A Case for Informal MetaRules

13:46		*** Renzai joined #obama
<@Joey> you can't fix stupid yet we keep trying...who does that really make the stupid one?
Topic set by AndroidUS!~AndroidUS@32.209.148.69 on Mon Apr 02 2018 13:52:42 GMT-0700 (PDT)
13:46	AndroidUS	https://www.voanews.com/a/can-a-us-president-be-charged-with-a-crime/3961703.html
13:46	RoboTurmp	[ Can a US President Be Charged With a Crime? It's Complicated ] - https://goo.gl/qYASvG
13:46	laceless`	That first article is confused.  An indictment is not a prosecution.
13:47	laceless`	"But would the Constitution allow Mr. Mueller to indict Mr. Trump if he finds evidence of criminal conduct?
13:47	laceless`	The prevailing view among most legal experts is no. They say the president is immune from prosecution so long as he is in office."
13:47	Renzai	It seems consistent with American constitutional ideology to be able to indict the president -- under some circumstances.
13:47	laceless`	The writer of that is clearly confused
13:47	Renzai	I can't think of a good reason why the president shouldn't be indictable.
13:48	Joey	heh the Constitution
13:48	Joey	other than that he should be taken to the wall and shot
13:48	AndroidUS	No one should be above the law
13:48	Renzai	Why do we indict people? Sufficient evidence of criminal conduct. Is the president a person? Yes. Is the president capable of doing a crime? Yes. Is the Judicial Branch explicitly designed to act as a check on the Executive? Yes.
13:49	Joey	is killing against the law?
13:49	Renzai	Sometimes.
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13:50	Joey	Was Bin Ladin an enemy combatant? Did we declare war on Isis or the Taliban? Was Obama justified legally in taking that idiot out?
13:50	AndroidUS	Those are solid reason to indict a Prsident, Renzai. Can you give reasons why a President shouldn't be indicted?
13:50	Renzai	What are the ideology objections? What if you get a rogue prosecutor and they indict the president as a way to derail the Executive? Then, that prosecutor is behaving illegally and the system should have checks on their behavior -- a corollary of prior constraint on potentially illegal behavior seems inconsistent with an independent judiciary.
13:51	Renzai	Sure, the evidence for the crime looks legit, but it's really disruptive to the president's schedule. Well, the president, if concerned about their schedule, should not have done the crime. It's okay to be incapable of being president -- the country will survive. We're not doing this for the president, the president is doing this for us.
13:51	Renzai	When the president becomes incapable of discharging their duties, for whatever reason, then they should not be president -- at least temporarily.
13:52	Renzai	While it's probably true that a disruption to the president's schedule is real, and while it's probably true you'll get groups that will abuse this power to disrupt presidents they do not like, do you know something even worse than that?
13:53	Renzai	A despot who somehow becomes president -- e.g. a reality TV star in a nation of morons under cyberwarfare by Russia -- hiding behind this power to do extremely harmful things to the nation, oh, like, conspiring with a foreign power.
13:54	Joey	heh sitting president's can't be indicted...they can be impeached. Which means that it isn't a criminal offense....Now once out of office can they be indicted? Of course.
13:54	Renzai	Show YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXrBO46Q-fw)
13:54	RoboTurmp	[ Boris Brejcha - The Soul of Minimal (Tripping) by Achi Rubency - YouTube ] - https://goo.gl/H1XKSh
13:54	Renzai	Joey: What do you do when the Congress and President are both corrupt at the same time @ impeachment solution?
13:54	Renzai	I can see two primary approaches:
13:54	Renzai	1 - You're fucked. Your nation lost. Sorry.
13:55	Renzai	2 - The Judiciary can act as an *additional* check on a corrupt Executive.
13:55	Renzai	I prefer two.
13:55	Joey	Renzai sadly it is what it is....
13:55	Renzai	Joey: The Constitution can be amended. Laws can be past. Shields will be splintered.
13:55	han--	3 - wait
13:56	Renzai	Civil Wars can occur -- or be prevent. Alternate interpretation of the Constitution can occur.
13:56	Joey	Nixon wasn't even impeached either...he quit....would he have been impeached? maybe...we don't know because it didn't happen
13:56	Renzai	Today is the day the sitting president is indicted for crimes against our species and civilization.
13:56	Joey	Renzai of course it can be amended...do you know the process by which it can be amended?
13:56	Renzai	Joey: Based off my hitherto mastery of law, reasoning, and English, what do you think is the prior on you knowing more about the Constitution than me?
13:56	Renzai	I'll go with 1%.
13:57	Renzai	Vision, Joey -- vision for our nation.
