park' rule."

A toy vehicle in the park most definitely is "a vehicle in the park." But prohibiting toys in the park most definitely wasn't the lawmakers' intent.

jstanley 29 minutes ago | parent

A toy vehicle is not a vehicle though.

If you think a toy vehicle is a vehicle then you should have answered that the toy car violated the rule.

maratc 12 minutes ago | parent

Nope, I think that toy vehicle is a vehicle, but it does not violate the intent of the rule.

More generally, I think that this game is about jurisprudence in general, and interpretation of laws in particular. It’s not about mathematics or group theory. If it was framed as “in preparation for your PhD in statistics, you need to count 1 for each instance of ‘vehicle in the park’ group” I would count 1 for toy vehicle in the park.

jstanley 5 minutes ago | parent

But nothing in the game asks about intent.

masklinn 1 hour ago | parent

> I personally answered "not breaking the rule" to emergency vehicles

> You might know of some rule in your jurisdiction which overrides local rules, and allows certain classes of vehicles. Please disregard these rules; the park isn't necessarily in your jurisdiction.

The game is entirely about what constitutes "a vehicle" and what constitutes "in the park", it explicitly instructs against "what do I personally think should be allowed in the park".

happymellon 1 hour ago | parent

> Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation

I think this is key. Having a tank, even if it is nonfunctional and being used as a war memorial is still a vehicle and should be banned unless an exception granted.

Otherwise you'll end up with a hundred "tanks" in the park because they are "allowed". This is one of the things that people who want to slash red tape don't seem to get. Just because it was difficult to get one going doesn't mean that we should cut the red tape. Perhaps we don't actually want/need 27 instances of it.

jstanley 40 minutes ago | parent

The fact that you might get a hundred tanks in the park if they are allowed and that that would be bad is not the reason that a tank in the park violates the rule.

The reason a tank in the park violates the rule is because a tank is a vehicle and the rule is "no vehicles in the park".

jstanley 1 hour ago | parent

> If it is both a vehicle and in the park, is justified?

This is explicitly irrelevant, the game makes this clear.

_petronius 1 hour ago | parent

The game makes it clear, but the interpretation is still a result of what view on "violation" the user brings (as people are saying in other comment threads, not everyone views a "justfied violation" as a subcategory of "violation", but rather as a subcategory of "not violation").

The whole point is -- to you this is extremely clear, along one axis of interpretation. To other people it may be extremely clear along another; the issue is those two "obvious" interpretations don't actually align.

jstanley 1 hour ago | parent

You're bringing in a whole load of baggage that isn't actually there.

Rule: no vehicles in the park.

A vehicle in the park violates the rule. If it's a vehicle, and it's in the park, it violates the rule.

Anything else you're assuming should be added to this comes from your own experiences, not from the problem statement.

z3dd 1 hour ago | parent

It's not irrelevant just because of the phrasing. People judge rules based on intention, and even more so with the rules they are already familiar with.

jstanley 59 minutes ago | parent

But the game tells you not to do that!

masklinn 1 hour ago | parent

> If it is both a vehicle and in the park, is justified?

> Is a justified violation of the rules still to be considered a violation? reply

Given the introductory text, neither is relevant:

> You might know of some rule in your jurisdiction which overrides local rules, and allows certain classes of vehicles. Please disregard these rules; the park isn't necessarily in your jurisdiction. Or perhaps your religion allows certain rules to be overridden. Again, please answer the question of whether the rule is violated (not whether the violation should be allowed).

cirrhosis 1 hour ago | parent

The choice of names (Tyrone vs Brett) made me wonder whether this was an experiment about racial prejudice.

Edit: yes this is explained at the end of the article after the quiz. It's still a confounding factor.

9dev 1 hour ago | parent

If only there was an exhaustive explanation offered answering this exact question after the quizz.

Gravityloss 1 hour ago | parent

> I don't yet have enough data to give an answer on whether the names affect anything, but stay tuned

kristofferc 1 hour ago | parent

This felt very easy. And yes, a police car in the park violates the rule, but police are allowed to violate rules in certain cases.

Levitating 1 hour ago | parent

> This felt very easy.

There's no right or wrong answers, so can it really be easy?

po1nt 1 hour ago | parent

Yesn't

jstanley 1 hour ago | parent

The only difficult ones are where reasonable people can disagree on whether it is a "vehicle". Like the rowing boat or the bicycle, or whether "wagon" refers to a little platform or a lorry.

Otherwise it comes down to "is it a vehicle?" and "is it in the park?". There are comments from people saying they said that a police car or ambulance was not a vehicle in the park because it had a good reason to be there, which to me makes no sense at all.

