>>> I do get the strong impression at times that law as implemented is merely
>>> a veneer of confidence applied to a messy and broken reality. There's an
>>> influential view that we're all psychotic in a psychotic world. I think
>>> this is why qualitative issues, essence, or intuitive understanding of
>>> the world is a helpful companion to logic. Good comedy, like good art,
>>> help us sidestep the illusory certainty of logic and help us become more
>>> in touch with reality and ourselves.

>> In one sense i can see how the system, wanting to appear fair and even
>> handed, might want the same judgment for all similar cases. This might
>> though, mean equally unfair for all similar cases, simple because that
>> was the precedence.

>> We might as well do away with judges and have computers as judges ;).
>> Imagine that world, where lawyers were employed to feed case notes in, as
>> computers did all the research to arrive at a standardized judgment.
>> It would follow naturally as a consequence of our rationalised system.

>> Now for the fun bit.

>> Imagine deviations in the punishment based upon supply and demand, so
>> that the program was 'tunned' according to the demands of the penal
>> system. Call this the bias variable. A work generation program, with
>> its parallel headline generation program, where computers were 'used'
>> to manage this element of supply and demand. No one would be in any
>> position to question the computer, or it programmer, unless it supplied
>> reasons which could be further investigated. In this way, the computer
>> would produce answers to manage appearance. judicial magic. Not that
>> i'm suggesting that course for the future, but forewarned is forearmed, as
>> we use to say.

>My mum used to say the Tories never change. I can be a bit thick at times
>but even I got that one eventually.

>--
>Charles E. Hardwidge