John McCarthy, Inventor of "AI" and a Founder of AI, Dies

Sad news: David Perlman John McCarthy, computer science trailblazer, dies Sf Gate (Oct. 29, 2011).

McCarthy was, among many things, a serious student of  "common sense."

A Comment on Lotfi Zadeh's Questions about Causality

In response to Lofti Zadeh's questions about causality I posted the following comment to the BISC Group list:

I want to say a few words about causality from a legal perspective, mainly from the standpoint of (my view of) what goes on in lawsuits and trials:

1. Lotfi is certainly correct that the law takes the view that events – almost all events, in any case – have multiple causes.

2. The law frequently takes the view that there are degrees of causation – that some automobile accident was caused, e.g., “to a substantial extent” by some defendant's actions or carelessness.

3. But it is hard to speak of a unitary theory of causality in law. For example, in litigation normative responsibility and factual causation is often lumped together. Even when factual and normative components are distinguished, the law often speaks only in a “commonsense” way about causation.

4. In the wave of lawsuits and cases involving technical and scientific evidence (a wave that has been passing over us in the United States for more than half a century), there are frequent attempts to develop or use something other than commonsense notions of causation. For example, scientists are routinely invited to testify about their opinions of the cause or causes of this or that disease or this or that failure of some machinery. However, in these cases the scientific or technical models of causality (when they're offered, which is not always) do not usually supplant the law's commonsense view of causation. There are various reasons for this. One reason, I think (see my next post), is that many scientific causal accounts of events depend to some degree on idealized circumstances (e.g., a “complete vacuum”) and in legal contexts there is often a question of the extent to which those idealized conditions existed and, if they did not perfectly exist, to what extent the scientific causal account in question holds for the event or events or states that are in issue in the particular lawsuit or trial.

But note: Much or most expert epidemiological evidence presented in trials does not even purport to be a causal account; much of this sort of evidence is portrayed by those who present it in trials as “purely statistical.” The same can be said of other types of (statistical) expert and scientific evidence presented in trials.

5. I have personally struggled at great length over what are sometimes thought to be the competing claims or Bayesianism and fuzzy logic. I belong to the camp that thinks that these two approaches to uncertainty, vagueness, and similar matters are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I am not a mathematician or logician, but I personally find that fuzzy logic approaches to semantic and conceptual vagueness are more intuitive and illuminating than Bayesian accounts (even though perhaps one cannot deny that Bayesian logic seems to work to some extent in contexts such as Google searches, but then I have been led to believe that fuzzy logic is also very important for Google searches). For partly this reason, the reflective part of my nature is inclined to think that fuzzy logic is a natural and powerful way of thinking about the way the law thinks of causality. The law's notions of causality are extraordinarily vague (though not always extraordinarily disordered)!

6. The next question that always comes to my mind is what the contribution of fuzzy logic to actual legal practice (e.g., trials) can be when (as is almost always the case) the law “believes in” – or assumes – that there are causes, that we live in a world in which there are causes, and undertakes (e.g., in lawsuits) to gather evidence about causes and to that end allows the legally-authorized trier (or “finder”) of fact to hear what are generally regarded as causal accounts – be they Freudian psychoanalytic accounts, accounts based on Newtonian mechanics,  accounts about the mechanisms involved in the transmission of AIDS, and so on. My inclination is to believe that in these investigations there has to be a way to marry fuzzy logic to causal reasoning if fuzzy logic approaches are to be useful – because in some circumstances (though definitely not in all) the law simply will not abandon its belief in or supposition of causes and effects.

