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Comment by fasteddie31003 | Hacker News Reader

How is that different from a traditional contract written by a lawyer? A single word could leave a huge unexpected hole in a traditional contract.

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In contract law, intent is the key part, so if the "hole" is truly unexpected (e.g. the most significant errors that come to mind would be an accidental omission of "not" which completely reverses the meaning of the contract; or perhaps a mistaken swap in the description of who pays whom) then it would be reasonable to demonstrate that is was not what either of the parties intended, and thus that single mistaken word simply does not matter and would be ignored.

What you do get in contract disputes where specific wording matters is in edge cases where you might reasonably assert that both parties wanted (and agreed) A or not-A for some specific situation as part of the negotiation, disputing where exactly some boundary lies - but not for the core parts or complete reversal. On the other hand, automatically enforced "smart contracts" don't make such a distinction and any typo can reverse the core meaning of the contract as well.

Because traditional contracts can be interpreted by a court of law and adjudicated with context. There's an entire field of contract law, with hundreds of years of precedent to fix very obvious human errors, like a typo where neither party could have possibly meant what is "technically" in the contract.

> Because traditional contracts can be interpreted by a court of law and adjudicated with context.

And all of that is a kind of technology that many "technology" people are far too eager to throw away for spurious reasons (often because they just plain don't understand it).

It's like if someone was working on autopilot program and rewrote it in a "modern" language, and "simplified" it in the process by dropping a bunch of "unnecessary" use cases...then it turns out that at least some of those cases were there for good reason and a bunch of planes crash. A lot of cryptocurrency and blockchain stuff is half-baked because it seems focus on faddish technology for its own sake rather than trying to actually build someone that works.

Part of contract law is that the legal standard for enforceability is "reasonableness"[1]. If there is a clause in a contract that you want to exercise, but your counterparty claims they didn't understand it or intend it they can take you to court. Unless you can convince a judge that they might, at one time, have wanted to agree to the contract then the contract is not a basis for you to take that action.

Contracts have always had a healthy dose of manual debugging that have allowed them to function.

[1] The idea of "a reasonable person" is used heavily in the US legal system and has problems but it also has upsides.

The difference is that disputes are resolved by humans who attempt to determine intent.

With a traditional contract you don't have to worry about an unrelated 3rd party coming in and taking all your assets. And if you have a mistake in a contract that governs a business relationship there's a lot of incentive on both sides to compromise (assuming it's a good relationship).

Regular written contracts are not automatically enforced.

Not a lawyer here but I’m guessing.

Not all legal loopholes automatically deprive you of all your savings. Intentional loop holes only go so far before consumer protection or other entities overwrite it. And if both parties are in agreement and in good standing you can figure out a way to find a reasonable compromise.

Indeed, contracts can be invalidated if they're abusive. For example, there's a doctrine in contract law called unconscionability. If you buy an airline ticket to Boston, the captain can't say upon landing "Welcome to Boston! You can pay $10,000 to deplane or we'll take you back to where you departed." Or let's say that, when you agree to the terms for a e-commerce site, buried deep in the terms is a clause saying the site gets half the money in your bank account. Sure, both parties might've technically agreed to the contract, but the contract probably isn't enforceable.

*Not a lawyer either, but I've read some introductory contract law stuff. All I know is this: you don't want to rely on the courts to save you, since they generally err on the side of the literal contract, but I don't spend much time worrying about accidentally agreeing to a contract that will sell myself into slavery.

There's actually some chance that a poorly written contract, can be fixed / worked out between the parties involved.

I'll take some chance over no chance.

The parties in a dispute like that are likely to settle out of court, in a somewhat reasonable manner, instead of blindly applying the law until a judge automaton reaches a decision following the letter of the law.

With a smart contract, there can be no negotiation and attempt at reconciliation. The price here will never recover from $0, so at a single point in time $248,000 was transferred from bag holders to beneficiaries.

Lawyers argue over ambiguities or mistakes and use precedent to solve these issues, smart contracts don't have that extra level of protection.

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