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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

Excellent advice.

The law is not logical and the outcomes are not reasonable. This is a hard thing for the engineering mind to come to terms with given how much these seemingly random outcomes can affect peoples' lives.

The law is a system that's nearly completely hacked at this point. Think of it as a RedHat linux 5.0 system with wuftp enabled that's been running on the net since '97. Do you really think that ls is still ls?

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Whilst I agree with Matt's advice, I disagree that the law is not logical. It is fundamentally logical and shares many of the ideas found in logic: evidence, probability, relevance, reasonableness, precedent, presumption, proof, explanation, plausability, etc. That legal outcomes are not always considered reasonable may be due more to the fallibility of a judge, jury, expert or process. Further, drafting a legal document and programming are not that disimilar.

You know the expression "security theatre"? My cynical experience is that the part of the legal system that concerns evidence, probability, relevance, reasonableness, precedent, presumption, proof, explanation, plausability, etc is reason theatre.

Although the decision may not always go to the side with the deepest pockets and the most theatrically convincing lawyers, that's the way to bet.

Hello, Raganwald, and welcome to my quotes file.

When you execute a program twice in a row, the same results are expected each time.

When you execute a legal document twice, the same results both times would be fall-out-of-your-chair unexpected.

Even simple, clear-cut legal documents like wills are at best, probability functions.

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