4 ms·

> Again IMHO, Reason should come in and trump coding mistakes in financial contracts That's not reason; it's emotion. A smart contract is pure reason (i.e., l

by zeveb 10y ago

> Again IMHO, Reason should come in and trump coding mistakes in financial contracts That's not reason; it's emotion. A smart contract is pure reason (i.e., logic); if one misunderstands a contract, then the error is one's own, not the contract's. And if others say, 'that's not fair: give him back his money!' then that's just emotion. I'm not downplaying emotion (indeed, I think that as a mover in human affairs it's far more powerful than reason); I'm just arguing for clarity in words.

crispyambulance 10y ago
These "smart contracts" are utterly new constructs and at this point I think it is fair that someone rudely exploited the system and is now playing "finders keepers". In some sense it is a much-needed learning exercise. Hopefully no single person lost anything more that whatever they're willing to part with in a very-high-risk thrill investment. As far as contracts and fairness goes, Judges DO TAKE fairness into consideration ALL THE TIME. If these smart contracts ever make it mainstream (and that's a big IF), gaming the system through loopholes won't be a sure-thing regardless of how much "pure logic" (smirk) is involved.
woah 10y ago
Your definition of reason is different than the law's definition of reason. Under your definition of reason, you'd lose your house because of a typo in your name on the deed.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  I agree. Also, if the above definition was enforced and we assume everyone was rational, there would be no contracts or smart contracts. If I click "yes I accept the TOU" and $1B USD is debited from my account because I overlooked that clause, and I had to actually pay it it would be pure logic but very unreasonable. Logic meant something like spoken word in the original Greek language, it eventually evolved into something close to reason, which is: > the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences. - Dictionary.com so I certainly agree they are != and actually find the parent's definition of reason quite unreasonable. edit: While the code itself will be difficult to write and have issues, much of what will really be the problem is how oracles use logic/reason to propogate settlement distinctions. The key problems are: * creating a bulletproof contract [touched on above] * tx/rx of the settlement information from the oracle's interpretation. * interpreting the oracle's interpretation * settling
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    How about just letting people opt in / out of legal interpretation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      There are good reasons you can't waive away certain rights, especially seen in the areas of employment and rent.
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      You can't sell yourself into chattel slavery even if you are an "expert." For good reason. Either you allow those sorts of contracts or you acknowledge that some contracts are unconscionable. Being able to opt out of the legal system would result in private "security" forces with the legal right to hold you upside down by the ankles and shake until you pay up (but, hey, the interest rate was better than the payday loan company that didn't make you sign away your rights, so you took the one with the opt-out). The result would be something out of "Snow Crash." Or a TV sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4
- smokeyj 10y ago
  Is this any different than signing a contract that you don't know the terms to? If an entrepreneur signs an agreement with a VC that has obscure clauses hidden deep in legalese - that doesn't mean the terms no longer apply. It doesn't matter if there's a billion dollars on the line - there is no 'whoops'.
  - crispyambulance 10y ago
    But there are "whoops". Lawyers gotta eat too!
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    No, the whole point of this discussion is that those deeply hidden, "tricky" clauses don't always hold up in court.
    - Natanael_L 10y ago
      Let people opt in to the court system, and feel free to tell people they should always do so. But sometimes people really do know what they're doing with the code. Courts are slower than code, let the experts opt out.
      - zyxley 10y ago
