Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

Fundamentally, rules almost always come with compromises — for the sake of making rules understandable by humans, they have to be relatively simple. Simple rules for complex situations will always forbid some amount of good behaviour, and allow some bad behaviour. Many of society's parasites live in the space of "allowable bad behaviour", but there is a lot of value to knowing how to exploit the "forbidden good behaviour" space.

Example?

For which side?

Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital.

Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool.

There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.

> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool.

In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.

I think you'll never find a case where someone got in trouble for not being a hero. I've recently found myself in a somewhat related situation where a guy turned violent in a pub... first I tried to calm him down and almost got hit... he then turned to other guys who were nearby, and one of them got punched in the face and fell unconscious. My family was with me and told me to stay the hell out of it, but I thought that would be extremely cowardly so I jumped at the guy to try to keep him down, but he was strong and I got a punch in the eye which cost me a week with a black eye, but could've easily turned out much worse for me. If I had just stayed quiet, would I be "negligent"?? The police told me what I did was good as I was trying to help someone, but I didn't have any obligation to do it.

In the case of a child in a pool, the difference is a matter of degree. What if I am terrified of water myself? Does that justify my inaction? What if I just "froze", which is common in stressful situations. Does anything justify not doing something?