Status Updates From Fewer Rules, Better People:...

I’m a rule follower so I thought this might not be my thing, but this book changed my perspective a bit. Populations tends to get more litigious as they grow. If we can keep rules broad and use proper discretion when enforcing them maybe that’s the way to go.

"We are no more selfish than we are selfless, nor more brutish than we are refined. We are no more disposed to live in a large-scale society than we are inclined to live in familial tribes. We are mostly, in almost all respects that explain our behaviors and dispositions, in the middle of a spectrum. Very few behavioral or psychological traits are categorically universal to humankind.

“AI is like any by-the-book bureaucrat who, settling on the rule that prohibits coffee purchases from any vendor but A, will give you no explanation as to why vendor A can purchase Starbuck’s coffee but you cannot. Asked why that rule is the right rule, they insist only that it is the rule.”

“Discretionary acts are an organization’s way to build in checks on the moral and practical legitimacy of laws and rules. We need wise enforcers when legalism hits its limits, and even when it doesn’t. Wise enforcers, like wise citizens, make a society worth living in.”

“Unlike Hobbes and the even more pessimistic Machiavelli, Han Fei did not identify humans as by nature brutish, stupid, irrational, or gullible. Instead, they are mediocre. Whatever else he was wrong about, Han Fei was right about this. We are mediocre.”