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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 for

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.
    - CameronNemo 6y ago
      Governments have and will continue to tie financial stimulus to financial indicators.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        Governments tie their stimulus to political beliefs, and they usually choose various financial indicators that reenforce those beliefs. This government is targeting some unemployment number, that argument cares about debt, some other government is more concerned with the stock market etc. Some claim that this measure was good for workers because it lowered unemployment, other will claim that it was bad for workers because it increased underemployment. You choose which to believe, but you won't find a formal definition.

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.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    Governments have and will continue to tie financial stimulus to financial indicators.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Governments tie their stimulus to political beliefs, and they usually choose various financial indicators that reenforce those beliefs. This government is targeting some unemployment number, that argument cares about debt, some other government is more concerned with the stock market etc. Some claim that this measure was good for workers because it lowered unemployment, other will claim that it was bad for workers because it increased underemployment. You choose which to believe, but you won't find a formal definition.