The game makes very clear that it is not "would you allow this vehicle in the park?" but "is this a vehicle in the park?".

Levitating 59 minutes ago | parent

> "is it a vehicle?" and "is it in the park?"

I don't think these are trivial questions at all. There's no sound definition of a vehicle.

If your definition depends on transporting humans than a wagon or even self-driving truck is not a vehicle. If your definition depends on transporting goods in a self-propelled manner than humans are vehicles.

jstanley 52 minutes ago | parent

That's fine, that's not the crux of the disagreement that this game generates.

The disagreement is that some people think a police car is not a vehicle in the park, because its presence in the park is justified.

asdfaoeu 35 minutes ago | parent

I think that's more just a product of them not reading the instructions.

jstanley 34 minutes ago | parent

Elsewhere in this thread you can find:

> not everyone views a "justfied violation" as a subcategory of "violation", but rather as a subcategory of "not violation"

masklinn 12 minutes ago | parent

That is indeed a person who did not, can not, or will not read instructions.

weli 1 hour ago | parent

My exact thought. Ambulances and police cars are vehicles. And they would violate the rules. But some rules sometimes can be violated under certain circumstances.

Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.

Also all the questions about verticality at least under my jurisprudence land is only owned vertically up to a certain extent after that is considered state property to be administered by authorities.

gambiting 1 hour ago | parent

>>Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.

Well no, it specifically says it's a memorial - at that point it's a statue, like an art installation, especially if the tank is non functional(bonus question - what if it was never an actual tank in the first place, it's just some metal bent to look like a tank?). If the memorial was of a Napoleonic soldier on a horse, you wouldn't say it violates a "no weapons allowed" rule just because the statue is holding a sword.

jstanley 37 minutes ago | parent

If it's metal bent to look like a tank then it's not a vehicle.

If it's a real tank that just happens not to work any more then it's a vehicle even if it as a monument as well.

Levitating 1 hour ago | parent

> Same thing about the WW2 tank that's not working. A vehicle that doesn't work is still a vehicle.

That completely depends on your definition of a vehicle. According to your definition an object that once met the conditions to be a vehicle will always be a vehicle. You can apply Theseus's ship to the WW2 tank replacing it's parts and then at what point does it seize to be a vehicle?

If your definition on vehicle depends on transporting humans than a wagon seizes to be a vehicle. If your definition depends on transporting objects in a self-propelled way than humans become vehicles.

masklinn 1 hour ago | parent

> police are allowed to violate rules in certain cases.

Probably more relevant, such services usually get legal carve outs for purpose.

But the game specifically instructs the player to ignore any such consideration.

lifestyleguru 1 hour ago | parent

For Mediterranean people:

"Francesca drives her car into the park with hazards lights on"

Does this violate the rule?

po1nt 1 hour ago | parent

You have to respect the sanctity of park-anywhere button.

lifestyleguru 1 hour ago | parent

Honestly I'm observing a culture shift in the region. People don't use hazard lights that often anymore but instead they're loudly and expressively speaking with their phone. As in saying "I can do whatever I'm doing, because I'm too busy with an important conversation".

neutronicus 1 hour ago | parent

How else would you Uber Eats your picnic?

masklinn 1 hour ago | parent

The game specifically instructs to disregard justification, overrides, carve-outs, etc...

It only asks two questions, strictly: is it a vehicle, and is it in the park.

So yes, francesca's car being a vehicle and in the park is a violation.

z3dd 59 minutes ago | parent

> It only asks two questions, strictly: is it a vehicle, and is it in the park.

no, it asks if the rule is violated in each situation

masklinn 16 minutes ago | parent

And what, pray tell, is the rule about?

NitpickLawyer 51 minutes ago | parent

> So yes, francesca's car being a vehicle and in the park is a violation.

I think you missed their joke :) the joke is that in europe (hence the Mediterranean) people often use "hazards on" as a justification for parking / stopping anywhere, especially where they aren't allowed to.

masklinn 16 minutes ago | parent

I didn't miss the joke, the joke missed the point.

po1nt 1 hour ago | parent

I thought this was about AI alignment. But the analogy could still work

thinkingemote 1 hour ago | parent

Previously: 2023 1K comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36453856

----

Fun game! I like how even if you know the "rules" and try to play against or with them, it still is a challenge.

m0op 1 hour ago | parent

i really liked this small project :) made me think.

pablogancharov 1 hour ago | parent

Did anyone tried jev on this?

benrutter 1 hour ago | parent

I liked this as an idea, and I agree with the point at the end that content moderation is quite difficult.

That said, I'm not sure the game proved the point it intended to, for me at least.

