5 ms·

But to sacrifice the gains in the first 90% for the sake of the remaining 10% just so that the remaining 10% is handled in a way that is maybe possibly better t

But to sacrifice the gains in the first 90% for the sake of the remaining 10% just so that the remaining 10% is handled in a way that is maybe possibly better than what we might have if we went the other route? That sounds like a questionable benefit for a huge cost. You do have a point though, perhaps a hybrid approach is best.

jacques_chester 15y ago
The people in the 10% feel otherwise. One of the classic moments in the history of common law was the emergence of Equity. It arose because the strict, predictable rules of Common Law as it then existed were leading to what were clearly unjust outcomes. Sometimes no specific rule can capture the correct action. You need room for judgement. It bugs the everliving daylights out of me that so much of law is undecidable and informal, but it is so out of historical demonstrations that a balance between robustness and strictness is required.
- etherael 15y ago
  And the people in the 90% that don't want to pay lawyers 500$ an hour? That's what I mean, as far as I can see I don't follow as to why that does not necessarily dwarf the concerns of the remaining 10%, and also it's not even a granted that this would actually happen. The emergence of equity in common law is one thing, but common law is administered by humans, a system written in code to which anyone was free to contribute and which was administered by computers would be far less susceptible by nature to human error. The only scope for human error in such a system is the process of coding itself, and massively distributing this and opening that process as much as possible makes any bugs in the system shallow by comparison, as well as easily demonstrable by test cases rather than actually requiring some clueless politician, lawyer or judge to make a terrible decision and someone else to suffer the consequences for it.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    The act of writing programs, and discovering a bottomless well of bugs in those programs, is what has made me respect lawyers all the more. I do think some tools and practices can be adapted. I think, for example, that expert systems -- whether classical or hybrid a la Watson -- could make a big dent in that $500 figure. That is definitely pursuable. But humans inject errors, it's what they do best. And outside of a properly formal system (and per Godel, these aren't perfectly usable anyway) the best way to identify errors is ... with another human. You might say that judges have been performing software inspections for much longer than we have. Don't get me wrong, law is as slow as frozen honey. But the problem domain is heinously complex and I expect that any software system would reflect that complexity. Given our profession's iffy track record on creating items of massive size and complexity, I lack your transformative enthusiasm. I am what you might call a cautiously optimistic conservative. Or a pessimistic radical. Not sure. One blogger I host talks about "radical centrism".

jacques_chester 15y ago

The people in the 10% feel otherwise. One of the classic moments in the history of common law was the emergence of Equity. It arose because the strict, predictable rules of Common Law as it then existed were leading to what were clearly unjust outcomes. Sometimes no specific rule can capture the correct action. You need room for judgement. It bugs the everliving daylights out of me that so much of law is undecidable and informal, but it is so out of historical demonstrations that a balance between robustness and strictness is required.

etherael 15y ago
And the people in the 90% that don't want to pay lawyers 500$ an hour? That's what I mean, as far as I can see I don't follow as to why that does not necessarily dwarf the concerns of the remaining 10%, and also it's not even a granted that this would actually happen. The emergence of equity in common law is one thing, but common law is administered by humans, a system written in code to which anyone was free to contribute and which was administered by computers would be far less susceptible by nature to human error. The only scope for human error in such a system is the process of coding itself, and massively distributing this and opening that process as much as possible makes any bugs in the system shallow by comparison, as well as easily demonstrable by test cases rather than actually requiring some clueless politician, lawyer or judge to make a terrible decision and someone else to suffer the consequences for it.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  The act of writing programs, and discovering a bottomless well of bugs in those programs, is what has made me respect lawyers all the more. I do think some tools and practices can be adapted. I think, for example, that expert systems -- whether classical or hybrid a la Watson -- could make a big dent in that $500 figure. That is definitely pursuable. But humans inject errors, it's what they do best. And outside of a properly formal system (and per Godel, these aren't perfectly usable anyway) the best way to identify errors is ... with another human. You might say that judges have been performing software inspections for much longer than we have. Don't get me wrong, law is as slow as frozen honey. But the problem domain is heinously complex and I expect that any software system would reflect that complexity. Given our profession's iffy track record on creating items of massive size and complexity, I lack your transformative enthusiasm. I am what you might call a cautiously optimistic conservative. Or a pessimistic radical. Not sure. One blogger I host talks about "radical centrism".