Comment by Ericson2314

It's a mistake to think that only things which are "absolute" can be logically programing. Take this silly example:

> If x is a good person they can go to heaven. Unless they were born on Feb 29th. The previous restriction is lifted if the year is a prime number. The counting of the year is Julian. The destination of heaven is replaced with hell if at least 5 people are on mars.

As the article shows, exactly existing law is fully of "whoops, you better keep on reading to find that override" situations like the above. Formalization still helps by putting all branching up front rather than with the the moral equivalent of COME FROM statements. And that helps whet there or not "good person", "heaven", and "hell" are well defined.

...The responses to this prreprint make me think no only do HN readers not understand the law, but they don't understand programming well either. :/