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Catala – Law to Code

catala-lang.org

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Re: Catala – Law to Code

#51

Post by bigbadfeline »

shakna wrote: post #41
bigbadfeline wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intent has been the core underiding feature of the law since the Magna Carta. I've already explained that intent is another word for interest - material or political, it may not be as trivial as potato chips but it's far simpler than rocket science. > To ignore or trivialise it is nothing short of advocating for the return of kings. Another purely speculative assertion with zero meaning or practical value. There's…

If intent were so simply explained, then the High Courts across the world would serve no function - as interpreting intent is their core role. Material interest and intent only accidentally collide. Intent cannot be defined in that manner. Almost every person beneath a capitalist system has a material interest in wealth. That does not translate to intent to seize it. If intent does not matter, only interest, then the…

> Almost every person beneath a capitalist system has a material interest in wealth. That does not translate to intent to seize it.If intent does not matter, only interest, then there is no war crime in bombing boats.

That's a different topic, legislative intent is different from criminal intent, the latter does not change the fact of wrongdoing, only the severity of it. Bombing sailors in a wreckage situation is either a war crime or gross military incompetence which may lead to court-martial. This together with interest-as-motive are decided based on facts and logic, not philosophy - these arguments support my view, not yours.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#52

Post by shakna »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #51
shakna wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If intent were so simply explained, then the High Courts across the world would serve no function - as interpreting intent is their core role. Material interest and intent only accidentally collide. Intent cannot be defined in that manner. Almost every person beneath a capitalist system has a material interest in wealth. That does not translate to intent to seize it. If intent does not matter, only interest, then the…

> Almost every person beneath a capitalist system has a material interest in wealth. That does not translate to intent to seize it.If intent does not matter, only interest, then there is no war crime in bombing boats. That's a different topic, legislative intent is different from criminal intent, the latter does not change the fact of wrongdoing, only the severity of it. Bombing sailors in a wreckage situation is eit…

You definition of philosophy does not seem to match the broader scientific one.

Philosophy is the science of understanding logic. Founded on Aristotles, Plato, and others. Rational process is derived directly from philosophy.

An appeal to facts and logic, is and always has been, an appeal to philosophy.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#53

Post by alfonsovng »

ascold wrote: post #42

I wonder what people who speak the actual Catala have to say about this semantic appropriation. It would be very easy for creators just to google it first.

Yeah, I speak Catalan, and we call the language "català" in Catalan, I mean, I would say "Jo parlo català" to say "I speak Catalan".

I agree that maybe do a quick Google search would avoid this strange appropiation.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#54

Post by mpeg »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #50
mkl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try clicking my "Catala" link and looking at the first sentence. The Catalan word for Catalan is català.

Great. You would know that the accent can completely change the meaning of a word in that language as such an expert. So we can just say that catala != català

That’s not correct, the accent is simply there to know how to pronounce the word, and while in some specific cases (diacritic accent) it is there to avoid confusion in words that are pronounced the same with different meaning, the presence or lack of accent does not as a rule change the meaning of a word.

In this case, catala and català mean the same thing, one is simply misspelled as all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#55

Post by maratc »

alphazard wrote: post #23

Obviously it would be great if this caught on, but it's not even widely understood/agreed on that read-time precision is a desirable quality in a legal system. This is something almost everyone here takes for granted; we want the interpreter or machine to give the same result for the same input. We want that property so we can know the run-time behavior during development. There are judges and politicians in the US t…

Do you really want, for example, the US constitution's write time understandings to be perpetuated forever? Their understanding of "citizen" did not include neither women nor black slaves, just to take one example. Another example is the famous question of "whether or not the right of a woman to abortion is a consitution-guaranteed federal right?" to which a bunch of very important folks gave an answer in 1973 but another bunch of very important folks gave a different answer in 2022.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#56

Post by alphazard »

maratc wrote: post #55
alphazard wrote: post #23

Obviously it would be great if this caught on, but it's not even widely understood/agreed on that read-time precision is a desirable quality in a legal system. This is something almost everyone here takes for granted; we want the interpreter or machine to give the same result for the same input. We want that property so we can know the run-time behavior during development. There are judges and politicians in the US t…

Do you really want, for example, the US constitution's write time understandings to be perpetuated forever? Their understanding of "citizen" did not include neither women nor black slaves, just to take one example. Another example is the famous question of "whether or not the right of a woman to abortion is a consitution-guaranteed federal right?" to which a bunch of very important folks gave an answer in 1973 but an…

Write-time understandings no, write-time language yes. You can always change it, which is what happened in the case of women and slaves. To be clear, changing the text is the correct way to handle that, we shouldn't have just relied on the understandings of people changing over time to fix those issues.

