6 ms·

That would be terrible

by bitJericho 11y ago

trentmb 11y ago
Why?
- tdaltonc 11y ago
  Because incompleteness.
- gopalv 11y ago
  Even ignoring Godel - take the stuff that's been legal in the past & not anymore. Slavery? Restricted Suffrage? Genocide? Witch trials? Heroin? Or stuff that's been illegal before Inter-racial marriage? Hemp? Gay marriage? Due process isn't enough for a legal system to work - the law has to change & revocable Axioms aren't exactly a thing. In fact, my sister goes on and on about Jurisprudence in such discussions - letter of the law and the spirit of it.
  - trentmb 11y ago
    > revocable Axioms aren't exactly a thing Aren't revocable axioms why there are different geometries?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Because designing a law that makes sense when interpreted strictly formally is a friendly-AI-equivalent problem, i.e. it requires figuring out what values humans actually care about and then implementing it in a system that can outsmart anyone trying to game it. Failing that, people will get hurt by corner cases in such a law, or suffer abuse from people gaming the system.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    There is a different point to be made here though. You can't predict everything ahead of time, but what do you do when somebody finds an edge case? For the future the answer is obvious. You consider the edge case, decide what to do what it happens, publish the decision and follow it from now on. The real question is, what do you do for the person who fell into the edge case before it was decided? And the problem with the existing criminal justice system is that the judge decides how that edge case should be handled and then imposes it on the defendant's behavior ex post facto. Which the courts don't allow Congress to do but seem to have no problem doing themselves. There is a fair argument to be made that we should let the first defendant who does it get away with it, but then publish the decision saying that it was wrong and imposing that on the next one. It's kind of like the exclusionary rule: Somebody getting away with something that one time would be the punishment Congress gets for not considering more of the edge cases from the outset (or passing simpler laws that are easier to reason about).
    - bitJericho 11y ago
      It's just not possible. It's like arguing that the developers of Windows or MacOS or Linux or whatever should just start over and do everything right this time. Or Intel and AMD should create a new CPU architecture and do it right this time. What you'll quickly find are a million reasons why things are done the way they are, and that this whole restarting project was a terrible idea. Yeah it sounds great, but anyone who knows what that actually means realizes it's a retarded idea.
      - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        It's not possible to make a perfect system. It's completely possible to let the first person to find an imperfection take advantage of it but then immediately fix it. Which would create an incentive for finding imperfections and therefore fix more of them faster.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I think there's yet another point to be made here. In an imperfect world, where we can't design axiomatic systems that are corner-case free and where we can't get stuff right on the first try, the judge's flexibility seems like a necessary safeguard against the letter of the law totally missing its spirit. I like to imagine it as a grease, a lubricant - you need to apply it, or else minor imperfections will grind your machine down. A fundamental question here is - do you want the law to be a completely trustless system? Sticking to the letter of the law and enumerating all imaginable corner cases are examples of going into that direction. I'm not totally convinced trustless systems are a good idea for society, because of inefficiencies they introduce as a cost of not having to trust anyone.

That would be terrible

trentmb 11y ago

Why?

tdaltonc 11y ago
Because incompleteness.
gopalv 11y ago
Even ignoring Godel - take the stuff that's been legal in the past & not anymore. Slavery? Restricted Suffrage? Genocide? Witch trials? Heroin? Or stuff that's been illegal before Inter-racial marriage? Hemp? Gay marriage? Due process isn't enough for a legal system to work - the law has to change & revocable Axioms aren't exactly a thing. In fact, my sister goes on and on about Jurisprudence in such discussions - letter of the law and the spirit of it.
- trentmb 11y ago
  > revocable Axioms aren't exactly a thing Aren't revocable axioms why there are different geometries?
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Because designing a law that makes sense when interpreted strictly formally is a friendly-AI-equivalent problem, i.e. it requires figuring out what values humans actually care about and then implementing it in a system that can outsmart anyone trying to game it. Failing that, people will get hurt by corner cases in such a law, or suffer abuse from people gaming the system.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  There is a different point to be made here though. You can't predict everything ahead of time, but what do you do when somebody finds an edge case? For the future the answer is obvious. You consider the edge case, decide what to do what it happens, publish the decision and follow it from now on. The real question is, what do you do for the person who fell into the edge case before it was decided? And the problem with the existing criminal justice system is that the judge decides how that edge case should be handled and then imposes it on the defendant's behavior ex post facto. Which the courts don't allow Congress to do but seem to have no problem doing themselves. There is a fair argument to be made that we should let the first defendant who does it get away with it, but then publish the decision saying that it was wrong and imposing that on the next one. It's kind of like the exclusionary rule: Somebody getting away with something that one time would be the punishment Congress gets for not considering more of the edge cases from the outset (or passing simpler laws that are easier to reason about).
  - bitJericho 11y ago
    It's just not possible. It's like arguing that the developers of Windows or MacOS or Linux or whatever should just start over and do everything right this time. Or Intel and AMD should create a new CPU architecture and do it right this time. What you'll quickly find are a million reasons why things are done the way they are, and that this whole restarting project was a terrible idea. Yeah it sounds great, but anyone who knows what that actually means realizes it's a retarded idea.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      It's not possible to make a perfect system. It's completely possible to let the first person to find an imperfection take advantage of it but then immediately fix it. Which would create an incentive for finding imperfections and therefore fix more of them faster.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I think there's yet another point to be made here. In an imperfect world, where we can't design axiomatic systems that are corner-case free and where we can't get stuff right on the first try, the judge's flexibility seems like a necessary safeguard against the letter of the law totally missing its spirit. I like to imagine it as a grease, a lubricant - you need to apply it, or else minor imperfections will grind your machine down. A fundamental question here is - do you want the law to be a completely trustless system? Sticking to the letter of the law and enumerating all imaginable corner cases are examples of going into that direction. I'm not totally convinced trustless systems are a good idea for society, because of inefficiencies they introduce as a cost of not having to trust anyone.