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John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

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Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#261

Post by wfo »

justinlaster wrote: post #154
xamuel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The judge was visibly surprised I would be too. What you said is rather arrogant. If you had based it on their having specific physics knowledge, that would be one thing. But to say that logic and reasoning is the exclusive realm of academia---that's very insulting to a lot of people.

Insulting. But doesn't make it any less true or false. To presume that your average joe has bothered to play in the realm of academic, diligent logic and reason is a mistake. I am not saying you need to go into a university, I'm not claiming a piece of paper will lend you credibility in this regard. It's about the time and effort that people spend practicing these subjects. How many people do you know outside of STEM…

I've seen a lot of STEM people go on thinking they are kings of logic, reason, even correct thought. All the others in the world are lesser beings, humanities scum who don't understand what /reason/ is, or anything about SCIENCE. I hope your degree in the arts was good career-prep for the rest of your life preparing coffee for me and my fellow engineers, peasant! Then they write books like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion and philosophers who have been thinking about these topics laugh at them, and they don't understand why. The subject was simple! Obviously so, for if it were difficult, it would be STEM! Philosophers should be grateful a STEM expert such has Dawkins spent his precious time on their puny insignificant domain, a great man who sees a room is dark and decides to, for the first time, light a torch illuminating features that have remained dark for centuries. A question open and unresolved, bickered about by lesser beings like Kant and Russell and Liebniz and Descartes (STEM people as well, but made impure by the fact that they considered themselves philosophers first) until finally, thankfully, someone in STEM thought about it for a moment and told us the answer.

Yet we realize quickly this is not what happened. Instead of shining new light, Dawkins stumbles through a dark room, knocking over furniture, breaking vases and china. He stubs his toe and says "did you know you had a table here?" He steps on a housecat and hears a squeak, then quietly and calmly uses his superior STEM intellect to draw a deduction: a pet would have moved out of the way before being stepped on, and a single rat would have as well. He tells the owner his home is infested with thousands of rats. It was, after all, the most logical deduction at the time. Who could blame him for simply stating what's most likely to be the truth? He is promptly asked to leave.

In most of real life (i.e. the sphere of life where events are determined by human relationships and decisions, including but not limited to the law) deductive logic and scientific theory is about as useful as this (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.07820.pdf) is to someone building a bridge.

It is actually worse, because knowledge of deduction (and things like 'syllogism' or 'logical fallacies' even) impart often times little more of use than obnoxious hubris and a false sense of superiority, a severely off-putting and unhelpful sense about the world that endears its holders to no-one and makes collaboration difficult; camaraderie impossible.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#262

Post by bdowling »

whyileft wrote: post #112
Bamafan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB post is solely about "literal" vs "non-literal" code copying. These are words that the lawyers chose to use to communicate a complex (for non-programmers) idea to a bunch of non-programmers. I think of "non-literal" code copying as R&D. I think the Zenimax lawyers were claiming that the R&D that Carmack did for the Occulus, while still an employee of Zenimax, was key to making Occulus valuable. And it seems like C…

"non-literal" copying is garbage. We already have a legal term. Its called a derivative work. Which is what taking a Harry Potter book and changing the names of the characters is. Lawyers create new terms like that to intentionally make it difficult to apply previous case law to the case at hand. Both for the opposing lawyers and any judges on appeal.

You have that backwards. Taking the Harry Potter text and copying large portions of it, even if the names are changed, would be literal copying. Writing a book that borrows the story, characters, and relationships between the characters from Harry Potter, but written in your own words using new character names, would be non-literal copying. A derivative work, on the other hand, would be taking Harry Potter and making something new from it, such as writing a novel about a new adventure involving Harry and his friends, or adapting Harry Potter to a new medium like a VR game.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#263

Post by dpark »

afthonos wrote: post #190
dpark wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peers are supposed to know you, your character, and your history. I don't think so. It's one thing to say that juries should be made of private citizens drawn from your nation/state/town. It's another thing entirely to say that juries should be made up of your buddies. Peer is not a synonym for neighbor. It means "equal".

Note that each level you've selected makes it more likely that they're sympathetic to you. Nation: shared culture. State: shared local culture. Town: shared understanding of what's considered acceptable here . There's of course a balance to be struck, and mobs will turn on people in an instant anyway. I'm merely saying that "peers" did not originally mean "random fellow humans"; it implied a level of connection above…

> Note that each level you've selected makes it more likely that they're sympathetic to you. Nation: shared culture. State: shared local culture. Town: shared understanding of what's considered acceptable here

Is that true? What if everyone in your town thinks you're kind of a jerk?

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#264

Post by hanginjudge »

I think the last sentence is the meat of the post.

The biggest credential of some expert witnesses is the number of trials for which they have been an expert witness.

Put your testimony out there for the public and let other experts critique it. Stake your reputation and your career on it.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#265

Post by erikpukinskis »

794CD01 wrote: post #115
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it is saying that Zenimax owns not only the code Carmack wrote while he was there, but also the knowledge and experience he gained while working there.

