Rules aren't Reasons | Andrei's blog

"Rules are instructions that must be followed." is probably the first definition that comes to mind. Technically this is true, but a second question reveals the flaw: "Why must they be followed?" "Rules are made to be followed."

The most apparent reason for following rules is avoiding punishment that must be enforced onto violators. So people start hiding that they broke the rules to avoid punishment. This is known to lead to disasters.

Rules are safeguards that prevent certain events from happening, but the legal system manages to obscure this fact to an incredible degree. There are members of society who like finding flaws in phrasing and cite them for things the rules were never meant or designed for.

Unfortunately interpreting rules doesn't change the reasons behind them, when rules fail, one should fallback onto the reasons, not the wording.

People are brainwashed from a young age that rules and laws must be followed, which is good because you can allow stupid people to do stuff without breaking anything. Explaining all the reasons to everybody would be far to complicated so Rules are an effective proxy: you don't need to know why, you just follow them and bad things don't happen.

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