Irreal doesn’t do politics but it’s no secret that we hold politicians in low esteem. It’s always a battle between politicians and journalists for the rank of the least respectable profession. I was reminded of all this by an article about the infamous Indiana bill to legally define the value of Pi as 3.2.
For a long time I’ve considered this an urban legend. I remember reading years ago that it simply wasn’t true. When I read the Mental Floss article I did some minimal research and Wikipedia, at least, agrees that the story is real. To be fair, the bill was really about squaring the circle—a mathematical impossibility—but a consequence of the bill was that the value of Pi is 3.2. Fortunately, happenstance intervened and the bill wasn’t passed.
You may think that this story falls into the “Boy! Them old folks: weren’t they silly” category and thank goodness we’re more sophisticated today. But we aren’t. The exact same dynamic can be seen in the UK Online Safety Bill that attempted to magically legislate into existence a “safe” backdoor to end-to-end encryption. As with the attempt to legislate the value of Pi, it was an attempt by politicians to legally instantiate their desire into existence despite assurances from those who actually knew what they were talking about that it wasn’t possible.
In both cases, saner heads prevailed although in the case of the UK bill it was merely a strategic retreat. Even that wouldn’t have happened if Apple, Meta, and others hadn’t threatened to withdraw popular services from the UK if the bill passed.
Irreal is the first to reject arguments from authority but if every single expert is telling you something isn’t possible, it seems to me that you have an obligation to provide evidence that they are the ones who are wrong. Politicians proclaiming “they could do it if they wanted” is not an example of that evidence.
UPDATE : substantiate → instantiate.