It still amazes me that extortion via lawsuit is legal.
I guess my point is never underestimate "incentive-caused bias"
On a related note, I also find it incredible how people can make a living out of these kind of businesses and sleep well at night...
What we do is legal, therefore it is not unethical; if it were unethical, it would be illegal.
Also, see irony.
Many people follow what I call Godfather's I ethics. Vito Corleone cares about his family and friends and will do rather mean things to those who threaten the well being of those around him.
Tribalism has stayed with us over the millennia and is unlikely to go away any time soon.
You can do unethical things using legal loopholes without it being necessarily illegal.
I'm guessing this is a good example of Poe's law.
There's no real way for the defenders to make a profit, since getting damages out of the troll is basically impossible. And unfortunately, that means that even with pooled resources, trolls are purely a drag on the economy. But at least this way, they tend to lose and stop being a drag for the next guy.
Of course, it's hard because paying the opponent's fees opens up other kinds of abuse. If you get sued by Coca Cola, you can't just judge what lawyer you can afford, you have to realize that even a small decision against you could come with the million dollars in costs they paid to take the thing to court. I don't really know a good answer to "litigation is expensive, and that produces abuse".
Sanctions or frequent invalidation of patents would be great, though. One other thing I would love to see is a change to the choice-of-venue rules - this would be less of a problem if we weren't seeing every case fought in East Texas where summary judgement is impossible to get.
If the government can't put together competent reforms, maybe they could put up some money to reward people who get bad patents struck down? Hell, maybe some percentage of infringement winnings could be directed into a reward pool for patent strikedowns.
It'd decrease the overall value of patents, but I'm pretty ok with that.
Many times these groups takes immortal stances because of their detachment from reality. For example there is a huge correlation in people who don't care about the suffering global warming causes and religion. Its not really hard to understand either, many modern day american think Jesus will come in their lifetime, so why bother caring about 100 years from now.
It even works for things directly against rules in the book. Churchgoers are more likely to be for the death penalty even "thou shall not kill" is most of those religious books.
I am not saying all religious people are bad, just that religion does not filter out bad people or bad behavior effectively.
But, the idea that morality is tied to or because of religion is, erm, pure applesauce. To me, morality appears to be the moving zeitgeist of opinions on what makes a proper society.
At the risk of derailing this topic, the concept we have of privacy as a moral issue is likely to change as well. The common current idea (which I hold as well, please don't misunderstand) is that one's personal privacy, especially as related to communication, is sacrosanct.
But, in a world where it's getting easier and easier to just not give a shit about that and (generally, for 99.9% of the population's personal lives) have no ill effects, people are going to care less and less about data privacy and security, and the zeitgeist will shift.
I think that it will be the defining issue of the 21st century, and I have no idea how things will look coming out the other end.
Because in a world with no privacy, the only people who are going to be squeaky clean are thoae whose lives have been curated from day 1, either through privilege and iron-fisted parent s or through single-mindedness verging on psychosis.
People who should in no way be taking power.
If AI programmers determined the AIs' decisions, that would negate the point of AI.
I can easily write a bunch of code you can't readily predict the outcome to but I can predict with 100% certainty. The easiest way is to cheat and inject code you don't readily see: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack
2) ???
3) ???
[...]
3.468^10128) ???
Most countries aside from the USA are pretty blase about their politicians' personal behavior and morality. It's this silly idea that politicians should be paragons of personal virtue, independent of their public and political virtues, that gets the US in such hypocritical binds.
Privacy is a fairly modern invention. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think it assumes too much to take the concept of sacrosanct privacy as axiomatic.
(Source: Skepticon.)
No idea, and I'm not sure it even matters. Such charities tend to help anyone afflicted by the plight they chose to alleviate.
> Are they giving to their church and it's called charity?
Since it was coming from a LessWrong contributor in Skepticon, I'd say this is improbable. Most likely, he scanned the study for such errors.
What?
It's not literally the worst charity - that probably belongs to Susan G. Komen - but it is pretty terrible.
"Giving to charity" is not necessarily a good thing. Before giving to a charity, a person ought to skeptically evaluate the charity. Many charities exist to exploit our desire to feel good about ourselves while benefiting those who run the charity. People who don't apply skeptical thinking are easy targets.
If our goal is to use our money to make the world a better place, in some cases it may in fact be better to invest in a local small business than to give to charity.
...and the ones who are against death penalty for criminals often support abortion. So much for the idea that life is "hallowed".
(FTR: I am personally against both.)
Also : we are way off topic and I don't want to continue this thread.
there are ~1m abortions a year, 3.2% after 18 weeks; Which is about 32,000.
In absolute terms, this is dwarfed by pre-18wk abortions, more than half happen before week 8.
Hence it may be relatively rare, but:
a) The law allows late-stage, hence 100% of abortions are allowed to be late stage.
b) those figures might change, but in absolute and % terms. Early abortions are the more common now, no guarantees how that may change.
