Claude sets an environment variable to prevent nested invocation, but I've found it can be unset. No idea if they consider that a violation of the secret laws though.
The same reasons the world needed AI for cats funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. How do you expect those precious people to do anything at all without a bi-yearly expenses-paid trip to Cabo and on-site baristas?
I watched "One Battle After Another" and it shows how deranged people are. I don't think its a new thing, I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better. In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage, it stands to reason that lazy, stupid people will need to play differently in order to win.
This is a pretty obvious misinterpretation. Protagonist bad ≠ antagonist good. This isn't even the law of the excluded middle because there was only ever a statistical relationship between the morality of narrative opponents.
> I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better.
It seems our society is being destroyed by people who are thriving the most.
> In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage
Which society is this, Sweden? Xi Jinping is pretty smart and hard working, is China being demolished by lazy dumb twats? Because it seems to me its US that is overrun bu stupidity and sheer lazyness right now, but it seems to be because it rewards people like Musk, Trump etc.
The reality is that no program so far has really been successful within the NHS. Money is burnt at an alarming rate and the companies taking on these contracts are incompetent at best.
If staff don't want to work with it then they're not fulfilling their roles.
What if any of us took a job and then refused to work with Microsoft or [Insert company] due to personal reasons? We'd be jobless.
People arent robots, they are allowed their own thoughts and free will. Your comment implies any behavior against the interests of a corporation is somehow a sin. This is such a gross take.
There have been recent articles in the FT about a man (who surname, funnily enough, sounds like swindle) who was an advisor to Palantir while also being chair of 4 NHS Trusts and pushing the trusts to put more of their data into Palantir.
Some special amendment procedure is not the only or even defining feature of constitutional law. There is non-constitutional law that has this property and there is constitutional law that does not.
I notice you are using the phrase "constitutional law" now, where as the original question was whether the UK can be said to have "a constitution."
The oddities of this "duck" go far beyond its lack of entrenchment. It also lacks form and definition in the way that a puff of smoke lacks form and definition. It includes such nebulous elements as common law, unwritten convention, and even legal commentary of various law scholars. It's also said to be in constant flux as it evolves over time.
It may be a useful abstraction within the context of UK law to refer to this amorphous blob as the "constitution," but for anyone unfamiliar with the UK's system of government, to say the UK has a constitution is grossly misleading in as much as all of the conclusions the listener will draw from that assertion will be false. It's like characterizing a chicken eating grain out of your hand as being "attacked by a dinosaur." The chicken may belong to the clade "Dinosauria" and may have inadvertently pecked your palm in its feeding frenzy, but in as much as it communicates information contrary to fact, it is a confabulation. At best, it's a lawyer's lie, to coin a phrase.
I find it weird that people would downvote this, I know you should not complain about it, but this comment is correct. The UK does have a (uncodified) constitution. Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified.
>> There is absolutely a Constitution in the UK, it is simply not codified into a single document. <link>
That's got to be the understatement of (many) centuries. AFAIK the UK constitution isn't even even codified into millions of documents, let alone a "single" one. Saying it's not in a "single" document is like saying my trillions of dollars aren't in a "single" bank account. The number of partitions really isn't the problem with that statement here.
Is there a single human (or even computer program) that could even definitively list all the sentences in this "constitution", let alone an arbitrary citizen who needs to be able to become aware of them to be able to follow them? (Note I'm not asking for interpretation, but literally just listing the sentences.) Could they even do this with infinite time? Is it even possible to have an oracle that, given an arbitrary sentence, could indisputably tell you if it is in the constitution?
Maybe that's asking too much. Forget enumerating the laws. Per your own link: "...this enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched."
If this doesn't itself sound silly, hopefully you can at least forgive people for getting irritated at the proposition that there totally exists a "constitution"... that nobody can point to... and that doesn't actually do the one thing many people want from a constitution: being more entrenched than statutes.
> Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified.
Not sure what countries you're referring to, but at least in the US, this is not the case. There is a single document that is the constitution, and (thankfully, so far) nobody is disputing what words are in fact written on that document. And that document absolutely is supreme to statutes.
Interpretation of the words is obviously left to courts in the US, and courts can interpret it differently changing the effective law, but "constitution" is not a synonym for "effective law", and nobody argues over what the words to be interpreted are. And even those interpretations are still written down!
I believe interpretation is a part of the definition of a constitution, you do not, we have different definitions, oh well. I also believe the uncodified/codified distinction is not binary, it is obvious that the US constitution is far more codified than the UK constitution, the two are at opposite extremes.
> I believe interpretation is a part of the definition of a constitution, you do not, we have different definitions, oh well.
You can't just brush it aside as some quibble about definitions. It's a fundamentally substantive difference in the two structures: one of these has an indisputable source of truth (a foundation everyone can witness) that everything else is built on top of
-- however shakily! -- and the other does not. Regardless of whether you include the upper parts of this metaphorical building in your definitions or not, the foundations are not the same.
> It's a fundamentally substantive difference in the two structures
Yes, it is a substantive difference but it does not follow that this difference provides the 'constitution' property.
