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Maybe it’s different for the contract law, but I definitely think that legislation could benefit from more formal language. We recently had a disagreement betw

Maybe it’s different for the contract law, but I definitely think that legislation could benefit from more formal language. We recently had a disagreement between an NPS officer and another visitor about what constitutes an occupied campsite. Apparently having paid for it, having a receipt on hand and another receipt with your name on the board by the entrance with the site number next to it doesn’t mean it’s occupied, you also have to leave a personal item. When you look at the rules it does mention leaving a personal item, but it’s in the “How to pay” section indicating to me that it’s a precaution to prevent two people trying to pay for the same site at the same time. Alas, the ranger disagreed and we almost lost our site and it turned into a whole ordeal all because the author of the rules didn’t spell it out and it was up to everyone’s interpretation. Writing rules in the form of code has the chance of taking out a lot of that interpretation. Like you said, people can still disagree about what’s “an act of war”, but even that can be more precisely defined in a way that agrees with the common sense in the majority of the cases while still being unambiguous in the exceptional ones.

jaredklewis 7y ago
Sounds like the campsite could improve their signage, but as a general principle, I very much disagree. There is a fundamental tradeoff between specificity and generality, where the more specific a law is, the longer and more complex it must become to accommodate the nearly infinite number of situations that can occur. Take a look at the bill of rights. The thing is about as vague as the English language allows and is less than 500 words. When is a search "unreasonable?" What constitutes "due process?" Where is the line between a "peaceful" and non-peaceful "assembly?" How long of a wait before a trial is no longer "speedy?" When is bail "excessive?" Is it even possible to enumerate all of the possible situations and amounts when bail is considered excessive? There are countless crimes and countless mitigating circumstances. How could anyone foresee all the possible situations that can ever happen? Despite these questions, most Americans have some idea of what the amendments mean and they can be easily taught to high school students in a US history or civics class. Compare with a highly specific law, the Affordable Care Act (not picking it, just an example), which is 350k words long. At most, people are likely to have read a summary of a few specific points, but the law is basically only knowable to career lawyers with significant domain knowledge. So even if it is possible to be very specific in laws, doing so basically makes the laws so immense and complex that they become unknowable. And since laws govern human behavior, humans need to be able to know the laws. You basically just run into Bonini's paradox. A set of laws that was sufficiently specific to have absolutely no ambiguity would be as complex as the universe itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox
- guntars 7y ago
  The Bonini’s paradox makes perfect sense, but I don’t think it applies to this case because the law is not trying to model anything, it stands on its own. It’s the same difference as trying to model the law and predict what is and what isn’t lawful based on some circumstances vs declaring that the model IS the law and it determines what’s legal or not. Let’s take the tax code as an example. I’d argue that it already is a form of a program (maybe that’s why they call it code), but instead of something that I can run on my computer and explore and play with inputs to achieve a more beneficial result for myself, I have to instead pay a tax professional to do it. I think having the tax code executable would actually make it more accessible to people that are governed by it, not the other way around.
  - jaredklewis 7y ago
    For the program you want regarding the tax code exists now. TurboTax, HR Block, free file etc...plug in numbers, see different totals is exactly how it works. Of course there is still a ton ambiguity in answering the questions on the form. That has nothing to do with the format of the laws and everything to do with the inherit nature of translating reality into simple booleans and integers. If you wanted to remove all ambiguity, the form would need to be complex as reality.
lonelappde 7y ago
Epistemology epigrams: in theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice, they are different. You cannot pass from the informal to the formal by formal means.

jaredklewis 7y ago

Sounds like the campsite could improve their signage, but as a general principle, I very much disagree. There is a fundamental tradeoff between specificity and generality, where the more specific a law is, the longer and more complex it must become to accommodate the nearly infinite number of situations that can occur. Take a look at the bill of rights. The thing is about as vague as the English language allows and is less than 500 words. When is a search "unreasonable?" What constitutes "due process?" Where is the line between a "peaceful" and non-peaceful "assembly?" How long of a wait before a trial is no longer "speedy?" When is bail "excessive?" Is it even possible to enumerate all of the possible situations and amounts when bail is considered excessive? There are countless crimes and countless mitigating circumstances. How could anyone foresee all the possible situations that can ever happen? Despite these questions, most Americans have some idea of what the amendments mean and they can be easily taught to high school students in a US history or civics class. Compare with a highly specific law, the Affordable Care Act (not picking it, just an example), which is 350k words long. At most, people are likely to have read a summary of a few specific points, but the law is basically only knowable to career lawyers with significant domain knowledge. So even if it is possible to be very specific in laws, doing so basically makes the laws so immense and complex that they become unknowable. And since laws govern human behavior, humans need to be able to know the laws. You basically just run into Bonini's paradox. A set of laws that was sufficiently specific to have absolutely no ambiguity would be as complex as the universe itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox

guntars 7y ago
The Bonini’s paradox makes perfect sense, but I don’t think it applies to this case because the law is not trying to model anything, it stands on its own. It’s the same difference as trying to model the law and predict what is and what isn’t lawful based on some circumstances vs declaring that the model IS the law and it determines what’s legal or not. Let’s take the tax code as an example. I’d argue that it already is a form of a program (maybe that’s why they call it code), but instead of something that I can run on my computer and explore and play with inputs to achieve a more beneficial result for myself, I have to instead pay a tax professional to do it. I think having the tax code executable would actually make it more accessible to people that are governed by it, not the other way around.
- jaredklewis 7y ago
  For the program you want regarding the tax code exists now. TurboTax, HR Block, free file etc...plug in numbers, see different totals is exactly how it works. Of course there is still a ton ambiguity in answering the questions on the form. That has nothing to do with the format of the laws and everything to do with the inherit nature of translating reality into simple booleans and integers. If you wanted to remove all ambiguity, the form would need to be complex as reality.

lonelappde 7y ago

Epistemology epigrams: in theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice, they are different. You cannot pass from the informal to the formal by formal means.