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 Call him [[post-modern]] — go on, do — but the [[JC]] doesn’t hold with [[Carl Sagan]]’s idea, above, that a book teleports its author “inside our heads”. That is to equate ''construal'' with ''symbol-processing''. It absolutely isn’t, and that [[metaphor]] — that the brain is a glorified Turing machine — gravely underestimates the human brain when in construction mode.
-This, by the way, is not in any way to diminish Shakespeare’s towering genius, but rather to observe that, however impossibly brilliant it is, it is swamped by the flood of exposition, analysis, interpretation, re-rendition and performance that has gone on since he published it, all as narratised and framed by the apparatus between the reader’s ears.
+This, by the way, is not in any way to diminish Shakespeare’s towering genius, but rather to observe that, however impossibly brilliant it is, it is swamped by the flood of exposition, analysis, interpretation, re-rendition and performance that has gone on since he published it, all as narratised and framed by the apparatus between the reader’s ears. The quote above — as Hamlet deals with a ghost — is apposite because — well, because ''thinking makes it so''.<ref>''Hamlet'', II, ii.</ref>
 “Construal” — interpreting and assigning meaning to — and “construction” — building — have the same etymology. They are interchangeable in this sense: over time that cultural milieu takes the received corpus of literature and, literally, ''constructs'' it, into edifices its authors can scarce have imagined.
-''Hamlet'' speaks, still, to the social and human dilemmas of the twenty-first century in ways Shakespeare cannot possibly have contemplated.<ref>A bit ironic that Microsoft should call its chatbot “Bard”, of all things.</ref>
+It is because a reader is ''not'' a simple “symbol processor”, that she does more than merely decrypt text to reveal a one-to-one assembly of the author’s intention in her own head, that ''Hamlet'' can speak, still, to the human dilemmas of the twenty-first century.
-A reader is no simple “symbol processor”, decrypting text to reveal a one-to-one assembly of the author’s intention in her own head. Literature is no instruction manual, recipe nor a computer programme.
+=====On the absence of metaphors in foxholes=====
+There is one kind of “literature” that ''is'' like a computer programme: where the ''last'' thing the writer wants is for the reader use her imagination, , or bring her cultural baggage in from the hall and use it to “construct” a meaning. In this singular domain, clarity of the writer’s intention is paramount: the only priority is divining the what those who wrote the text meant by it.
-Now there is one kind of “literature” that is like a computer programme: where the ''last'' thing the writer wants is for the reader use her imagination, to construct a meaning: where clarity of authorial intention is paramount; where communicating and understanding ''purpose'' is the sole priority: ''legal'' literature.
+This is, of course, ''legal'' literature.
-Rather than ceding interpretative control to the reader, a legal drafter seeks to squash all opportunities for improvisation and stomp out all ambiguity. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, [[there are no metaphors in a trust deed|there are no metaphors in a Trust Deed]].
+Rather than ceding interpretative control to the reader, a legal drafter seeks to squash any chance for improvisation, to pre-emptively stomp on all ambiguity. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, ''[[there are no metaphors in a trust deed|there are no metaphors in a Trust Deed]]''.
-Legal drafting seeks to be as [[finite]] as it can be. It strives do to readers what code does to hardware: to reduce them to mere symbol-processing machines, extracting the author’s single incontrovertible meaning. But, in a natural language that is constructed out of dead metaphors, this is very, very hard to do. That there is such a living to be made conducting commercial litigation shows that.
+Legal drafting seeks to be as “[[finite]]” as it can be. It strives as far as it can to readers to mere symbol-processing machines; to allow them only the job of extracting the author’s incontrovertible meaning. But, in a natural language constructed out of dead [[metaphor|metaphors]], this is very, very hard to do: that such a comfortable living is to be made conducting commercial litigation shows that.
-It is one reason why [[legalese]] is so laboured. It is compelled to chase down all blind alleys, previsualise all phantoms and prescribe outcomes for all logical possibilities. To remove all possible ambiguity and render the text as mechanical, precise and reliable as it can be. ''[[There are no metaphors in a trust deed]]''. Where normal literature favours possibility over certainty, legal language bestows [[certainty]] at the cost of [[possibility]], and to hell with literary style and elegance.
+It is one reason why [[legalese]] is so laboured. To render text as mechanical, precise and reliable as it can be, lawyers are compelled to chase down all blind alleys, previsualise all phantoms and prescribe outcomes for all logical possibilities. Where the best “literary” language prefers possibility to certainty, ''legal'' language sanctifies [[certainty]] above all else, at the cost of [[possibility]]. To hell with literary style and elegance.
 Where literary language is, in [[James Carse]]’s sense, ''[[Finite and Infinite Games|infinite]]'', legal language is ''finite''.
