We're WEIRD. Get over it.

[David Horn]

(10-02-2020, 11:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-02-2020, 08:28 AM)David Horn Wrote: To a farcical extent, this is like two combatants agreeing to settle issues of life and death with a pillow fight.  The law is already clumsy enough without overlaying it with a veneer of myth and pseudo religion.  Of course there will be legislating from the bench if there is no legislating from the body intended to legislate.  Worse, people and organizations with resources will always appeal to the bench, and do it continuously if the math looks good.  A 6-3 court will be inundated with appeals to do or undo in service to a dyspeptic conservative vision.

Us software engineers sometimes catch something we call digitalitis.  Computers, digital devises, obey rules.  They do what they are supposed to do.  Cause leads to effect.  After years of handling devices that act like this, we kind of expect other things to act this way too.  Have you ever tried to argue with a computer, to assume it is the computer's fault not yours?  The dang things are obnoxiously always right.  It becomes a way of looking at the world.  Part of one’s worldview, so to speak.

So, I kind of look that way at the law.  There is a theory there, and it ought to be followed.  You ignore it for temporary expediency and you pay the price.

If you think this is a pseudo religion, obviously you don’t have digitalitis.  You can see the law as something you can bend to your whim, and you can hope some crisis will never come when you will need it.  A crisis, after all, is only a once in a lifetime thing.  Getting rid of law and free wheeling it could never be a problem?

No, I'm unconcerned about consistency. It's a good thing overall.  I am concerned about arcane rules of engagement, for lack of a better term.  Digging around in dusty archives trying to ascertain the intent of this or that historical person as a guide to parsing language written decades or even hundreds of years ago makes no sense.  We don't live in that distant past.  We live today.  More to the point, the impact of laws, especially their unintended consequences, weighs more heavily with me than the original intent from ages past.

So I might be a bit more stochastic than determinant.