Posts by BenWilson
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But wouldn’t that require presumptions about the value of a given law (“equal or higher”) that cannot be decided within the paradigm you outlined?
It's decided beforehand. I only say equal or higher because a law could override lower priority ones. Otherwise it's not simply resolved. I didn't say there weren't problematic cases, just that there is still a potentially infinite number of resolvable ones. For instance, it is against the law to kill people intentionally, in general. But there are exceptions. If the case doesn't fall into one of the exceptions, then it's against the law in every circumstance, a potentially infinite number of circumstances. It might also be prohibited to let a minor drink alcohol, but you aren't permitted to kill someone to enforce this law. The killing law has higher priority. But perhaps in defense of your own life, you can kill someone - this is of equal or greater priority to the no-killing law.
And if you resolve the conflicts with more specific laws, how do you resolve disputes around those laws?
This is a separate question. There are mechanisms that work perfectly well in most countries to resolve this problem.
Look, at the end of the day, it seems to me that you're coming from the position that freedom from prohibitions is best argued for because anything else is impractical. But you haven't really shown that it is, because it's always possible to just make more laws to cover up whatever holes you find. Law writers make a job out of finding ways to do this with minimal contradiction with other laws, and judges and juries use their practical reasoning to resolve any disputes that do arise.
If you want to say that prohibiting things has more onus on it than allowing freedom, then you really need to do it from a standpoint that prohibiting things is wrong , not that it is impractical. Otherwise you merely lay down a challenge to write more and more specific laws, which is exactly what people will do.
For every advocate of a particular prohibition (potentially infinite in number that they are) you feel an argument is required specific to that case, even if they offer nothing in the way evidence themselves.
No, I think they should justify themselves. I just don't think that gives ME a free pass to not have to justify myself.
Even putting aside the philosophical reasons, I object on grounds of laziness.
Your laziness or mine? I'm genuinely confused.
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LOL @ Iggy. Needs a mouse to toss around.
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In the terms we're speaking of? How simple is it to describe an infinite set of legal prohibitions that do not contradict?
With the clause "where this does not contradict x", where x is a list of laws of equal or higher importance. So whatever you've described covers non-overlapping areas of activity. You leave the overlapping ones for more specific laws that resolve the conflicts.
Practically, cases will come up all the time which are not perfectly clearly covered by one law or other, which is why we have humans interpreting them rather than machines. The humans make abstractions based on what they think the 'principle of the law' is, or their own principles, and this sets up case law, which can of course be overridden by laws being changed.
Why do I think freedom is generally good? There's lot of reasons.1. I like it for myself, and don't generally agree with hypocrisy
2. It enables people to find their own interpretation of good
3. Prohibitions may obscure talents and close valid paths to good
4. A choice made freely is a real choice, which means that it puts a lot of responsibility on the chooser to take care, which develops their sense of responsibility.
5. Less important, but still a factor, it's efficient. Enforcing prohibitions carries a cost.There are plenty of counters to these points, which is why I don't feel I can just lay the onus on people who disagree with any/all of them to prove every single prohibition. Certainly there is an onus, but it's both ways. I'm required to lay out my points above more clearly in any particular case, and show why they don't contradict other goods. My creed is not the only one, and may not even be the most popular one.
I think there's a real tendency in humans to try to bring society together with prohibitions - if people are allowed to roam freely, they can just leave the pack, consume resources that the group believes it owns, act in all sorts of antisocial ways. This is particularly evident in children, whose lives are mostly governed by endless seemingly arbitrary prohibitions, and highly restricted choices. Our government makes rules about where they are allowed to be for large tracts of their time, and what they must be doing when they are there. It's how we are raised, so it's no wonder that the attitude that it's good pervades extremely deep. It even makes a lot of sense - appropriate freedom is actually a really hard balance to strike.
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i imagine most people, knowing it is billed as a cycleway, would keep well to one side. but there's always the tiny minority who "don't look, don't care" about other path users.
It's not really that practical anyway. There is enough room for 2 cycles to pass in opposite directions, but not enough for 2 lanes of pedestrians as well. So what side do the pedestrians walk? There's no answer, so it's on the cyclists to make their presence known. Not to mention that pedestrians in NZ just don't know about these rules, since there's no official code, and there's always children.
The average punter who just wants to get from A to B without being an athlete is unlikely to be going so fast they can't take evasive action.
You don't have to be an athlete to make a bike go fast downhill. Also, falling off a bike even at slow speed can be quite nasty, particularly if you fall onto the road. What evasive action can you take with a pedestrian if you're riding on the road? Either swerve into the kerb or the road. Both are dangerous.
And I'd say that anyone who is going so fast they can't take evasive action is a bloody idiot.
To a point. There's no accounting for some stupidities, like people or cars just not seeing you and running/driving straight across your path. But yes, you should aim to not ever be taken by surprise. It takes a lot of practice.
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Nope, no barrier, no signs saying no pedestrians. Can't have everything! Best to just cohabit and be careful. I have a bell, and use it for all pedestrians - they never take offense, because I ring it from a distance.
I have to say, I didn't much like how people acted in Germany regarding cycleways and pedestrian zones, ringing the bell angrily and shouting at anyone walking in the cycleway. If people can walk in your way, exactly as with cars, then I think it's on the person moving faster to keep a good eye out, slow down, and stop if necessary. Ring the bell, sure, but it's a warning, not a demand. Most people look up, then make way.
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I think the biggest danger on the cycleway is to forget that it's also a pedestrian way. It's not really safe to be ripping down the hills on it at 50kmh unless you're certain that people (or dogs) couldn't just step out of the bushes. I very nearly collected one guy doing this - pedestrians just don't expect to have to look on a cycleway.
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(As long as she doesn't argue for the cycle superhighway as diverting pedal-powered criminals coming in from West Auckland...)
LOL. Actually I ride along it regularly at night, and it does seem to have more suspicious looking fellows wandering around on it then than during the day. Possibly I just think they look suspicious because it's night, and they're dressed in black, but I wouldn't advise anyone to use it as a footpath at night - there's long stretches where you'd be a long way from any help, with plenty of places for some creep to hide.
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Hey taxis aren't as bad as actually driving a car. At least someone else could use them in the meantime.
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Sorry to have missed the opening, too busy swotting Java :-). But I just got back from a cruise in to K-Road along it - I'd say it knocked 5 mins off each way, and probably about 200 calories. More importantly, it's a lot safer.
Am I the very first to ride it with a child on the back? Marcus insisted on coming. To celebrate, I actually managed to pedal all the way up the Newton ramp at the end. It rained on the way home, but it just cooled me down a bit.
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Steve, it just doesn't seem like a numbers game to me. If you want to argue for freedom, you do it with positive arguments around the value of freedom, not the difficulty in specifying all the freedoms. This kind of difficulty is easily surmountable. It is simple to describe infinite sets. And it's also not a difficult thing to write copious amounts of law. Don't encourage it! Don't turn it into an engineering problem. It's beside the point whether it's easy or difficult to define freedoms - the point is that freedom is generally, in itself, good. With exceptions, in which lies all the difficulty of rights based systems of morality.
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