based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
It’s not about whether the choice is good or bad but that it’s not made because of reasons that speak in favor.
There is no real reason to choose either the left or right side of the road for driving but it’s very useful to choose either of them.
The fact that the number 404 for a “page not found” and 403 for “client is forbidden from accessing a valid URL” is arbitrary. There’s no reason or system why you wouldn’t switch the two numbers.
The web profits from everyone accepting the same arbitrary numbers for the same type of error.
If one person says I don’t really need that many error codes, I don’t want to follow arbitrary choices and send 44 instead of 404, this creates a mess for everyone who expects the standard to be followed.
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
The more considerate and reasoned your choice, the less random it is. If the truth is that your way of being considerate and systematic isn’t as good as it could have been, that truth is systematic and not magical. The reason for the non-maximal goodness of your policy is a reason you did not consider. The less considerate, the more arbitrary.
There is no real reason to choose either the left or right side of the road for driving but it’s very useful to choose either of them.
Actually there are real reasons to choose left or right when designing your policy; you can appeal to human psychology; human psychology does not treat left and right exactly the same.
If one person says I don’t really need that many error codes, I don’t want to follow arbitrary choices and send 44 instead of 404, this creates a mess for everyone who expects the standard to be followed.
If the mess created for everyone else truly outweighs the goodness of choosing 44, then it is arbitrary to prefer 44. You cannot make true arbitrariness truly strategic just by calling it so; there are facts of the matter besides your stereotypes. People using the word “arbitrary” to refer to something that is based on greater consideration quality are wrong by your dictionary definition and the true definition as well.
You are wrong in your conception of arbitrariness as being all-or-nothing; there are varying degrees, just as there are varying degrees of efficiency between chess players. A chess player, Bob, half as efficient as Kasparov, makes a lower-quality sum of considerations; not following Kasparov’s advice is arbitrary unless Bob can know somehow that he made better considerations in this case;
maybe Bob studied Kasparov’s biases carefully by attending to the common themes of his blunders, and the advice he’s receiving for this exact move looks a lot like a case where Kasparov would blunder. Perhaps in such a case Bob will be wrong and his disobedience will be arbitrary on net, but the disobedience in that case will be a lot less arbitrary than all his other opportunities to disobey Kasparov.
That’s not how the English language works.
The dictionary defines arbitrary as:
It’s not about whether the choice is good or bad but that it’s not made because of reasons that speak in favor.
There is no real reason to choose either the left or right side of the road for driving but it’s very useful to choose either of them.
The fact that the number 404 for a “page not found” and 403 for “client is forbidden from accessing a valid URL” is arbitrary. There’s no reason or system why you wouldn’t switch the two numbers.
The web profits from everyone accepting the same arbitrary numbers for the same type of error.
If one person says I don’t really need that many error codes, I don’t want to follow arbitrary choices and send 44 instead of 404, this creates a mess for everyone who expects the standard to be followed.
The more considerate and reasoned your choice, the less random it is. If the truth is that your way of being considerate and systematic isn’t as good as it could have been, that truth is systematic and not magical. The reason for the non-maximal goodness of your policy is a reason you did not consider. The less considerate, the more arbitrary.
Actually there are real reasons to choose left or right when designing your policy; you can appeal to human psychology; human psychology does not treat left and right exactly the same.
If the mess created for everyone else truly outweighs the goodness of choosing 44, then it is arbitrary to prefer 44. You cannot make true arbitrariness truly strategic just by calling it so; there are facts of the matter besides your stereotypes. People using the word “arbitrary” to refer to something that is based on greater consideration quality are wrong by your dictionary definition and the true definition as well.
You are wrong in your conception of arbitrariness as being all-or-nothing; there are varying degrees, just as there are varying degrees of efficiency between chess players. A chess player, Bob, half as efficient as Kasparov, makes a lower-quality sum of considerations; not following Kasparov’s advice is arbitrary unless Bob can know somehow that he made better considerations in this case;
maybe Bob studied Kasparov’s biases carefully by attending to the common themes of his blunders, and the advice he’s receiving for this exact move looks a lot like a case where Kasparov would blunder. Perhaps in such a case Bob will be wrong and his disobedience will be arbitrary on net, but the disobedience in that case will be a lot less arbitrary than all his other opportunities to disobey Kasparov.