I’m a gentile atheist and I find that Halachich debate and reasoning totally appeals to the detail-oriented fanboy in me. Ultimately, it was a barren intellectual exercise with respect to the real world, but a hugely challenging intellectual exercise—a game—nonetheless. Maybe one of the great games of history. Who can tell how many brilliant minds wasted their lives building this enormously refined system of law, based on the myths of one of many, many barbaric tribes? But with that said, in the modern day, many of the best jurists and legal scholars today are Jews who owe some debt to this cultural inheritance.
I think this must apply to every legal system which has governed humans so far. If laws are to be made known to everyone, and generally comprehensible, then they can’t be too complicated. As it is, they tend to be plenty complicated. Even so, great numbers of people in aggregate are still far, far more complicated than any human system of laws. They will do things unanticipated by the lawmakers, and not exactly covered by the words of the lawmakers. Then, a court of law may be required to decide whether or how an inherently ambiguous law applies to an unanticipated fact pattern.
I think this must apply to every legal system which has governed humans so far.
I agree, and it’s factually true; my concern was that if training on Halachic law was good practice for common law, then our legal systems suffer too much from complications. I think the Halachic system is bad, and to the extent that our legal system resembles it enough to measurably advantage Halachic scholars, our legal system is bad too.
There was a move at one point to write laws in Python or some other programming code; I would then argue that if thinking like a programmer made you a better jurist or legal scholar, it says good things about both systems.
I am seriously interested in more information about this approach. I think that right now, there are two modern systems of law: Roman-derived law and English-derived, or “common” law. Sharia law might count as a close runner-up. I think Halacha is well-developed, but not widely-enforced, so I would not count it as a major modern legal system. With that said, and admitting I don’t know much about civil law or the religious laws, my impression is that all the above are similarly complicated, and have been for centuries. I am in doubt that human behavior and its ambiguities could be simplified by being encoded in Python. I think it’s a really, really hard problem, at least as long as humans remain as unpredictable as they do.
I am seriously interested in more information about this approach. I think that right now, there are two modern systems of law: Roman-derived law and English-derived, or “common” law. Sharia law might count as a close runner-up. I think Halacha is well-developed, but not widely-enforced, so I would not count it as a major modern legal system.
David Friedman has taught a course in “Legal Systems Very Different From Ours” in both 2008 and 2010. See these course pages: [1][2]
It would probably have to be coupled, though, with a state where laws are actually enforced consistently, and can be changed quickly if they end up screwing things up massively.
Who can tell how many brilliant minds wasted their lives building this enormously refined system of law, based on the myths of one of many, many barbaric tribes?
They may have wasted their minds on it, but the better they where at wasting their minds the higher their status was, the likelier it was they would marry a girl from another respected or wealthy family and consequently the more they got to reproduce.
Where their minds truly wasted? Or did it by happy accident, a hack of our out of date reward systems, managed to produce more brilliant, if deluded and blinded minds? History has also since shown that the minds aren’t irreversibly deluded.
I can’t help but wonder if we would have had quite as many wonderful minds like Bohr, Einstein, Hertz or Nobele prize winners like Richard Phillips Fenyman or Isidor Isaac Rabi (!) if those minds in the late middle ages or early modern period weren’t wasted.
Possibly, but at the same time, a lot of those people in the Middle Ages were still wasting time and are still doing so today. There’s no question for example that Maimonides was brilliant. He was impressive for his accomplishments in philosophy, medicine, and even in other areas that he only dabbled in (such as math). That he spent most of his time on halachah certainly held back society. And he’s not the only example. Similar remarks would apply to many of the great Rabbis in history and even some of the modern ones.
I’d be interested in seeing how you draw the line between Maimonides’ work in halachah and in philosophy. I can certainly identify outputs that I would classify as one or the other, but I would have a very hard time drawing a sharp line between the processes.
I agree that there isn’t a sharp line. But if we just look at the material that falls unambiguously into halachah as opposed to all the material that falls into philosophy or the borderline, there’s a lot more halachich material.
Sure. Again, classifying the outputs isn’t too hard. Philosophical and halachic writing are different genres, and it’s relatively easy to class writing by genre. Sure, there’s a fuzzy middle ground, but I agree that that’s a minor concern.
But your argument seems to depend on the idea that if he spent a year thinking about stuff and at the end of that year wrote five thousand words we would class as halachah and five hundred words we would class as philosophy, that means he wasted that year, whereas if it had been the other way around, that would advance society.
Before endorsing such an argument, I’d want to know more about what was actually going on in that year. I could easily see it going either way, simply because there isn’t a clear correlation in this context between how useful his thinking was vs. what genre he published the results in.
Regarding fanboyism, that’s certainly an aspect that it has similarity to among the more self-conscious Orthodox Jews there’s a feeling that they understand it as an intellectual game. And for what it is worth, when I’ve wrote on my blog entries about things likes the halachot of making a horcrux, or the kashrut status of a Star Trek replicator, most Orthodox readers are interested and generally not offended.
I’m a gentile atheist and I find that Halachich debate and reasoning totally appeals to the detail-oriented fanboy in me. Ultimately, it was a barren intellectual exercise with respect to the real world, but a hugely challenging intellectual exercise—a game—nonetheless. Maybe one of the great games of history. Who can tell how many brilliant minds wasted their lives building this enormously refined system of law, based on the myths of one of many, many barbaric tribes? But with that said, in the modern day, many of the best jurists and legal scholars today are Jews who owe some debt to this cultural inheritance.
