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> Maybe it’s naive, but I’ve often thought law itself should be spelled out in code Any formal system can either be consistent or complete - not both. Therefor

> Maybe it’s naive, but I’ve often thought law itself should be spelled out in code Any formal system can either be consistent or complete - not both. Therefore, you will always need an oversight to check for most individual legal cases.

naasking 8y ago
Your therefore doesn't follow. You haven't established that the law would even need to form a "complete" logic, which means it must be able to encode both addition and multiplication. There is little reason to think this is the case. Furthermore, oversight wouldn't necessarily yield any further insight even if it were. Humans aren't extra-logical, we have similar limitations.
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  > You haven't established that the law would even need to form a "complete" logic, which means it must be able to encode both addition and multiplication. There is little reason to think this is the case. The very basics of a legal system are consistency (fairness) and completeness (coverage). Are you making an argument against these two basics?
  - bollu 8y ago
    Please don't quote the incompleteness theorem without knowing it's precise statement. Far too many people do this to make absurd claims. In particular, the tradeoff between soundness and completeness only holds for those mathematical systems which can internally encode peano arithmetic (naturals, addition, multiplication, first order logic) Therefore, to invoke the incompleteness theorem, you need to prove that a legal system is powerful enough to encode arithmetic, which to me at least is not obvious. There are many systems that are both consistent and complete, but are just not as expressive.
  - andrepd 8y ago
    >The very basics of a legal system are consistency (fairness) and completeness (coverage). You are using words that have a very precise formal meaning into a completely different (informal) sense. Probably this is the source of your confusion.
    - perfmode 8y ago
      Indeed. These are completely out of context.
- perfmode 8y ago
  Humans _are_ extra-logical. The world is what is the case. We humans are often interested in something else.
andrepd 8y ago
That makes no sense. You're trying to apply a mathematical theorem to a real-world situation on the basis of some very thin analogy.
- perfmode 8y ago
  Godel, Wittgenstein, etc. Results in mathematics, logic, and philosophy have provided undisputed evidence that you can’t reason formally about human ethics. You’re responding to someone who is correct but made the assumption that you’d be familiar with the field of study and the results.

naasking 8y ago

Your therefore doesn't follow. You haven't established that the law would even need to form a "complete" logic, which means it must be able to encode both addition and multiplication. There is little reason to think this is the case. Furthermore, oversight wouldn't necessarily yield any further insight even if it were. Humans aren't extra-logical, we have similar limitations.

denzil_correa 8y ago
> You haven't established that the law would even need to form a "complete" logic, which means it must be able to encode both addition and multiplication. There is little reason to think this is the case. The very basics of a legal system are consistency (fairness) and completeness (coverage). Are you making an argument against these two basics?
- bollu 8y ago
  Please don't quote the incompleteness theorem without knowing it's precise statement. Far too many people do this to make absurd claims. In particular, the tradeoff between soundness and completeness only holds for those mathematical systems which can internally encode peano arithmetic (naturals, addition, multiplication, first order logic) Therefore, to invoke the incompleteness theorem, you need to prove that a legal system is powerful enough to encode arithmetic, which to me at least is not obvious. There are many systems that are both consistent and complete, but are just not as expressive.
- andrepd 8y ago
  >The very basics of a legal system are consistency (fairness) and completeness (coverage). You are using words that have a very precise formal meaning into a completely different (informal) sense. Probably this is the source of your confusion.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    Indeed. These are completely out of context.
perfmode 8y ago
Humans _are_ extra-logical. The world is what is the case. We humans are often interested in something else.

andrepd 8y ago

That makes no sense. You're trying to apply a mathematical theorem to a real-world situation on the basis of some very thin analogy.

perfmode 8y ago
Godel, Wittgenstein, etc. Results in mathematics, logic, and philosophy have provided undisputed evidence that you can’t reason formally about human ethics. You’re responding to someone who is correct but made the assumption that you’d be familiar with the field of study and the results.