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>The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"

This is not such an unusual thing in law, as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code. The most famous example is determining art vs pornography - "I know it when I see it" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)



This exactly. The post you reply to implies they have discovered something very novel, which they did not. I don't remember which ancient king it was, but they already tried thousands of years ago to make codes of law with every situation described in it. They failed. Just leave the final interpretation to the judge, and let the politicians make broad laws (in good faith, I hope).

> as much as us stem-brained people want legal systems to work like code

I see this a lot on HN, and it makes sense to think like this if you're a programmer. It's also a sign these programmers should open up their world view a bit more.


Which is of course the only way it makes sense to write laws, since code can't model infinite reality.

Not, at least, until our machine overlords arrive.


Not just reality. Adversaries trying to find loopholes. Luckily the git history of law goes back millenia so its had some time to adapt to humans.


"I know it when I see it" notoriously does not work in law, either. Instead, we have the Miller test.


Pt 1 of the Miller test is just "I know it when I see it" where "I" is a hypothetical random person


Not really. It has slightly more well-defined criteria than that. Material must satisfy all three prongs to be considered obscene.




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