Things They Should Invent: Thresholds Edition

"Well done!" threshold

I once read that if someone who's in jail is pregnant and goes into labour, they keep her shackled while she's in labour. Could you actually escape while in labour? That's like the rule against taking things like tweezers and nail clippers on an airplane. Could you actually hijack an airplane with nail clippers? If someone could escape from prison while in labour, or hijack an airplane with tweezers, we should just acknowledge their sheer talent and say "Well done!" There should be a threshold like this for everything. Rather than inconvenience large numbers of people in case of something remote and unlikely, we should acknowledge that if anyone can actually pull off the remote and unlikely thing, they probably deserve to win.

"Don't have to give them a chance any more" threshold

People keep saying to me of new Toronto mayor Rob Ford "You should give him a chance." As it happens, I sent him an email shortly after he was elected, as I do for everyone who's newly elected to represent me. Since he apparently has a reputation for being very good at solving individual citizens' problems, I wrote about the issue that's the biggest problem for me personally, namely a delay in funding to a specific part in Transit City. In my email, I quantified the monetary value of the lost time that this will cost me (well above what I pay in municipal taxes, BTW) and explicitly stated that any delay to this particular section will be more harmful to me than any other policy enacted by any level of government in my lifetime.

And then, on his first day of work, he came into work early to completely kill Transit City. Not just delay, not just the part that I need, the whole thing. The worst any government policy has ever hurt me, and he did it first thing on his first day, before even the start of normal office hours.

I don't think I should have to give him a chance any more.

I'd very much like that threshold clearly defined for broad applicability.

"Shut up and do it" threshold

This initially came to mind in the context of Transit City as well. My personal transit policy is rapidly becoming "Build something! Anything! Just build it now!" I was thinking about all the money that had been invested and the contracts that had been signed and the fact that they've already broken ground in at least one place, and it occurred to me that there must be some point of no return in project planning, where it simply isn't worthwhile any more to slow progress and go back to the drawing board in the hope of improving.

Then I got thinking that that would probably apply to other areas of life as well. How many couches do you have to look at before you should just buy the best of the ones you've already seen? How long should you spend trying to find the best price on something? I find that the more I research buying a condo, the less I know. I'd very much like some external indicator of when I've done enough research and can just go ahead and act.

Useless advice threshold

If a person has given you a certain critical mass of useless advice in your life, you are no longer obligated to go through the motions of listening to/respecting them any more. I want this quantified, so I can call people out.

Same old story threshold

Again, if a person tells you the same story a certain number of times, you can tell them to shut up without being considered rude. This needs to be formally quantified.

Noblesse oblige threshold

In a (not always successful, obviously) effort to be open-minded and considerate and not a total egomaniac I often find myself saying things like "Well, maybe it's different if you have a lot of money, but in my experience..."

But really, by general standards of noblesse oblige, shouldn't they be accommodating me and not vice versa?

I'm already a huge proponent of the idea that if one person has been in the other's position, it's up to the person who has been in both positions to identify with the other. In a conversation between a child and an adult, it's incumbent upon the adult to be able to figure out where the child's coming from. It's incumbent upon parents to know where their childless friends are coming from. It's incumbent upon teachers to know where their students are coming from. And I think, building on this, it's incumbent upon people who have more money to know where people with less money are coming from. It's incumbent upon car people to remember what it's like not to have a car.

There needs to be a threshold where a person is "above" you by a certain amount, you aren't required or expected to take their situation into consideration, but they do have to take yours into consideration.