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Larks comments on Boring Advice Repository - Less Wrong
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Comments (557)
Don't get arrested.
IMO this sentence is too general to constitute useful advice. It's like saying, "don't get killed". Well, yeah, that's a good idea, but how do you actually implement it into practice ?
Try very hard to avoid doing two illegal things at the same time (and if you go to 3 you're just asking for it). This is one of the biggest ways people get caught.
Avoid committing crimes, especially near police. I think the people already know this though.
In most countries, including the USA, it is prohibitively difficult to completely avoid committing crimes. For example, you commit a crime whenever you:
Most of the laws that define such actions as crimes are rarely enforced here in the USA -- until you happen to draw an attention of some moderately powerful person or entity, at which point the enforcement kicks in. However, it would be difficult (though not, I suppose, impossible) to lead a normal life without committing any such minor crimes.
Technical note: some of these are Torts, not Crimes. (Singing Happy Birthday, Watching a Movie, or making an Off-Color Joke are not crimes, barring special circumstances, but they may well be Torts.)
I'd remove the comma and “especially”. Why the hell would I refrain from (say) infringing copyright if I had a snowball's chance in hell of getting caught? (unless I thought infringing copyright was bad in itself -- but in that case I wouldn't need to be told to avoid doing that)
Many people get arrested for committing crimes not in the immediate proximity of police. While obviously we can complicate the advice to an arbitrarily with epicycles to deal with edge cases, I think simple advice is best. If you know enough to construct edge cases you don't need to ask questions like "how does one avoid getting arrested?" in the first place.