implicit rules and explicit rules

To me saying that you have a bunch of implicit rules is pretty much saying that people are subject to possible discipline or shunning in an arbitrary manner; for violating customs that no one bothered to tell them about, or deliberately withheld to get someone in trouble.

If you cannot tell someone exactly what they are doing that is wrong and point to a published rule that says so either in general or specifically, you are simply oppressing people.

i'm left with the feeling that you missed the point of my post...

implicit rules vary from how one says hello to whether or not you yield when walking down the hall and someone is approaching you to how you barter in a marketplace in asia.

there are rules you follow without ever heard the explicit rules. almost 99% of the rules of grammar you use are implicit (a small number that have been stated explicited after the fact). the same goes for most social interactions.

Ohhh, ok.

You don't mean rules at all!

To add:

As for your description, every single "rule", or custom, or grammar, or definition, or spelling of a word, or means of shaking hands, is something I had to learn from someone. Where these are clearly defined and agreed upon, I do well in dealing with others. Where they are not, things tend to break down and dysfunction occurs.

i do mean rules.

all the rules are grammar are not all explicitly stated, and yet you communicate in english quite well.

people can tell when something is ungrammatical (e.g. violate a rule of the language) quite easily, even if they can't state the rule.

it is true that where rules are unstated, that there is often difficulty, but consider animal societies where there rules, and no way to state the rules explicitly, and yet animal societies function.

in some sense the argument i'm making is that the world is not aristotelian.

I don't really want to debate whether animals are capable of communication.

My point is that every rule, to be a rule, needs to be communicated at some point. If you cannot express it or reach an agreement about it in some way or another, it isn't a rule. It's just an opinion or idea trapped within the confines of your own mind, and you shouldn't expect anyone else to hold to it.

implicit rule:
Don't fart under the covers and then foof them towards your partner, it usually yields bad results!

Actually, the trick is that implicit rules can only be enforced informally, and great care must be taken to give the person every chance to make amends or leave the community.

Otherwise you have 1984, where there are no laws, but complete authority. The entire purpose of Law, when it originated, was to codify the rules in order to protect people from arbitrary sanctions.

So in the case of griefing builds, you shun the person, neg rate them, wall off their property, whatever, but don't expect the Lindens to get involved for every little impoliteness you encounter.

I don't think LL is interested in being a RL-type of government. I don't think Philip believes that government is a good thing(maybe a necessary evil at best) all in all, though he probably would never say that explicitly.

Exactly!!! Well said Ananda.

As I said, a very slippery issue, one that can be abused easily. SSK is right in that implicit rules often govern our behavior, but that doesn't necessarily make it right, proper, ethical, efficient, a good idea, something to aspire to, or whatever positive criteria you'd want to use to judge it.

When most people do share the same idea or opinion, then an implicit rule can be very dangerous because of its power coupled with the lack of clear communication.

I don't think that I did.

What use are implicit rules in an online society?

We are all (or most of us) hiding behind our virtual puppets.

There is little if any consequence for actions which do not break the explicit rules. No "naming names"

Those consequences (being ostracized, or frowned upon) can and regularly ARE bypassed by getting a new puppet, a fresh identity.

Some residents do not subscribe to notions of Community, or common standards of behavior, even though they share the same resources as the rest of us; Land, server use, creation, interaction.

Most, but not all incidents of "griefing in the margins", of annoying people in ways that don't quite violate the explicit rules, are from people who either do not actively subscribe to their neighbors' concepts of community, or who actively revel in breaking the implicit rules of others.

HG, these "implicit rules" are only as valuable as an individual's desire to be a part of a community; to do business with others, or to become friends with them, or achieve respect for their creations/actions. Since the basic building blocks of SL are "neighborhoods/sims", some of whose members wish to be a part of a community and some who do not, any neighborhood's set of standards or set of implicit rules are only as valuable as the Lowest Common Denominator of inhabitant in that sim holds them to be.

Most of the people that complain about things like land-griefing seem to be asking for their Implicit rules to become incorporated into the game's Explicit rules.


Here's where I don't think that I missed your point:

We cannot rely on implicit rules EVER in a game like SL, because we will always be subject to the people who choose not to abide by them, or who deliberately flaunt them because it amuses them to see us get our virtual panties in a bunch over their actions.