+=====LLMs okay for literature: bad for legal drafting=====
+Now: the punchline. Given how integral the reader and her cultural baggage are to the creative act in ''normal'' literature, we can see how, in that domain, a [[large learning model]], which spits out text ripe with interpretative possibilities, which positively begs for someone to “construct” it, just to make sense of it, is a feasible model for the language of possibility. The interpretative task is paramount: to move from a model where ''most'' of the creative work is done by the reader to one where ''all'' of it is, is no great step.
-Now: the punchline. Given how integral the reader and her cultural baggage are to the creative act in ''normal'' literature, we can see how, in that domain, a [[large learning model]], which spits out text ripe with interpretative possibilities, begging for someone to “construct” it, is a feasible model for that kind of language: to move from a model where ''most'' of the creative work is done by the reader to one where ''all'' of it is, is no great step.
+It is is no great stretch to imagine doing without a human writer altogether. Who cares what the text is ''meant'' to say, as long as it is coherent enough for an enterprising reader to make something out of it?
-There is enough bad human literature in existence already, that is is no great stretch to imagine doing without the human altogether. Who cares what the text is ''meant'' to say, as long as it is coherent enough for an enterprising reader to make something out of it?
+''But that does not work for legal language''. Legal language is code: it must say exactly what the parties require: nothing more or less, and it must do it in a way that leaves nothing open to later creative interpretation. Legal drafting is as close to computer code as natural language gets: a form of symbol processing where the meaning resides wholly within and is fully limited by the text.
-''But that does not work at all at all for legal language''. Legal language is code: it must say exactly what the parties require: nothing more or less, and it must do it in a way that leaves nothing open to a later creative act of interpretation. Legal drafting is as close to computer code as natural language gets: a form of symbol processing where the meaning resides wholly within and is fully limited by the text.
+But unlike computer code, the operating system it is written for is not a closed logical system, and even the best-laid code can still run amok. You can’t run it in a sandbox to see if it works. You have to test in production. A random-word generator that creates plausible sounding legal text, which falls apart on closer inspection, is not much use.
-But unlike computer code, the operating system it is written for is not a closed logical system, and even the best-laid code can still run amok. You can’t run it in a sandbox to see if it works. You have to test in production.
+This is not to say that a [[large language model]] can’t be used to generate legal [[boilerplate]]: it just can’t do it by itself, and the process of working with it will be a lot more labour-intensive than the first round of generation suggests.
-This is not to say that a [[large language model]] can’t be used to generate legal [[boilerplate]]: it just can’t do it by itself, and the process of working with it will be a lot more labour-intensive than the first round of generation suggests. An LLM will silt towards an intended meaning asymptotically, getting progressively less efficient as it goes.
+We have seen it suggested that one might invert the process instead, letting humans do the first cut,  then pressing the machine into action to critique the human drafts, to find potential errors and omissions.
-We have seen it suggested that one might invert the processes instead, and use the machine to critique drafts prepared by humans, to identify potential errors and omissions. But this is to get the [[division of labour]] exactly backwards, using expensive, context-sensitive [[meatware]] to do the legwork and a dumb machine to provide the “magic”.
+But this is to get the [[division of labour]] exactly backwards, using expensive, context-sensitive [[meatware]] to do the legwork and a dumb machine to provide the “magic”. And besides, there is a design flaw in any legal process which supposes that the risk in a legal contract is distributed evenly throughout its content, and that therefore the legal proposition is one of handling volume.
-Without wishing to seem all John Connor about it, there is a question of basic human dignity going on here. We ''need to stop subordinating ourselves to machines''. We should not compromising just to optimise for machine processing, to make it easier for machines to manage. There is a question of self-belief — self-respect — here.
+Boilerplate is [[boilerplate]] for a reason. It is pinned down; tried, tested and done: it takes those things that should go without saying out of the equation. There is nothing to be gained from having a [[large language model]] drafting boilerplate from scratch each time — especially if, randomly, it changes things. ''[[The quotidian is a utility, not an asset|Boilerplate is a utility, not an asset]]''. It is the part of the deal the lawyers already spend the least time on. The parts that matter — that they do spend time on — are typically discrete, manageable parts of drafting. It is hard to see how an LLM really assists in the process.
-And besides, there is a design flaw in any legal process which supposes that the risk in a legal contract is distributed evenly throughout its content, and that therefore the legal proposition is one of handling volume.
+We come back to that question of basic human self-respect. We ''need to stop subordinating ourselves to machines''. We should not compromise just to optimise for machine processing, to make it easier for machines to manage what we do.
-Boilerplate is boilerplate for a reason. It is pinned down; done, it takes the goes without saying out of the equation. ''[[The quotidian is a utility, not an asset]]''. There is nothing to be gained from having a large language model drafting it from scratch each time. The important part of the legal drafting process is not assembling the boilerplate, but getting the deal-specific bespoke bits right.
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