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> And who would you delegate to instead? Someone you know even less about, probably. AI. Get AI to sift through all the data, summarize it, and then select a s

by x5n1 11y ago

> And who would you delegate to instead? Someone you know even less about, probably. AI. Get AI to sift through all the data, summarize it, and then select a set of best qualified candidates in the world. This same AI would also have global surveillance. People are often crazy and politicians are often idiots.

DiabloD3 11y ago
x5n1's comment is getting downvoted, but I'm not even entirely sure he's wrong. We're building AI-type applications to help people run large companies and other difficult problems that throwing more people at just doesn't help (because, usually, its organizing people that is the difficult part; and when its not, its organizing data to help people organize themselves). Having some sort of large scale AI infra to help the government manage stuff to well integrate local, state, and federal into a cohesive unit with well defined boundaries and task ownership between the layers and departments would massively fix the US government. And before someone says "no duh, our founding fathers said this", they never looked at it from the point of view of someone from our era that deals with large scale application design (because, well, it didn't exist yet). I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. That would be a good place to start.
- x5n1 11y ago
  > I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. That would be a good place to start. Awesome! Would love logic and contradiction checking on the laws as a feature of such a language.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn (Do you seriously believe that a field as nascent and murky as macroeconomics, coupled with the hectic state of public policy and political advisory -- that these same people can then turn around and write a magical AI to quick fix government planning as we know it?) I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. That would be a good place to start. The law already is a formal language, and court procedure is also formalized and mechanical. The language of the law is such that it permits a high degree of fuzziness, so one can benefit from common law, case precedent, jury nullification and all sorts of nice judicial perks. The "programming language for laws" that people on HN keep proposing will only fuck everything up even worse.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    > benefit from common law, case precedent, jury nullification and all sorts of nice judicial perks. for the right class of people. the same "perks" turn into something much more sinister for the "wrong" sort of people. whether those be blacks or browns. the point is to have one set of laws that applies logically to all situations and to all people equally. Adding that as a constraint will either make the laws much worse or much better.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      the point is to have one set of laws that applies logically to all situations and to all people equally. This is already the case. Codifying laws into some sort of PL is a complete diversion and redundant.
      - wolfgke 11y ago
        Then why do different courts come to different decisions then if this is already the case. Codifying laws into some sort of PL exactly intends to prevent this.
        jacques_chester 11y ago
        > Then why do different courts come to different decisions then if this is already the case. This is a quirk of the US Federal legal system -- independent circuits. Any sufficiently important matter is settled nationwide in US caselaw by the Supreme Court. The law is incredibly consistent. You will, without recognising it, have hundreds or thousands of invisible interactions with it daily. It is incredibly robust in the face of massively variable outputs. No software product has ever come within a cooee of sustaining decades to centuries of uptime at a stretch in the face of sustained attack.
        wolfgke 11y ago
        > No software product has ever come within a cooee of sustaining decades to centuries of uptime at a stretch in the face of sustained attack. If you consider each change of a law as a break of the uptime (I mean: there is some "bug" in the laws, so it's changed), the uptime of, say, good embedded software is far better.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. Laws are more like requirements than computer code. Almost every part of them is subject to interpretation. On the few occasions where computer code has actually been treated as law (MERS, for instance), the result hasn't worked out so well.

by x5n1 11y ago

DiabloD3 11y ago

x5n1's comment is getting downvoted, but I'm not even entirely sure he's wrong. We're building AI-type applications to help people run large companies and other difficult problems that throwing more people at just doesn't help (because, usually, its organizing people that is the difficult part; and when its not, its organizing data to help people organize themselves). Having some sort of large scale AI infra to help the government manage stuff to well integrate local, state, and federal into a cohesive unit with well defined boundaries and task ownership between the layers and departments would massively fix the US government. And before someone says "no duh, our founding fathers said this", they never looked at it from the point of view of someone from our era that deals with large scale application design (because, well, it didn't exist yet). I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. That would be a good place to start.

x5n1 11y ago
> I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. That would be a good place to start. Awesome! Would love logic and contradiction checking on the laws as a feature of such a language.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn (Do you seriously believe that a field as nascent and murky as macroeconomics, coupled with the hectic state of public policy and political advisory -- that these same people can then turn around and write a magical AI to quick fix government planning as we know it?) I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. That would be a good place to start. The law already is a formal language, and court procedure is also formalized and mechanical. The language of the law is such that it permits a high degree of fuzziness, so one can benefit from common law, case precedent, jury nullification and all sorts of nice judicial perks. The "programming language for laws" that people on HN keep proposing will only fuck everything up even worse.
- x5n1 11y ago
  > benefit from common law, case precedent, jury nullification and all sorts of nice judicial perks. for the right class of people. the same "perks" turn into something much more sinister for the "wrong" sort of people. whether those be blacks or browns. the point is to have one set of laws that applies logically to all situations and to all people equally. Adding that as a constraint will either make the laws much worse or much better.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    the point is to have one set of laws that applies logically to all situations and to all people equally. This is already the case. Codifying laws into some sort of PL is a complete diversion and redundant.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      Then why do different courts come to different decisions then if this is already the case. Codifying laws into some sort of PL exactly intends to prevent this.
      - jacques_chester 11y ago
        > Then why do different courts come to different decisions then if this is already the case. This is a quirk of the US Federal legal system -- independent circuits. Any sufficiently important matter is settled nationwide in US caselaw by the Supreme Court. The law is incredibly consistent. You will, without recognising it, have hundreds or thousands of invisible interactions with it daily. It is incredibly robust in the face of massively variable outputs. No software product has ever come within a cooee of sustaining decades to centuries of uptime at a stretch in the face of sustained attack.
        wolfgke 11y ago
        > No software product has ever come within a cooee of sustaining decades to centuries of uptime at a stretch in the face of sustained attack. If you consider each change of a law as a break of the uptime (I mean: there is some "bug" in the laws, so it's changed), the uptime of, say, good embedded software is far better.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>I mean, what would go a long way is manufacturing a programming language to write laws in, so we could lint and compile time warn/error laws. Laws are more like requirements than computer code. Almost every part of them is subject to interpretation. On the few occasions where computer code has actually been treated as law (MERS, for instance), the result hasn't worked out so well.