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Comment by bigbubba | Hacker News Reader

> If you break any concept/law down far enough, it becomes kinda meaningless.

I call bullshit, I think it's mostly just bad laws that become ridiculous when 'broken down'. If you want to convince me otherwise, demonstrate your claim using laws against murder (unambiguously good laws.)

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Hmm I'd like to see your "laws against murder" that cover every possibly corner case of homicide being acceptable or unacceptable without relying on intent of the law to come into consideration regardless of circumstance. It would be infinitely long.

There is no unambiguously good law because of the simple fact nothing is unambiguously good. Given billions of people and many years some ambiguous scenario is going to come up even around the most "obviously good/bad" things.

It has corner cases, that's not a breakdown that makes it become "kinda meaningless" or the law itself ridiculous.

Of course the law isn't ridiculous at face value, it's extending it to corner cases without looking at intent that can be. That's the point, the same thing is true of any law. It's impossible to cover all corner cases, at some point you need intent when you try to take it too far from what it was written to cover.

Yes, that's your point. But you're arguing a different point than treve.

Treve was saying that anything becomes ridiculous when inspected closely enough. Even the core components.

You are saying that the extension to corner cases becomes ridiculous.

The extension can be ridiculous without the original core being ridiculous.

So you're saying a correct thing, but it's not relevant to the conversation that existed before your comment.

I understand what you're trying to say but "core components" and "corner cases" are part of the same concept. You can't say "I have concept <x> which is made of core components <y> and corner cases <z>" in one breath and then in the next say "<x> is unambiguous without looking at <z>" and unless you have a concept that depends on nothing else for it's construction this applies recursively as well.

E.g. "murder is always illegal" is not true and a bad law/take on the concept. Expanding the law to include "murder is always illegal except when... <other laws>" is only unambiguous if <other laws> are unambiguous. I don't think I need to take it further to explain justifiable homicide isn't unambiguously black and white or always possible to rule on without looking at intent of the various laws and what happened.

Bringing that back to the original thing this is true of any concept or law, including reviewing some remote apps and not others based on what they are for not that they are remote. I'm not saying I agree the way Apple regulates these is good I'm just saying I agree the fact some remote apps are regulated and others aren't isn't proof alone the regulation is contradictory.

> I understand what you're trying to say but "core components" and "corner cases" are part of the same concept.

Sure! And if you look at the overall concept, it does not become meaningless. To get to meaninglessness requires you separate the two.

"Unambiguous" is a much much higher bar that we don't need to worry about. Something can be 5% ambiguous but still very meaningful.

> Bringing that back to the original thing this is true of any concept or law, including reviewing some remote apps and not others based on what they are for not that they are remote. I'm not saying I agree the way Apple regulates these is good I'm just saying I agree the fact some remote apps are regulated and others aren't isn't proof alone the regulation is contradictory.

It's not proof by itself, but if you can show that there's no good reason for the distinction then it's a strong mark against Apple.

I think you must have misunderstood. The idea was to make laws against murder sound ridiculous by breaking them down, not make yourself sound ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure you cannot do as I requested.

If I was in incredible pain and wanted to end my own life but was not capable on my own I might ask a close friend to help me with that. If that friend had enough empathy to help me fulfil my hypothetical wish then they would be a murderer, but a kind and helpful one.

edit: maybe we want to define murder as killing someone who does not want to be killed. I would ask what you have to say about the "trolley problem". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

The trolley problem is a bit silly.

If you just boil it down to the actual question

You can pick one of:

1 random person dies, or

5 random people die.

Which one do you choose?

The correct answer is obvious. The question is more interesting with more context.

If you remove the action/inaction part you've ruined the question.

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