My answers agreed 89% with the majority, and more importantly, on the visualization showing proportions of people classifying various examples as "a vehicle in the park" had a clear cut off point, before which I hadn't classified anything as a violation, and after which, I had classified everything as a violation.

The suggestion is (I'm not saying this is proven, only suggested), to me at least, that if you gave people the instructions:

> No vehicles are allowed in the park. A wagon being pulled is not a vehicle, but a rowboat is.

A very high number would come to the exact same determination as me.

Just for context, I'm just talking about the game itself, I definitely agree that moderation is a very tricky issue full of grey areas, and we'd all find it very hard to agree fully on a set of guidelines and then agree on when they're being enforced correctly.

thinkingemote 47 minutes ago | parent

Try playing the game to win rather than playing it "straight". Or try finding the rules of the game or finding whether it's possible to win or lose, can you get 100% can you get 0%. What does winning mean?

In other words finding the game in the game can be a game.

asdfaoeu 37 minutes ago | parent

The bigger issue with moderation as exemplified by the comments is it's very easy to come up with posts that skirt the law.

rob74 24 minutes ago | parent

Well, I would say that most of the questions are very well chosen to highlight the intricacies of moderation, as evidenced by the fact that the only question where over 90% agree that it definitely violates the rule is someone driving their personal car into the park. All of the others are below 65%, because for every one of them you could make an argument that they should be exempted:

- police car and ambulance: definitely reasonable exceptions (the only thing that surprised me is that slightly more people would allow the police car than the ambulance)

- memorial: you could argue that a static vehicle installed as a memorial does not count as a vehicle anymore.

- rowboats: if there is a lake in the park, and if there are rowboats on the lake, you would assume that it's allowed to use them?

etc. etc.

chrisbuc 1 hour ago | parent

From a data management point of view, I have a similar question about a hypothetical sign that reads "Customer parking only"

- Am I a customer when I go into the shop?

- How about if I don't buy anything this time?

- When I receive a marketing email from the shop, based on my previous purchases, am I still a customer?

- How about 1 year later and I haven't bought anything, am I still a customer?

So when can I park there?

(obviously in the real world, there would be terms and conditions, but it's an interesting way to talk to clients about definitions in their data)

gambiting 1 hour ago | parent

It's the classic "no parking after midnight" sign, which obviously means you can never park there.

tsukikage 1 hour ago | parent

…this ALWAYS bothered me ever since I first saw Gremlins as a kid.

How early in the morning can I feed them? Dude never says!

neutronicus 1 hour ago | parent

Definitely not if you live or work in the area and will leave your car there for 8+ hours.

Maybe not if you have an appointment and will be there for an hour.

If you’re there for 15 minutes, open season.

Levitating 55 minutes ago | parent

> (obviously in the real world, there would be terms and conditions, but it's an interesting way to talk to clients about definitions in their data)

Not necessarily, you can't apply terms and conditions to a sign. But original intent does matter, you can reason over why the shop owners put the sign there in the first place. Which is likely to allow their customers to park while making a purchase.

thinkingemote 53 minutes ago | parent

Or if it's a club and the club has a car park for patrons only but the club is closed for renovations, or only opens at the weekend. But the club car park is very near a supermarket you go to which only has paid car parking. Can a club member park at the club when the club is shut to only go to the shop?

Would it also matter if the club had paid membership or anyone could belong to it for free?

anonymous908213 1 hour ago | parent

Not interesting even as a thought experiment. From context, "vehicle" is clearly inferred to mean "automobile" rather than literally "vehicle". All of the subsequent pedantry about vehicles then misses the point, because the common understanding is that you clearly meant automobiles. It is weird one can be so pedantic and yet fail to draw the obvious connection that the word is effectively substituted for a different word in context. Surely one could come up with a better example to use for your game.

mzajc 1 hour ago | parent

> From context, "vehicle" is clearly inferred to mean "automobile" rather than literally "vehicle".

From what context? At no point does the game say that, and from both the questions and the epilogue it's made clear that the game is about finding edge cases for what passes as "a vehicle" and "in the park".

anonymous908213 1 hour ago | parent

The context of being a human and living in a society, which may perhaps be described as "common sense". The game references a real law disallowing motorized equipment. It then substituted a precise verbiage commonly used in the real world to an imprecise verbiage for the game. As humans, we naturally autocorrect their imprecise mistake and hone in on the intended precision, even unconsciously. It says nothing about whether any of the things are vehicles. Boats and bicycles are obviously vehicles. But, in the context of the question, anybody with common sense is inferring the intended meaning of automobiles that such a rule is intended to prohibit. In fact this is not limited to humans. Even compilers are capable of this, operating on a subtype when you pass an overly broad supertype to them in the right context.

lambdaone 49 minutes ago | parent

The general interpretation of laws in countries with British-derived legal systems is that firstly, words have the meaning given referenced by the legislation itself, or failing that by a standard legal definition; otherwise words have their literal meaning unless they are ambiguous. If they are ambiguous, then the meaning is usually taken to be that understood by the notional "reasonable man" (and I should also add the meta-note that in most legal contexts, "man" is regarded as meaning "man or woman", except where it explicitly isn't, etc. etc.)

