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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

#201

Post by EdHominem »

protomyth wrote: post #127
ue_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common argument against juries, and I think it's one of the most powerful. Of course if you start to fill a jury with people competent in the area being judged, you run different risks, such as bias within the field. And it's still not clear that it would help with delivering justice. But if we take the idea of a jury to be about judging by one's peers, it should be patently clear (heh) that the jury o…

> Of course if you start to fill a jury with people competent in the area being judged, you run different risks, such as bias within the field. And it's still not clear that it would help with delivering justice. If you've ever worked at a company with an "problematic" architectural committee you might get a little scared of having them as a jury.

That's because they've been given the position and it's gone to their heads.

If new architecture had to be reviewed by a representative sampling of your workmates, randomly selected for each review, I don't think you'd have such issues.

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

#202

Post by dragonwriter »

xamuel wrote: post #142
ISL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once espoused a similar opinion, but have since changed my mind. I'm a physicist, and once expressed to a judge I had met on the trail that 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. The judge was visibly surprised, but said little. What later changed my mind w…

>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.

> But to say that logic and reasoning is the exclusive realm of academia---that's very insulting to a lot of people.

And more to the point, fairly obviously false.

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

#203

Post by crimlaw »

fjdlwlv wrote: post #140
ISL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once espoused a similar opinion, but have since changed my mind. I'm a physicist, and once expressed to a judge I had met on the trail that 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. The judge was visibly surprised, but said little. What later changed my mind w…

Educated and principled people are generally excluded from juries during voir dire because they are less susceptible to attorney's arguments.

The exception to that rule is when you have a couple slam dunk where your forced to go to trial because a prosecutor refuses 2 dismiss the case or offer an appropriate plea bargain. Its almost an insurance against their pervasiveness

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

#204

Post by EdHominem »

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?

That's not the part they most need to be able to do. They merely need to be able to understand an argument without getting distracted by tricks.

The actual analysis of the code is something that they could then listen to expert findings about.

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

#206

Post by grellas »

I learned long ago (at the beginning of my legal career) that a determined litigant can essentially cook up expert testimony on demand as needed to further some tendentious goal or other.

It is dressed up to be "scientific," "learned," etc. but, when objectively analyzed, it is in reality utter garbage. But, and this is a big "but," it is the sort of garbage that cannot be refuted conclusively owing either to uncertainty in the science involved or uncertainty in the facts and assumptions on which it is based.

By this, I don't mean there are experts who have integrity and who will not allow their good names and reputations to be cynically used for such purposes.

But, for every expert of such integrity, it is (sadly) pretty easy to find others who can be bought.

Don't know what happened in this case but I instinctively can sympathize with the author here that this is what might easily have happened.

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

#207

Post by ghaff »

rhino369 wrote: post #108
yaur wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a jury trial I can imagine that having the jury understand your testimony is probably the most challenging. What I've seen from the sidelines is that what you want in an expert is someone who make your point, which has more to do with assertiveness than competence, and the credentials to back it up but who can't delve into the topic too deeply because information that the jury doesn't understand is an attack sur…

That is pretty much how it works on the civil side too. Pick an older professor from the best local college who has given testimony several times before. The open secret is that a lawyer writes all the expert reports and the expert just reviews and makes edits.

That has certainly not been my experience. The lawyers have a clear objective for a given expert report and are heavily involved in a lengthy back-and-forth review process. Perhaps sometimes lawyers do the primary drafting but that wasn't what I encountered.

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

#208

Post by hydrogen18 »

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 think of peer as meaning someone who is my legal equal. Historically in the US this meant a slave could not testify against me if I born a free white man. Obviously we are well past the point of having multiple distinct classes as such.

But the point being is that my peer would be someone who is on equal legal footing with me. For example, in a criminal case a police officer should generally not be part of the jury. Even if the case is well outside his jurisdiction they enjoy far too many legal privileges to be considered my equal. This isn't a condemnation of police, it is just how things are.

I am actually far more afraid of being judged by a bunch of 'experts'.

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

#209

Post by xxs »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #164

>* After he had said he was “Absolutely certain there was non-literal copying” in several cases, I just wanted to shout “You lie!”. By the end, after seven cases of “absolutely certain”, I was wondering if gangsters had kidnapped his grandchildren and were holding them for ransom.* This seems to be a very common reaction when reasonable people are put through a lawsuit.

At least we can get few bits if information knowing the expert witness was old enough to have grandchildren.

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

#210

Post by DonHopkins »

Dave Beazley (Python expert and author of SWIG) was an expert witness and analyzed a huge body of code. This is his fascinating talk about his adventure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ4Sn-Y7AP8

So, what happens when you lock a Python programmer in a secret vault containing 1.5 TBytes of C++ source code and no internet connection? Find out as I describe how I used Python as a secret weapon of "discovery" in an epic legal battle.

Slides can be found at: https://speakerdeck.com/pycon2014 and https://github.com/PyCon/2014-slides

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