No, it's more than Zenimax owns not only the code Carmack wrote while he was there, but also the design on which that code was based. If there were literal design documents written up, I think we would all agree that is clearly true. When the designs are all in one person's head, it becomes gray enough to take to court.

Only the verbatim design documents are copyrighted. The ideas in them are protected as free speech.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#266

Post by RobertoG »

fjdlwlv wrote: post #145
RobertoG wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal impression is that when people of average intelligence can't understand something is because the concepts that make that thing are outside their expertise, not because they are not able to. They are missing the parts, so, understanding the total is impossible. People of exceptional intelligence is able to learn new things and think through a problems easily, but what makes a real difference is if you alre…

You think the average person could meaningfully review graphics rendering code?

I'm saying that you can teach the average person to swim if you teach them all the proper techniques, in the proper order, before the competition.

I'm not saying that you can do the average person perform like a world-class champion.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#267

Post by caf »

madgar wrote: post #36
ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Interesting rant on expert witnesses. Mostly interesting because I've done some expert witness testimony and found it fascinating. I completely resonate with John's issue with the expert's testimony and his understanding of it. John mentioned that their own expert testified differently but he didn't say whether or not their lawyers attempted to impeach their expert with cross examination. In the two cases I participa…

> In the limit it means "you read this code, understood how it worked, and wrote new code that could do the same function." You can stretch that to cover anything you have ever seen. Which is sad. I thought the industry adopted "clean room" techniques decades ago to avoid this kind of appearance of impropriety. It's more expensive, sure, but isn't eliminating legal risk something that typically gets paid for?

The visual and written arts seem to get away without requiring "clean room" techniques. It's not like authors have to avoid reading any other author's work.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#268

Post by rhizome »

Cyph0n wrote: post #103
foldr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wished I could be judged by my academic peers. It was my belief that they would be more receptive to logical argument, understanding in their analysis, and more committed to fundamental principles. Have you met any academics?

Exactly this. You would be surprised how petty and subjective academics are in practice. There is a reason why everything is done through committees in academia.

You would be surprised how petty and subjective academics are in practice.

Sayre's Law[1] was paraphrased by Henry Kissinger as, "Academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small."

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#269

Post by mhandley »

addisonj wrote: post #10

I don't have the evidence so I can't make a judgement about whether Zenimax or Carmack is in the wrong here, but this does point out something strange in our court system and that is where a "jury of peers" which translates to normal people with little to no knowledge of the underlying subject matter. As our society becomes more specialized it seems a bit absurd to have people make judgements mostly based on how well…

I've testified as an expert witness in patent cases in both the UK and the US. In both cases I was testifying that the patent in question should be invalid, and in both cases we were successful. It's much harder to invalidate a patent, because the burden on proof is on you.

The UK and US systems are very different - in the UK you testify in front of a professional patent judge, and they tend to be fairly technically clueful.

Both cases were very hard work - top patent lawyers are very smart, very well paid, and are experts at finding ways to undermine your credibility.

Where the UK and US differ is in how the lawyers go about trying to undermine credibility. It's much harder in the UK to get away with claiming something without it being supported by careful evidence. At one point in the UK case, the issue came up of whether it was technically feasible to run X windows over a dial-up modem. I said that it could, but it certainly wouldn't be quick. When their lawyer tried to dispute this, the judge chimed in, and said he knew personally that it could, because he'd done it himself years before, and could they move along to their next question please. I had a hard time not laughing.

The lawyer's strategy in the UK seems to be to start from a point the expert agrees with, then take them step by step, each step being reasonably in itself, until the expert ends up contradicting their own evidence. Generally, in the UK, if the other side manages to find an angle on something where you don't have evidence to back up your point, you usually need to concede the point. If you don't you lose credibility with the judge, and then it's all over. To avoid such traps, you need to know the 2000 pages of evidence so well you can jump to a particular page, where there's evidence to back your point up.

In the US, you need to maintain credibility with the jury. That's really quite different, as they're not technical. You've got to look them in the eye, and do your best to explain how it is in minimally technical points. They often won't be listening to the technical issues, but just trying to decide whether you're lying. They'll likely go with whichever expert they decide to trust most. I've never testified on something I didn't believe in, so looking the housewives in the jury in the eye and trying to explain earnestly was not so hard. I think juries are actually quite good at detecting who is being evasive if you talk straight to them, but few technical witnesses feel comfortable giving evidence, and this adds noise to the process.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#270

Post by [deleted] »

leggomylibro wrote: post #91
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it is saying that Zenimax owns not only the code Carmack wrote while he was there, but also the knowledge and experience he gained while working there.

I think it's more that Zenimax thinks it owns the unique ideas that Carmack, a top talent in his field, created while he was working there. They're not angry that he wrote the same 4x4 matrix inverse function for both them and Oculus. Or more specifically, if Zenimax's claims are correct, while he was working on company time and equipment.

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