We should not be trying to find way to enforce a common set of implicit rules, because it isn't possible except in certain areas; private estates and group-held sims. Instead, we should try to figure out, overall, what are the biggest problem-areas of social interaction; actions that are not violations of Explicit Rules, but still cause a lot of headaches and complaints. Once identified, we should concentrate on "damage control", finding ways to minimize one person's ability to inflict grief or annoyance on another. The greatest asset that we have in this regard is that our environment is all just bits and bytes. It's possible to shuffle the world and our interactions with it in any number of ways. in the RW, a dispute between neighbors would require some compromise in order to be solved. An ugly wall would have to be physically torn down, or physically repainted. Here in SL, the solution is often possible without either side having to compromise. If you literally give me the ability to turn "off" from my view the objects that I don't wish to see, I now have the ability to shape my own destiny, and my path isn't determined by the lowest-common-denominator of society, the one who refuses to abide by my "implicit rules", or show "common courtesy"

It's a radical solution, because it sidesteps notions of RL which dictate how SL should act; it ignores notions of Real World continuity that in fact don't have to apply to our virtual world.

The only rule anyone ever needs:

Don't be a jerk.

That is all.

But "jerk" is not an attribute in the same sense as "height"; it is a relationship between two people. As such, it is surely not a binary characteristic. In some cases the result would be almost unanimous (land griefing), in others, maybe only driven by an aggressive pro-jerk minority (hundreds of "for sale" signs).

Posting about in-world government probably counts as being a jerk by this definition. In fact, a corollary of this rule might be "Don't be ((insert name of prominent pro-government activist))".

What you are proposing, then, is a democratic (vote-counting) system where the votes are never counted, but whoever shouts louder gets more weight and most people don't get in on the conversation at all. Goodness, if you're against government ("I'm not going to have some random idiot telling me what to do", you ought to be against this proposal.

To get specific: does putting an ugly build on your land to get it to sell faster count as being a jerk? Understand, I'm not asking for your opinion; I'm asking how we would know whether the person had broken your cardinal rule.

And, what good is a simple rule if you don't know when it's been broken?

i'm sure you missed my point.

rules need not be communicated. e.g. ignorance of the law is no excuse. you can be held to a rule you don't know.

also, some rules are logical conclusions from brute facts (e.g. gravity).

laws are explicit. they are not the same thing as the actual rules that govern social interaction.

Ok, apparently I did, even having read through your first post 3 separate times.

Would you dummy it down for me pretty please? Use small words.

SSK:

Rules need not be communicated? Then have you been advocating an inhumane, unjust, undesirable society all along? I think not.

Rules must be communicated. It is the responsibility of the individual to know the rules, and it is the responsibility of society to be sure that those rules are commonly available and comprehensible. One way in which rules are made known is to formalize and publish them as laws. Many times people have been held to a lesser legal or ethical responsibility when society has failed to make common rules or laws properly known.

Of course laws aren't the same as rules that govern social interaction. But what rules do you assume do, if not Aristotelian? Physical conditions such as gravity? An agreed-on moral code? The pursuit of power, wealth, and security? Social construction?

By the way, many animals do explicitly communicate rules to each other. Other animals rely on instinctive rules, which are perhaps most explicit of all.

explicit rules = explicit consequences
implicit rules = varied (not unanimously agreed on) consequences

The problem is when something that belongs in the implicit category ("dont stare at a stranger on a bus for more than 10 seconds) gets an explicit consequence ("anyone caught staring is given 30 days in the county jail"

The whole point of implicit is that it covers often gray area behavior..those things we think of as good manners or customs. When everyone is on the same page with good manners, everything runs more smoothly...everyone feels comfortable. They know what to expect walking down the street. (In Smalltown USA thats a cheerful "How ya doin?" On the streets of a Big City thats a careful avoidance of eye contact and brisk "on my way somewhere" stride) Break either of these implicit rules in either the Smalltown or the Big City, and you can be met with anything from surprise to a dirty look. Keep it up over time and people may become more and more hostile to you. Or not. Responses are varied. They will however not be written down in a book and enforced by an officer of the law (unless its 16th Century Salem and you failed to correctly greet the pastor...then its off to the stocks with you for some hold fashioned humiliation and vegetable pelting!)