7. Despite my puzzlement about the matter just mentioned in par. 6,  I have a sort of global admiration for fuzzy logic because of my belief that (i) causal explanations of specific phenomena are generally necessarily incomplete both for specific events (“What made Jimmy's car cross the median”?) and (ii) causal accounts are necessarily incomplete theoretically speaking – simply because knowledge of causes of space-time events (if such causes exist) are necessarily imperfect –because human knowledge of the cosmos is necessarily partial. If you grant what I have just said, the capacity of formal scientific models to work and make fairly accurate predictions is something of a mystery. But the same is true of everyday commonsense knowledge of the world: Commonsense  knowledge, language, concepts, etc., sometimes or often “work” even though they seem to rest on partial knowledge. This leads me to an inference (and I wonder what all of you think of my naïve insight): Ordinary language and concepts harbor much tacit but genuine knowledge – and this is what makes fuzzy logic useful, what makes some or many fuzzy logic applications possible. Supposing that this drift in my thinking has some validity, I am led to wonder whether formalizations of fuzzy legal ways of talking and thinking about causation might in some sense improve (and not just describe) the law's effort to “establish” the cause or causes of this or that event, events, state, or states. I await edification from the BISC community!

Fuzzy Logic & Causality

Lotfi Zadeh asks some questions about causality:

Dear Members of the BISC [Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing] Group:

    Few concepts are as pervasive as the concept of causality. Causality has a position of centrality in medicine and legal reasoning. Causality is pervasive in everyday reasoning and decision-making. But what is widely unrecognized is that in the enormous literature of causality what cannot be found are theories which work in real-world settings--settings in which information is uncertain, imprecise, incomplete or partially true. If you know of a working theory developed by yourself or others, please bring it to my attention. I will admit that I am wrong if you are right.

    All theories of causality founder on the rocks of multicausality. The problem is that in real-world settings multicausality is the norm rather than exception. I find it helpful to talk about multicausality in the context of a prototypical example which I call the Raincoats Problem, or RP for short. I am a manufacturer of raincoats. I would like to increase my sales. To this end I increase the advertising budget by 20%. Six months later sales have risen by 10%. Was the increase in sales caused by the increase in the advertising budget? Can a theory of causality come up with an answer to this simple question? This is the litmus test. What is the problem? The problem is that the increase in sales may have been caused by a variety of causants other than the increase in the advertising budget--causants such as rainy weather, improvement in economic conditions, lowering price of raincoats, etc. Some of the causants may be known and some not. Given this setting, the question should be restated as: To what degree was the increase in sales caused by the increase in the advertising budget? It is this question that cannot be answered by existing theories. In existing theories, causality is not a matter of degree--as it should be. What should be underscored is that the degree of strength of causality is not the same as the probability of causality. What is the meaning of: The probability that the increase in sales was caused by the increase in the advertising budget, is 0.8? 

    In the case of RP, a theory of causality should suggest a procedure for assessing the degree to which the increase in sales was caused by the increase in the advertising budget. One such procedure may involve interviewing all purchasers of my raincoats, to identify in each case what led to the purchase of a raincoat? The problem is that no such procedure can be devised. The problem becomes more apparent when the advertising budget is increased by 20% but the sales declined by 10%. Consider the question: Was the 10% decline in sales caused by a 20% increase in the advertising budget? How should it be interpreted? Can an existing theory of causality deal with this question? 

    As an underlying issue, causality plays an important role in political debates. Was the financial crisis caused by Wall Street? To improve the economy, the Federal Reserve lowered the interest rate from 1% to 0.8%. Six months later, the economic activity rose by 5%. Was the increase in economic activity caused by lowering the interest rate? Will a particular initiative cause a decrease in unemployment? Is Obama's stimulus program a success or failure? What lessons can be drawn from RP to answer such questions?

     A sobering thought is that no theory of causality can answer such questions. Is Obama's stimulus program a success or failure? Republicans argue that it is a failure because the unemployment rate remains above 9%. The democrats can argue, counterfactually, that it is a success because without the stimulus the unemployment rate would be over 12%. The problem is that counterfactual arguments are much less convincing than factual arguments. Nevertheless, the fact remains that in the instance of political debates, most causality assertions can neither be proved nor disproved. It would be much more realistic to accept that basically causality is a matter of degree. Once this is accepted, debates will become less polarized. A fundamental conclusion is that in realistic theories of causality, causality should be a matter of degree. To put it another way, realistic theories of causality should necessarily be based on fuzzy logic. Having said that, a word of caution is in order. Introduction of degrees into theories of causality is an undertaking which is far from simple to formalize. Comments are welcome. 