> one of these has an indisputable source of truth... the foundations are not the same
They are so similar as to be almost the same and if an 'indisputable source of truth' exists anywhere, it is not in the written documents or their structure but unwritten norms and rituals sit beneath both.
What stops a President from simply choosing to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and what prevents the King from returning to personal rule?
The lack of arbitrary rule is a defining feature of both and relies on something that emerged rather than something imposed from without by written words.
> What stops a President from simply choosing to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and what prevents the King from returning to personal rule?
Legally? The fact that everybody under the president -- including those in the military -- understand they are swearing their oath to the constitution -- not the King, not the Crown, not God, not the Supreme Court, not anything else. And that the Supreme Court says what the constitution means. And that if there is a clear and direct contradiction between the Supreme Court and the president, the former trumps (no pun intended) the latter.
Physically? "Nothing", yeah. Same goes for non-presidents. If you can get enough people to follow you (or maybe at least enough of the people with guns) everything else becomes irrelevant, including whether your title was president or King or God or Constitution or whatever.
> The lack of arbitrary rule is a defining feature of both
It is emphatically not. There are lots of countries with constitutions that nevertheless have arbitrary rule. As there are countries without constitutions or arbitrary rule.
> They are so similar as to be almost the same and if an 'indisputable source of truth' exists anywhere, it is not in the written documents or their structure but unwritten norms and rituals sit beneath both.
No, that's exactly what those are not. Unwritten stories, traditions, and rituals are very much disputable. That's kind of the entire point of writing things down, and the point of the game we call Telephone. The indisputable bits are physical artifacts everyone can see with their own eyes.
> And that if there is a clear and direct contradiction between the Supreme Court and the president, the former trumps (no pun intended) the latter.
The extent to which members of the executive branch adhere to their oaths is not written down. Ofc the oath is written and its power may partly derive from its written nature (clear; predictable; well publicised etc) but there is a lot more than its written nature that might cause a general to refuse to follow a Presidential order to arrest all people suspected of voting for their opponent.
> The lack of arbitrary rule... is emphatically not [a defining feature of both]
I guess it depends on whether you (or most reasonable people) would call countries like Russia a 'constitutional republic'. Of course there are plenty of dysfunctional and dictatorial countries which superficially describe themselves as XYZ but it lacks substance.
While there may be a textbook answer, I strongly suspect it is debatable within the field and comes down (like so many things) to how you define your terms. Do you define 'constitutional' as attaching more to the codified and written nature of any rules or whether it is more to do with predictable and enforceable rules limiting arbitrary government. My view is that it attaches more the latter.
If you go into the etymology of the term, I don't think codification is baked in - that you can find a large number of books discussing the English or UK constitution (using that term) is testament to the fact that it's not just some niche view. I do suspect the influence of US popular culture (e.g. Hollywood) has biased the term towards the US' arrangement vs. the alternatives.
> The extent to which members of the executive branch adhere to their oaths is not written down. Ofc the oath is written
So... it is written down...
Notice the president isn't even mentioned. [1] And it even says all enemies, foreign and domestic. The oath is 100% unambiguous and crystal clear that in the event that the president becomes an enemy of the constitution, you defend the constitution, not the president.
> but there is a lot more than its written nature
We're not playing no-true-Scotsman here, right? There are always going to be more factors both in favor and against such a position than any human can enumerate ahead of time. This in no way contradicts anything I wrote.
>>> definition of a constitution
>> The lack of arbitrary rule... is emphatically not [a defining feature]
> I guess it depends on whether you (or most reasonable people) would call countries like Russia a 'constitutional republic'
No, the fact that Russia has a constitution doesn't depend on what I (or most reasonable people) may call Russia or its form of government at all.
> I strongly suspect it is debatable within the field and comes down (like so many things) to how you define your terms.
Russia has a constitution, end of story. There's even a Wikipedia article on it! [2]
If you believe otherwise, just assert "Russia doesn't have a constitution" directly. No need to dive into the debate over whether "Russia is a constitutional republic" when Russia clearly has a constitution. Of course, you're not going to claim it doesn't have a constitution (otherwise you already would've), which... well, I rest my case.
> Do you define 'constitutional' as attaching more to the codified and written nature of any rules
I'm not defining "constitutional" (adjective), whose definition comes in conjunction with the noun following it. I am merely defining "constitution", which is a simple noun. Recall that the sentence I was originally replying to -- word for word -- was: "there is absolutely a Constitution in the UK." Not "the UK is a constitutional <noun>." That's all. The debate is not over anything that involves the <noun> following the word "constitutional". The dispute is over whether the UK has a constitution, and in that debate, it is indisputable that e.g. Russia indeed has a constitution, whether it is well-followed or not, or whether we like it or not.
I think what's becoming pretty clear that people just really desperately want to say the UK has a constitution regardless of how many contortions of the definition of "constitution" that requires, because... well, a constitution is a good thing, the UK sees its form of government as good, so of course it must have a good basis. (Global virtue-signaling, I guess?) Which I find ironic, because a good constitution-less government would be something to be proud of, not something embarrassing to avoid.
