4 ms·
> You can have quite relaxed rules as long as everyone abides by the spirit of the agreement. As soon as one party violates that spirit you are forced to make e
by growse 6y ago
> You can have quite relaxed rules as long as everyone abides by the spirit of the agreement. As soon as one party violates that spirit you are forced to make everything much more explicit, which inflicts collateral damage on use cases nobody would have objected to previously.
How are newcomers to know what the mystical "spirit of the agreement" is if it's not written down?
How do you detect that there isn't, in fact, a precise consensus over the "spirit of the agreement" if it's not written down?
- wongarsu 6y agoNewcomers can just look at what others are doing, and if what they want to do goes beyond standard practice should ask themselves "do I do undue harm to others?". That's how society generally runs on all scales, whether we are talking about the office fridge or about national law. Things generally start with very few explicit rules, and new rules get made when they are proven necessary.
- growse 6y agoEh? The national law is literally written down. "Guesswork" doesn't seem like a good way to do anything without stumbling into a lot of confusion and miscommunication.
- wongarsu 6y agoIf law was as simple as reading what's written down, then what are all the lawyers and courts for. There is a lot of interpretation going on. But really I was referring to the process of how the laws are formed in the first place. A lot of the time they start out under-specified, and as abuses emerge we make more concrete laws using our new understanding. Of course the latter part usually leads to a lot of discussion and resistance because of the collateral damage any new law causes by being slightly broader than necessary. Which is a major reason many industries self-regulate in the attempt to make explicit laws unnecessary.