The Nature of Laws

I would like to discuss laws and rules with all who wish to participate. Before I get to the purpose of this thread, I would like to ask a few general questions that require some answering by the community. I would also like to state beforehand that I am going to use the words "law" and "rule" interchangeably for the sake of convenience.

These questions are in regards to all known rules and laws, whether they be societal laws, game rules, and so on and so forth.

1. What is a law?

2. How do we interact with laws?

3. What are the requirement(s) that must be met in order to break a law/rule?

From there on out, please feel free to discuss anything that has to do with the nature of laws. Ask questions, challenge our ideas, and we'll go from there.

Shall we begin?

Do these laws include laws such as the laws of motion, thermodynamics, etc.?

Yes, yes it does. That's going to become a part of the center of attention, assuming this thread receives some feedback.

I would have to disagree that natural laws can be lumped with human-created ones. Semantic-wise, I would say that anything that cannot be broken is a law, anything that can is a rule. But because we are joining them together:

I would have to say that a law is a restriction placed on something to serve a purpose. The law can be changed or revised to ensure that it serves the purpose no matter what the purpose changes to be.

We interact with laws by either respecting the restriction or ignoring the restriction.

In order to break a law, you must do something that the law limits. The limit is based on how the law is written, hence the loopholes found in the majority of contracts and laws.

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Originally Posted by invader_tech

1. What is a law?

2. How do we interact with laws?

3. What are the requirement(s) that must be met in order to break a law/rule?

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Nice thread, IT.

1. A law is simply a guideline established and defined by the person or group that is in power.

2. Define "interact". If by interacting with laws, you mean the I/O of action and consequence, then I have an example. Ex:
2=2, correct? I think we all agree on that. Let's use 2=2 as a simple action/consequence pair. Now, let's add the modifier: laws. The law in this example is characterized by the integer 1. If you were to break the law (see 3) you would subtract the law from the action, resulting in a less favorable consequence, being as the value is lowered. If you were to follow the law, it would be addition, seeing as it would result in a higher value. Ex:
2+1=3; 2-1=1
If this confuses you, just ask for a more detailed explanation.

3. Breaking a law is a very simple concept, like laws themselves. Breaking a law means to go against the concept laid out by the law. Ex:

Law: You may only have three apples.
Action: You eat four.
Law = broken lul

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Originally Posted by Licity

I would have to disagree that natural laws can be lumped with human-created ones. Semantic-wise, I would say that anything that cannot be broken is a law, anything that can is a rule.

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So far as we know, natural have not yet been broken by us. Does that mean that they cannot be broken though? What is it that actually prevents us from violating any of the physical laws of the universe?

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Originally Posted by Licity

In order to break a law, you must do something that the law limits. The limit is based on how the law is written, hence the loopholes found in the majority of contracts and laws.

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I would relate this statement to a virtual world (a video game), where the programming acts as the law. From the inside of the game, as the character, you cannot violate the law directly, but you can find loopholes (also known as bugs, glitches, errors), that can only occur because of the imperfection of the law (programming). In this sense, I don't consider the exploitation of a loophole to be breaking the law, as there had to be some sort of contradiction within the law to allow it in the first place. If one were to exploit the loophole of a contract, the consequence (or lack thereof) is not the same as if one were to violate the contract outright. Does that make sense?

In a program, in order to break the law, it's required to operate from "outside" the program in order to do anything to it. Modifying the program's source code directly or using another program to screw with the first one are common ways of going about this. If you'd like more clarification with that or want to offer further feedback in regards to the laws of a given digital world, I wouldn't mind to expound more upon this as I believe it has much to do with what we're talking about.

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Originally Posted by SomeGuy

1. A law is simply a guideline established and defined by the person or group that is in power.

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Good, can you explain this further? Does a law have to come from a source of power or influence? How does that power/influence effect the chance that the law will be broken (consider the influence a police state would have on the peoples' willingness to break a law, vs. a state with poor law enforcement).

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Originally Posted by SomeGuy

Breaking a law is a very simple concept, like laws themselves. Breaking a law means to go against the concept laid out by the law.

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Does that apply to all laws? What about programs, in the example I used for Licity? And, is it always a simple endeavor?

And thank you both for your responses. I look forward to the feedback you have to give.

The 2 basic senses of "law" are distinguished by one being descriptive and the other being prescriptive. Newton didn't look at the universe and say "You fucking obey these laws of motion I came up with". Similarly, Hitler didn't look at the universe and say "Interesting. Jews have a statistically significant deviation in life expectancy when residing within Germany."

The word is a polyseme because the both senses have common ground in that they describe a distinct aspect of the world through the use of symbols, in a very concise form. The aspect has to be an abstraction (physical laws govern all matter, social laws govern all humans). In one case it is the description of an ideal world that the author of the law would then try to shape the real world into, usually by use of physical force. The other case is simply the description of observed reality.

