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Comment by brutusborn

3 years ago

Do you have any examples where ambiguity is truly beneficial?

For all the examples I can think of, the most beneficial outcome is removing the law altogether.

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brutusborn

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dathinab  3 years ago

Two easy examples:

- Fair use law (there are thinks which clearly are and are not fair use but in between there is huge gray area where you can not really formulate generic precise rules which work reliable).

- Parent law (which has a lot of issues especially given how it's applied, but design wise you fundamentally have ambiguity about questions like when something is "enough added innovation" to be patentable as fundamentaly "the degree of inovativeness" is purely subjective.)

- Insult, is also very subjective. Define it as "only when insult was intented" would be bad, but similar would be "always when the person felt insulted" and even "if intended and felt insulted" has issues.

- Self defense it's in many jurisdiction based on the person feeling threatened, but in jurisdictions with sane law it also involves stuff like "a generic person would also have felt threatened", but then you still have to consider person specific circumstances.

- or lot of stuff around what counts as insider information, e.g. for insider trading

unethical_ban  3 years ago

Speed limits is one example.

  • dathinab  3 years ago

    in many countries speed limits are quite clear cut

    through "clear cut" here sometimes still involve an assessment of danger which fundamentally isn't 100% objective

    and e.g. in germany you are only allowed to "drive as fast as it's save" even if the speed limit is higher (and that is a common occurrence, e.g. resident areas tend to be 30km/h zones but you have to slow down at nearly every crossing because anything else wouldn't be save and if you do an accident at a crossing driving 30km/h in such a zone you are very likely very much screwed (depending on damage done).

    So I guess, yes speed limits in a certain way, too.

    • brutusborn  3 years ago

      Thanks for the reply. Just a little spelling mistake, it’s “safe.” Besides that you write English better than me (a native) :P

  • brutusborn  3 years ago

    How so?

    I would have thought that is a good example of a law placing an upper limit on risk in a very black and white way.

    Maybe exemptions for passing on single lane roads might be a net reduction of risk but I can’t think of any other grey areas.