Rules 1

Humans can follow rules 100%—and they are the only animals capable of this. I do not (yet?) know why this is so; but it has something to do with what rules are, and what rules are about.

Take chess, as an example. A chess player, after having learned chess's rules—maybe as a child—, will always move a rook along rows or columns on the chess board when playing a game of chess. With someone playing 3 to maybe 20 games a day on average, that would make some 10 times 365 times 50 or almost 200,000 games: And most probably, the player will not slip on a single one of them. Even if a rook ends up in a wrong position one day, the opponent, or the player herself, will notive this, and the player will agree that the rule was different than what happened; and will correct the move.

Or take a writer, writing English texts in current times. He will write "the" always with these three letters. And even if he slips, he will agree if someone points it out; and correct it.

Here is a more complex story how ingrained rule-following is in humans. I live in Bavaria, near Munich, where we have a mass transit system covering about 5500 square kilometers, with integrated ticketing. On the line from Munich to Grafing, where I live, the ticketing border is jsut before Ostermünchen, from where the line continues to Rosenheim. This means that for a travel frm Munich to Grafing, you have to buy a transit ticket at a ticket vending machine; whereas if you travel to Ostermünchen or beyond, you can buy the ticket on the train. A regular ticket there is about 17 Euros, whereas the fee for travelling without a ticket anywhere in the transit system is 60 Euros.

One day, a lady jumps into the train just before its doors close. The conductor ask her for a ticket: In accented German, she tells her that being in a hurry, she couldn't get one a at the vending machine; could she now buy needs one to Grafing. The conductor explains that she cannot sell her a ticket to Grafing; this is only possible for destinations Ostermünchen and beyond. The lady insists that she needs to travel to Grafing. Again, the conductor explains the rules: "If you need a ticket to Ostermünchen, I can sell it to you; but not to Grafing". Again, the lady insists that she needs to go to Grafing. The conductor, with all of us listening, with a tiny shrug, tells her, that because of the lacking ticket, she has to fine her 60 Euros. The lady does not really understand what's going on; but after some discussion, she accepts that these are the rules—when, finally, another passenger interrupts: "Can't you sell her a ticket to Ostermünchen?" The conductor waits a little—then the lady says she does not want to go there. It is getting awkward. Again the passenger addresses the conductor—it is obvious the lady is overwhelmed: "Just sell her a ticket to Ostermünchen, please!" Without a pause, the conductor says: "Ok, I'll do this once for you. That would be 17 Euros." It appears very much that the lady still does not understand what's going on—but she now accepts that she has to go to Grafing with a ticket with destination Ostermünchen, costing her 17 Euros.

Obviously, the conductor did not want to bend the rules in front of all the other passengers: She had to adhere to what's written—travelling inside the transit system area without a ticket costs you 60 Euros; but she could sell tickets beyond the system's boundary. And, for what it's worth, also the lady could not bend the rules she had learned: If you want to go to destination X, you need to purchase a ticket to X. The "non-linearity" of these rules had led to a crash, hadn't the passengers been the catalyst that enabled an different reaction.

My initial thought was that the reason that we follow rules so perfectly is a social one: Playing together certain games requires following rules perfectly, otherwise games with many players, or with high stakes, or long-running games would quickly deteriorate and end. But much of our civilization seems to consist of such games.

But then I saw another lady sitting opposite me, doing a crossword puzzle. She followed the rules perfectly: Filling it out with wellknown German words that had identical letters at the crossing places, and were solutions to the hints given. Nobody forced her to do this. She could have written in any words she wanted, she could have stopped solving it: But no, she racked her brain to find one word after the other. So, it's not a social effect, or not a social effect alone. It seems that we have fun following rules: Solving a crossword, finding a mathematical proof to some unimportant formula, playing a piece of music exactly as it is written in the score.

How can we do that, and how can we agree that we do that (in some specific situation)?