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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

On a side note, I find this interesting how accepting everyone here is that language is ambiguous. The conversations seem to drastically change when you start talking about LLMs. But this is exactly why I don't see them replacing programmers even if they didn't write shit code. Because like with law, you don't really even know what you're trying to describe until you start doing it. And then you gotta keep updating it and be thinking really hard about all your edge cases.

Though for law, I think some ambiguity is beneficial. We should be going after the intent of the law, not the letter. This isn't just about bad encoding, as in not well aligned with the intent, but that there's always exceptions. Having that human judge be there to determine if something is actually reasonable or not is beneficial, even if there's a strong bias to follow the letter.

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> Though for law, I think some ambiguity is beneficial.

Ambiguity means that there are two or more possible interpretations and it's not clear which of them is intended. That's hardly useful. What's beneficial, and what you perhaps had in mind, is some amount of under-specification where the meaning is clear but leaves gaps to be filled in by judges.

Yes, this is what I mean. More focus on the intention. But I do also think we should give judges a lot of flexibility (technically they do). Because things are changing all the time.

I agree with your second point about intentionality of the law. I would love to see strict requirements that new laws should have sections explaining: -the intention in writing the law. -societal and economic situation that lead to it being needed. -what measurable outcomes the law should achieve in x years

Politics is a game of making coalitions. People may be in favor of a law for disparate reasons. Take a law against prostitition. One person may be in favor of it to reduce trafficking. Another to reduce premarital sex. A third to reduce husbands' opportunities to cheat. A fourth to reduce the spread of std's.

On the other side there may be one person that wants to have sex with prostitutes himself, another that believes women should be able to do what they want with their bodies, a third that believes prostitutes can be an important way for young men to gain sexual experience and skill, a fourth that thinks prostitution is bad but legalization to be a way of harm reduction.

Not all of these people may be willing to admit their reasoning in writing. You could say that only following the written down reasoning is a feature. I haven't thought a lot about that subject, so I haven't made up my mind on it.

This seems like a feature and not a bug. Though in your example, it seems like those that would be required to state the reasoning wouldn't have a problem. A partial solution for the coalition issue is that signatories can be connected to the intentions.

I want my politicians speaking more honestly. Or at least having to write things on the record. Things in the system that pressure more honesty, accountability, and transparency are better.

> Not all of these people may be willing to admit their reasoning in writing

They are not willing to admit it in any domain, which is exactly why we want it in writing.

It's called accountability.

I can't see agreement on intentions in writing, there will be many intentions.

What I would like to see is what harm it is supposed to prevent.

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