News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Utterly Unpersuasive: Formal Methods and Law (2019) by quantified on Thursday April 21, 2022 @08:02AM (#31108349)
One purpose of hiring a lawyer is to find loopholes. One business model for lawyers is selling the exploitation of loopholes. Sounds like formal methods can be very valuable in legal training.
Re:Utterly Unpersuasive: Formal Methods and Law (2019) by lobstey on Saturday April 23, 2022 @12:32PM (#31135754)
But unlike computer security, laws are not determined by hardware that never complain about exploitation. Law is operated by humans, and people may reject exploration by arguing the contract differently. Lawyers are trained to dispute humans rather than rules.
Re:Utterly Unpersuasive: Formal Methods and Law (2019) by oh_sigh on Saturday April 23, 2022 @01:13PM (#31136126)
A human just sounds like a buggy, inconsistent compiler in this case.
Re:Utterly Unpersuasive: Formal Methods and Law (2019) by bobthechef on Saturday April 23, 2022 @01:46PM (#31136459)
A Procrustean view.

The law isn't perfect, and in that sense, it is like software in that it is constantly changing in anger. With the law, however, you're also in the situation of having many different interpreters. Given that the law is imperfect and requires refinement and adaptation in anger, given the imperfect knowledge of law givers, it is expected that there would be multiple interpretations.

Law does not determine justice by virtue of its codification. Morality does. Law is just the determination of general moral principles. A ruled-based system blindly followed by a machine would be a disaster outside very narrow, niche applications.