13:57	Joey	heh raindonna word blathering again....
13:57	Renzai	The Judiciary -- use the Rule of Law to hold accountable those who would violate our nation's compact.
13:58	Renzai	The Fourth Estate -- shine your light upon the darkness of the factionalists.
13:58	Renzai	Science -- tirelessly observe and record the effects of our choices so that we might decrease our suffering for ourselves, our children, and non-humans.
13:58	Renzai	An American day -- a Mueller day.
13:58	Joey	heh hooray....
13:59	Joey	anyway nothing is going to happen to dotard, sadly, until the dems regain control of both houses....and even then....
13:59	Renzai	Joey: I encourage you to reflect on the mental habit of seeing excellency with language to be a bad thing.
13:59	fierygt	https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/former-trump-aide-approved-black-ops-to-help-ukraine-president/ar-AAvvWgP?li=BBnb7Kz
13:59	RoboTurmp	[ Former Trump aide approved 'black ops' to help Ukraine president ] - https://goo.gl/mxSJ14
13:59	Renzai	Anybody can experience unnuanced emotion.
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14:00	Renzai	"that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." - Aristotle
14:00	Joey	Renzai speaking in simple terms that everyone can understand sort of makes people smart...trying to confuse instead of convince is sadly just word salad...
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14:00	Renzai	We use language to nuance and constrain our perceptions of harm -- among other things -- and this allows us to pursue remedies to misdeeds without having to annihilate 'everybody who looks real similar to my enemy'.
14:00	Joey	there's a great book they give you in law school on "legalese."
14:01	Renzai	Take care, Joey.
14:01	Renzai	(I moved on to engage other people)
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14:01	Renzai	Whatever happens -- stay with your sense of fairness.
14:01	Renzai	It will look after you.
14:02	Renzai	It's kind of ridiculous how powerful this Death scene is from Return of the King.
14:02	Renzai	"Let me use language right quick in order to get you to overcome your fear of death for a larger goal."
14:03	Renzai	"It's not for Allah -- I promise. Our goal is noble."
14:03	Renzai	Here is the subsuming structure, Joey:
14:04	Renzai	The Nation can be conceptualized as a running program with the source code of Constitution + case law + statutory law.
14:04	laceless`	You really babble too much, raindonna
14:04	Renzai	Merely trying to model the nation's actions using just this would be a difficult challenge.
14:05	Renzai	But, all the things we've written down to guide our nation -- and their interpretations -- are merely the formal components of our system.
14:05	Renzai	There's good reason to think no formalized system of sufficient complexity* can be written that is complete or avoids self-contradiction.
14:05	fierygt	https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-dollar12-trillion-weapon-china-could-use-in-a-trade-war-with-the-us/ar-AAvvKHL?li=BBnb7Kz
14:05	RoboTurmp	[ The $1.2 trillion weapon China could use in a trade war with the US ] - https://goo.gl/am1mKH
14:06	Renzai	We might like to have a law and a sublaw and a case of that handlees every possible situation we can encounter as a people -- for example, Russia corrupting the Right Wing ecosystem and Congress such that Congress won't hold accountable the Traitor Donald Trump.
14:06		--- laceless` has banned *!*@ircip1.mibbit.com
14:06	Renzai	But, we might miss something. As you notice from repeated hacks of technology companies -- security is hard.
So, what happens in the case we miss something? Should we allow the system to collapse? There is a good argument for that. However, we might do a meta-analysis *independent* of the constructed system's rules.
14:10	Renzai	What happens -- according to key metrics -- when we let the system do, at best, a hard reset? How many lives lost? How much suffering endured that might have been preventable?
14:11	Renzai	Now, you might say, "Sure, I appreciate that bad things happen when systems fall, but let's just include that into our formal system of Governing Rules." I do think we should do that *as much as possible*, but a deep theoretical question is, Is that sufficient?
14:12	Renzai	If it is not, then we want to have unwritten, informal guiding principles that we might use when our model of Governance exceeds its support. Conversations like this play a role in the creation of such principles.
14:14	Renzai	Now, of course, if we *even talk* about such metaconcepts whilst the system is running, we will be partially modifying System Agents in their compliance/enforcement of System Rules -- and that can be a problem and has been a problem throughout history.
14:14	Renzai	Various abuses at the CIA might be good examples of agents believing they have the 'True Vision' that is superior to System Rules.
14:17	Renzai	What might be a positive example of violations of System Rules on a smaller scale, pre-collapse? Acts of civil disobedience designed to modify a racist nation state. Courageous acts *with knowledge of violation of System Rules* resulting a high likelihood of personal harm that were recognized, in time, as welcome additions to the Source Code.