[veeter]

I always thought it was some kind of protectionist mechanism amongst the academic trades.

Can't do your own taxes if you don't speak accounting, you have to pay somebody.

Can't represent yourself in court if you can't even comprehend what's being said, either.

[n144q]

Probably not the best place for a programming joke, but here I am:

This is exactly why I write code that nobody can understand. Can't get fired.

[goatlover]

Or it takes expertise to do anything sophisticated in those fields. Representing yourself is not a good idea because you probably don't have the courtroom experience arguing cases, and likely don't have an in depth understanding of the law.

[bitshiftfaced]

That sounds plausible. You also see an abundance of center embedding in older philosophical works. In highschool I tried reading through these, and they way they write forces you to read slowly and constantly backtrack.

I think you see it with more complex subject matter because you have more tangents shooting off. It means the writer needs to think ahead and do more mental work in order for the sentences to be read more easily. It was also more burdensome to edit your manuscript back then, so you had physical as well as mental friction.

[kjkjadksj]

This was literally the case when we look at history surrounding Jim Crowe laws. They were purpose built to disenfranchise. You always have to wonder what the actual intent of a given law is. The incentive to work in an ulterior motive within the text is always going to be there. And we have not designed a system to be robust to that. Most we can do is attempt to pass yet another law that might rectify the “bad” one but that one itself might be filled with bullshit. Pork barrel politics is a real phenomenon and a side effect of our legal system.