no rule of law -> automatic bullshit.
HN has never been a rule-driven, legalistic kind of place, and isn't going to get that way. But I've had to learn a lot about people who do feel this way and obviously have a lot to learn yet. My own temperament is very far from this; it's almost impossible for me not to read "we'll figure it out as we go" as a good, fine thing.
The issue was that it wasn't clear there would be rule-changing or experimentation /during/ the experiment, rather than after the experiment.
From my point of view that sentence about making it up as we go was the most important thing in the original post. It meant that we didn't have to plan a fixed set of rules: if and when something unforeseen came up, we'd adapt to it then. That's why I said "initial conditions". I'd never have proposed anything that took away our ability to adapt in the middle of this, and especially not about something so untried.
About that, I like the point zellyn makes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633818