What some of us would like to avoid is trying to legislate good manners and courtesy which are governed generally by implicit rules. We dont want to create a strict, codified response to someone merely being rude or inconsiderate. Mainly because those types of behavior are very subjective and we may have trouble as an online society creating an explicit definition of what is rude or ugly.

not all rules need be communicated for them to be enforced.
that is a fact of the world. fair or not. right or not.

what i am advocating is a bit of consideration of what is happening between implicit and explicit rules and what is happening between the people who support or decry each, both, or none.

i haven't seen a rule to this affect.

i disagree.
but say you are right... where does this responsibility come from?

the world is not aristotelian. it is not described by necessary and sufficient conditions alone. which also means that fixed rules are insufficient.
most of the rules i assume are the ones that affect me in some tangible way. the rest are relatively unimportant to me.

some do, and some don't communicate their rules. and yet they have rules, even the ones that don't communicate them.

can instinct be considered most explicit? there is suggestion that sociability is instinct. where does that do to the implicit explicit distinction?

there are two kinds of rules (at least two kinds), and how people use them have affects.
explicit rules and implicit rules must work together; not because one is better than the other, or because it's better for there to be a unity of rules, but simply because there are two sets of rules.

we can't rely on implicit rules alone.
nor can we rely on explicit rules alone.

that is dysfunctional simply because it ignores the actual situation.

this isn't true for two reasons.

the first reason is that the explicit rules cannot and do not cover every situation, even in areas where the rules attempt to be explicit. the world is not discrete; the line between what is part of a situation and not part of a situation is not a bright line. the world (especially the social world) is not aristotelian - not governed by necessary and sufficient conditions.

the second reason has a complex mathematical proof, but the gist of it is that given any system of rules and situations, you can always arrive at a combination of rules and situation that the system cannot resolve.

Then I will admit I misunderstood you. And gracefully bow out of this thread.

Haha, either we're arguing at crosspurposes here or we're in complete agreement. Yes, I understood that this was your point, but I disagree, totally. Well, maybe. We're wandering into semantics territory now.

Are implicit rules "rules", if everyone does not agree to them? Are they rules if people generally agree that they exist, but some deliberately flaunt them? Are they rules if there is no way to enforce them? If they are rules even though they cannot be enforced, what value have they?

I agree that implicit rules exist in our virtual society. As far as how practical they are, how out-and-out useful, they have only as much value as each individual holds them to have, and this seems directly related to how much that individual wants to be a part of the community. We willingly obey implicit rules in order to facilitate our relations with others.

Explicit and implicit rules can and will be used together, but only by those people who wish to get along with each other. As interesting a philosophical discussion this might be, it has NO practical value in a society where:

a. We hide behind the masks of our avatars and our computer screens, and are thus removed physically and emotionally (guilt) somewhat from our actions. Further, our identities in-game are semi-disposable; if I have an account get cancelled, even though that identity has "died", I may still be able to get in and interact with SL society for better or worse.

b. We are further protected from the social consequences of our actions by the policies of the landlords, the Lindens. If we do something crappy that isn't breaking an explicit rule, we're safe from being named in the forums, being called to task. We can even brag about it in chat or IM, and feel relatively safe from consequences.

c. A percentage of the populace in our world will deliberately try to make things less-than-enjoyable for us; for revenge, for idle amusement, for profit. This percentage will be NOTICEABLY larger than in the real-world, because people feel more free to act out in an environment like this, because of reasons (a.) and (b.) above.


We only have explicit rules to rely on, because not everyone is going to follow the implicit ones, and we have no way to force them to. We're left with either implicit non-rules, (non, because not everyone subscribes to them), or rules that can't be enforced and are therefore about as useful as non-rules.

Implicit rules do work alongside explicit in a functioning society; implicit rules include such things as whether the tone of an IM is "friendly" or "creepy", depending on context. These only work for the people who are working towards a functioning community. With no social shoehorn to force dissidents into step, it doesn't matter if 1-in-20 or 5-in-20 of us are disobeying the implicit rules; either way, there's going to be a lot of misery and complaining in the forums.


Setting aside the philosophical, we should seek practical solutions to these implicit rules, and find ways to minimize the damage caused from one resident to another when they break those rules.

I rely on explicit rules alone, in cases where I feel myself to be slighted or griefed by another. If their actions do not violate these rules, then I seek ways to negotiate, or failiing that, keep quiet about it.

See, you broke it already.

i think it does have practical value. it has real effect.