I think the many pro-lifers see the distinction as a slippery slope.
Clarification since there is a misunderstanding about my understanding: No, I know most of them are not this type. I also think there is a difference between late and early although I personally would advice against both. I am not a lawmaker though.
A little background: yes, I grew up in a pro life family and while I was always personally against I didn't really start bothering until that piece of news struck me from one of the major newspapers that day. Knowing this kind of cruelty actually happens on a more or less regular basis (well known by nurses even in the small country I live in) and on the scale of 88/day * botch_factor it is now hard not to care.
That said, yes, from a pragmatic perspective just getting rid of most of those 32000 late ones would be mighty good. I would believe a number of you could agree with that.
There is now and has been for some time a somewhat healthy debate around death penalty. Unfortunately IMO it seems that the right to kill innocent children before (or, if necessary because procedure failed, after ) birth is somehow sacred and cannot be discussed publicly.
Why would going to church be evidence that they are good people?
Look at how people act, not what they say. When you look at crime rates, divorce statistics, and so on, atheists seem to behave more morally than evangelical Christians.
I guess my point is never underestimate "incentive-caused bias"
Take that a step farther. When you already believe yourself to be a worthless sinner who has a blank check of forgiveness from Jesus, what incentive do you have to not act like a worthless sinner?
Do you have data source for this?
Don't put too much weight on this.
If you identify evangelical Christians by self-identification, my statement is clearly true. Digging into the difference between self-identification and religious practice is not something that I saw before, and is a fascinating data point.
The bar chart is comparing divorce rates per marriage, and does not find that religious affiliation affects divorce rate; but churchgoing does, at least in some religious groups.
I've heard from a Skepticon talk that some studies show that it is. They give more to charity, participate more in their communities, things like that.
At the very least, going to Church is most probably evidence that one is either striving to be a good person or already think of themselves as good persons. That last hypothesis would explain how they can sleep at night.
> Take that a step farther. When you already believe yourself to be a worthless sinner who has a blank check of forgiveness from Jesus, what incentive do you have to not act like a worthless sinner?
Aren't you supposed to make amends first? At the very least, show some contrition, and promise you won't do it again?
Now to not strawman the argument, it is more complex than that. The wiki link does an OK job explaining some of it.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+2%3A14-26...
This is mentioned again and again and again by Jesus and the apostles and it is a mystery how anyone can get away with saying anything else.
Why would that be amazing? Another set of rules to be co-opted and exploited against their fellows must be like catnip for this type of personality. Its the first place I'd go looking for them.
Remember that the Jesus that they claim today was so unpopular for showing up at their churches and throwing down with exactly that type of personality in his day that they had him killed.
Of course it is bad, even ugly, when someone who has pledged to be follow Christ is an @$$, but do not however try to pretend like Christianity is what causes it.
For any so-called Christian scumbag there is an even worse non-believer, just read up on the reign of terror or the various communist regimes. (And don't get me started on mainstream Christinity and its refusal to, - and I quote "Teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you[...]")
If the Christians followed Christ everything would be great. The first thing Christ did was head for the church, point out the legalism and say "you're doing it all wrong."
That Jesus was quite radical in a number of ways though, all the way from being way stricter than the religious elite at the time ("It has been said... But I say to you...", going above and beyond what was commonly thought to be good behavior and into what people even today think is close to impossible), to pointing out how their hypocrisy was wrong - to then go ahead and die for them(!), so almost by definition the life of anyone who honestly tries to follow his teachings are still today quite unlike anything that passes for normal.
That said I mostly don't bother anyone else with it, hoping instead that if my life stands out in a good way, those who are interested might ask.
I do however defend my faith, I won't let people thrash the thing that has turned my and so many others life around for the better. That is the least I can do.
(I hold this opinion weakly, so please argue me out of it if it's dumb.)
That's quite a claim! I also don't see how that doesn't apply to virtually every law surrounding civil cases. If I pay for a service and you don't give it to me, I have to sue you. Why is that any less like officially sanctioned vigilantism than if I sue you over patent claims? Do you also advocate breach of contract being made legal?
There is a literature on this:
I don't see why this would be amazing. Many terrible people go to church. Some even use it as a form of moral self licensing to rationalize doing evil.
Out-of-court settlement is awesome.
The real problem is that laws are complicated and variably enforced, making it extremely unclear who is right. Thus high legal fees.
The legal system is worse than the shittiest legacy code base you have ever seen, composed almost entirely of buggy exceptions, written with no thought toward future maintainers, beyond the comprehension of any mortal man, and gluing centuries old defunctness to poorly conceived addendum patching over the peeling layers. No one has interested in remove features, just adding more to the mountain of rubble.
You haven't seen the legacy code I have. One of the apps I worked on was modelling financial legal agreements. That was some truly shitty code. One function was over 50 printed pages with indentation levels I can't even begin to describe. It was also C++ written like Java. Tons of new's - no deletes or use of smart pointers. Leaked memory like you would not believe. Thankfully it was a batch-process. Even then, the server it ran on was allocated more that 128 GB of RAM because the hardware was cheaper than fixing the software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee...
