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"set of rules saying you must X and cannot Y etc" How it isn't a computation for certain inputs (X, Y...) to certain outputs (must, cannot, ...)? Legal text do
by guard-of-terra 15y ago
"set of rules saying you must X and cannot Y etc"
How it isn't a computation for certain inputs (X, Y...) to certain outputs (must, cannot, ...)?
Legal text doesn't look like natural language and doesn't behave as one.
- andreasvc 15y agoI believe it's not computation because the inputs are not well-defined, and the result depends on contexts which aren't well-defined either. What kind of definition of "look like" are you working with? I see words that are in the dictionary, plus I can parse them into meaningful sentences. I have no idea how "text" is supposed to behave anyway... It's about what humans do with it, and that happens to be the same as with other texts: humans read it and do stuff based on that. Sure there are differences, just as a letter of recommendation differs from a novel, but if you are claiming it's a different "language" you'll have to back that up.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoWell, programs sometimes have to handle such problems too. You can always find keywords and function names from a program source in a dictionary, but it doesn't make program source a normal text. The main difference is that a legal document can be evaluated and it transforms input to output; novel doesn't.