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I think I'm going to end up pasting this link in all discussions surrounding Ethereum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law https://en.wik

by simias 9y ago

I think I'm going to end up pasting this link in all discussions surrounding Ethereum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law >When one obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit, one is obeying the literal interpretation of the words (the "letter") of the law, but not necessarily the intent of those who wrote the law. Conversely, when one obeys the spirit of the law but not the letter, one is doing what the authors of the law intended, though not necessarily adhering to the literal wording. This is a very ancient concept and like all ancient concepts it's bound to be rediscovered every other decade on average. "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, Code is Law. Have a good day sir". In the real world you have a safety net for these types of things, in many case you can break an abusive contract because society has created regulations that ban certain tactics. Ethereum has no such thing. A single mistake or intentional deception and like that, you've lost all your money. The code is law, nothing we can do sir. How is that a feature exactly? Look at how dumb the average spam is, and yet there's no shortage of people falling for them. Yet it seems like the ethereum crowd genuinely believes that my mother is suddenly going to be able to proof Solidity scripts, something I wouldn't even trust myself to do with decades of programming experience behind me. I don't know if Ethereum is an economic bubble but it definitely is an intellectual one.

patrickaljord 9y ago
> "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. How is that dystopic and authoritarian? Looks like you're throwing a bunch of buzz words for shock value with little argument to back it up. We already trust code as contract everyday every time you make a payment through SSL (anyone who lived through the 90's and early 2000's remembers how people were scared to death of online payment security and now it happens every millisecond). Ethereum is just a distributed version of that with no middle man, that is to say it can fail like SSL can when compromised but it doesn't mean we should throw it out the window just because it could sometimes fail. By that logic we should still be cavemen and forget about any technology ever. > "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. " I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right?
- simias 9y ago
  I gave some examples (that you quickly dismissed). Having a recourse through an other, hopefully compassionate and empathetic human being is not something I'm willing to give up on. If things go awry to the point where I could go bankrupt because of a small lapse in judgment I want to have recourses. That's why we have we have consumer laws. That's why we have the notion of abusive contracts. SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it. There's no contract involved. It's a tunnel for some data. A more apt comparison would be to say that I trust, say, Amazon's website to do the right thing when I give them my credit card infos. But the truth is that I don't even trust them that much, if they abuse it or get compromised I'll just notify my bank (if they don't notice it before I do) and I'm good to go. If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court? >I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right? Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right? If anything that's a very good example about how the average person can be tricked into accepting a terrible contract if they don't know any better. Do you think it would've worked better if the loan was expressed in Solidity code?
  - patrickaljord 9y ago
    > hopefully compassionate and empathetic human Hopefully after said compassionate human had their lunch break. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/#.WXYcztOGMcg http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/1... > That's why we have we have consumer laws. That's why we have the notion of abusive contracts. That could still exist with Ethereum. > SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it. Your browser's code trust the code on the server hosting the SSL cert and authority server. So, it's just code involved here. > If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court Again, you could also sue someone for tricking you into a bad ethereum contract and it would not hold in court either. Not sure what your point is here. > Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right? No it is not, my point is that bad things happen no matter who's involved (humans or code) and just because some bad things may happen doesn't mean we should stop using it, but we should go with the most efficient and secure one, which for now is probably humans of course. See also plane crashes.

by simias 9y ago

patrickaljord 9y ago

> "The code is law" is a wet dream for a dystopic authoritarian state and I don't understand why anybody, much less actual coders, would think that's a good idea. How is that dystopic and authoritarian? Looks like you're throwing a bunch of buzz words for shock value with little argument to back it up. We already trust code as contract everyday every time you make a payment through SSL (anyone who lived through the 90's and early 2000's remembers how people were scared to death of online payment security and now it happens every millisecond). Ethereum is just a distributed version of that with no middle man, that is to say it can fail like SSL can when compromised but it doesn't mean we should throw it out the window just because it could sometimes fail. By that logic we should still be cavemen and forget about any technology ever. > "Thank you for subscribing to our contract for your $2 weekly subscription. By the way through a clever loophole obfuscated in our code the amount actually doubles every week. " I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right?

simias 9y ago
I gave some examples (that you quickly dismissed). Having a recourse through an other, hopefully compassionate and empathetic human being is not something I'm willing to give up on. If things go awry to the point where I could go bankrupt because of a small lapse in judgment I want to have recourses. That's why we have we have consumer laws. That's why we have the notion of abusive contracts. SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it. There's no contract involved. It's a tunnel for some data. A more apt comparison would be to say that I trust, say, Amazon's website to do the right thing when I give them my credit card infos. But the truth is that I don't even trust them that much, if they abuse it or get compromised I'll just notify my bank (if they don't notice it before I do) and I'm good to go. If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court? >I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right? Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right? If anything that's a very good example about how the average person can be tricked into accepting a terrible contract if they don't know any better. Do you think it would've worked better if the loan was expressed in Solidity code?
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  > hopefully compassionate and empathetic human Hopefully after said compassionate human had their lunch break. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/#.WXYcztOGMcg http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/1... > That's why we have we have consumer laws. That's why we have the notion of abusive contracts. That could still exist with Ethereum. > SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it. Your browser's code trust the code on the server hosting the SSL cert and authority server. So, it's just code involved here. > If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court Again, you could also sue someone for tricking you into a bad ethereum contract and it would not hold in court either. Not sure what your point is here. > Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right? No it is not, my point is that bad things happen no matter who's involved (humans or code) and just because some bad things may happen doesn't mean we should stop using it, but we should go with the most efficient and secure one, which for now is probably humans of course. See also plane crashes.