That's right Serkat. The way in which I wished to relate these two kinds of laws though was by representing them as a form of "invisible" boundary, whether they be easily breakable man-made laws that rely on motivation in order to maintain, or the boundaries that are created with the design of a program in the environment that the program governs. I'd like to think of the program example as being analogous to the real world (which is open to objection, of course), in that the laws that they represent are enforced differently from social laws.

If a program can be cracked from the outside to the point that all of its laws are circumvented, can that be done with the real universe? Is there some way to go "outside" to accomplish this, from a theoretical standpoint?

Furthermore, any strict rule (including the so far unbreakable, unbendable rules of the universe) does something very specific. They serve to maintain something in the system that they are a part of. We know that the rules of our universe serve to maintain a sort of balance, an equality. One can get no more out of something than they put in. So where does that standard come from, in regards to our universe? The natural laws are consistent throughout our observable material world, so far as we know, much the same way a program's laws are maintained throughout the secondary reality it generates via the use of a processor. From a philosophical standpoint, would the natural laws that govern our universe require maintenance from an outside source?

That last question can imply a number of different things (our world is a virtual world in which the natural laws are the work of the program, or that our world is maintained by super-intelligent dog-people, whatever). The jist of this is that a rule of any kind requires some form of meaning that is given to it in order to exist in the system for which it is a part.

All of this is open to debate, I'd much like to hear what anyone has to think about this.

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Originally Posted by invader_tech

That's right Serkat. The way in which I wished to relate these two kinds of laws though was by representing them as a form of "invisible" boundary, whether they be easily breakable man-made laws that rely on motivation in order to maintain, or the boundaries that are created with the design of a program in the environment that the program governs. I'd like to think of the program example as being analogous to the real world (which is open to objection, of course), in that the laws that they represent are enforced differently from social laws.

If a program can be cracked from the outside to the point that all of its laws are circumvented, can that be done with the real universe? Is there some way to go "outside" to accomplish this, from a theoretical standpoint?

Furthermore, any strict rule (including the so far unbreakable, unbendable rules of the universe) does something very specific. They serve to maintain something in the system that they are a part of. We know that the rules of our universe serve to maintain a sort of balance, an equality. One can get no more out of something than they put in. So where does that standard come from, in regards to our universe? The natural laws are consistent throughout our observable material world, so far as we know, much the same way a program's laws are maintained throughout the secondary reality it generates via the use of a processor. From a philosophical standpoint, would the natural laws that govern our universe require maintenance from an outside source?

That last question can imply a number of different things (our world is a virtual world in which the natural laws are the work of the program, or that our world is maintained by super-intelligent dog-people, whatever). The jist of this is that a rule of any kind requires some form of meaning that is given to it in order to exist in the system for which it is a part.

All of this is open to debate, I'd much like to hear what anyone has to think about this.

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Thing is, we didn't "create" these universal laws. We just described what we saw. Humans, Newton first, said "Hey, look! Mass is attracted to objects with larger mass!" So we wrote the "laws" of gravity in order to explain it. We eventually got more descriptive, talking about spacetime curvature and such, but the law was still a rationalization of what we saw to comprehend the gravitational force more easily.

In a virtual world, you have your program, which is just a series of bits on a computer chip. Those bits were generated from a series of instructions in assembly language. Assembly language is very hard to write with, so most programmers use another language plus a compiler or interpreter to make things easier. If you understand C++, this might make sense:

while(x = 1)
{
something();
}

In English, this would be put simply as saying that something happens while the value of x is 1. This is not the way the virtual world is written, it is the law a non-programmer would write to describe the series of bits on a computer chip. The code above would run until x stopped being 1, much in the way our world works. Observers inside the program/virtual world would be hard pressed to stop something from happening while x is 1. I, the programmer can't do that either. My best option is to change x to something that isn't 1.

Because of my x = 1 statement, I have created an infinite number of other laws without intending to. I never stated explicitly that something couldn't happen when x was 2 or 3 or 76. But in reality, that is what will happen.

About the outside maintenance thing: taking the software metaphor another step, I wouldn't think the universe needs outside tune-ups. I can run that program and let it sit forever and a day; something will happen while x is 1, something will not happen when x is not 1. Unless the value of 1 changes while I'm not looking, all I had to do was set the original conditions and let it run.

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Originally Posted by Licity

Thing is, we didn't "create" these universal laws. We just described what we saw.

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Right. It still exists as one of these "invisible" boundaries that effects one aspect of our reality though, whether we created it or not.

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Originally Posted by Licity

Observers inside the program/virtual world would be hard pressed to stop something from happening while x is 1. I, the programmer can't do that either. My best option is to change x to something that isn't 1.