        > Let people opt in to the court system You can't "opt in" to a system that exerts coercive power (in the dictionary-definition sense) over everyone in a jurisdiction. You are already in. The system will not let you out, because that would interfere with other civil and criminal processes (for example, bankruptcy proceedings) and in doing so harm society as a whole.
        programmarchy 10y ago
        The belief that a coercive monopoly is beneficial to society is a delusion of religious proportions.
- stale2002 10y ago
  Except that that was the whole point of smart contracts to begin with. The purpose was to only rely on the code, and to never have to worry about subjective things like judges and the interpretation of the law. If the code of a smart contract isn't "the law of the land" and you have to rely on messy things like the courts, then smart contracts are useless and you may as well just create a regular contract.
  - zyxley 10y ago
    The code of a smart contract will never be "the law of the land", because thousands of years worth of precedent in the legal systems of every country in the world give leeway to override the terms of contracts to satisfy other legal considerations.
    - stale2002 10y ago
      Well, it could be if it is irreversible, which is what the debate is about. Bitcoin has done a pretty good job of being irreversible, despite all the illegal stuff that happens on it, and how much I'm sure all the governments would LOVE to shut it down.
kmd123 10y ago
Code is not pure reason. It's an attempt to implement some of the concepts or operations of pure reason, so a machine can carry them out. Any such implementation will contain quirks and imperfections. Even pure reason contains paradoxes and strange consequences that are difficult to anticipate. The process of engineering requires trying something, failing, learning from the mistake, and reiterating.
pyrale 10y ago
Code is to logic what law is to ethics. It can't match it perfectly, nor should it try to. But then, once a situation arises where code goes against logic, and where law goes against ethics, we should be able to override the artifact in favor of the model. This is where most libertarian utopias advocating a purely contract-enforced society fail. That is in my opinion the reason why we shouldn't try to implement logic into a cryptographic blockchain. Blockchain already has a tremendous value as a safe event sourcing tool.
stcredzero 10y ago
A smart contract is pure reason (i.e., logic); if one misunderstands a contract, then the error is one's own, not the contract's Pure logic is enough? Doesn't logic tell us this isn't the case? Isn't the Ripoff Problem reducible to the Halting Problem? EDIT: Thinking on this a bit more, I have to conclude: No. But it's orders of magnitude worse!
darpa_escapee 10y ago
Coding is an abstraction that tries to capture human intent over the physical realities of a machine, just as contracts are an abstraction capturing human intent over the realities of behavior, society and law. That is to say they're imperfect and require human intervention to uphold intent when abstractions are incorrectly implemented over lower levels.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  My opinion is that you should be allowed to opt out of the uncertainty of human law and accept that the code will decide exclusively. After all, otherwise we'll never truly be able to build very autonomous networks due to humans halting them all the time to reset some part of them. In fact, I even think that should be the default for blockchains, letting the code be canonical, the authoritive source. The better solution IMHO is to allow people to opt in to legal authority by declaring that a given human contract is the canonical declaration of intent, with the code declared as a tool built to help enforce it. This way you also drop the uncertainty and ambiguity in meaning of the code and in most of the marketing, when you always have a primary document declaring what it is you're dealing with.
  - zyxley 10y ago
    > My opinion is that you should be allowed to opt out of the uncertainty of human law and accept that the code will decide exclusively. This will literally never happen, as it's the prerogative of the state to decide that circumstances that flatly override contracts - for example, bankruptcy (and specific things that are and aren't enforceable in regards to it), or nullifying of contracts by minors.