    Regards to all,

    Lotfi

-- 
Lotfi A. Zadeh 
Professor in the Graduate School
Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) 

Address: 
729 Soda Hall #1776
Computer Science Division
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California 
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 
zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu 
Tel.(office): (510) 642-4959 
Fax (office): (510) 642-1712 
Tel.(home): (510) 526-2569 
Fax (home): (510) 526-2433 
URL: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/

BISC Homepage URLs 

URL: http://zadeh.cs.berkeley.edu/

A Possible Difficulty with Subjective Bayesian Argument

Hykel Hosni, "...Uncertain Reasoning," 5 The Reasoner No. 11, 196, 197-198 (November, 2011):

Going back to [Andrew] Gelman’s analysis of the standard view, he points out that one very negative consequence of subscribing to the bayesian bundle, is that it encourages bayesians to cultivate the bad habit of disregarding model checking. This, according to Gelman, depends crucially on the subjective view of probability which Bayesians embrace. One is easily reminded here of the classic line by F.J. Anscombe: “To anyone sympathetic with the current neo-Bernoullian neo-Bayesian Ramseyesque Finettist Savageous movement in statistics, the subject of testing goodness of fit is something of an embarrassment”, F.J. Anscombe (1963, “Tests of Goodness of Fit”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 81-94).

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

A Very Interesting Monthly Magazine: The Reasoner

Some of you may not be aware of the online monthly magazine The Reasoner. If you are philosophically inclined or are interested in matters such as logic, argumentation theory, and inference, I strongly suggest you subscribe (free) to this magazine.

The magazine's own blurb describes itself this way:

The Reasoner (www.thereasoner.org) is a monthly digest highlighting exciting new research on reasoning, inference and method broadly construed. It is interdisciplinary, covering research in, e.g., philosophy, logic, AI, statistics, cognitive science, law, psychology, mathematics and the sciences.

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Clifford Winston Asks: Are Law Schools and Bar Exams Necessary?

Clifford Winston Are Law Schools and Bar Exams Necessary? New York Times (Oct. 24, 2011)
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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Thinking about and Picturing Places and Events in Time

Long ago a perceptive acquaintance suggested that time lines are not enough. Space-time lines are needed, he said. He had a point.

These particular space-time lines are designed to show, not the movement of things in time, but to show events over time associated with specific places (lots).

A more sophisticated version of this idea would have four dimensions (and would facilitate visualizing the movement of things and persons in space).

But some or many events associated with specific places happen in other places. Tricky complications.

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A Lesson in Probability by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

A slight shudder goes over me when I realize that I am about to encounter another judicial disquisition on probability and factual inference.

I will give you the citation first, and I will discuss the opinion in a later post or posts: Commonwealth v. Ferreira, No. SJC-10902, 2011 Mass. LEXIS 977 (Oct. 21, 2011).

But I feel compelled to make very brief comment on two points now:

1. The case involved a pretrial identification. The prosecutor made an off-the-cuff argument about the improbability that the victim would have picked, out of two photo arrays containing a total of 14 people, two suspects who happened to know each other. Whether or not the court got the final result right, the court failed to understand the point of the prosecutor's argument about random selection.

2. Whether or not the court got the final result right, the court -- like practically every other court before it -- parroted vacuous and misleading cliches about the non-mathematical character of the reasonable doubt standard:

The prosecutor also erred in equating proof beyond a reasonable doubt with a numerical percentage of the probability of guilt, in this case, ninety-eight per cent. "[T]o attempt to quantify proof beyond a reasonable doubt changes the nature of the legal concept of 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' which seeks 'abiding conviction' or 'moral certainty' rather than statistical probability." Commonwealth v. Rosa, 422 Mass. 18, 28 (1996). "The idea of reasonable doubt is not susceptible to quantification; it is inherently qualitative." Commonwealth v. Sullivan, 20 Mass. App. Ct. 802, 806 (1985). See Commonwealth v. Mack, 423 Mass. 288, 291 (1996) ("the concept of reasonable doubt is not a mathematical one").