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But there is one condition that you, the programmer, can change. Consider your example:

while(x = 1)
{
something();
}

I don't know what this would look like in legitimate C++, but there can be a third statement to this set that would look like: "Except for (x exists at c)", where the exception can now be made that whenever x exists at place/time/situation c, x would not equal 1. Variable c can have no value at all until a value is defined for it by anyone who has access to whatever it is that gives c a value. That statement "Except for (x exists at c)" doesn't have to exist in the code originally either, it's implied that the programmer has the power to make that change and "violate" the original law whenever x exists at c. It's true that in the strictest sense it would not be outright violation of the law, it just means that the original statement can be made untrue under certain circumstances. Does that make sense?

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Originally Posted by Licity

About the outside maintenance thing: taking the software metaphor another step, I wouldn't think the universe needs outside tune-ups. I can run that program and let it sit forever and a day;

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Miscommunication on my part.
By "maintenance" I did not mean that it would require tune-ups of any sort, but that the program (law) itself has to rely on something it order for it to retain its meaning, or logic. The processor itself possesses it's own intelligence-potential (similar in some regards to our brains), however limited that is. Man-made laws, on the other hand, requires our conscious awareness of them in order to exist at all. And don't forget, a law to me is no more than an invisible boundary, however weak or strong, however it is made manifest in one reality or another.

So, my point one more times boils down to this: Any system that exists has a foundation of rules. The rules, themselves, must also have a foundation in order to retain they're meaning/logic throughout that system.

The idea is still in the works, which is why I welcome questions and input.

My observation.

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1. What is a law?

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1. A facet of reality that exists beyond the physical constructs that exist within it. A principle that exists and affects all things specified inside of the physical world (and possibly beyond), and has no definite origin in perspective to physical beings that are affected by said laws.

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2. How do we interact with laws?

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2. The laws interact with us as long as specified things the law interacts with exist within this universe. It seems like more of a given to an equation than a program that initiates upon certain requirements being met. Possibly both.

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3. What are the requirement(s) that must be met in order to break a law/rule?

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3. Defy the principles laid out by the law, possibly by using other laws and principles that exist in the universe and relate to the said law. However, some laws seem to be intertwined with the nature of logic and reason, which seem to be impossible to defy. That, or possibly the consequences of defying said laws. Example: A physical object going beyond the speed of light. Infinite mass is gained, which requires infinite energy to keep it accelerating at said speeds. Infinite energy is not known to exist in the universe, and it is impossible for such irrational amounts of it to be brought together in a given moment to produce such an effect.

Ehh, I made a slight mistake in the code snippet. The first line should read
while(x == 1)

Doesn't make much of a difference unless you actually try to run the code.

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Originally Posted by invader_tech

I don't know what this would look like in legitimate C++, but there can be a third statement to this set that would look like: "Except for (x exists at c)", where the exception can now be made that whenever x exists at place/time/situation c, x would not equal 1. Variable c can have no value at all until a value is defined for it by anyone who has access to whatever it is that gives c a value. That statement "Except for (x exists at c)" doesn't have to exist in the code originally either, it's implied that the programmer has the power to make that change and "violate" the original law whenever x exists at c. It's true that in the strictest sense it would not be outright violation of the law, it just means that the original statement can be made untrue under certain circumstances. Does that make sense?

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The virtual world comparison breaks down here. X must exist no matter what is happening with the event at c. C cannot be referenced at all if it is not explicitly said to exist. If I tried to run the program/create the universe without first declaring x and/or c as a real thing, I would get an error. The closest you can get to what you are saying is something like


int x, c;
while(x == 1 || x != c)
{
something();
}

if I understand correctly. It would read in English as "while x is 1 or x is not the same as c". Maybe you mean a condition that would change x from within the something? In that case, it would be a condition in the law, not a fault in the law itself, similar to the "no driving in the left highway lane unless you have more than one person in your car" rule of the HOV lane.

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Originally Posted by invader_tech

oils down to this: Any system that exists has a foundation of rules. The rules, themselves, must also have a foundation in order to retain they're meaning/logic throughout that system.

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So... does that mean that the rules have rules? Is the chain of foundations and rules infinite, or is there a base set of rules at some point?

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Originally Posted by Licity

if I understand correctly. It would read in English as "while x is 1 or x is not the same as c". Maybe you mean a condition that would change x from within the something? In that case, it would be a condition in the law, not a fault in the law itself, similar to the "no driving in the left highway lane unless you have more than one person in your car" rule of the HOV lane.

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Right, at the end of what you quoted me on I said that in the strictest sense it wasn't really a violation of the law. What it boils down to is "This cannot happen unless you have the authority to make it happen". The true enforcement for a man-made law really comes from our own minds. We are motivated not to break the law, but because we can all actively accept or deny a law we also retain the 'authority' to do what the law otherwise forbade. As a programmer, you can actively change the code temporarily to cause a desired change because you, and not the things inside the program, have the authority to do so. When you're dreaming, you have the active authority to change what goes on in your dreams by changing the boundaries of what can and cannot happen, but you can restrict this power from other dream characters because you have the 'authority'.

