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We can try to reinvent longstanding law here on HN, or we can look for a library on CPAN (or in a law library?) that already implements it. These questions have

by runako 14y ago

We can try to reinvent longstanding law here on HN, or we can look for a library on CPAN (or in a law library?) that already implements it. These questions have come up many times before, with many sets of specifics. This is what many smart people came up with, which has stood the test of time. Trying to unravel longstanding law is kind of like poking at a piece of code that's been running for 20 years and deciding you can do better. Then realizing that the only way to make it better is to rewrite it from scratch, because there are reasons for all of the funkiness in the code. And rewriting fails spectacularly in code much of the time (see TextMate 2, for instance). Imagine how much success non-programmers would have at rewriting a complex system from scratch. That's roughly how much success I'd expect HN users to achieve at rewriting longstanding law. I'm just saying, the outcomes may seem capricious, but picking at one string isn't going to improve things. If you think otherwise, you may have a bright career in the legislature.

Dylan16807 14y ago
You're right, trying to specify anything new is destined to fail. So I'll stick with this: Charging the same crime twice is unfair, where "same" is not something I am qualified to define in detail. There. That seems good. I am not suggesting what to do about it at this point in time. By the way, I find it rather hyperbolic of you to look at a report of an uncommon bug and claim it calls for a total rewrite. No way in hell do I want to change the entire legal system. But if you're afraid to adjust something at all it just gets clunkier over time.
- runako 14y ago
  I think the problem here is we're not lawyers. I have no idea how often this comes up. Is it an uncommon bug, or something that happens daily? I have no idea because I am not a lawyer. But, thinking as much like a lawyer as I can: you're never charged for the same "crime" more than once. There are overlapping laws, and one action can cause you to break more than one law (each of these is a separate "crime"). So I believe that legally speaking, Aleynikov is not being charged twice for the same crime, because he is not being charged again with breaking the same law. So I'm saying that your simple tweak that "seems good" may have other problems, and may cascade in ways that we cannot predict (because we're not seasoned jurists). Also, I'm saying that lots of smart people who have dedicated their lives to the study of problems like this just may have stumbled on the simple adjustment you have stumbled across in 3 minutes of armchair quarterbacking, and thrown it out for a reason that is not immediately obvious to the layperson. You may have had similar experiences with non-programmers trying to redesign the guts of software; it's about as productive as this exchange. So you might not need to redesign the legal system from scratch, but step one in making adjustments is certainly deep knowledge and experience with the existing statutes and their application. (Similarly, you wouldn't be allowed to commit to the mainline branch of Git if you don't know C.) If I had more time, I'd grope for an analogy in computers where two things appear the same to a layperson, but is actually different to programmers. I'm sure you can come up with several if you try.

by runako 14y ago

Dylan16807 14y ago

You're right, trying to specify anything new is destined to fail. So I'll stick with this: Charging the same crime twice is unfair, where "same" is not something I am qualified to define in detail. There. That seems good. I am not suggesting what to do about it at this point in time. By the way, I find it rather hyperbolic of you to look at a report of an uncommon bug and claim it calls for a total rewrite. No way in hell do I want to change the entire legal system. But if you're afraid to adjust something at all it just gets clunkier over time.

runako 14y ago
I think the problem here is we're not lawyers. I have no idea how often this comes up. Is it an uncommon bug, or something that happens daily? I have no idea because I am not a lawyer. But, thinking as much like a lawyer as I can: you're never charged for the same "crime" more than once. There are overlapping laws, and one action can cause you to break more than one law (each of these is a separate "crime"). So I believe that legally speaking, Aleynikov is not being charged twice for the same crime, because he is not being charged again with breaking the same law. So I'm saying that your simple tweak that "seems good" may have other problems, and may cascade in ways that we cannot predict (because we're not seasoned jurists). Also, I'm saying that lots of smart people who have dedicated their lives to the study of problems like this just may have stumbled on the simple adjustment you have stumbled across in 3 minutes of armchair quarterbacking, and thrown it out for a reason that is not immediately obvious to the layperson. You may have had similar experiences with non-programmers trying to redesign the guts of software; it's about as productive as this exchange. So you might not need to redesign the legal system from scratch, but step one in making adjustments is certainly deep knowledge and experience with the existing statutes and their application. (Similarly, you wouldn't be allowed to commit to the mainline branch of Git if you don't know C.) If I had more time, I'd grope for an analogy in computers where two things appear the same to a layperson, but is actually different to programmers. I'm sure you can come up with several if you try.