Compare P.Tillers & J. Gottfried, United States v. Copeland: A Collateral Attack on the Legal Maxim that Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Is Unquantifiable?, 5 Law, Probability and Risk 135 (Oxford University Press, 2006).

David Brooks on Daniel Kahneman and Human Irrationality

The New York Times Columnist David Brooks writes in praise of Kahneman & Tversky. He emphasizes the tendency of the work of Kahneman & Tevrsky to show that fhuman beings frequently act irrationally. Fair enough. But what Brooks needs to emphasize a bit more is that subconscious processes have both successes as well as failures -- and it is possible that the rate of success is as striking as or even more striking than the rate of failure. If that weren't the case, we probably would all have been dead a long time ago.

The question of to what extent and under what circumstances "unthinking" human beings make mistakes is pertinent to many debates about evidence in legal cases -- for example, about false eyewitness identifications. The proponents of eyewitness identification reform sometimes exaggerate the relative frequency of incorrect identifications and perhaps underestimate or underplay the capacity of the legal system to correct for such errors (for example, by allowing or insisting on multiple lines of evidence of identity and by allowing adversaries to test the accuracy of eyewitness identifications by using devices such as cross-examination and evidence about witnesses' eyesight and the circumstances under which an identification was made).

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Spindle Law Interview of Arthur Bryant

See the Spindle Law Interview of Arthur Bryant

MarshalPlan 5.0 in Your Browser (Firefox)

I just discovered, to my pleasure and surprise, that MarshalPlan 5.0, the most recent version of my evidence marshaling software, runs in Firefox 4.0 as well as in Firefox 3.x.  To give the most recent iteration of MarshlPlan a trial spin, using Firefox 3.x or 4.0, click on this link and, when asked, accept the plug-in.

MarshalPlan 5.0, unlike MarshalPlan 4.0, has a stack that facilitates planning for the order of submission of evidence at trial.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Trial Advocacy at Temple & Pretrial Fact Investigation

What do think of Prof. Herb Kolsby's course (see below) on "speechmaking" by trial lawyers?

1719 N. Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19122 215-204-1857 law@temple.edu

TRIAL ADVOCACY

Temple Law’s New Certificate in Trial Advocacy and Litigation. Herb Kolsby on Persuasive Speechmaking for Adversaries.

Certificate in Trial Advocacy and Litigation Temple Law proudly announces the launch of our new Certificate in Trial Advocacy and Litigation. Grounded in Temple’s ongoing commitment to legal education that bridges theory and practice, the Certificate in Trial Advocacy and Litigation offers a developmental and experiential curriculum, instruction from faculty and advocates who have proven themselves in the field, and live client clinical experiences. Participate in Temple’s award-winning full-year Integrated Trial Advocacy Program Take a minimum of 4 electives from a robust list of advocacy courses Join licensed attorneys in our path-breaking LL.M. program for instruction in Litigation Strategy and Courtroom Performance Serve as trial lawyers in one of 16 litigation clinical placements Learn about cutting edge issues from leading litigators in our Distinguished Advocates’ Lecture Series Gain insight into the courtroom process by serving as jurors, witnesses, and teaching assistants in mock trials and advanced trial advocacy courses Temple Law has long been a leader in training trial lawyers. Our graduates are courtroom ready and litigation savvy. With the addition of the Certificate in Trial Advocacy and Litigation, Temple Law School formally recognizes this accomplishment. Herb Kolsby on Speechmaking Lawyers do two things in courtrooms: They ask questions and make speeches. Only at Temple Law can students take a class dedicated exclusively to one of these acts – speechmaking – taught by one of the best speech makers at the bar. In Speechmaking, Herb Kolsby takes students through every stage of a trial, from voire dire to closing. Along the way, they learn that there are keys to persuasive speech; that lawyers need to become storytellers because juries decide based on the stories they hear; and that the visual, verbal, and vocal aspects of a speech must support the speaker’s goal in making it. Enrollment is capped at 12, therefore students are required to make a speech in every class and then receive direct feedback both during class and in a private session with Professor Kolsby. Students study the fundamentals of speechmaking by applying Kolsby’s model to formal speeches like eulogies before turning to the range of adversarial speeches, from motions and objections to argument, opening, and closing. By the end of the semester, students understand how to persuade their listeners – every time they rise to speak. Professor Emeritus Herb Kolsby ’51 is the former and founding director of Temple Law’s LL.M. in Trial Advocacy program. He is currently of counsel to Kolsby Gordon in Philadelphia and a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

