2.1.1 Rules Aren’t Principles
In the Shallow Dive on Principles, the question was posed: if a rule caused disorder, is following it orderly or disorderly? In this Deep Dive, we’re going to cover this and more!
Imagine a warehouse where, as parts arrived, they were given a code that was the first three letters of the name of the part, followed by the time they arrived, and they were placed on shelves according to that code (first alphabetically, and then by numerical order).
First, not everyone refers to something by the same name, or they may use more or less specific terms. Is it under “Bingofal Difergilator” or just “Difergilator”? Some people shorten it to “the BD” or “Fergilator”. So, should someone shelve it under “Bin”, “Dif”, “BD”, or “Fer”? Did they use the time on their watch when they got it? Or the clock on the wall? Or the time from the computer that shows when the pallet was scanned? Or the time when the individual item was scanned? What if everyone does it differently!?
Following this unclear rule causes immediate disorder, as there is no clear objective principle being followed by everyone. It also leads to future disorder when people try to locate a part in the warehouse. If the workers collectively, but unspokenly, started organizing the parts in a way that made sense to everyone, they would be breaking the rule, but would actually achieve more order.
As another example, going back to the rules of language discussed in the shallow dive, if we pronounced “literally” literally, we’d pronounce it “literally” - with the ‘t’ pronounced literally as a ‘t’. But many people pronounce it “liderally” or even “licherally”. It’s also often used to mean “figuratively” (the exact opposite of literally), or used for emphasis, or to simply agree with someone’s statement. Since so many people do these things, and we all understand what we mean, that becomes a principle in reality, even though it breaks the rules.
If someone comes to work 15 minutes late every day, breaking the rule that work starts at 9 am, isn’t that disorderly? No, “comes to work 15 minutes late every day” is, itself, a principle!
The difference is between a “prescriptivist” understanding of reality vs a “descriptivist” view. Someone who sees the person coming to work 15 minutes late every day, and using the word “literally” in a way that is not technically correct, will subjectively see this as disorderly because the prescribed rules aren’t being followed. TBA can easily be applied to a prescriptivist worldview, explaining why someone who sees artificial, subjective rules being broken or deteriorated in some way as being “bad”.
However, TBA is fundamentally descriptivist - whatever is objectively happening in reality is what makes principles what they are.
This means that not only are laws or rules not principles automatically, but principles are also not rules or laws. The main difference is that rules and laws are subjective and externally imposed (they are prescribed), whereas principles are objective and inherent (they are described). If you made a law that it couldn’t rain on the weekend or that birds couldn’t poop on cars anymore, nothing would change in reality. No principles will have changed. And there’s no deterioration when it continues to rain on weekends and birds continue to poop on cars.
Similarly, many countries have old laws that people no longer even know about or follow. In England, it’s still the law that cab drivers need to ask their passengers if they have the plague or smallpox. No one does this, and it’s not enforced, so there’s no principle, and therefore no deterioration when it isn’t followed. Just because it’s written down on a piece of paper somewhere doesn’t make it a principle.
Conversely, there are many unspoken and unwritten rules that we simply pick up on as we grow up. It may be that no one is even consciously aware of some of these, yet they would count as principles.
Another important difference between rules and principles is that the more principles there are, the more complex something is, whereas rules can go either way - they can foster complexity or limit it. If there were no rules of language or driving, we couldn’t communicate complex ideas or have a sophisticated, efficient network of roads.
But if someone had different coloured hair every week and wore zany clothing, and the manager made new rules that you could only have your natural hair colour and wear a company-provided uniform, then that would decrease complexity because the unique principles of the employee’s self-expression would have been eliminated. In this case, adding rules decreased the number of principles.
Understanding the difference between rules and principles is therefore crucial. It enables us to understand why our systems of rules and laws, whether corporate, legal, or social, are causing real or perceived disorder. It also shows us that the path to a more effective society, one that is more stable, efficient, dynamic, displays more complex order, allows for more individual distinctiveness, while removing unnecessary constraint (aka allows more freedom), isn't always more rules, but better alignment with the TCQs and how things objectively work.