> "Nearly every Western democracy other than the United States follows the English rule."
Does anyone know why the US decided on this system? It seems obviously unfair.
1. The English system doesn't necessarily protect a litigant. A well funded patent troll or a poorly funded but well meaning patent violator is now potentially on the hook for both damages and attorney fees. This is especially problematic when the law favors the accuser (as it seems to do in the American patent system).
2. It's a system that favors the "big guy", the party that has retainers for research, potential suit identification and preparation, not someone who might be accused. This forces smaller parties to invest at least some of their resources in "CYA" rather than doing what they are built to do (make products, for example).
3. It could affect supply of attorneys available to take a case or their fees. Say you feel there's a good chance of beating a wealthy litigant, so you charge more and misjudge? Or you don't feel you could be paid by the opposing party? Grant it, this likely cuts both ways. In the case of patent trolls, it might be beneficial, but perhaps not in others?
While the defendant in a patent lawsuit might feel they have an airtight case, it is never certain what will happen in a courtroom. You might lose and need to pay the damages PLUS attorney's fees for the plaintiff.
Result: no one sues Megacorp for small amounts of money. Megacorp can get away with lots of things that they would otherwise be sued for.
(I don't know if this happens in reality, but I do think it's a legit thing to worry about.)
That way Megacorp can hire 100 barristers if they want but if you lose you pay ordinary levels of costs. It might still bankrupt an individual but Megacorp can't just financially pressure all opponents in giving up in cases when Megacorp will obviously lose no matter who represents them in court.
Also, Small Claims (which I think USA has too), has very limited awards of costs, I'd usually contended just on paper and covers small charges. Allowing you to sue Megacorp by filling out a simple form and not even enlisting a lawyer.
A system with an assumption of awarding reasonable costs seems most preferable.
As for fairness: loser pays disincentivizes bringing lawsuits, whether meritless or meritorious. Under loser pays, certain frivolous lawsuits would not be brought, but meritorious cases that are often uphill battles would not be brought either. If you're in the business of going after polluters (like the Sierra Club), or challenging national security policies (like the EFF), the law is not on your side, even if your cause is just.
As a practical matter, you can't just take the English rule and import it into the U.S. Europe is an "ask for permission first" place, while the U.S. is "ask for forgiveness later." That allows U.S. companies to move faster, but puts the legal system in the position of being a backstop for unsafe products, financial fraud, pollution, unfairness in hiring, etc. So for example, it would be unfair to make it untenable for individuals to bring lawsuits for wrongful termination without giving them the protections against arbitrary dismissal European workers enjoy.[1]
Much of the support for loser-pays in the U.S. is an attempt by businesses to have their cake and eat it too. They don't want plaintiffs lawyers' bringing privacy lawsuits, but they're not exactly clamoring for that system to be replaced with European-style data protection laws administered by regulatory agencies.
[1] Which model is more efficient is debatable. I think in areas where causation is difficult to prove (environmental, product safety, employment discrimination), "ask for permission first" does a better job protecting the public at lower cost. But it also gives tremendous additional power to the government to micromanage the economy.
A lot of complaints about the legal system seem centered around particular cases where things seem unfair, but it's important to bear in mind that the legal system as a whole tries to optimize multiple, sometimes-contradictory objectives, and every design choice represents a tradeoff.
* The tradeoff between discouraging frivolous lawsuits vs. discouraging legitimate lawsuits is one case
* Another common complaint is that laws and regulations are complex and inscrutable -- but the tradeoff is that a simpler, shorter law will be more ambiguous and therefore actually less predictable in practice until it's been thoroughly litigated
Sometimes it surprises me that professional software engineers deal with systems design tradeoffs every day in their own work, but then fail to see that systems design logic also applies to human institutions.
I think it's because the equilibriums look much worse. Even if your system is a pile of hacks on top of hacks, it might at least be good enough right now. Not to mention that sometimes you engineer something that works pretty well. Meanwhile the legal system often fails even for the exact situations considered when the rules were made, and there's pretty much no one would feel there isn't some gross injustice happening within it quite frequently (though the injustice may vary).
Interesting to see you advocate for "ask forgiveness later", one could render that as "if you're rich the legislature is happy as long as you give it a cut". You might as well ditch all corporate application of the law and just increase business taxes, same result but more economical.
You can settle with one troll and still keep your business, but not a non-stop stream of them. At least when the mafia extorted you for "protection" they wouldn't let anyone else muscle in on their turf.
The FBI could say, "rat on so and so and we will decrease your sentence by X, otherwise we will push for full sentence" and happens all the time.
But, if FBI said, "give us the password to Bitcoin wallet or you get decades in jail under retarded computer law" and the agent transfers Bitcoin to his offshore account, that is illegal.