
Code of Hammurabi - waqasaday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
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oedmarap
Hammurabi's code is prominently featured, ruminated upon, and contextualized
in Nassim Taleb's _Skin In The Game_.

It's a profound and highly recommended read, especially considering the sheer
amount of downtime that's available at the moment.

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rantwasp
I thoroughly enjoyed Taleb's earlier books: Fooled By Randomness and Black
Swan. Even AntiFragile is pretty good.

IMHO "Skin in the Game" is where Taleb jumped the shark. I understand the
ideas behind it but it's just too much.

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HeavenBanned
__Adultery Ex. Law #129: "If the wife of a man has been caught lying with
another man, they shall bind them and throw them into the waters. If the owner
of the wife would save his wife then in turn the king could save his servant."
__

Crazy how much our laws have evolved since then.

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oldgradstudent
> If the owner of the wife

In Hebrew the word husband is the same word as owner. Other translations use
husband rather than owner.

How much do we really understand the meaning of these ancient texts?

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grawprog
>then in turn the king could save his servant."

Yeah, I don't understand what this part means at all honestly.

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AgentMatt
I would interpret this as the king being allowed to pardon the citizen who
committed the adultery, if the husband chooses to forgive his wife.

I actually like the law. While it does still display an asymmetry of power in
the relationship, it implements a negative incentive for cheating for both men
and women. This is progress compared to a more primitive law that one could
imagine where women could be punished arbitrarily, e.g. to death, while the
man in the cheating act could not be punished by law.

Also, it seems better than vigilante justice. It gives both parties in the
decision making the opportunity to show empathy, and so acknowledge the
adultery without explicit punishment.

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riffraff
It's hard to grasp that old "bad" laws could still be very progressive.

I remember a teacher telling us that "an eye for an eye" should be viewed not
as a crazy excessive response, but as a very modern "the punishment should be
commensurate to the crime", which was not a given.

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jquast
I would like to think the very first strategy home computer game was about
Hammurabi, Hamurabi.bas, [https://www.acriticalhit.com/sumerian-game-most-
important-vi...](https://www.acriticalhit.com/sumerian-game-most-important-
video-game-youve-never-heard/)

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bmn__
Also see: [http://enwp.org/Code_of_Ur-Nammu](http://enwp.org/Code_of_Ur-Nammu)

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oldgradstudent
Please add (1754 BC) to the title.

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dang
Wikipedia pages don't date from that era.

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52-6F-62
I think it was a bit of a wry joke