The famous example you give illustrates why a system without precise meaning cannot work. It can seem like it works when lots of people act in good faith, but it quickly breaks down with even a few actors play the actual game instead of some "spirit of the game". In 1973, judges ruled one way, playing the actual game to accomplish a goal, and then everyone acted surprised in 2022, when the same tactics (playing the actual game not the spirit) reverted the decision.

I'm going to take a guess, and assume that you were in favor of the 1973 understanding and not the 2022 understanding. It would have been nice for that to have been captured precisely in some kind of specification, instead of enacted with a volatile read-time mechanism.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#57

Post by maratc »

alphazard wrote: post #56
maratc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want, for example, the US constitution's write time understandings to be perpetuated forever? Their understanding of "citizen" did not include neither women nor black slaves, just to take one example. Another example is the famous question of "whether or not the right of a woman to abortion is a consitution-guaranteed federal right?" to which a bunch of very important folks gave an answer in 1973 but an…

Write-time understandings no, write-time language yes. You can always change it, which is what happened in the case of women and slaves. To be clear, changing the text is the correct way to handle that, we shouldn't have just relied on the understandings of people changing over time to fix those issues. The famous example you give illustrates why a system without precise meaning cannot work. It can seem like it works…

I don't live in the US and I'm rather indifferent to either understanding, so it would be correct to say that I'm neither in favour nor in opposition of any one of these. Being personally unaffected, I simply find it an interesting subject to observe.

With that, I still want to point out that even if we both agree that "changing the text is the correct way to handle," it's not a possibility that is even remotely practical or achievable; any meaningful progress that the US have had in the last 100 years or so was achieved solely by the means of "reinventing" the meaning of already written (and unchangeable) words. That seems to be the exact thing you seem to be in opposition of.

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#58

Post by [deleted] »

mpeg wrote: post #54
dghlsakjg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. You would know that the accent can completely change the meaning of a word in that language as such an expert. So we can just say that catala != català

That’s not correct, the accent is simply there to know how to pronounce the word, and while in some specific cases (diacritic accent) it is there to avoid confusion in words that are pronounced the same with different meaning, the presence or lack of accent does not as a rule change the meaning of a word. In this case, catala and català mean the same thing, one is simply misspelled as all words with the strong syllab…

[deleted]

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#59

Post by knollimar »

alphazard wrote: post #56
maratc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want, for example, the US constitution's write time understandings to be perpetuated forever? Their understanding of "citizen" did not include neither women nor black slaves, just to take one example. Another example is the famous question of "whether or not the right of a woman to abortion is a consitution-guaranteed federal right?" to which a bunch of very important folks gave an answer in 1973 but an…

Write-time understandings no, write-time language yes. You can always change it, which is what happened in the case of women and slaves. To be clear, changing the text is the correct way to handle that, we shouldn't have just relied on the understandings of people changing over time to fix those issues. The famous example you give illustrates why a system without precise meaning cannot work. It can seem like it works…

Wouldn't 1973 be spirit based and 2022 be text based in this instance?

Re: Catala – Law to Code

#60

Post by tinodb »

akabalanza wrote: post #25

Can't wait for lawmakers to get a red CI before merging ;) Jokes aside, I'm trying to imagine what a pull request workflow would be for law making. For example, there might be a test that checks that a law has adequate budget before applying it; or to get an error if it conflicts with another law. Also (Italian here), I would be very happy to do "git blame" and discover who actually introduced a modification.

Yes, this would make us programmers so happy wouldn’t it :)
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