4 ms·

Aside from the few proposals that I know of to literally use programming languages in laws, I have wondered if actually lowering the language expressiveness wou

Aside from the few proposals that I know of to literally use programming languages in laws, I have wondered if actually lowering the language expressiveness would help (e.g. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia ) The thinking being that the less nuanced the vocabulary, the less ways it could be interpreted and thus one may not have to write so many laywerly guard phrases to artificially constrain "normal" vocabulary. It may very well run the risk of having to use a bazillion more cross-references as one builds up a "library" of word-subroutines, but still could be a net win But I guess I can navel-gaze all I like because for this specific domain, any change might as well be all the changes since there's no prayer

caseyohara 2y ago
The US government has the Plain Language movement which is rewriting policy and legal documents in clear, plain language. The plainlanguage.gov site is an excellent all-around writing resource. I direct junior developers here when they are trying too hard to sound fancy when communicating technical concepts in documentation and design documents. Here are some great examples: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/ambiguity/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/ambi... https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/monthly-due-date/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/mont... https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/use-less-water/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/use-...
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > The Plain Writing Act of 2010 was signed on October 13, 2010. The law requires that federal agencies use clear government communication that the public can understand and use. well, no shit! that's amazing Thanks so much for bringing that to my attention, I'll try to see how I can incorporate those into my own process
- kookamamie 2y ago
  [X] Good.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  This is a great resource for UX design as well.
- archermarks 2y ago
  Wow TIL. Those before and afters are awesome and I have definitely seen this showing up in government documents. Thanks for sharing.
- falcor84 2y ago
  That's a great initiative, but even with these, I feel there's further opportunity to make these clearer. As a particular example, is there any reason to keep the vague "second month" in the second example [2], rather than "subsequent month" or "next month"? [2] https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/monthly-due-date/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/mont...
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    Yeah it's not that clear to me. My interpretation would be that if I'm reporting (whatever that means) April, then May would be the first month following, and hence June would be the second month following. Hence the last day I could submit would be June 15th (paper) or June 25th (electronic).
    - falcor84 2y ago
      Oh, wow, I think you're absolutely right and I entirely misread that (supposedly "plain") explanation. Having an example, like the one you gave, in the text would be really useful!
  - iterateoften 2y ago
    Lots of ambiguity with “next”. It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday or “next week” if it’s Saturday. My friends from non English countries get very confused that somehow “next Wednesday” when it’s Monday might not mean two days from now but 8 days from now. And how two days in that instance would be referred as “this Wednesday” or “this coming Wednesday” Which is different way of talking. If you were sitting by the road counting cars and you are at car “n”, Saying “the next car” would refer to car n+1. If your counting wednesdays you experienced “next Wednesday” technically refers to n+2 I stopped saying “this <day>” or “next <day>” and now just say “Wednesday the 25th” for instance.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - 2y ago
- fudged71 2y ago
  Am I crazy or does the guidelines page not contain the guidelines? https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/ Maybe because I’m on mobile?
  - caseyohara 2y ago
    The guidelines are hidden in the menu in the top-right on mobile.
ketzo 2y ago
> the less nuanced the vocabulary, the less ways it could be interpreted I genuinely don't mean this in a dickish way -- isn't this, like, tautologically untrue? By definition, more nuanced, more descriptive language describes a narrower, more precise view of reality than broader language otherwise would. When would plainer language allow less room for interpretation? I do generally think writing laws and other documents in plainer language would be beneficial for society, but not for this reason. Sometimes you do have to describe a really, really precise concept. "Kill" is different than "murder" is different than "manslaughter" in ways that are meaningful and important to preserve. Although even as I write that, I guess you could say "kill", "kill a person with intention", "kill a person without intention". That's kind of what you mean by word subroutines? At a certain point this just seems like a similarly-complex vocabulary, just with more words, though.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  Yes, sorry, it's the latter idea that you arrived at: if a law cannot be understood by a 9th grader, then one might argue it is mal-specified. I grew up hearing stories of folks that dropped out in the 9th grade so it seemed like a reasonable cut-off I am 100% open to the fact that it may not be possible to do this, since nat-lang is its own special little thing, and trying to apply fixes to it may be nonsensical themselves The word subroutines would be cross-references to potentially more complex concepts akin to "one cannot end life (§3.14.159) unless working (§8.6.753) in a job (§127.0.1) that allows State violence" where the boundaries of what this legislation cares about 'ending life,' the boundaries around 'working,' the boundaries of a 'job' would then be composed into 'citizen cannot kill other citizen'. I always got the impression that the nuance between murder and manslaughter wasn't in their degree of unlawfulness but rather in their sentencing, but I am deeply thankful that I haven't needed to know
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    > I always got the impression that the nuance between murder and manslaughter wasn't in their degree of unlawfulness but rather in their sentencing, but I am deeply thankful that I haven't needed to know As an aside the difference between murder and manslaughter is in the intent of the perpetrator. Murder is typically when you intended for the outcome to be death (and is additionally divided into whether or not it was premeditated/planned). Manslaughter is reserved for when there was not intent to kill, but your actions caused a death.
johnecheck 2y ago
Care to elaborate on the proposals to do laws via formal languages? Seems like there's a lot of pitfalls there, but that comes with the territory of writing laws in general. Seems like a concept worth exploring.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala#readme https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala#readme is the most famous one I know of, and https://github.com/CatalaLang/catleg https://github.com/CatalaLang/catleg is an integration with the French legal code. https://catleg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cli_reference.html#catleg-article https://catleg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cli_reference.html#c... gives an example URL that has unfortunately link rotted but wayback has it https://web.archive.org/web/20240721045507/https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000033971416 https://web.archive.org/web/20240721045507/https://www.legif... I am pretty sure there are several more but that's the one I can recall. It has been discussed here periodically https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/catalalang https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/catalalang (and https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=catala-lang.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=catala-lang.org ) with the 2023 thread being the beefiest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37546874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37546874
ajmurmann 2y ago
I think you'd just end up going through the motions of this again: https://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0 https://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0
jbaber 2y ago
What you're describing sounds like Toki Pona, which ends up very ambiguous because of 120 word vocabulary. Still, here's a contract written in it: https://jonathangabel.com/2012/lipu-lawa-pi-esun-kama/ https://jonathangabel.com/2012/lipu-lawa-pi-esun-kama/
- mdaniel 2y ago
  I actually initially did load the Toki Pona wikipedia page because I (erroneously) thought TP was just a constrained version of English and not its own language. So, once I saw it was not one of the established natural languages that are used in law/contracts/treaties I closed the page If we were going to get 80 year old Senators to learn a new language, I'd lobby for Lojban which is at least plausibly designed for representing unambiguous semantics I've mentioned before that any laws that are written in formal languages seems great from the metric of keeping "interpretation" cases out of the judicial system but would put society back into the "priests read Latin and tell the plebs what God really meant, trustmebro" and that's for sure no bueno

