
Show HN: Promise Visualization Playground - bevacqua
http://bevacqua.github.io/promisees?
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anigbrowl
I don't quite understand what's going on here but find it extremely
interesting. Is it an implementation of a particular theory? The word
'Promise' makes me think of automated contractual mechanisms, self-executing
legal agreements and things along those lines.

For some years I've thought that the ever-increasing complexity of law,
legislation, and litigation is a form of sociopolitical pollution that ends up
making the world a worse place to live in, rather than the better one that is
intended. Of course when we draft contracts, bills and so on we want to
incorporate the lessons of past experience and provide for foreseeable
contingencies, but (if we are ethical) we do not want to make our legal
promises so complex that people can't evaluate their acceptability. The
biggest innovation that I've noticed in recent years was the Creative Commons
approach to copyright, where existing concepts from copyright law underpin a
simple and clearly defined framework where the different categories aggregate
bundles of rights and responsibilities, such that both parties to a
transaction can agree to a particular licensing regime (like CC-by-SA 4.0)
without wasting time and energy negotiating individual details from scratch in
pursuit of some marginal gain. Doing so is not optimal for either party, but
if the licensing regime is sufficiently credible and widely accepted that it
can be optimally efficient in the aggregate.

This tool suggests to me a more formal, rigorous way of defining contracts
that could then be evaluated at a higher level but which, in the event of a
dispute, are capable of an agreed-upon objective evaluation that avoids the
financial, operational, and emotional costs of litigating a dispute.

sorry if this is completely off the wall and irrelevant, I was just instantly
struck by the possibilities for encoding legal matters in a way that would
make the fundamental dynamics much more accessible to people without legalist
training or inclinations.

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hawleyal
JavaScript promises, which are basically a way to respond to asynchronous
functions.

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anigbrowl
Thanks. If you were curious about the applicability of this to legal topics
you might like to read up on
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_law)

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lasryaric
I would love to try it, but I have a javascript error in the console:

Uncaught SyntaxError: missing ) after argument list demo.min.js:1

Chrome version: Version 44.0.2403.155 (64-bit)

~~~
bevacqua
Try using the babelify option

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ilaksh
Async/await is such a much better syntax so I just use babel.

It makes the syntax close to the normal synchronous code. Then you don't need
a 'playground' to visualize basic control flow.

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jsprogrammer
You may want to default to Babelifying. Nothing was happening and I only
discovered the problem by going to the developer console and seeing a syntax
error.

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nadaviv
Can't seem to get it working on Chromium 34:

    
    
        Uncaught TypeError: undefined is not a function demo.min.js:20
        (anonymous function) demo.min.js:20
        i demo.min.js:1
        (anonymous function) demo.min.js:1
        ./lib demo.min.js:1
        i demo.min.js:1
        (anonymous function) demo.min.js:1
        (anonymous function) demo.min.js:1
        ./injection demo.min.js:1
        i demo.min.js:1
        e demo.min.js:1
        (anonymous function) demo.min.js:1

