5 ms·
And as any large software project eventually collapses on its own weight of complexity, so do societies when their tax and law codes become too complicated for
by snidane 6y ago
And as any large software project eventually collapses on its own weight of complexity, so do societies when their tax and law codes become too complicated for citizens to comprehend and only clerks, priests and lawyers can be hired to help them navigate the code of the organization.
Complexity slowly kills organizations and whole civilizations. If there ever is a silver bullet, it would be aggressive pursuit of simplicity of systems.
- 082349872349872 6y ago"Aggressive pursuit of simplicity of systems" is part of that whole Enlightenment slide Napoleon had in his pitch deck. I think most of the parts of the former empire kept many of the simplifications, even if they weren't too fond of the aggressive pursuit part. (The swedes kept yet more: they still have Bernadottes.) Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj_9CiNkkn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj_9CiNkkn4
- sjy 6y agoI think you might be right, but do we have any examples of this happening to a real legal system yet?
- jandrese 6y agoI'd argue that the complexity of the laws is a tree. It looks enormous, but it's about splitting the hairs finer and finer on edge cases. Simple laws are just laws that are less completely specified. So the real complexity only grows at a log factor with the total size of the law.