(08-09-2015, 11:16 AM)Oedipussy Rex Wrote: (08-07-2015, 12:20 AM)Lunamancer Wrote: I've observed often enough that when a traffic light is not working, traffic flows more smoothly and orderly through the intersection. Even though the purpose of the traffic light is to bring order to the intersection, it seems to have the opposite effect.
That's because traffic lights aren't intended to bring order to an intersection but are intended to disrupt the flow of traffic. More so now that traffic citations are becoming a bigger part of a municipality's revenue stream.
Also, where do you live that people don't freak the shit out when a traffic light isn't working? The idiots around here have no frickin' clue what to do.
Guess drivers are a little different everywhere. I remember humor columnist Dave Barry, in the wake of ballotgate back in 2000, said of course the ballots were misleading. Anyone who's ever driven in south Florida knows no one there can follow arrows. Here, drivers are affectionately characterized as "Massholes" but I find we do tend to be far better drivers than most of the rest of the country because we have to do it on crazier roads. Connecticut drivers are by far the worst as I observed on a road trip from Springfield, MA to Sayersville, NJ which included driving among Massholes, right through New York City, and half way across the state for which the Jersey barrier is named.
But really when I see chaos ensue is whenever people drive through a parking lot. People have trouble doing anything but following a straight line. Give them two dimensions, and they break down. One has to wonder how society is going to handle 3 dimensions when we having flying cars.
Anyway, I agree with you 100% on the true purpose of traffic signals. Maybe it's just a modern brain bug. But when people seek to solve the problem of bringing order, like to busy intersections, they almost always start thinking in terms of top-down solutions. Whereas my education in computer science, in particular how operating systems manage resources or network traffic, that the best solution to orderly and efficient flow is a sort of de-centralized "politeness" algorithm.
Perhaps in the absence of a modern, scientific society--not to mention modern politics--the typical person's thinking may very well be that of bottom-up order. This would be something players would just have to wrap their heads around. Maybe in a sword & sorcery world, nobody in their right mind would ever believe law springs forth from a king's decree, rather it would be more like common law, where practical solutions to disputes become widespread and standardized over time.
And that would actually get right at answering the question I was asking. "Lawful" doesn't mean just whatever a GM or a game designer thinks, and it doesn't refer to the "laws" as determined by the ruler of a particular land. Rather it's this naturalistic thing, and that literally written laws to be imposed from the top down actually represent chaos, associated with the warlord and usurper.
I haven't mentioned, but have in the back of my head, that BD&D only used the Law/Chaos axis, not the good/evil axis, and those of the chaotic alignment were thus the "bad guys." So what would this mean for "Chaotic Good" characters in AD&D. Most people seem to conceive of CG as being champions of "the good" who sincerely believe that if they could collapse society constructs they deem somehow "oppressive" that a new society without oppression will rise from the ashes like a phoenix. However with the law=bottom-up perspective, the Chaotic Good character is one who perhaps seeks power, a sort of usurper, intending to use that power for good, but whose plans are consistently frustrated creating a chaos.