caseyohara 2y ago

The US government has the Plain Language movement which is rewriting policy and legal documents in clear, plain language. The plainlanguage.gov site is an excellent all-around writing resource. I direct junior developers here when they are trying too hard to sound fancy when communicating technical concepts in documentation and design documents. Here are some great examples: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/ambiguity/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/ambi... https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/monthly-due-date/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/mont... https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/use-less-water/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/use-...

mdaniel 2y ago
> The Plain Writing Act of 2010 was signed on October 13, 2010. The law requires that federal agencies use clear government communication that the public can understand and use. well, no shit! that's amazing Thanks so much for bringing that to my attention, I'll try to see how I can incorporate those into my own process
kookamamie 2y ago
[X] Good.
aurareturn 2y ago
This is a great resource for UX design as well.
archermarks 2y ago
Wow TIL. Those before and afters are awesome and I have definitely seen this showing up in government documents. Thanks for sharing.
falcor84 2y ago
That's a great initiative, but even with these, I feel there's further opportunity to make these clearer. As a particular example, is there any reason to keep the vague "second month" in the second example [2], rather than "subsequent month" or "next month"? [2] https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/monthly-due-date/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/mont...
- im3w1l 2y ago
  Yeah it's not that clear to me. My interpretation would be that if I'm reporting (whatever that means) April, then May would be the first month following, and hence June would be the second month following. Hence the last day I could submit would be June 15th (paper) or June 25th (electronic).
  - falcor84 2y ago
    Oh, wow, I think you're absolutely right and I entirely misread that (supposedly "plain") explanation. Having an example, like the one you gave, in the text would be really useful!
- iterateoften 2y ago
  Lots of ambiguity with “next”. It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday or “next week” if it’s Saturday. My friends from non English countries get very confused that somehow “next Wednesday” when it’s Monday might not mean two days from now but 8 days from now. And how two days in that instance would be referred as “this Wednesday” or “this coming Wednesday” Which is different way of talking. If you were sitting by the road counting cars and you are at car “n”, Saying “the next car” would refer to car n+1. If your counting wednesdays you experienced “next Wednesday” technically refers to n+2 I stopped saying “this <day>” or “next <day>” and now just say “Wednesday the 25th” for instance.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2y ago
fudged71 2y ago
Am I crazy or does the guidelines page not contain the guidelines? https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/ Maybe because I’m on mobile?
- caseyohara 2y ago
  The guidelines are hidden in the menu in the top-right on mobile.

