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0 pointskstrauser2y ago0 comments

It occurs to me that I make fun of sovereign citizen types, but in tech we have our own set of rituals for getting large organizations to do what we want. While those people are still boneheads, maybe I should be more empathetic about their motivations and why they think that this time it might work.

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j6zauas4gz2y ago

People like to make fun of sovereign citizen types who think the law is magic spells, and if you only say the right words you have to be let off the hook or not pay taxes or whatever.

The thing is though that that notion is absolutly right. The law is like fucking magic.

what else could explain the fact that misspeaking even one word of the incantation will cause the magical shield of +5 "rights against self incrimination" to fizzle (or perhaps missfire and summon a canine companion) when being attacked by pigs?

the joke, if folks dont get the reference to an oldish story, is that you do actually in real life need to be be very specific and clear to cops in order to "invoke" your fifth amendment rights. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/11/02...

Which is incredibly stupid, but is just one example of the many ways in which law is so weird and unintuitive that its super easy for the uneducated to assume there are tons of weird eldrich legal phrases that if only spoken in the right place and time will conjure legal protection. Of course we who know better know that those eldrich legal phrases need to be spoken by a trained wizard (lawyer) with enough mana (money, time) at their disposal.

willcipriano2y ago

When the accepted interpretation of the US constitution allows for civil asset forfeiture or indefinite detention lawyers have no rights scoffing at magical ideas. The whole thing is Harry Potter nonsense.

ebiester2y ago

Law is a fundamentally hard problem at scale, especially with a federated system that has bug fixed 725 years (post-Magna Carta) of edge cases.

If you think the second system effect is bad on a 20 year old system, try doing it for centuries of evolutionary system that started with 2-3 million users and has been forked.

munk-a2y ago

I do agree that we are in an unfortunate place where we do have spells and incantations that must be recited but... that's such BS. This ruling was pure BS and a common speaker would clearly understand the intent of the defendent's request.

matheusmoreira2y ago

The US government can just revoke the rights of its own citizens if it wants. That's literally what stuff like the Patriot act was designed to do. The US government gives itself the right to steal from its own citizens via "civil forfeiture". The US government spies on its citizens 24/7.

The whole point of the right to own and bear arms is to guarantee the ability of citizens to defend themselves from and even fight the government should it turn into some corrupt, tyrannical and ultimately unconstitutional police state. The ultimate check and balance is the threat of violence.

Without that ability, all this "rights" nonsense is just magical thinking. No one has any rights that they cannot personally defend. No one enjoys any rights in 2023, they enjoy the government's mercy.

throw0101b2y ago

> It occurs to me that I make fun of sovereign citizen types, but in tech we have our own set of rituals for getting large organizations to do what we want.

Sadly a "shibboleet" does not yet exist:

* https://xkcd.com/806/

* https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/806:_Tech_Support

kstrauserOP2y ago

I want that so badly.

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