4 ms·

I feel like programmers/engineers/technical-minded people have an easier time being terrified at this kind of "exception" for "exigent circumtances". Because t

I feel like programmers/engineers/technical-minded people have an easier time being terrified at this kind of "exception" for "exigent circumtances". Because that type of person is well aware that an "exception to a rule" really just means the rule is formally worthless, since it provides no guarantee whatsoever. or maybe I'm just projecting how I think.

roughly 6y ago
You'd think this would generalize, but ask anyone who does security or has more than 10 minutes of social science education about programmers' general ability to ignore side effects and unintentional consequences...
gruez 6y ago
> Because that type of person is well aware that an "exception to a rule" really just means the rule is formally worthless, since it provides no guarantee whatsoever. If you think about it, rules themselves provide no guarantee whatsoever. They're only as strong as the institutions (aka. people) enforcing them. Some text in a book somewhere provides zero guarantee that some cop isn't going to assault you for talking back at him, or some general isn't going to turn the country into a dictatorship.
- swiley 6y ago
  Learning about foreign governments (like British parliament) makes this a lot more obvious IMO. It seems like at a certain level formal rules start to become a lot less important than tradition.
  - wiml 6y ago
    I've heard it put more pithily, but, the practice of following the rules, obeying the laws, is itself no more than a tradition.
jrumbut 6y ago
Yeah, I often thing that way too, and I think this mindset in programming (and also financial engineering) of taking any little gap and maximally exploiting it is very hard to deal with legislatively. It's hard enough to make a web form secure, trying to do the same with emergency response legislation, when the nature of emergencies is that they often take unforeseeable forms, is an intractable problem. I've been beating this drum quite a bit lately and I understand this feels impossible from where we are, it feels impossible to me too, but the problem we really have to solve is figuring out a way to trust and be trustworthy when given certain responsibilities. Not just for emergency powers, for everything. We don't have the technology to eliminate the need for trust, not even close. We have to work on constraining the threat model a little bit.

roughly 6y ago

You'd think this would generalize, but ask anyone who does security or has more than 10 minutes of social science education about programmers' general ability to ignore side effects and unintentional consequences...

gruez 6y ago

> Because that type of person is well aware that an "exception to a rule" really just means the rule is formally worthless, since it provides no guarantee whatsoever. If you think about it, rules themselves provide no guarantee whatsoever. They're only as strong as the institutions (aka. people) enforcing them. Some text in a book somewhere provides zero guarantee that some cop isn't going to assault you for talking back at him, or some general isn't going to turn the country into a dictatorship.

swiley 6y ago
Learning about foreign governments (like British parliament) makes this a lot more obvious IMO. It seems like at a certain level formal rules start to become a lot less important than tradition.
- wiml 6y ago
  I've heard it put more pithily, but, the practice of following the rules, obeying the laws, is itself no more than a tradition.

jrumbut 6y ago

Yeah, I often thing that way too, and I think this mindset in programming (and also financial engineering) of taking any little gap and maximally exploiting it is very hard to deal with legislatively. It's hard enough to make a web form secure, trying to do the same with emergency response legislation, when the nature of emergencies is that they often take unforeseeable forms, is an intractable problem. I've been beating this drum quite a bit lately and I understand this feels impossible from where we are, it feels impossible to me too, but the problem we really have to solve is figuring out a way to trust and be trustworthy when given certain responsibilities. Not just for emergency powers, for everything. We don't have the technology to eliminate the need for trust, not even close. We have to work on constraining the threat model a little bit.