On 6/18/08, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Thats an interesting philosophical argument, but there is a reason most communities of human beings have a plethora of rules. Its indeed true that restrictions sometimes make it impossible to know what someone might do in complete freedom - but so what? I don't care what they "might do" in a state of nature, I care about what they "will do" on Wikipedia. If we have a mechanism for enforcing topic bans we have no need of knowing whether someone would otherwise violate the ban. We don't want them to violate the bans so we can drop a hammer - they have an end other than as a game of chicken.
Whatever kind of vehicle you drive, if you play chicken with a pedestrian you will lose nine times out of ten, because you know that they know that you won't hit them. There is nothing which physically preventing you from doing so, only the basic premise that you couldn't be that stupid. Unless of course you are, in which case you shouldn't be driving at all.
(At the peril of allowing this thread to degenerate into Bad Sci-Fi), if the car were equipped with some sort of electronic "pedestrian detector" which caused you to swerve, this would (to the pedestrian) be indistinguishable from a conscious decision to avoid making road-kill. Once again, anyone relying on such a feature shouldn't be driving at all.
—C.W.