ketzo 2y ago

> the less nuanced the vocabulary, the less ways it could be interpreted I genuinely don't mean this in a dickish way -- isn't this, like, tautologically untrue? By definition, more nuanced, more descriptive language describes a narrower, more precise view of reality than broader language otherwise would. When would plainer language allow less room for interpretation? I do generally think writing laws and other documents in plainer language would be beneficial for society, but not for this reason. Sometimes you do have to describe a really, really precise concept. "Kill" is different than "murder" is different than "manslaughter" in ways that are meaningful and important to preserve. Although even as I write that, I guess you could say "kill", "kill a person with intention", "kill a person without intention". That's kind of what you mean by word subroutines? At a certain point this just seems like a similarly-complex vocabulary, just with more words, though.

mdaniel 2y ago
Yes, sorry, it's the latter idea that you arrived at: if a law cannot be understood by a 9th grader, then one might argue it is mal-specified. I grew up hearing stories of folks that dropped out in the 9th grade so it seemed like a reasonable cut-off I am 100% open to the fact that it may not be possible to do this, since nat-lang is its own special little thing, and trying to apply fixes to it may be nonsensical themselves The word subroutines would be cross-references to potentially more complex concepts akin to "one cannot end life (§3.14.159) unless working (§8.6.753) in a job (§127.0.1) that allows State violence" where the boundaries of what this legislation cares about 'ending life,' the boundaries around 'working,' the boundaries of a 'job' would then be composed into 'citizen cannot kill other citizen'. I always got the impression that the nuance between murder and manslaughter wasn't in their degree of unlawfulness but rather in their sentencing, but I am deeply thankful that I haven't needed to know
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  > I always got the impression that the nuance between murder and manslaughter wasn't in their degree of unlawfulness but rather in their sentencing, but I am deeply thankful that I haven't needed to know As an aside the difference between murder and manslaughter is in the intent of the perpetrator. Murder is typically when you intended for the outcome to be death (and is additionally divided into whether or not it was premeditated/planned). Manslaughter is reserved for when there was not intent to kill, but your actions caused a death.

johnecheck 2y ago

Care to elaborate on the proposals to do laws via formal languages? Seems like there's a lot of pitfalls there, but that comes with the territory of writing laws in general. Seems like a concept worth exploring.

mdaniel 2y ago
https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala#readme https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala#readme is the most famous one I know of, and https://github.com/CatalaLang/catleg https://github.com/CatalaLang/catleg is an integration with the French legal code. https://catleg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cli_reference.html#catleg-article https://catleg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cli_reference.html#c... gives an example URL that has unfortunately link rotted but wayback has it https://web.archive.org/web/20240721045507/https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000033971416 https://web.archive.org/web/20240721045507/https://www.legif... I am pretty sure there are several more but that's the one I can recall. It has been discussed here periodically https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/catalalang https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/catalalang (and https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=catala-lang.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=catala-lang.org ) with the 2023 thread being the beefiest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37546874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37546874

ajmurmann 2y ago

I think you'd just end up going through the motions of this again: https://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0 https://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0

jbaber 2y ago

What you're describing sounds like Toki Pona, which ends up very ambiguous because of 120 word vocabulary. Still, here's a contract written in it: https://jonathangabel.com/2012/lipu-lawa-pi-esun-kama/ https://jonathangabel.com/2012/lipu-lawa-pi-esun-kama/

mdaniel 2y ago
I actually initially did load the Toki Pona wikipedia page because I (erroneously) thought TP was just a constrained version of English and not its own language. So, once I saw it was not one of the established natural languages that are used in law/contracts/treaties I closed the page If we were going to get 80 year old Senators to learn a new language, I'd lobby for Lojban which is at least plausibly designed for representing unambiguous semantics I've mentioned before that any laws that are written in formal languages seems great from the metric of keeping "interpretation" cases out of the judicial system but would put society back into the "priests read Latin and tell the plebs what God really meant, trustmebro" and that's for sure no bueno