> It's approachable, and doesn't fall into the interpretation biases of the reporter.
I agree with this, but don't forget that interpretation biases will still come into play as the law is enforced — the biases of police, lawyers and judges. So it still makes sense to read others' interpretations of what this might mean in practice.
I think this is a systemic issue on hackernews. People forgetting reality exists, and always pointing at the rules and acting as if they're infallible. You'd think /hackers/ would understand that rules are for show.
I've seen this regarding serious legislation like this or even something as mundane as Apple's app store "guidelines".
> You'd think hackers would understand that rules are for show.
I may be misinterpreting your wording here (my apologies if I am), but I'd assume the opposite. I'd think people who operate in a realm where text becomes action executed by a machine designed wholly around faithful, reliable execution of text fed to it would come to learn the reality-defining power of rules.
Hackers are specifically interested in exploring/exploiting the way human nature makes all machines vulnerable. IE taking a reasonably well-defined system of rules built with good intentions and using them for something entirely unintended.
In this sense, law is similar to code, but far easier to exploit.
> In this sense, law is similar to code, but far easier to exploit.
I would disagree. I feel like programmers see logical contradictions or loop holes in laws and think that if they make the argument in court, the court will segfault and they will go free.
In reality, courts use more inductive reasoning than computers, and aren't as easily tricked.
Courts are easily tricked, the hacks needed are just different from what most programmers assume them to be. The whole job of lawyers is hacking the court to get a more favorable outcome. If this wasn't true it wouldn't matter which lawyer you have since the court would always interpret law in exactly the same way.
> If this wasn't true it wouldn't matter which lawyer you have since the court would always interpret law in exactly the same way
Have you ever litigated?
Litigation isn’t about “hacking” the court. If that’s how a lawyer is selling themselves, you’re being taken for a ride.
Cases are about resolving novel ambiguities in the law. The vast majority of disputes never make it to court. The two sides lawyer up and one of them is advised that based on the facts the precedent is in the opponent’s favor. As such, settlement is advisable. In a minority of cases, precedent is mixed or not applicable—the facts and circumstances are truly novel with respect to the law. Given the law is finite and reality is infinite, this happens more often than you’d think.
Lawyers thus argue how the law should be extended. Remember, case law is law in common law countries. Judges opinions aren’t interpretations per se, but acts of rule making.
Courts are made up of humans. Good lawyers put time into jury and judge/jurisdiction selection. Good firms hire former court staffers that know the judges presiding over the case. It's not meant to be easy to game the courts because it's a privilege.
The biggest thing I've learned from good lawyers, is that with the law - there's always an appeal, a different interpretation, and a challenge or request for exemption from a rule.
Applying to be a lawyer in and of itself can be a process of figuring out the correct paperwork to fill out and asking for a special exemption on a piece of missing information or a missed deadline.
Police discretion is a great example imho. Watch everywhere in your day to day as laws are applied based on a subjective real time evaluation of the situation.
tax loopholes, crazy defense strategies, corporations doing blatantly illegal things (or that should be illegal) and getting by on technicalities. All of them are essentially legal system hacking.
> I'd think people who operate in a realm where text becomes action executed by a machine designed wholly around faithful, reliable execution of text fed to it would come to learn the reality-defining power of rules.
Ah, but don't forget how often the code that gets written doesn't do exactly what the writer expected! Or is exploited by another party...
Indeed. I wouldn't say the law is for show; I would say the written law isn't the whole story. Reality is a three-edged sword: the law, the intent, and the implementation.
"For show," to me, implies you can ignore it and charge forward, bull-in-a-china-shop-style. That doesn't work in law or computers; naive invalid input gets rejected by the first-stage parser, and a court complaint completely ignorant of the law can get tossed by the clerk before it even sees a judge's desk. Rather, hacking is understanding and exploiting the consequences of, and nuances within, the rules.
I understand and agree with what you mean, but that's what I'd associate with Engineers. I was thinking Hackers understand that the code running on the machine can be exploited.
Sure, I know. HN is about tech news, maybe with a startup bent. But, I thought what a lot of programmers would have in common were innovative or uncommon angles, "hacking" of a sort.
I don't think rulebook following coders are particularly interested in debating like this on HN.
I don't really have the pulse of programmers but I'd imagine this is precisely the sort of thing they'd prefer doing over hard work. It may change, but there is still quite a bit of DIY culture in programming for better and worse. Just look at all the daily new syntactic sugar you can find. What are those if not innovative angles to get things to work more literally?
We're acutely aware, I think, of the vast gap between computer interpreted rules and human interpreted ones. The computer's interpretation may be hard to fathom but is ultimately rigorous. Human interpreted rules are basically vacuous: a human can make anything mean anything, no matter how rigorous it may seem.
All it requires is for other humans to accept your interpretation. That depends both on the text, your position in society, and that of the other person. The text will convince a few people when the difference in power is small. When the difference in position is large, no text will support the person in the subordinate position.
Lawyers pretend that this is not the case, and that they have mastered objective interpretation of the rules. It is unclear whether they say that because they are stupid, or because they think you are stupid. As programmers, who really are trained in objective interpretation of rules, it's laughable either way.
I believe you are underestimating the work lawyers do.
I try to avoid the error of confusing my lack of knowledge of the grammar of a system with the system itself being stupid. Law and its application have flaws, but it's not an "anything goes" system as you seem to be describing it here.
Can't social engineer without understanding how human agents differ from mechanical ones. Can't hack without understanding the difference between specification and implementation. To know C is to understand the true meaning of "undefined behavior."
From my social experience in high school, the board game rules nerds were more likely to become programmers than lawyers. The worst of them went on to be a pro poker player.
Riffing on Principle of Charity, Uncle Bob Martin's grumpyness, Mark Twain's many observations, and William Gibson's insight about the uneven distribution of the future:
Cone of ignorance expands further, faster than the cone of understanding.
Unlearning is even harder than learning, which contributes the durability of ignorance.
"You'd think /hackers/ would understand that rules are for show."
Ya. I'd like someone to explain cognitive certainty. The opposite of "strong opinions, loosely held". How is everyone else so sure of what they know? The only certainty I have is knowing that I'm probably wrong.
People aren't forgetting reality exists, they are falling in love with how the rules will actually be enforced, but know that the only morally defensible position to take is as it's written.
Hackernews users take the principle of charity too far. I have seen too many people here take Trump in good faith, for example. When you give authoritarians the benefit of the doubt, they'll take it and RUN.
I agree with this, but don't forget that interpretation biases will still come into play as the law is enforced — the biases of police, lawyers and judges. So it still makes sense to read others' interpretations of what this might mean in practice.