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Rules
2 min read · 483 words
Rules are the constraints — internal or external — that determine what the operator can and cannot do.
The categories: external rules (laws, regulations, organizational policies, social conventions) and internal rules (the operator’s own committed standards, the values they have decided to operate by, the limits they have set on their own behavior). Both function structurally similarly — they constrain available actions, with the constraint enforced either by external consequence or by the operator’s own commitment. The operator’s life is shaped by both kinds.
The mistake one direction: treating all rules as external constraints to be navigated around. The operator running this configuration spends significant cognitive resources on what they can get away with, what the actual enforcement is, what the consequences would be of breaking each rule. This produces a particular kind of operator — one whose behavior is determined by enforcement rather than by values, and who cannot be relied on when enforcement is absent. The cost is in trust: other operators correctly identify this configuration and limit their willingness to depend on the operator running it.
The mistake the other direction: treating all rules as binding regardless of merit. The operator running this configuration follows rules whether or not they make sense, whether or not the conditions the rules were written for still apply, whether or not the rule is itself reasonable. This produces compliance without judgment, and the operator becomes the instrument of whoever wrote the rules rather than the agent of their own actual values.
From the chair: distinguish between rules. Some rules have legitimate basis and warrant compliance regardless of whether the operator personally agrees with each one. Some rules are arbitrary, outdated, or unjust, and warrant examination of whether following them is itself a moral failure. The operator who can make these distinctions accurately operates with both reliability (following legitimate rules) and integrity (resisting illegitimate ones).
The other application: the operator’s internal rules are a different kind of structure entirely. These are not externally enforced; their function is to make the operator’s behavior consistent with their own values without requiring the operator to re-derive each decision in the moment. The Principles entry covered this. Internal rules that the operator has set deliberately — I do this, I do not do that — function as the structure that produces consistency across the operator’s life when in-the-moment conditions would otherwise produce inconsistency.
The internal rules worth installing are the ones that protect the operator from their own predictable distortions. The diet rule that prevents food choices made when emotionally activated. The communication rule that prevents responses sent when angry. The financial rule that prevents purchases made when stressed. These rules look like constraints from outside; from inside, they are the operator’s own self-protection from configurations that produce decisions the operator wouldn’t endorse on reflection.