On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 3:38 PM, Sean Lynch <se...@literati.org> wrote: > > On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 12:27 PM, Stephen D. Williams <s...@lig.net> wrote: >> >> On 9/26/16 11:35 AM, Sean Lynch wrote: >> >> On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Xer0Dynamite <dreamingforw...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> Like Lessig's "Code is Law". LAW is also CODE: it's the Operating >>> System for your Government. Presently: bloated and with a few design >>> flaws. Fortunately, it's Open Source. Muhahhhwhahaaa >>> >> >> This is almost worthy of being called THE "Geek Fallacy." It is why people >> who seem otherwise smart are so often statists. They love systems and they >> make the mistake of thinking government is just a machine and that all it >> needs is better code. But that's totally false. Human organizations are NOT >> MACHINES, at least nothing nearly so simple as a computer. They are run not >> by code but by people responding to incentives. If you want to see what >> their programming is, look not at the laws but at the incentives people are >> responding to. "Programming" such a beast looks far more like biological >> evolution than it does like programming a computer. >> >> This, by the way, is why our legislation is so complex. You cannot tell >> the goal of a piece of legislation by reading it. You can watch it in >> operation and see what happens, and you can try to understand the incentives >> of the people who wrote it and voted on it, but that's it. For the most >> part, if a law gets passed and then doesn't get changed, in all probability >> the intent of the law is precisely what its effect is. >> >> >> All of that is still programming. Parenting is programming. Culture is >> programming. A speech is programming. Up to a certain age / experience / >> introspectiveness it is hard to see various things as programming people, >> but eventually it becomes obvious how much that is true. Certain people are >> naturally (or through happenstance become advanced) in understanding and >> manipulating others, or at least being able to if and when the need or >> desire to. Many use this sparingly and for the good of those people; others >> take advantage of others. The skill and related contexts are real. The TV >> series "The Mentalist" is completely about this. >> >> I generally agree about intent of laws, although some percentage of time >> unintended consequences, good or bad from various points of view, can lock >> in a law that ended up much different than the original intent. Some very >> good laws were partly passed after key provisions were added that were >> expected to be outlandish enough to kill it, but passed anyway. > > > My problem with viewing any of this as programming is that you can look at a > computer's code and predict what it will do. You cannot do that with any of > the other things you're calling "programming" there. The closest analogy > might be trying to program a broken computer built by an insane genius in a > language you don't actually understand but that looks like English. You know > what the words mean but you have no idea what will happen when they're > actually run. Oh, and by the way, there's a bunch of extra firmware there > you have no access to and that's changing all the time.
Programming 2.0... Load Firmware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tRKH_BSsk0