Saturday, November 15, 2025

The 613 Commandments and the number of Federal regulations for automobiles

I have probably been in 613 Bible studies in my adult life, the number of rules/laws in the Old Testament for observant Jews. I often hear (and maybe I said) one didn't need so many laws to be religious, or to please God. I had hoped to be writing a blog about this, but just thinking about today, 6 a.m. when I got up to 9:30 a.m. when I drove to a hair appointment, I thought I could come up with 613 federal, state, municipal, township, plus thousands of regulations that will affect my life. That doesn't count the general commonsense rules we and our culture expect for us. Like brush your teeth; comb your hair; dress for the weather; check the rear view mirror before backing out.  Imagine that people living 4000 years ago could get by with only 613 and yet survived to the 21st century.

Since I would be leaving my apartment in the car I thought I'd just ask AI an easy question, "How many federal laws and regulations apply only to automobiles." Co-Pilot and I really got into an argument, and I kept feeding back to it its answer and telling Co-pilot that was not what I was asking, especially when it finally came up with 142 after telling me about all the revisions and subsections of the codes. After about 6 responses, AI began to blame it on me that I didn't accept its answer!! It really got snippy and tried to overwhelm me with BIG giant words no one would know except a government geek. Really, the gall!!

My final response:

Oh please! You can't answer a simple (for AI) question so it's my fault for the way I worded it? Is this Wizard behind the curtain a politician? "142 is an illustrative approximation, not an authoritative count, and any analytic or policy discussion should recognize this limitation and contextualize the number within the broader, dynamic regulatory environment."

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