Lamb’s book Fewer rules, better people: the case for discretion Is filled with specific examples of cases where the absence of discretion forces people to take actions that are contrary to justice or even only common sense. In a chapter he talks about a woman who organized a Rondetary conversation through her organization during a conference. She wanted to order coffee for the event, but her institution had the rule that all catering orders had to go through a certain seller. But there was a problem – the round table started at 9:30, but the seller did not even start taking orders until 10:00 am. However, there was a Starbucks around the corner, and it turned out that the supplier in question had placed coffee images to Starbucks – indeed, to that specific Starbucks location. So the woman who organized the event tried to allow her institution to have her placed directly at Starbucks, in vain:
Certainly, my host argued, this was sufficient evidence that this coffee purchase was within the spirit of the rules. The manager did not agree and did not approve the purchase. It was against the rules.
It may be easy to reject these types of rules as little more than annoyance, but not something substantial indicates. But lamb does not agree. He thinks it is ruled by administrators who focus on unyielding entry to policy manuals and Rulbooks can be equally corrosive for the structure of civil society and moral development as a life under tyranny:
Tyranny has done as much as everything else to prevent people from blooming. Western liberals have been less concerned with a figure who is the opposite of the tyrant in disposition, but no less to be feared. This is the bureaucraat of the book. These bureaucrats are naturally inclined to legalism and deeply afraid of exerting discretionary judgment. They don’t want responsibility; They are afraid of all recoil, so that they are very risk -averse. Faced with a decision that they are not sure of, they look for the governance language and are comforted when they notice that the problem is over. If someone goes to the bureaucrat of the book with a new idea, the only way is to bring them yes if there are explicit rules for the idea.
A critical capacity for us as individual people, and for the development of a thriving society, is the ability to not only recognize a rule and to know how to meet this – it is the ability to understand the reason and goal behind the rules. Rules are not justified themselves, simply because they are rules of their nature are rules to exist to exist in service From another, larger goal. A dedication to lead a person’s life by simply applying the rules, whatever they may be, shuns our moral development and our ability to practice virtue. This does not only apply to the office of the book. It also applies to the citizens whose behavior is determined by submissiveness of legalistic algorithms:
But I think that even worse than this is the effect that such societies have on the obedient. The aim of surveillance state-final is to convert all citizens into compliance robots and every bureaucrat in a bureaucrate in the book. It does this by changing human motivation in all its rich complexity in fear of getting out of the line and in a love of action because of the rules. This is the true horror of legalism.
He makes a personal analogy by thinking about his own responsibility as a parent to not only teach his daughter to follow a list of prescribed actions, but to the Why Behind those actions:
The aim of creating responsibilities and to hold her to them is not up to her to act because of the rules and the punishment and rewards they bring. We want her to feed her rabbits, water and brush because they are vulnerable, whose well -being is completely dependent on their caregivers. We want them to empty the dishwasher in time because it is important that a kitchen is clean and useful, because it is essential to not be a free rider in the house and because you have obligations for other people. In her we want to cultivate the mind and reasoning behind the rules, especially if they are good.
We also want her to have the opinion to find out when rules are not good, either because the reason behind them is defective or because she has discovered a better way to do things.
He admits that it might be easier to easily maintain the rules for his child legally. But that would be a failure:
Make the penalties serious and consistent enough and I am sure that I could get better, more consistent compliance. But if my child becomes the manager who refuses to approve the coffee purchase, I have not succeeded in raising a decent, reasonable person as much as I would have failed if I had raised a tyrant. Choose between a world of Apparatchiks that follow the law of the law and a world of imperfect decision makers who have a judgment and motivation to do well through the spirit of the rules ready to identify better ways to do things, I will take the last 100 percent of the time.
Legalism not only reduces our ability to develop as moral agents, it also leaves people unprepared and unable to act in the light of situations that could not explain the rules:
New circumstances require judgments based on the reasons behind the rules. People who live for fear of non -compliance have no idea what to do in such circumstances. Even worse, they will apply rules in ways that are contrary to the reasons why those rules exist in the first place. They will act wrongly under the coverage of the law, whether it is about refusing coffee or denying freedom.
Lam is also very concerned about the growing tendency to make decisions through algorithms generated by AI as a replacement for human judgment. Use of AI algorithms in decision-making even robes us of the possibility To understand the reason behind the rules:
These are comparisons for which there is no explanation in the human language. A programmer can show you this comparison, although you could never read it before his height, and the only coherent description of what it means is: “This is the comparison that fits all pronunciation in the past.” Deep learning is not only opaque, it is not human. The deepded rules are the logical end point of the proliferation of rules. It is the end point of legalism, where the laws of BureauDynamics put us in the most extreme matter, whereby no one even understands the rules that rule us.
The use of rules generated by AI therefore does little to illuminate the problems of the bureaucrate of the book:
AI is like any bureaucraat of the book that settles on the rule that prohibits coffee purchases from a supplier, but A, you do not explain why seller A Starbucks Coffee can buy, but that is not possible. Asked why that rule is the right rule, they only notice that it is the rule.
Ultimately, LAM believes that Han Fei reverses the true relationship between mediocrity and rules:
Han Fei believes that legalism was the antidote for mediocrity. I think legalism is the cause. Standardized food, standardized houses, standardized essay assessment and standardized bureaucrats are at its best OkayOnly accessible objects must be tolerated. They are never excellent and do not inspire excellence.
But this discussion requires more than just second order, abstract discussions about why discretion should gain ground against legalism and rules. To be useful in the book in the book, the rubber will have to go on the road at some point. To this end, LAM has a series of ideas about how and where the role for discretion to expand. I will deal with that in the next message.