h a l f b a k e r yGuitar Hero: 4'33"
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Laws are written by humans in natural language, and the ambiguity provides rich gaps. A place where the gentle art
of the legal profession truly lives. Right?
Rubbish! As a citizen, I have the right to know when I have
or have not broken that new complex noise-abatement
law. There is enough
interpretation of intent, motive, behaviour, etc without all that mucking about trying to
define what the law actually means in the first place.
For instance, if the law states that a penalty of $100
applies to a natural person of legal age and no prior
convictions who does wantonly make more than a
reasonable noise a a time of night that a panel of my peers
would reasonably expect me to be quiet....
... does that mean less than 100dB and 9:30pm? And is the
prior convictions about the penalty or the offence?
What right do the lawmakers have to impose laws which
cannot be understood clearly, anyway? How is it possible to
remain law-abiding in a world of uncertain legal
frameworks?! Argh!
I propose any new law introduced must be computationally
executable. That way, parameters can be entered to see if
the law applies.
Changes to legislation would be versioned and added
through discrete APIs and modules that make the entire
legal system open to both the auto-interpretation of the
law AND to visibility of bugs or clashes in the 'code' of law.
IF (($offences < 1) AND ((AGE AT OFFENCE TIME) > 18 )
AND (NOT (GET_ZONE() = 'INDUSTRIAL'))
{ REASONABLE_NOISE(DECIBELS + 10 x (HOURS PAST
6pm)) } THEN....
(Re-)Publish_20all_...0readable)_20format
[xaviergisz, Nov 01 2011]
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//I propose any new law introduced must be computationally executable//
They are, only not in the environment that you want them to be. Think of the court system as a debugger. |
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I've always said lawyers were debuggers. |
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And then there's legislactation script, which defines in precise detail where nursing mothers may feed their young, and for how long. |
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As it happens, this concern has been raised in
jurisprudence. Just as there are different
approaches to sacred texts which involve
hermeneutics, such as authorial intention and the
location of meaning, so are there controversies
concerning whether the intentions of the
legislator or those of the court in interpreting the
law are paramount. This idea comes down on the
side of the legislator and as such makes apolitical
statement. The question then arise s of whether
its my "right" to interpret this as inherent in the
idea whether my reading is as valid as the idea's
author or whether a different interpretation is
viable. |
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Haven't we done a variety of "computational law"
themes already? |
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Legalese should be more understandable, but
that's not the intention here, as far as I can see.
(Go out on the street and ask ten people to
explain what your IF...THEN statement means.) |
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This idea is more along the lines of automated
law, which is marginally worse than law open to
human interpretation. Didn't they do that on
Startrek once? |
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Formal systems are not ambiguity-free. You are
going to run into problems with Godel's
theorem and the Halting Problem. |
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Many lawyers -- the ones who draft contracts, and
other documents -- strive to eradicate ambiguity,
and would probably welcome something like this if it
were feasible. Within contract law, there might be
domains restricted enough for it actually to work. |
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//You are going to run into problems with Godel's
theorem and the Halting Problem.// No you're not. |
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You mean that pathological cases won't arise in
practice? |
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I mean that neither Godel's theorem nor the halting
problem are likely to arise. |
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Unless you can provide a plausible example to the
contrary. |
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Think of the out-of-work lawyers! There will be
people -- intelligent, or at least cunning people --
paid to find loopholes. It's like saying that certain
configurations in chess, or certain genomes are
unlikely to arise. You get into all sorts of weird
low-entropy states with competition that you
wouldn't otherwise. Either you buy that, or I can't
convince you -- I don't think I can make the
argument more rigorous. |
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(Also, is the Halting Problem in fact distinct from
Goedel's Theorem? My understanding is that they
have some sort of deep commonality but I don't
really understand what that is.) |
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Yech. MaxBuch is right - "computational law" is new idea neither on the halfbakery nor in the real world of people talking to one another: I spent I don't know how many minutes of the 1990s buttonholed by wet-eyed CS zealots, listening, with an intensity in inverse proportion to the quantity of froth forming at the corners of their mouths, to them bang on and on about how code is more elegant and clear and why o why o why does the law have to be written in such an ambiguous and complicated way o if only the law could be written as code then everyone could understand it they could just go up to a terminal and say have i broken the law and then they would know because the computer programe law would be able to compute it o why o why o why and so on and so forth ad graduation. |
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Indeed. Computational logic produces simplistic yes/no answers, not justice. The law has many faults but one of its great strengths is the use of that word "reasonable". It allows judges & juries to use the most effective tool in the legal armoury, their common sense. |
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//the defendants fingerprint when he was last
arrested// The snickering sound you hear is coming
from the defendant's lawyer. The only advantage of
computational logic in that example is efficiency. |
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You mean your example wasn't about prosecutorial
misconduct? Sorry. Seems I read too much into it. |
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Agreed: this idea'd work best in selected parts of
the justice system, rather than globally. In fact, I
suggested one upthread. |
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You were likely charged because a panel of your
peers were disturbed by you and decided to call it
in to the police. |
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