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I ran across the Chomsky hierarchy last week while researching expression languages (like jsonnet and Nix). Really blew my mind. Made me think how we could reim

I ran across the Chomsky hierarchy last week while researching expression languages (like jsonnet and Nix). Really blew my mind. Made me think how we could reimagine our legal language in a more structured way.

tsimionescu 6y ago
Legal language doesn't have any reason to be re-imagined, especially in the direction of making it more formal. If anything, it would probably benefit from stopping to pretend it is a kind of formal language. It doesn't really help to use a formal(-ish) language to describe informal semantics, and there's no way at this time to describe the world in formal semantics (for example, you couldn't formally, mathematically, define the concept 'contract' in a way that matches what the legal system generally understands by it).
- gryn 6y ago
  I'm curious, why would it be impossible to define the concept of legal contract formally ?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Try it and it will quickly become apparent. Most of the concepts we work with are fuzzy and dependent on many implicit understandings that are very hard to formalize in satisfying manner. In particular, a contract must be willingly entered by the participants, which in itself is a very hard to formalize concept (e.g. if I am dying of hunger and believe that my only chance of eating is to enter this contract, am I willingly accepting it or am I being compelled? How is this different from someone putting a gun to my head and telling me to sign?) Note that what I'm thinking of here is a formal definition that is rigorous enough to be able to apply formal mathematical methods to reason about it.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  As legal codes become broader, more specific, and more voluminous, I believe we will need tools to automate enforcement of policy. Hard to do that without a formal language. I'm not talking about the first amendment to the US constitution here. I am talking about legal codes used to standardize health and safety standards for goods manufactured in different jurisdictions.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    How would you automatically enforce a policy that says that a good can't cause harm? What kind of machine could automatically verify this? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by automatic enforcement of health and safety standards?
    - CameronNemo 6y ago
      Pesticides and heavy metals are often measured in food, water, and other goods and have limits. Having these limits specified programmatically ensures there is a fast and efficient feedback loop between proposals to changes in limits and entities that would be affected by the policy changes. Mandatory financial reporting can benefit from automation as well IMO.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        The limits are specified explicitly in current laws as well. The problem is always things like deciding the limits, measuring the values in real products, establishing QA standards that give us a good chance that the levels in each unit match the levels that were measured when approved etc. You'll also have all sorts of people lobbying for more lax standards claiming that stricter standards will have too much impact on businesses etc. Financial reporting could almost certainly benefit from more automation. However, even there a lot of the problems happen around what revenue to recognize, how to prevent people from moving money around in fictitious transactions etc.
    - CameronNemo 6y ago
      Another example, this time unrelated to health&safety or corporate governance: A legislature should be able to express their intention to apply financial stimulus according to some expression that takes macroeconomic and/or quality of life metrics as input.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        Macroeconomics is not a science, it is a mathematical model tangentially related to reality in a fuzzy way (if at all). Quality of life is not rigorously measurable.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Legal language doesn't have any reason to be re-imagined, especially in the direction of making it more formal. If anything, it would probably benefit from stopping to pretend it is a kind of formal language. It doesn't really help to use a formal(-ish) language to describe informal semantics, and there's no way at this time to describe the world in formal semantics (for example, you couldn't formally, mathematically, define the concept 'contract' in a way that matches what the legal system generally understands by it).

gryn 6y ago
I'm curious, why would it be impossible to define the concept of legal contract formally ?
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Try it and it will quickly become apparent. Most of the concepts we work with are fuzzy and dependent on many implicit understandings that are very hard to formalize in satisfying manner. In particular, a contract must be willingly entered by the participants, which in itself is a very hard to formalize concept (e.g. if I am dying of hunger and believe that my only chance of eating is to enter this contract, am I willingly accepting it or am I being compelled? How is this different from someone putting a gun to my head and telling me to sign?) Note that what I'm thinking of here is a formal definition that is rigorous enough to be able to apply formal mathematical methods to reason about it.
CameronNemo 6y ago
As legal codes become broader, more specific, and more voluminous, I believe we will need tools to automate enforcement of policy. Hard to do that without a formal language. I'm not talking about the first amendment to the US constitution here. I am talking about legal codes used to standardize health and safety standards for goods manufactured in different jurisdictions.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  How would you automatically enforce a policy that says that a good can't cause harm? What kind of machine could automatically verify this? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by automatic enforcement of health and safety standards?
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    Pesticides and heavy metals are often measured in food, water, and other goods and have limits. Having these limits specified programmatically ensures there is a fast and efficient feedback loop between proposals to changes in limits and entities that would be affected by the policy changes. Mandatory financial reporting can benefit from automation as well IMO.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      The limits are specified explicitly in current laws as well. The problem is always things like deciding the limits, measuring the values in real products, establishing QA standards that give us a good chance that the levels in each unit match the levels that were measured when approved etc. You'll also have all sorts of people lobbying for more lax standards claiming that stricter standards will have too much impact on businesses etc. Financial reporting could almost certainly benefit from more automation. However, even there a lot of the problems happen around what revenue to recognize, how to prevent people from moving money around in fictitious transactions etc.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    Another example, this time unrelated to health&safety or corporate governance: A legislature should be able to express their intention to apply financial stimulus according to some expression that takes macroeconomic and/or quality of life metrics as input.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Macroeconomics is not a science, it is a mathematical model tangentially related to reality in a fuzzy way (if at all). Quality of life is not rigorously measurable.