Contempt of court

BBC News L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter 22 October 2012 Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila.

It is concerning that that such an otherwise modern and developed country would entrust the lives of its people to a judiciary capable of such ignorance and oafishness. Whenever one correctly predicts that an imminent earthquake is “unlikely,” it means that an earthquake will ensue in a minority of those occasions. While negligence is sometimes a crime, random probability is not.

The prosecution cited scientific opinion that major earthquakes are often preceded by smaller shocks, but this should not be confused with the converse, that smaller shocks often lead to major earthquakes. Small shocks are relatively common in that part of Italy and normally do not herald a major earthquake. This argument is therefore irrelevant.

A non-scientist government official then told the press that there was “no danger.” While this is not the same as “unlikely” danger, some allowance should be made for the practicalities of human language. If a doctor tells a patient that they are in “no danger,” it does not mean literally zero danger but rather no significantly increased danger from baseline. The patient could still be struck by a car on the way home, for example. Six-year jail sentences for all the scientists because of a small communication inaccuracy by someone else are a human rights atrocity.

The tragedy here is that an unavoidable disaster has been compounded by an avoidable one.

UPDATE: In November 2015, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation acquitted the scientists and greatly reduced the sentence of the non-scientist.

http://singularity24601.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/weis-neologisms-2.html

Wei's visual guide to picking up chicks

Noxiae poena par esto

"Cavendum est ne major poena quam culpa sit; et ne iisdem de causis alii plectantur, alii ne appellentur quidem."

"Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted."        

Cicero – De Officiis (44 BCE), I. 23.

BBC News US music file-sharer must pay damages 24 August 2012 Joel Tenenbaum must pay $675,000 in damages awarded to the major US music labels.

• Thirty-one songs should have a fair price of roughly $60, either as physical media or legal digital downloads. 
• Under Massachusetts law, petty theft of property valued at $250 or less is punishable by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than $300.
• Under the US Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999, the penalty for 31 counts of willful infringement ranges from a minimum of $23,250 to a maximum of $4,650,000.

Thus, US law evidently considers it worse, by several orders of magnitude, to illegally "not deprive" someone of virtual (non-rivalrous) property than to deprive someone of physical (rivalrous) property.

Thou shalt not copy thy neighbour's CD for post-Gutenberg law decrees it a far lesser evil to just steal it altogether.

Accidents of history

Wei Hong commented on ST’s link:

American Thinker The Soul-Crushing Scorched-Earth Battle for Gay Marriage 11 August 2012 “Most importantly, had civil unions been the focus, there would have been nowhere near as much resistance.”

A semantic imbroglio exists here. Homosexual "marriage" and "civil union" potentially denote the same concept, as is the case in some countries. However, in federations such as the USA (alas, the current dialectic epicentre) and Australia, "civil unions" tend to be recognised at the state level, while "marriage" is recognised at the federal level. Thus, along divisions between state and federal power, arguably contrived distinctions arise via accidents of history.

Entrapment

Wei Hong commented on CY’s link:

The Age Safety rule at railway crossing a step too far for one commuter 17 August 2012

Shall we also start fining people for walking through a green pedestrian light because a nearby vehicle traffic light is still red? Opening the gate before it is legal (by obtuse technicality) to cross is entrapment. Laws should serve people, rather than the reverse. These people give jurists a bad name and should be ashamed to call themselves such.

Radiology the Wei way

Intern: Hey, can I borrow your eyes to look at an X-ray? It's a shit film...

Me: Well if you're gonna do imaging on faeces, you're better off doing an MRI, because diarrhoea will look brighter on T2-weighted imaging, whereas steatorrhoea will look brighter on T1.

"Free markets"

ABC Are free markets a moral force? 25 July 2012 Is the ‘free market’ a moral entity? One of Australia’s best known free-market economists, Ian Harper, rethinks some of his views, in not so much a conversion but a revision on the road to Damascus.

While Prof Harper makes several good points, the common use of the term "free market" is unfortunate and potentially counter-productive. The term "free market" is such a semantic imbroglio ad contradictionem that it is best expunged from dialectic vocabulary. While a Pareto efficient "free market" is free from state constraints on supply and demand, this should not be confused with freedom from regulation in general; on the contrary, a Pareto efficient market actually depends upon regulation to enforce Walrasian market conditions and correct for externalities. While "the market", as a construct, is amoral by definition, the reality that it models is shaped by our choices in economic policy, wherein lies our ethical imperative.

(via ST’s wall)

Epistemological limits

New Scientist Unofficial report ramps up Higgs significance 5 July 2012

The confidence level of 7.4 sigma represents only random error and says nothing about systematic error, so I would not label it a "certainty." The importance of this distinction was dramatically demonstrated in the recent faster-than-light neutrino controversy. For this reason, I feel that 7 sigma versus 5 sigma is of little conceptual difference.

Certainty-proportional punishment

Although unpalatable, perhaps criminal punishments should be adjusted in proportion to subcategorised degrees of certainty within the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard of evidence. This principle arguably already applies when strict liability is justified in the setting of relatively minor punishment.

Global commons

As state regulation is essential for preventing tragedies of the commons, so globalisation may be essential for environmental protection.

Thoughts on tort law reform

As a child, I watched on television hidden camera footage of a woman pouring oil over steps, then repeatedly walking up and down them in a deliberate attempt to slip and sue for compensation.

In early 2010, Glen Hanncock was compensated $300,000 after becoming paraplegic in a work-related injury. In late 2010, Kristy Fraser-Kirk was compensated $850,000 after being sexually harassed on 2 occasions at work. 