I like the idea for the course by Kolsby. But I confess I would like to see more emphasis  on pretrial preparation in the form of informal fact investigation and formal discovery. (To judge by the blurb below, this part of trial lawyering is missing from Kolsby's course.) Trial advocacy without meticulous pretrial preparation is lifeless, it is doomed to fail. But I am probably being unfair: There are other courses in Temple's program in advocacy and some of them probably deal in detail with pretrial fact investigation (which is my favorite shtick, see http://tillers.net/fi-course/fi-home.html).

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

FBI’s DNA database upgrade plans come under fire

Paul Rincon FBI’s DNA database upgrade plans come under fire BBC News (Oct. 16, 2011):

A major upgrade of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) DNA database system has come under fire from members of the forensic science community. The Codis system is used to generate the genetic profiles stored in the US national DNA database. The FBI wants to expand the number of genetic markers used by Codis to classify individual DNA profiles. But a former science chief at the bureau says the plan is not being driven by scientists' needs. Dr Bruce Budowle, along with colleagues Arthur Eisenberg and Jianye Ge, outlined the objections at the Promega 22nd International Symposium on Human Identification (ISHI) in Maryland, US. Another scientist told BBC News the changes were vitally important because they would set down how DNA profiles were recorded in the United States for perhaps "the next 20 years".

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Controversy about Law School Data about Students' Employment Prospects Goes (More) National

Mark Hansen, Senators Seek Decade of Detailed Law School Placement, Bar Passage and Student Debt Data ABA Journal (online) (Oct. 14, 2011):

Two U.S. senators have asked federal educational officials to turn over detailed information about law school enrollment, tuition, finances, job placement, bar passage and student debt rates over the past 10 years. In a statement Friday, the two—Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)—said they were acting in response to "serious concerns" that have been raised lately about the accuracy and transparency of information law schools are providing prospective students.

 


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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

The Brain: Stupid or Smart -- or Something Else?

Some people believe that ordinary people are pretty stupid on the whole and prone to fall into all sorts of cognitive, visual, aural, tactile, etc., illusions & delusions. Camp 1. Some people believe the human brain is a remarkably sophisticated mechanism. Camp 2. Some people are agnostic on the issue of human stupidity v. human intelligence, and some people are indifferent to the issue. Camp 3.

I generally belong to Camp 2 -- while believing (as every sensible person should) that people should use whatever tools are available to augment their extant intelligence and capacities (so that they can build trains, planes, computers, etc., and do calculus, play chess, etc.). See, e.g., "Trial by Mathematics - Reconsidered," http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1798906

Even the NYTimes is beginning to creep (ever so slightly) into this debate. See Christoper Chabris, "Is the Brain Good at What It Does?" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/books/review/is-the-brain-good-at-what-it-does.html?pagewanted=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

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Simplicity (it is said) Is Not Always Better Than Complexity

"The dissent, ... (opinion of SCALIA, J.), criticizes the complexity of our approach, but we, at least, are unwilling to sacrifice accuracy for simplicity. Simpler is not always better...." Michigan v. Bryant, 131 S.Ct. 1143, 1162 (2011) (Sotomayor, J., for the Court).