This says some good things about the cultural laws, but it also says some bad things about our legal systems.
I think this must apply to every legal system which has governed humans so far. If laws are to be made known to everyone, and generally comprehensible, then they can’t be too complicated. As it is, they tend to be plenty complicated. Even so, great numbers of people in aggregate are still far, far more complicated than any human system of laws. They will do things unanticipated by the lawmakers, and not exactly covered by the words of the lawmakers. Then, a court of law may be required to decide whether or how an inherently ambiguous law applies to an unanticipated fact pattern.
I agree, and it’s factually true; my concern was that if training on Halachic law was good practice for common law, then our legal systems suffer too much from complications. I think the Halachic system is bad, and to the extent that our legal system resembles it enough to measurably advantage Halachic scholars, our legal system is bad too.
There was a move at one point to write laws in Python or some other programming code; I would then argue that if thinking like a programmer made you a better jurist or legal scholar, it says good things about both systems.
I am seriously interested in more information about this approach. I think that right now, there are two modern systems of law: Roman-derived law and English-derived, or “common” law. Sharia law might count as a close runner-up. I think Halacha is well-developed, but not widely-enforced, so I would not count it as a major modern legal system. With that said, and admitting I don’t know much about civil law or the religious laws, my impression is that all the above are similarly complicated, and have been for centuries. I am in doubt that human behavior and its ambiguities could be simplified by being encoded in Python. I think it’s a really, really hard problem, at least as long as humans remain as unpredictable as they do.
Off-topic: Why does everyone on lesswrong say Python when they need to mention a programming language?
Rule 46b:: I will not turn my programming language into a snake. It never helps.
It has a very high ease of learning to usefulness ratio?
edit: It seems to come highly recommended as a first programming language (certainly it was such to me).
Do you mean a high usefulness to difficulty of learning ratio?
Atari BASIC had a nearly infinite ease of learning to usefulness ratio. :)
Right.
Python is my first (and currently only) programming language. It’s easy to read, easy to learn, and useful.
Python code is also reasonably easy to read. It’s sometimes called executable pseudocode.
I did a Google duel—and it appears that “Java” beats “Python” for mentions around here.
I don’t get it either I’m more of a C guy.
David Friedman has taught a course in “Legal Systems Very Different From Ours” in both 2008 and 2010. See these course pages: [1] [2]
I think the Python thing was just for the payoff functions of securities, not for laws as such.
That is disappointing. Lawmakers who think like programmers seems like it would be a huge improvement on the current system.
Lawmakers who think like programmers might be an improvement. But I’m not sure.
On Less Wrong, this almost reads as “if only lawmakers were more like me, things would be okay.” I’m skeptical.
It would probably have to be coupled, though, with a state where laws are actually enforced consistently, and can be changed quickly if they end up screwing things up massively.
They may have wasted their minds on it, but the better they where at wasting their minds the higher their status was, the likelier it was they would marry a girl from another respected or wealthy family and consequently the more they got to reproduce.
Where their minds truly wasted? Or did it by happy accident, a hack of our out of date reward systems, managed to produce more brilliant, if deluded and blinded minds? History has also since shown that the minds aren’t irreversibly deluded.
I can’t help but wonder if we would have had quite as many wonderful minds like Bohr, Einstein, Hertz or Nobele prize winners like Richard Phillips Fenyman or Isidor Isaac Rabi (!) if those minds in the late middle ages or early modern period weren’t wasted.
Possibly, but at the same time, a lot of those people in the Middle Ages were still wasting time and are still doing so today. There’s no question for example that Maimonides was brilliant. He was impressive for his accomplishments in philosophy, medicine, and even in other areas that he only dabbled in (such as math). That he spent most of his time on halachah certainly held back society. And he’s not the only example. Similar remarks would apply to many of the great Rabbis in history and even some of the modern ones.
I’d be interested in seeing how you draw the line between Maimonides’ work in halachah and in philosophy. I can certainly identify outputs that I would classify as one or the other, but I would have a very hard time drawing a sharp line between the processes.
I agree that there isn’t a sharp line. But if we just look at the material that falls unambiguously into halachah as opposed to all the material that falls into philosophy or the borderline, there’s a lot more halachich material.
Sure. Again, classifying the outputs isn’t too hard. Philosophical and halachic writing are different genres, and it’s relatively easy to class writing by genre. Sure, there’s a fuzzy middle ground, but I agree that that’s a minor concern.
But your argument seems to depend on the idea that if he spent a year thinking about stuff and at the end of that year wrote five thousand words we would class as halachah and five hundred words we would class as philosophy, that means he wasted that year, whereas if it had been the other way around, that would advance society.
Before endorsing such an argument, I’d want to know more about what was actually going on in that year. I could easily see it going either way, simply because there isn’t a clear correlation in this context between how useful his thinking was vs. what genre he published the results in.
Regarding fanboyism, that’s certainly an aspect that it has similarity to among the more self-conscious Orthodox Jews there’s a feeling that they understand it as an intellectual game. And for what it is worth, when I’ve wrote on my blog entries about things likes the halachot of making a horcrux, or the kashrut status of a Star Trek replicator, most Orthodox readers are interested and generally not offended.
I want a link to that.
Discussed in this entry.
I think Lawyers are like Warriors in this regard.