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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 ma

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.
        jacques_chester 11y ago
        Show me an embedded system with live patching and as large a problem domain and let's run that comparison again.
        wolfgke 11y ago
        The AXD301 switch > http://ll2.ai.mit.edu/talks/armstrong.pdf http://ll2.ai.mit.edu/talks/armstrong.pdf (from slide 27 on) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)#... "In 1998 Ericsson announced the AXD301 switch, containing over a million lines of Erlang and reported to achieve a high availability of nine "9"s." Additionally it is well-known that the AXD301 has live patching capabilities (which is not surprising, since Erlang has).
        jacques_chester 11y ago

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.
      - jacques_chester 11y ago
        Show me an embedded system with live patching and as large a problem domain and let's run that comparison again.
        wolfgke 11y ago
        The AXD301 switch > http://ll2.ai.mit.edu/talks/armstrong.pdf http://ll2.ai.mit.edu/talks/armstrong.pdf (from slide 27 on) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)#... "In 1998 Ericsson announced the AXD301 switch, containing over a million lines of Erlang and reported to achieve a high availability of nine "9"s." Additionally it is well-known that the AXD301 has live patching capabilities (which is not surprising, since Erlang has).
        jacques_chester 11y ago