[Stephen D. Williams]

On 9/26/16 11:35 AM, Sean Lynch wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Xer0Dynamite <dreamingforward at gmail.com <mailto:dreamingforward at 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.

sdw

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