by zeveb 10y ago

crispyambulance 10y ago

These "smart contracts" are utterly new constructs and at this point I think it is fair that someone rudely exploited the system and is now playing "finders keepers". In some sense it is a much-needed learning exercise. Hopefully no single person lost anything more that whatever they're willing to part with in a very-high-risk thrill investment. As far as contracts and fairness goes, Judges DO TAKE fairness into consideration ALL THE TIME. If these smart contracts ever make it mainstream (and that's a big IF), gaming the system through loopholes won't be a sure-thing regardless of how much "pure logic" (smirk) is involved.

woah 10y ago

Your definition of reason is different than the law's definition of reason. Under your definition of reason, you'd lose your house because of a typo in your name on the deed.

vonklaus 10y ago
I agree. Also, if the above definition was enforced and we assume everyone was rational, there would be no contracts or smart contracts. If I click "yes I accept the TOU" and $1B USD is debited from my account because I overlooked that clause, and I had to actually pay it it would be pure logic but very unreasonable. Logic meant something like spoken word in the original Greek language, it eventually evolved into something close to reason, which is: > the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences. - Dictionary.com so I certainly agree they are != and actually find the parent's definition of reason quite unreasonable. edit: While the code itself will be difficult to write and have issues, much of what will really be the problem is how oracles use logic/reason to propogate settlement distinctions. The key problems are: * creating a bulletproof contract [touched on above] * tx/rx of the settlement information from the oracle's interpretation. * interpreting the oracle's interpretation * settling
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  How about just letting people opt in / out of legal interpretation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    There are good reasons you can't waive away certain rights, especially seen in the areas of employment and rent.
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    You can't sell yourself into chattel slavery even if you are an "expert." For good reason. Either you allow those sorts of contracts or you acknowledge that some contracts are unconscionable. Being able to opt out of the legal system would result in private "security" forces with the legal right to hold you upside down by the ankles and shake until you pay up (but, hey, the interest rate was better than the payday loan company that didn't make you sign away your rights, so you took the one with the opt-out). The result would be something out of "Snow Crash." Or a TV sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4
smokeyj 10y ago
Is this any different than signing a contract that you don't know the terms to? If an entrepreneur signs an agreement with a VC that has obscure clauses hidden deep in legalese - that doesn't mean the terms no longer apply. It doesn't matter if there's a billion dollars on the line - there is no 'whoops'.
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  But there are "whoops". Lawyers gotta eat too!
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  No, the whole point of this discussion is that those deeply hidden, "tricky" clauses don't always hold up in court.
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    Let people opt in to the court system, and feel free to tell people they should always do so. But sometimes people really do know what they're doing with the code. Courts are slower than code, let the experts opt out.
    - zyxley 10y ago
      > Let people opt in to the court system You can't "opt in" to a system that exerts coercive power (in the dictionary-definition sense) over everyone in a jurisdiction. You are already in. The system will not let you out, because that would interfere with other civil and criminal processes (for example, bankruptcy proceedings) and in doing so harm society as a whole.
      - programmarchy 10y ago
        The belief that a coercive monopoly is beneficial to society is a delusion of religious proportions.
stale2002 10y ago
Except that that was the whole point of smart contracts to begin with. The purpose was to only rely on the code, and to never have to worry about subjective things like judges and the interpretation of the law. If the code of a smart contract isn't "the law of the land" and you have to rely on messy things like the courts, then smart contracts are useless and you may as well just create a regular contract.
- zyxley 10y ago
  The code of a smart contract will never be "the law of the land", because thousands of years worth of precedent in the legal systems of every country in the world give leeway to override the terms of contracts to satisfy other legal considerations.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    Well, it could be if it is irreversible, which is what the debate is about. Bitcoin has done a pretty good job of being irreversible, despite all the illegal stuff that happens on it, and how much I'm sure all the governments would LOVE to shut it down.

kmd123 10y ago

Code is not pure reason. It's an attempt to implement some of the concepts or operations of pure reason, so a machine can carry them out. Any such implementation will contain quirks and imperfections. Even pure reason contains paradoxes and strange consequences that are difficult to anticipate. The process of engineering requires trying something, failing, learning from the mistake, and reiterating.

pyrale 10y ago

Code is to logic what law is to ethics. It can't match it perfectly, nor should it try to. But then, once a situation arises where code goes against logic, and where law goes against ethics, we should be able to override the artifact in favor of the model. This is where most libertarian utopias advocating a purely contract-enforced society fail. That is in my opinion the reason why we shouldn't try to implement logic into a cryptographic blockchain. Blockchain already has a tremendous value as a safe event sourcing tool.

stcredzero 10y ago

A smart contract is pure reason (i.e., logic); if one misunderstands a contract, then the error is one's own, not the contract's Pure logic is enough? Doesn't logic tell us this isn't the case? Isn't the Ripoff Problem reducible to the Halting Problem? EDIT: Thinking on this a bit more, I have to conclude: No. But it's orders of magnitude worse!

darpa_escapee 10y ago

Coding is an abstraction that tries to capture human intent over the physical realities of a machine, just as contracts are an abstraction capturing human intent over the realities of behavior, society and law. That is to say they're imperfect and require human intervention to uphold intent when abstractions are incorrectly implemented over lower levels.

Natanael_L 10y ago
My opinion is that you should be allowed to opt out of the uncertainty of human law and accept that the code will decide exclusively. After all, otherwise we'll never truly be able to build very autonomous networks due to humans halting them all the time to reset some part of them. In fact, I even think that should be the default for blockchains, letting the code be canonical, the authoritive source. The better solution IMHO is to allow people to opt in to legal authority by declaring that a given human contract is the canonical declaration of intent, with the code declared as a tool built to help enforce it. This way you also drop the uncertainty and ambiguity in meaning of the code and in most of the marketing, when you always have a primary document declaring what it is you're dealing with.
- zyxley 10y ago
  > My opinion is that you should be allowed to opt out of the uncertainty of human law and accept that the code will decide exclusively. This will literally never happen, as it's the prerogative of the state to decide that circumstances that flatly override contracts - for example, bankruptcy (and specific things that are and aren't enforceable in regards to it), or nullifying of contracts by minors.