In this case, "vehicle" is defined by Wikipedia (and most other reference works) as "a machine designed for self-propulsion, usually to transport people, cargo, or both", but even that is ambiguous, as is "in the park", so at that point we look for the opinion of the "reasonable man". Whether skateboards, toy cars, horse, surfboards, aircraft above the park, drones etc. meet these definitions is the kind of ambiguity the quiz is looking for.

anonymous908213 41 minutes ago | parent

The problem I'm pointing out here is that it fails to actually explore that ambiguity. The majority cleanly decide that the 3 automobiles are out and everything else is in. There is interesting ambiguity, but it gets thrown out by the context; the context dictates things that are unambiguously vehicles, like boats and bicycles, are actually not violating the rule, because the rule in context actually means automobiles. You cannot explore the ambiguity around the meaning of "vehicle" with a context that dictates you actually meant automobile. At most you can make a point about type theory and type inference, but that was not the point the game was trying to make.

I would also note that the game is not formulated as a law. It is formulated as a colloquial rule - a law would never be presented as "no vehicles in the park". This lends itself to the contextual inference that narrows imprecise wording. If it were instead presented as "Article 5, Section 3: Vehicles are not permitted in the park. [Subsection: definition of vehicle]" it would likely do a better job of getting results that explore the ambiguous bounds of the definition rather than, as it currently does, getting results that clearly delineate at what is unambiguously an automobile rather than at what is unambiguously a vehicle.

silvester23 1 hour ago | parent

If "vehicle" here clearly means "automobile" _to you_, then that just proves the point the game is trying to make because the results show that it does not clearly mean that to everyone.

anonymous908213 27 minutes ago | parent

In terms of the majority answer, there is a clean break between the three automobiles and everything else. This is what's known as "having common sense". It is this common sense that leads the majority to answer that a bicycle is not violating the rule. Is that because they believe, in their heart of hearts, that a bicycle is not a vehicle? Could it truly be that 55% of people don't know what a vehicle is? Or is it because they are capable of inferring from context that vehicle was an imprecise supertype and the rule clearly referred to subtype automobiles?

fawefafd 1 hour ago | parent

How do you come to the conclusion that vehicle here means automobile? This thought has not even crossed my mind

jstanley 1 hour ago | parent

I think the most interesting finding from this is that some people experience their sense of what should be allowed so strongly that it blinds their sense of whether a particular action technically violates a particular rule.

NitpickLawyer 59 minutes ago | parent

> You agreed with the majority: 100%

Yeah, but the majority is sane. There are only 3 vehicles in the park.

davemullenjnr 1 hour ago | parent

This was an awful experience on mobile fwiw

NSUserDefaults 55 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if the averages would move if it said “you are a policeman and your performance will be judged based on your decisions”.

My_Name 54 minutes ago | parent

To me a vehicle carries a human or goods on the ground and movement is generated via mechanical action, powered by either by a motor or a human being. Motorbike, car, cycle, rowboat. Pushing or pulling the object without a mechanism does not count as these are just extensions of 'pedestrian', buggy, wagon, skateboard, ice skates. If it does not carry a human it does not count. Toy car, drone. If it is not touching the park, it is not 'on the park'. Commercial airliner, ISS. A non functioning object that used to be a vehicle is now art or a monument, so long it has been approved to be in the park as such. Otherwise it is littering.

Emergency vehicles are exempt, like police or ambulance.

skyflyer97 52 minutes ago | parent

To me this shows how even a simple prompt can be complicated. Not necessarily in the context of content moderation, but in general.

I've been working as a software developer for a while now, and this feels a lot like when a customer says I want feature A and I have to ask 20 more questions to filter out edge-cases the customer hadn't thought of yet.

My_Name 45 minutes ago | parent

Interesting that less than half of people think a cycle is a vehicle. In the UK it is legally a vehicle and the rider has to obey all the rules that other vehicles have to obey, road signs, speed limits, red lights etc.

GodelNumbering 43 minutes ago | parent

Conceptually very interesting and revealing, but I found it frustrating being forced to binarize the outcome without sufficient context (ill-posed). A lot of those questions have both valid yes and no answers, depending on the context.