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Originally Posted by Licity

So... does that mean that the rules have rules? Is the chain of foundations and rules infinite, or is there a base set of rules at some point?

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I think the foundation of a rule comes either from an intelligent or conscious source, as a rule has direct meaning/logic. The rules that are defined by whatever program can be defined that way because the specific processor allows it to. A processor possesses intelligence, like I said (but not sentience, which is beyond the point). Our acceptance of man-made, social laws demands conscious observation of them in order for them to have any meaning at all. The rules that your dream might operate by are effected primarily by your brain (when you're not aware that you're dreaming) but can be taken over once you are consciously aware of the situation.

What does that imply for the rules of the universe, since those boundaries function with logical precision? What foundation are those boundaries built upon? An intelligent processor? A conscious mind? Those questions arise only because of the observations I have currently made in regards to rules (boundaries). If any other suggestion can be made for the foundation of rules, I'd like to hear it all.

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Originally Posted by Daniel Danciu

and has no definite origin in perspective to physical beings that are affected by said laws.

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Since this statement is true as I understand it, do you think that we can make an educated guess for the nature of the origin, based upon the nature of the laws (and all other laws) themselves? Assuming of course that all known 'invisible' boundaries share this nature in common.

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Originally Posted by "daniel danciu'

and it is impossible for such irrational amounts of it to be brought together in a given moment to produce such an effect.

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Right, so can there be a way of achieving the desired effect without the energy at all? Can some fundamental change be made in regards to how the immediate space around the object behaves, and how do you propose we might go about doing that (if of course you have any suggestions)?

Thank you for your responses so far. :)

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Originally Posted by invader_tech

Since this statement is true as I understand it, do you think that we can make an educated guess for the nature of the origin, based upon the nature of the laws (and all other laws) themselves? Assuming of course that all known 'invisible' boundaries share this nature in common.

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How can you make an educated guess about something that could very well transcend all that you know about the fundamentals of nature itself? It is akin to a neolithic man wondering how to reach the moon with the simple tools he has, or even his own body. The answer is not certain to you at this point in time as a species, and it won't be until you gain a further understanding of the things in this universe, including the universe as a whole concept, and the fundamental pieces that make it this way.

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Originally Posted by Daniel Danciu

How can you make an educated guess about something that could very well transcend all that you know about the fundamentals of nature itself? It is akin to a neolithic man wondering how to reach the moon with the simple tools he has, or even his own body. The answer is not certain to you at this point in time as a species, and it won't be until you gain a further understanding of the things in this universe, including the universe as a whole concept, and the fundamental pieces that make it this way.

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The fundamentals being the rules? The way the discussion is leaning, it seems we are able to break the universal rules but we just don't know how yet.

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Originally Posted by Daniel Danciu

How can you make an educated guess about something that could very well transcend all that you know about the fundamentals of nature itself? It is akin to a neolithic man wondering how to reach the moon with the simple tools he has, or even his own b ody. The answer is not certain to you at this point in time as a species, and it won't be until you gain a further understanding of the things in this universe, including the universe as a whole concept, and the fundamental pieces that make it this way.

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The neolithic man might at least be able to draw the conclusion that the moon is "too far from the ground to reach by conventional means", in which respect s/he'd be right. They can see that it makes a long arching movement across the sky from their frame of reference. They would be making very simple guesses based upon what they can observe. They can't know everything about the moon and why it does what it does, but they can at least make some kind assumptions about the moon's more basic qualities.

So, what I was suggesting was that we can make an educated guess about one possible aspect of this "thing that could very well transcend all that you know about the fundamentals of nature itself". This "thing" could have a number of other qualities that could be infinitely beyond our current understanding of it, but again, we may at least be able to draw a simple theoretic conclusion about at least one thing that defines it. If this "thing" that reinforces the rules possesses intelligence to give the rules meaning/logic, then that's that. It's not that same as assuming that it's only intelligent and nothing else, but that we can say that at least it has this _______ quality. Does that make sense? I understand that yes, as our understanding of the universe develops, so may our understanding of this "thing that reinforces the rules" develop. At least right now I hope to draw some simple points of view based on what observation I can make and from the input of other people on the subject.

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Originally Posted by Invader Tech

At least right now I hope to draw some simple points of view based on what observation I can make and from the input of other people on the subject.

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I see nothing wrong with this. Though I hope you keep in mind that the possibility for personal bias in the discussion is extremely high. Dancing on the line of logic and (potentially) speculating wildly is where science's boundaries usually begin. It's true that the educated guess is part of the scientific method, but history shows we're so prone to error as human beings in the guessing department. :)