4 ms·
>...In the real world, people usually attempt to solve problems by forming hypotheses and then testing them against the facts as they know them. When the facts
by floxy 2y ago
>...In the real world, people usually attempt to solve problems by forming hypotheses and then testing them against the facts as they know them. When the facts confirm the hypotheses, they are accepted as true, although subject to re-evaluation as new evidence is discovered. This is a successful method of reasoning about scientific and other empirical matters because the physical world has a definite, unique structure. It works because the laws of nature are consistent. In the real world, it is entirely appropriate to assume that once you have confirmed your hypothesis, all other hypotheses inconsistent with it are incorrect.
> In the legal world, however, this assumption does not hold. This is because unlike the laws of nature, political laws are not consistent. The law human beings create to regulate their conduct is made up of incompatible, contradictory rules and principles; and, as anyone who has studied a little logic can demonstrate, any conclusion can be validly derived from a set of contradictory premises. This means that a logically sound argument can be found for any legal conclusion.
The Myth of the Rule of Law:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-JhqpU3_0r_HL06hP-5DABhEtGLX3g8/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-JhqpU3_0r_HL06hP-5DABhEtG...
- birktj 2y agoThanks for the link! I have been thinking a lot about topics related to this lately and this looks like an interesting read. Skimming through it I might not agree with all the ideas of the author I very much welcome new ideas about how to organize our society and our legal system. I have especially been thinking about how the legal system is mostly fiction and what makes it work is not so much what the laws say and what the punishments are for breaking them, but rather our shared belief in the system. And I think this is problematic because it takes away our agency to imagine other ways of doing things, we think our current legal system is the only possible system because it has to be. Thoughts of anything else would cause a collapse. I have also been thinking about how basing morality on following laws is a bad idea. You should not be afraid of breaking laws or rules if they are stupid. All of modern workers rights, women's rights, etc are based on brave people of the past that were not afraid of breaking stupid laws of their time, why should today be any different.