I do not speak for all, but forced to choose, I would much rather be odiously groped and harassed on 20 occasions than become incurably paraplegic, even if I am not compensated the extrapolatable $8.5 million. If I could cure someone's paraplegia by groping and harassing them on 20 occasions, it would be a medical miracle.

In tort law, the principle of plaintiff remedy should be restorative, compensating wrongful losses and restituting wrongful gains. There should not arise a situation where the plaintiff makes a net utility profit and is glad to have been "torted." However, punitive damages (ie, in excess of the wrongs incurred) are justified, lest people commit calculated torts knowing they gain more than damages they'll need to pay (for the same reason, I do not support proposals to cap punitive damages). The principle of punitive damages should be future public interest rather than rewarding the plaintiff.

▪ I dream of a world where punitive damages are not awarded to the plaintiff but rather, eg, a charity organisation independently appointed or mutually agreed upon

One problem with such a world is that plaintiffs can still make net utility profits at the expense of future public interest through out-of-court settlements (Kristy Fraser-Kirk threatened $37 million in punitive damages to charity and settled for $850,000 to her own pocket).

▪ I dream of a world where manifestly unjust out-of-court agreements risk legal action, just as in the real world how manifestly inappropriate sentences can be appealed and illegal agreements can be ruled unenforceable

Litigation is ideally the last resort after out-of-court agreements have been exhausted, lest the court system become further clogged. While limitations to such agreements may create additional burden upon the courts, this may be offset by a reduction in opportunistic and profiteering lawsuits. Another problem is that plaintiffs may rarely pursue punitive damages at all due to minimal incentives. Awarding the plaintiff a nominal share of the punitive damages may only be a partial remedy.

Ultimately, the onus and reward of a public interest matter should be taken out of the hands of a private litigant in the first place. This is the case in another field where public interest is the underlying principle; criminal law.

▪ I dream of a world where the primary onus of punitive damages falls not on the plaintiff but on a state office akin to a public prosecutor

One sesquicentury ago, the military hegemony of the British Empire exported a pernicious produce in opium. Today, the cultural hegemony of the USA exports a pernicious produce in its legal practices.

Moral hazard

International concessions in the face of Syriza brinkmanship would create a moral hazard. Capitalism for profits and communism for losses is the worst of both worlds, undermining free market principles and causing a tragedy of the commons. Greece enters into elections tomorrow. Will the democracy’s cradle see democracy's failure?

Dopaminomics

BBC News Parents sue Apple over in-app game charges 16 April 2012 Apple is being sued by parents who claim the iPhone-maker is unfairly profiting from in-app payments in games aimed at children.

It is interesting what $60 can buy:

1) For a traditional outright purchase, the fastest-selling PC game of all time, with 3.5 million copies sold within the first 24 hours:

Diablo III

2) For a subscription business model, the world's most popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, with 10.2 million subscribers as of December 2011 and new content constantly added:

 World of Warcraft, 4 months subscription

3) Almost enough FarmVille in-game currency to purchase:

Two Beach Resorts

The above is one example of a wider media trend (social networks, smartphones, etc), calling into question the utility function of (at least certain subspecies of) Homo economicus. Granted, FarmVille can be played for free and "Beach Resorts" are expensive high-end buildings aimed at extracting consumer surplus via market segmentation, so perhaps the comparison should be limited to optional premium "add-on" content.

Thus, it is interesting what $10 can buy:

1) Fallout 3 add-on: The Pitt

Adds an entire new area to explore in a game that has won multiple awards for "Best of 2008"

2) A FarmVille in-game purchase:

One Fishing Hole

...

Exclusive design rights

Exclusive design rights should only be granted if they are new and distinctive. Basic concepts and shapes such as "minimalism" and "rounded rectangles" by definition meet neither criterion.

The Pareto inefficient practice of intellectual property laws can only be justified insofar that innovation is rewarded without restricting rivals from superior innovation and allowing King Ludd (“your auto-loom invention incorporates my hand-loom patent and must be smashed!”) hold the rest of industry to ransom. The principles of essential patents and compulsory licensing follow in this spirit, whereas Apple’s sales injunctions against its rivals do not.

Time symmetry

The arrow of time does not manifest in the second law of thermodynamics save for a verisimilitude born of the sheer statistical unlikelihood of observed existence.

UPDATE: Fundamental physics pseudo-paradoxes

Echo chamber

The Washington Post Pearls Before Breakfast 5 July 2012 "Bell bought it a few years ago. He had to sell his own Strad and borrow much of the rest. The price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million."

Another poignant commentary on the unfortunate demands of modern life. On the other hand, recent double-blinded experiments from the University of Paris have shown that even professional violinists cannot tell apart the supposedly superlative aural qualities of multi-million dollar antique violins from modern instruments costing less than 1% of their price. Perhaps a perverse partnership ensues when subjectivism combines with conspicuous consumption?

Valentine's Day

Despite our liberated ideals and marriage-related statistics, there yet remains an ideal of monogamous love lasting forever like a De Beers cartel diamond. Many bird species are long renowned as symbols of lifelong devotion and have been traditionally popular in love iconography.

It is said that if you want monogamy, you should marry a swan.

However, modern research shows that many socially monogamous species nevertheless engage in extra-pair copulations, with DNA testing revealing, for example, that 1 in 6 black swan cygnets are not fathered by the resident male.

True devotion, then, is demonstrated in schistosomes and diplozoons. In the lives of these parasitic flatworms, males and females find each other "and the two shall become one flesh", the pair remaining physically locked in mating position for the rest of their lives.

Schistosoma mansoni

Diplozoon paradoxum

Lovebirds this Valentine's Day who are ready to enter a new level of commitment could consider one day becoming loveworms instead, exchanging "I ♥ You" for "I χ You."