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You say that certain generalizations (which you do not believe to be true) are inherently unreasonable. But you have no problem making a generalization about so

by hurin 12y ago

You say that certain generalizations (which you do not believe to be true) are inherently unreasonable. But you have no problem making a generalization about something you believe to be true (only in this case it's qualified as fairly reasonable). Do you not see a dis-congruity in that? Isn't it possible and/or likely that for someone else the opposite generalization would seem fairly reasonable? For example to you law is generally complex. That may very well be true. But to some people a command-line or a circuit diagram is also something unfathomable. But a person that's not a programmer can be good with GNU/Unix tools! Or at building circuits! I agree your average person might not be, but it's an obvious disservice to the rest of society when people talk about it as something mystically complex.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
I said "the vast majority", not all people. Also, while it's true that laws can be simple and to-the-point in some places, I doubt you can really say that "law must be at least as complex as its the subject matter" is an unreasonable generalisation on the whole.
- hurin 12y ago
  > "law must be at least as complex as its the subject matter" is an unreasonable generalisation on the whole. I mean it's an unclear generalization to say the least. Consider concepts such as culpable state of mind, insanity, fact; it's not an exact science, so you always stop somewhere and generalize (you can't actually have the whole, or maybe even a sizable fraction of the subject matter). >I said "the vast majority", not all people. To be clear I'm not arguing for the total abolition of lawyers from society. What I'm talking about is the vague complexity, procedural obscurity, and the part this plays in segregating lower and upper classes. Here we had a hacker starting a civil process to get his computers back, and the response is you're crazy law is too complicated! Note that this response wasn't based on a tangible assessment of the complexity of his case or anything else, It was just based on a generalization which for some reason is supposed to apply to all of law. Although we would allow that for example this guy taught himself to code.

by hurin 12y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

I said "the vast majority", not all people. Also, while it's true that laws can be simple and to-the-point in some places, I doubt you can really say that "law must be at least as complex as its the subject matter" is an unreasonable generalisation on the whole.

hurin 12y ago
> "law must be at least as complex as its the subject matter" is an unreasonable generalisation on the whole. I mean it's an unclear generalization to say the least. Consider concepts such as culpable state of mind, insanity, fact; it's not an exact science, so you always stop somewhere and generalize (you can't actually have the whole, or maybe even a sizable fraction of the subject matter). >I said "the vast majority", not all people. To be clear I'm not arguing for the total abolition of lawyers from society. What I'm talking about is the vague complexity, procedural obscurity, and the part this plays in segregating lower and upper classes. Here we had a hacker starting a civil process to get his computers back, and the response is you're crazy law is too complicated! Note that this response wasn't based on a tangible assessment of the complexity of his case or anything else, It was just based on a generalization which for some reason is supposed to apply to all of law. Although we would allow that for example this guy taught himself to code.