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Paper accounting seems significantly more error prone, at least for a given level of convenience, right? I mean the computer might be worried about comic rays flipping bits, but ink on paper can be smudged by fingers, and they don’t even have to be traveling at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light.

You can make paper backups of course, but you can also make electronic ones, the electronic ones can be shipped around the world basically for free.



The legal system already has checks and balances to account for errors in paper accounting. They don't require an assumption that the paper accounting is correct, but rather rely on the jury to make judgements, because juries are familiar with the limitations of paper accounting.

We're still a long way away from pulling that off with computers, but the idea that someone could have made a mistake shouldn't be that hard to grasp.




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