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Spanish legislation as a Git repo

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Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#31
post #4

This is brilliant. I wish this were available for all legislations. There's so many inefficiencies that are trivially solved with existing tech frameworks.

And, in the example of the stereotypical venture capital seeking techbro junk that has somehow infected the entire world, this project doesn't actually understand or solve any real world problems.

No shade on the author, they made a fun thing. I'm directing my cannons more towards the parent post idea that the world needs software developers for their rare genius to use their beautiful brains to solve problems in ways no actual participant in the system could have ever thought of.

The additude that because you can prompt a LLM to write some python you are also uniquely situated to solve the world's problems is how we built an entire generation of automated solutions worse than what we had before.

Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#32
post #4

This is brilliant. I wish this were available for all legislations. There's so many inefficiencies that are trivially solved with existing tech frameworks.

> so many inefficiencies that are trivially solved with existing tech frameworks. Out of curiosity, like what specifically? Didn’t DOGE’s failure highlight that it actually wasn’t trivial? I’m skeptical at first glance but open to being proven wrong.

DOGE wasn't actually trying to make things more efficient. You can't count it as an honest attempt.

Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#33

I'm surprised the world is not running a system where laws are formally encoded using some DSL that would allow making decision (guilty/not guilty) using formal logic. Perhaps there is not much interest from law making/enforcing parties for this either.

That's a common fantasy of developers who haven't touched grass in a while.

Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#34

I built a pipeline that converts all Spanish state legislation into version-controlled Markdown. Each law is a file, each reform is a real git commit with the historical date. 8,642 laws, 27,866 commits. The idea: legislation is just patches on patches on patches. Git already solves this. Instead of reading "strike paragraph 3 and replace with...", you get an actual diff. The repo is the product. Browse any law, git…

Laws intent are often clarified in courts through judgments. If you can overlay the judgements on top of the corresponding law, at correct points in time, I think that will have value. It might, for example, show which laws were referenced the most and which needed to be clarified the most. It might give insights into what legal language constructs stood the test of time and which had to be repeatedly clarified.

Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#36

I'm surprised the world is not running a system where laws are formally encoded using some DSL that would allow making decision (guilty/not guilty) using formal logic. Perhaps there is not much interest from law making/enforcing parties for this either.

You’d also probably be surprised about how subjective and unevenly applied the law is… by design, to allow appropriate outcomes and discretion.

Edit: Consider the following words included in law.

“reasonable” “reckless” “due care”

Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#38

I think this is great. Only limit of git is I can't imagine "git blame" works. It would be nice to know who voted for and against each patch. Git isn't structured for collaborative commits.

That could actually be a git commit log with date, votes and other metadata.

But getting the entire country's law into git is already an impressive feat.

Re: Spanish legislation as a Git repo

#39
post #4

This is brilliant. I wish this were available for all legislations. There's so many inefficiencies that are trivially solved with existing tech frameworks.

> so many inefficiencies that are trivially solved with existing tech frameworks. Out of curiosity, like what specifically? Didn’t DOGE’s failure highlight that it actually wasn’t trivial? I’m skeptical at first glance but open to being proven wrong.

DOGE made the token gain more in market cap than it saved in expenses. Despite having at head a master of blind layoffs.
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