Of course, Scalia's real point was that the majoity's approach in Bryant is unnecessarily complex -- and disordered. But never mind about that: Justice Sotomayor succeeded in making her point in a catchy way.

The issue in Bryant was whether certain pretrial statements were "testimonial" or "non-testimonial" under the Court's current theory of the reach of the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a right of confrontation in criminal cases. See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).

The truly troubling thing about the complex methodology in Bryant is its incoherence: The multiplicity of factors considered by Sotomayor (for the Court) serves as camouflage for the failure of the Court to give any grounds for the factors that Sotomayor and the Court chose to consider. (But this is a pickle that Scalia's opinion in Crawford created: In Crawford Scalia went to great lengths to try to make the reach of the Confrontation Clause independent of its purposes. Scalia effectively thinks that judges who confont confrontation problems should reason that the only purpose of confrontation is confrontation. However, even though some starting premises have to be granted or assumed, Scalia's preference for circular reasoning in this context is not viable: The purposes attributed to or discerned in Constitutional guarantees such as the Right of Confrontation will creep into  judicial discourse willy-nilly More about this point later, dear Reader.)

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

QJustice 2012

The planning for the conference QJustice 12, May 22-24, 2012, Lisbon, Portugal, is proceeding apace.

The three general conference topics are:

Module 1: Inference and causality; 
Module 2: Consequentialism; 
Module 3: Distributive justice.

Organizers & program committee members include

Rainhard Z. Bengez, TU Munich, Germany
Lothar Philipps, LMU – Munich University, Germany
Maria Fernanda Palma, FDUL – IDPCC, Portugal
Augusto Silva Dias, FDUL – IDPCC, Portugal
Paulo de Sousa Mendes, FDUL – IDPCC, Portugal
David Duarte, FDUL – Institute of Juridical and Political Sciences (ICJP), Portugal
Rui Soares Pereira, FDUL – IDPCC, Portugal
José de Sousa e Brito, New University of Lisbon, Portugal
José Manuel Aroso Linhares, University of Coimbra Law Faculty, Portugal
Giovanni Sartor, European University Institute, Law Department, Florence, Italy
Feliciana Tafuri, LMU -- Munich, Germany
 Peter Tillers, Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, USA
Joseph Gastwirth, George Washington University, USA
Scott Brewer, Harvard Law School, Harvard University, USA
Vern Walker, Hofstra University, USA

Institutional sponsors include:

Carl von Linde Academy, Technical University of Munich
Institute of Penal Law & Criminal Sciences, University of Lisbon Law Faculty
Portuguese Association for Law Theory, Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Lisbon
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York

Panelists include ... many interesting & important people (stay tuned for details).

Conference papers will be published, some of them in a special issue of Law, Probability and Risk, http://lpr.oxfordjournals.org/

QJustice 12 is part of a series of conferences organized by Rainhard Bengez, under the umbrella of the network "Quantitative Justice and Fairness." See http://www.quantius.org/ The general mission of this network is to address "the use, the limits and mediation aspects of formal/quantitive methods in connection with any of the the following topics:

* Ethics, moral theories and theories of human rights (e.g., assessment as of harms & benefits to other persons; quantitative models of justice and fairness)
* Legal theory (balancing rights and duties; formal and quantitative models of legal argumentation/justification)
* Law (quantification and the application of the law, e.g., compensation for economic harm, for pain & suffering; criminal punishment and deterrence)
* Analytical philosophy (ontology and metaphysics of quantification)
* Science, technology and legal responsibilities (neurosciences and the measurement of mind, assessing environmental and human impacts of dangerous technologies, responsibilities of scientists)
* Mathematics & Computer science (mathematical and computational approaches to model justice and fairness, e.g., game theory, geometry, fractals, etc)
* Evidence (mathematical & statistical analysis of factual inferences in trials; burdens of persuasion and proof)
* Economics (economic and decision-theoretic models of justice and fairness)
* Medicine & Health care (e.g., measuring the quality of medical care; allocating medical resources, etc)
* Theology (views in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc., of quantitative aspects of justice and fairness )
* STS - Science and Technology Studies (e.g. breaking down the black boxes of social behavior and social actions)
* Public Understanding of Complex Decisions and Mediation (e.g. how can a better understanding of our underlying quantitative measures and concepts be helpful in cross-cultural discussions, politics, etc. )

