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As a relatively normal person, I have my quirks. I read HN, I love politics, and I enjoy trying to understand the law. The fact that an average contract is impo

by celer 15y ago

As a relatively normal person, I have my quirks. I read HN, I love politics, and I enjoy trying to understand the law. The fact that an average contract is impossible to comprehend is actively offensive. Most legal phrases in contracts are stock phrases. A "Google translate from law to human" would be a wonderful thing. Stick a contract in there, have all the standard parts summarized, and flag anything odd. I would adore this. This isn't about fighting battles, this is about making battles never happen in the first place. As a founder, you could run your recieved contract offers through this, just to make sure you aren't being doomed. If it can take in .doc, .docx, .odt, and .pdf files and return their translated equivalents, so much the better.

blakdawg 15y ago
This is approximately equivalent to writing a program that would read poetry or literature and explain what's going on, including allusions, metaphors, snarky inside references, etc. Or, framed differently - if law is code, it's linked against a complicated set of libraries that isn't standard worldwide, or even across a single nation. And the libraries are frequently updated - so unless you've got a statically linked executable (which may or may not be permissible) it's entirely possible that library functions will do things at runtime that hadn't even been imagined when the code was written. Also, when the code is executed, the system's got a built-in "red team" trying to substitute other libraries that produce opposite results, and from time to time fuzzers appear that generate gibberish which may also be linked with your code. In that context, your task is to solve the halting problem. The battles that you are trying to avoid occur because someone wants them to occur. The problem isn't that law is complicated, the problem is that people are assholes.

by celer 15y ago

blakdawg 15y ago

This is approximately equivalent to writing a program that would read poetry or literature and explain what's going on, including allusions, metaphors, snarky inside references, etc. Or, framed differently - if law is code, it's linked against a complicated set of libraries that isn't standard worldwide, or even across a single nation. And the libraries are frequently updated - so unless you've got a statically linked executable (which may or may not be permissible) it's entirely possible that library functions will do things at runtime that hadn't even been imagined when the code was written. Also, when the code is executed, the system's got a built-in "red team" trying to substitute other libraries that produce opposite results, and from time to time fuzzers appear that generate gibberish which may also be linked with your code. In that context, your task is to solve the halting problem. The battles that you are trying to avoid occur because someone wants them to occur. The problem isn't that law is complicated, the problem is that people are assholes.