4 ms·

Part of the reason juries work so well is the default “fuck you I don’t understand so I say not guilty”. If the prosecutor tries to baffle the jury the jury wo

Part of the reason juries work so well is the default “fuck you I don’t understand so I say not guilty”. If the prosecutor tries to baffle the jury the jury won’t convict. If something happens similar with “legislative juries” where they’d refuse to pass a complicated law they didn’t understand.

dpassens 1y ago
Is that necessarily a bad thing? If the average person doesn't understand a law, shouldn't that law be reworked?
- harimau777 1y ago
  I think that could depend on if we are fine with having an administrative state. I.e. can regular people have simple laws and then have experts work out the highly nuanced details?
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  The average person in the US reads at below a high school level. How do you explain to someone who doesn't understand high school level writing, let alone math, that "No, you can't just say Pi is 4, it doesn't work like that" in a way that they will agree in the end, rather than just calling you an elitist shithead who is patronizing them?
aaronbaugher 1y ago
That seems like a feature, which would force those writing legislation to stop turning it into thousands of pages of unreadable jargon to hide its purpose. Today, legislation isn't written by legislators.[1] It's written by lobbyists and special interest groups, then massaged into its final form by legislative staff, who then provide a summary to the figurehead who will be voting on it. Since it's impossible for those legislating to really know what's in the bill, those creating it have no reason not to obfuscate it as much as possible, and every incentive to do so. [1] https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/you-elected-them-to-write-new-laws-theyre-letting-corporations-do-it-instead/ https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-pas...
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  My dream change to the system: If you haven't read the bill - all of it - you can't vote for it. You want to have 1000-page monstrosities? Knock yourself out. But you're going to have to actually read all 1000 pages. And you're going to have to persuade everyone else to also read all of it. While I'm dreaming, I have a second dream change: Congress cannot exempt members of Congress from the effect of laws. Hey, Representative So-and-so, you want to change Social Security? You're changing your retirement, too. You want to change healthcare? You're changing your own healthcare, too.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Saying this in a programmers forum is pretty rich. If you've ever written code that wasn't clear and obvious and necessary to the dumbest script kiddie, it's bad code, right? I'm sure you love those PR bots that sass you for "function getting long" right? They are never wrong, right? Why do we continue to insist, as the world gets ever more complicated, that non-experts not understanding expert things is a problem with the experts? Most adults don't understand relativity, so it can't possibly be correct.

dpassens 1y ago

Is that necessarily a bad thing? If the average person doesn't understand a law, shouldn't that law be reworked?

harimau777 1y ago
I think that could depend on if we are fine with having an administrative state. I.e. can regular people have simple laws and then have experts work out the highly nuanced details?
mrguyorama 1y ago
The average person in the US reads at below a high school level. How do you explain to someone who doesn't understand high school level writing, let alone math, that "No, you can't just say Pi is 4, it doesn't work like that" in a way that they will agree in the end, rather than just calling you an elitist shithead who is patronizing them?

aaronbaugher 1y ago

That seems like a feature, which would force those writing legislation to stop turning it into thousands of pages of unreadable jargon to hide its purpose. Today, legislation isn't written by legislators.[1] It's written by lobbyists and special interest groups, then massaged into its final form by legislative staff, who then provide a summary to the figurehead who will be voting on it. Since it's impossible for those legislating to really know what's in the bill, those creating it have no reason not to obfuscate it as much as possible, and every incentive to do so. [1] https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/you-elected-them-to-write-new-laws-theyre-letting-corporations-do-it-instead/ https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-pas...

AnimalMuppet 1y ago
My dream change to the system: If you haven't read the bill - all of it - you can't vote for it. You want to have 1000-page monstrosities? Knock yourself out. But you're going to have to actually read all 1000 pages. And you're going to have to persuade everyone else to also read all of it. While I'm dreaming, I have a second dream change: Congress cannot exempt members of Congress from the effect of laws. Hey, Representative So-and-so, you want to change Social Security? You're changing your retirement, too. You want to change healthcare? You're changing your own healthcare, too.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  Saying this in a programmers forum is pretty rich. If you've ever written code that wasn't clear and obvious and necessary to the dumbest script kiddie, it's bad code, right? I'm sure you love those PR bots that sass you for "function getting long" right? They are never wrong, right? Why do we continue to insist, as the world gets ever more complicated, that non-experts not understanding expert things is a problem with the experts? Most adults don't understand relativity, so it can't possibly be correct.