Quantitative Justice and Fairness | ::proportionality//humanity//reasoning//technology::

www.quantius.org

Fuller and Hart Want to Know: What Is a "Sidewalk"?

H.L.A. Hart and Lon Fuller famously discussed whether roller skating in a park amounts to operating a motor vehicle in a park. Cf.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Riding While Under the Influence: Is a Horse a Vehicle?

and

Monday, April 04, 2011

The Hart-Fuller Debate Resurrected: What Is a Vehicle in a Park?

In September 2011 the Is-roller-skating-in-the-park-driving-a-motor-vehicle-in-the-park? hypo took on yet another guise. Marc Weber pointed out a case he was involved in: People v Pena (Joshua) 2011 NY Slip Op 21340 (Sept. 28, 2011). There defendant "was charged with riding a bicycle on a sidewalk in violation of section 19-176(b) of the Administrative Code of the City of New York, upon allegations that he rode the bicycle "on a pedestrian pathway inside the entrance of a [specified] subway station." The prosecutor argued that "'sidewalk' ... encompass[es] all manner of 'pedestrian conduits,' even those 'set back from the street.'" The court rejected this argument:

[W]e agree with defendant that the underlying information was facially insufficient since it failed to set forth, prima facie, defendant's commission of the charged offense. Even if established as true, allegations that defendant was observed riding a bicycle inside a subway station entrance would not make out a legally sufficient case that defendant violated Administrative Code § 19-176(b), an essential element of which is proof that the bicycle riding take place on a "sidewalk," a term narrowly defined in the ordinance as "that portion of the street ... between the curb lines or the lateral lines of a roadway and the adjacent property lines, intended for the use of pedestrians." We decline to adopt the People's broad reading of the term "sidewalk" as encompassing all manner of "pedestrian conduits," even those "set back from the street." Had the City Council intended to extend the definitional reach of the term "sidewalk" in [*2]such an expansive fashion, it would have been a simple matter to include appropriate language to that effect, as it did elsewhere in the Administrative Code (see Code § 7-201[c][1][b] [The Pothole Law], defining a sidewalk to include "a boardwalk, underpass, pedestrian walk or path, step and stairway"]).

This bicycle rider knows that the issue was never in doubt. Nothing in New York City constitutes a "sidewalk" for purposes of bicycle riding in New York City (if, that is, the rider proceeds slowly and cautiously and does not swear at pedestrians who obstruct his [her] path).
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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

A Useful Perspective on Life from the Late Steve Jobs

Although I was not one of those people who wanted to deify Steve Jobs, he did make a perceptive comment a few years ago:

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.

Yukari Kane & Geoffrey Fowler, Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011 Wall Street Journal (Onloine) (Oct. 6, 2011).
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Criminal Educational Choice; Energy Production in the United States

The following matter is not precisely on topic -- but it is interesting:

Micheal Flaherty The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School Wall Street Journal Onlline (Oct. 1, 2011):

In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge that has landed several parents, such as Ohio's Kelley Williams-Bolar, in jail this year. An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.

The following item is even more off-topic (the topic of evidence and inference) but it is also very interesting:

Stephen Moore How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia Wall Street Journal Online (October 1, 2011):

When OPEC was at its peak in the 1990s, the U.S. imported about two-thirds of its oil. Now we import less than half of it, and about 40% of what we do import comes from Mexico and Canada.

I fancy myself an old-fashioned liberal: I think economic welfare (both of the nation and the individual) is very important. Energy costs are therefore important in my mind.
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The dynamic evidence page

Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.