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by davidm888 1864 days ago
I agree completely, and the quote you cited more eloquently describes what I was trying to convey in some of my earlier comments. Coming from a software-development mindset, I started practicing law twenty years ago, and the hardest adjustment to make was to understand that even though the law seemed analogous to deterministic code on the surface, in reality it is much different. Today, both writing code and practicing law, I still have to remind myself of the difference sometimes. It is a completely different mindset when dealing with ambiguity, especially in the cases where ambiguity is sometimes desired, welcomed, or necessary. It is also eye-opening to realize that the parties never consider all of the future possibilities, and as such, it's not even possible for a document, however syntactically correct, to convey the intent of the parties 100% -- they don't even know their full intent as to infinite possibilities. I think many of the commenters, just like I did before, struggle to understand this. They don't realize that the "flaw" they're trying to correct is actually a feature -- a messy, sometimes annoying, irrational, subjective, human, necessary feature that's actually an important part of the functioning of society. It's intoxicating to think of a purely logical society driven by immutable, consistent, and brutally efficient laws for everyone, but upon further thought, it's a bit terrifying. Thankfully, it's also impossible.