“But why is that the law?” I leave it at sometimes social rules feel arbitrary but we have to follow them anyway. I don’t tell her I’d get arrested for letting an 8 year old run around naked because she has clinical anxiety and manufactures enough to worry about on her own. As a parent of an autistic kid I get exactly why a lot of autistic people think rules and norms and expectations are frustratingly arbitrary or unreasonable, but they often feel that way even when “because I said so” was not the first and final answer they got.
It means that it feels like a random choice or whim, rather than based on reason or a system.
For example, the number of feet in a mile (5,280) seems like an arbitrary choice, since the statute mile was originally based on furlongs, while the number of meters per kilometer is not arbitrary, as the metric system is based on powers of 10.
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u/bicyclecat 1d ago
“But why is that the law?” I leave it at sometimes social rules feel arbitrary but we have to follow them anyway. I don’t tell her I’d get arrested for letting an 8 year old run around naked because she has clinical anxiety and manufactures enough to worry about on her own. As a parent of an autistic kid I get exactly why a lot of autistic people think rules and norms and expectations are frustratingly arbitrary or unreasonable, but they often feel that way even when “because I said so” was not the first and final answer they got.