If this is hard to wrestle with, consider this: imagine a world where the UK was the same as it is today, but everything else was flipped. i.e. the US & every other country that has a constitution was suffering, and every other monarchy was flourishing. Do you really believe the experts "in the field" would still be arguing the UK has a constitution today, or would they just stick with calling it a monarchy and vehemently deny any constitution existing? It's pretty obvious to me the answer is the latter, but of course, I can't prove anything about an alternate timeline.
Yes, the foundations of the constitutions are not the same, one of them has a mostly codified constitution, the other has a mostly uncodified (uncodified but mostly written down, that is not a contradiction!) constitution. They both have constitutions however, so the phase "Britain has no constitution" is wrong. To be clear, I am not saying that is good or bad that Britain has an uncodified constitution, just that from my definition (and most political and legal definitions) of what a constitution is the phrase "Britain has no constitution" is wrong. Britain of course has laws, and laws about how new laws are made, etcetera. This forms a constitution.
>> Is there a single human (or even computer program) that could even definitively list all the sentences in this "constitution"
> No, it's a living thing. Why is this your sticking point on the existence of a constitution or not?
Do you never write down or sign contracts? Are verbal promises adequate for you in all transactions?
If you don't see the value of laws being written down - especially the most important ones! - I can't really convince you of it here on HN.
But what I can tell is that most people who care about the legitimacy of government believe it is fundamental to fairness that there be a single source of truth that can tell them the laws under which they would be rewarded or punished, before those happen.
I think you have diverged too much...well from reality, in order to try to prove a point. Do you think most people, or lawyers, or judges in the UK spend their time trying to enumerate all the laws of the land before they proceed in their court cases? Do you think that people think that the UK system of government is illegitimate? What point are you trying to make? Because it is not grounded in reality. You can debate the merits of a codified constitution versus an uncodified one, but the UK does have a constitution, the vast majority of which is codified into many documents. The following two links might help you:
> I think you have diverged too much...well from reality
> What point are you trying to make? Because it is not grounded in reality.
Your comment would have been much more valuable without these insults and I would have been much more likely to respond, to point you to where you seemed to be misunderstanding my point. But it seems you're not here for a discussion so let's leave it.
Nobody claimed it's helping or hurting. The debate is over what constitutes a constitution, whether good or bad. There have been great governments without a constitution and terrible governments with one. "You don't have a constitution" does not mean "your government sucks", but it seems somehow people take it as such.
You are technically correct. But the distinction between devolution and a Federation of states gets very blurry when you take a look at what's happening with voting in the US these days.
You are technically incorrect about the UK not having a constitution. It's just not all compiled into a single written document.
Technically correct only if you accept "vague set of traditions" as a valid definition for "constitution". This both contradicts common usage and enables tyranny, so I recommend rejecting it.
Where can I find the official list of which acts are part of the constitution? And what additional obstacles exist to changing those acts beyond the obstacles to changing non-constitutional acts of parliament? In common usage, a constitution is something that restricts changes to ordinary law. If a "constitution" is made entirely from ordinary law it cannot function as a constitution.
Before you demand more explanation on the spot, you know there's a Wikipedia page for that. It explains the components how they are legitimated and the mechanisms of the UK government that rely on it.
I suppose the issue is that the NHS themselves have historically been terrible at managing their software. Nobody I know who I rate as even mediocre and above would or have worked at the NHS, and those I do know who have have, I wouldn't hire into junior roles.
I have no doubt that it's an extremely complicated mixture of 100s of systems, but anyone who has lived here knows how terrible it is. GP surgery's have for years had to send paper files across to new practices when a patient moves. The new NHS app is great, but I can see from my history that > 90% is missing.
Another great example of how good the NHS is at this, is the fact that nurses & doctors would have to scroll down a combo list without any typeahead to pick a medication, which would be in an A-Z list of every medication ever.
So, closing the circle, is there a reason to bring in a company that hires people at and above our level of competence, who have the expertise to implement a system to bring the NHS out of the dark ages of IT? Yes. There are many.
There will always be concerns about data, about security, but I'd much rather data be in the hands of a corporation that doesn't leak it than an unknown company getting billions in contracts, building software worse than someone with a $20 Claude extension, and then leaking it to hackers.
> I have no doubt that it's an extremely complicated mixture of 100s of systems, but anyone who has lived here knows how terrible it is.
Yep, as someone who's worked at a couple of small startups trying to sell into the NHS, it's terrible. A big part of the problem seems to be that there's no centralised procurement: each trust (of which there are ~200) does their own precurement. And a lot of the companies (the big established players are the worst) at most pay lip service interoperability. So you end with a big mess of system that don't talk to each other.
And they're not setup to pay "market rates" that are competitive with private employers to their in-house developers. So it's hard for them to attract and retain good in-house developers where they have them (although there are still some great people working there).
Internal restrictions are such that even aspiring software Devs find hurdles to doing basic automation. I know someone who wanted to use python, yes just use it, and it took months to be allowed to do that on an NHS machine.
Is there any proof that Palantir has ever leaked client data? From a security perspective they are one of the few companies that hold IL6, which means they can handle highly classified/top secret information.
They work with many international governments and companies, and I would imagine any sort of unapproved leak would be disastrous for their brand.
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