Hacker News Reader

Computer program makes a decision based on the set of rules it was programmed with.

We have a law to make humans work exactly the same way. Law is a set of rules that say who is guilty and who's not. Only that humans are bad at being objective: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/1...

View on HN

Laws are rules but they are not enough on their own to make decisions. They are written with the implicit cultural background and the intent of the humans who wrote them. Plenty of case law is around determining what the authors actually meant when they made a law.

As long as humans write the law, and that there is the notion of a sovereign people, human judges should decide how to interpret and apply the law.

Justice tends to be harsher on a hungry stomach.

I think we should strive for well written laws that don't require so much interpretation.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lunchtime-leniency...

Not exactly. The real world is far too complex to cover all edge cases, which is why we have human judges to evaluate cases on an individual basis. Leaving these decisions up to a computer is essentially subjecting ourselves to rule by computers, which is incredibly concerning.

Judges don't do any deep analysis on million small claims, and can be replaced by automated rules.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com