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"The risk is, it turns into a one-witness trial," The solution is to hire a jury of expert witnesses. That should have happened a long time ago, in fact; letti
by saulrh 15y ago
"The risk is, it turns into a one-witness trial,"
The solution is to hire a jury of expert witnesses. That should have happened a long time ago, in fact; letting a judge or jury make decisions about a specialist subject if they don't have a corresponding degree will only cause trouble.
The counterargument is that the government can't recognize technical competence. The answer there is to let the technically competent people select their own juries, given that they're the ones that can recognize competence. Just hand jury selection over to, say, the ACM or the IEEE.
I suspect that, as this proposal goes on, you'll converge to a technocracy. Whether that's good or bad is up to you.
- Tuna-Fish 15y agoThe primary problem with that isn't that it would turn into a technocracy, it's that it would instantly make influence over ACM or IEEE extremely valuable. In a few short years the organizations would degrade into paid shills. The various laws mandating standard-compliance already did this to the standards bodies.
- saulrh 15y agoOne possibility: spread things out to the point where there are too many groups to influence and personal relations between engineers overpower what remains. Instead of calling in the ACM for an audio compression patent case, ask the Audio Engineering Society and they'll send you six guys that have known each other for twenty years and have shared beers with every other person involved in the case.
- pewpewlasergun 15y agoThis seems like one of those ideas that sounds really good until you start to think about it.
- saulrh 15y agoDefinitely true; the same goes for nearly every idea in history. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.