Comment by ivanjermakov
8 hours ago
I'm surprised the world is not running a system where laws are formally encoded using some DSL that would allow making decision (guilty/not guilty) using formal logic. Perhaps there is not much interest from law making/enforcing parties for this either.
That's a common fantasy of developers who haven't touched grass in a while.
It's a rehashing of Leibniz's "Calculemus!".
It's not a fully stupid idea, many rules can be automated and indeed have already been. The things that courts still have to decide manually are the leftovers that require more human judgment.
This pipe dream will soon be replaced by "let's have the first degree of judgment be ChatGPT; human judges should only deal with appeals".
1 reply →
Why is it a fantasy to have a fair system with no room for interpretation?
You’d also probably be surprised about how subjective and unevenly applied the law is… by design, to allow appropriate outcomes and discretion.
Edit: Consider the following words included in law.
“reasonable” “reckless” “due care”
I don't think this is where the problem lies. If you kill someone with intent, it's murder. But the whole system needs to prove that you killed someone with intent beyond a reasonable doubt, and a DSL will not help you there.
Have you actually tried reading a single law? If you have, have you tried to write just one article in formal logic?
Certain laws, like parts of tax law may be possible to turn into code, like percentages and deadlines, but even those often carry natural language conditions that can't be evaluated so easily. Seriously, try it.
Maybe we should go further and use some DSL to speak with each other in the first place? Would def make everything straight and eliminate ambiguity!
That's Lojban.
Turns out, ambiguity is an intentional communicative tool.