4 ms·

While I doubt that many 75-year-olds waste time at work perusing HN, the article misses, downplays or misunderstands several important points: The justices' of

While I doubt that many 75-year-olds waste time at work perusing HN, the article misses, downplays or misunderstands several important points: The justices' often use apparently clueless analogies to prompt the attorneys during oral arguments; these are suggestions that the argument needs to be clarified or reframed. Ultimatley, it's the attorneys job to make their cases, no matter how seemingly clueless the court might be. Much/most of the real work at SCOTUS is done by clerks, some of sharpest young minds in the US. I'm betting they will peruse HN for background on issues. It's incredibly easy to cherrypick from the vast library of court opinions for a few rotten tomatoes to throw at a straw man.

ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
The sharpest young minds who went to the right law schools.
thinkcomp 12y ago
This vastly overstates the wisdom of the justices. They're using clueless analogies most of the time because they're actually clueless, regardless of whether the arguments could be made better. It's true that lawyers should explain their positions clearly in any court, but if the ultimate interpreter of fact can't even understand the facts they're being told, there's a fundamental problem.
3rd3 12y ago
> peruse HN for background on issues. Is HN really such an important source for background on cutting edge tech issues?
- pessimizer 12y ago
  It's an important source of educated debate about things currently going on in often very specialized tech news, often between domain experts. Isn't that why you're here?
  - 3rd3 12y ago
    I wonder whether HN comes close enough to the effeciency of curated sources, conferences or some private circles to mention it as a proxy for staying on top of current developments, because the gems on HN are usually burried under a lot of comments and submissions without any societal significance. I can’t really form an opinion on that since I have never attended to technology assessment conferences and don’t read tech magazines.
    - existencebox 12y ago
      If nothing else, I think it serves as a barometer for some sectors of tech's outlook on various visible events. As long as you keep in mind what sort of echo chamber/groupthink to look out for (a task when reading _any_ media) it's served well for me as a jumping off block for finding vectors to explore to better understand an issue.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      >I wonder whether HN comes close enough to the effeciency of curated sources, conferences or some private circles to mention it as a proxy for staying on top of current developments. When a development hits the media, there will be a thread on it at HN, and that thread will contain entire arguments and links to curated sources. The question is where to start to research if you're not an engineer. This is a better place than most.
    - hackuser 12y ago
      It would be great if you could share some other curated resources (HN is curated) that are more efficient and publicly available. What do you like?
      - 3rd3 12y ago
        As I said, I don't know whether they exist. HN might be the best source for the people, but the supreme curt might have access to more efficient sources.
themartorana 12y ago
There is no straw man here. Yes, the article is poorly put together, starts with one thought and never finishes, etc. But the inability to truly understand the impact of technology on the country and the globe by the highest court in the land - and further inability to understand that much of that impact exists without deep historical context and outside traditional court definitions - is worrying. To think that this group of technology-illiterate academics can hand down judgments that can drastically alter the legality of future innovations - without understanding the most basic parts of those innovations - should give everyone pause. I'm sure their clerks are incredibly bright - but so are the lawyers standing before the Supreme Court - and if they can't explain the technology they're trying to defend to the justices, what makes you think a clerk can do better? It's incredibly easy to stifle innovation and its potential offspring for centuries by not understanding it.
- wfjackson 12y ago
  >But the inability to truly understand the impact of technology on the country and the globe by the highest court in the land - and further inability to understand that much of that impact exists without deep historical context and outside traditional court definitions - is worrying. >To think that this group of technology-illiterate academics can hand down judgments that can drastically alter the legality of future innovations - without understanding the most basic parts of those innovations - should give everyone pause. This is not the job of courts nor is it intended according to the US constitution. That job falls on the other two branches of the government i.e Congress that needs to make and update laws of the land and the executive which has some discretion on which are actually enforced etc. The job of the courts is only to see what the written word of laws means and get inside the heads of the lawmakers wrote that law at the time to try to learn the intent behind the law and how it applies to the case at hand. Thus analogies are perfectly appropriate to pursue. If Congress thinks that, for example, the Aereo decision was wrong and hurts innovation, they can pass legislation legalizing Aereo in probably just a week or two. It's not the court's job to decide that Aereo is good for innovation so it should be allowed to operate, even if it's illegal. It's the courts job to understand what Aereo is, and how the law and it's intent applies to it.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
j2kun 12y ago
I would also point out that the justices could simply say something like, "Could you please provide a definition of the term 'troll' for the court?" This shouldn't be considered clueless because even if the justice does know the definition, it establishes a record of the terms as they're used in what follows. I would hope that the reason we get these seemingly silly quotes is rather that the justices usually do this, and the occasional jokes result from boredom (even if they do show some misunderstanding).
- arrrg 12y ago
  It's an interesting question about the interesting etymology of the word. It certainly doesn't show any kind of illiteracy. How could you even begin to view it that way? That' span absurd interpretation of the words.
pessimizer 12y ago
I had a relative that was a appeals court clerk, and I definitely got calls to explain computer concepts and answer questions. I answered with metaphors and references that she could follow up on. The only way to approach something new is though analogy, right? I can't think of any other way.
- wtallis 12y ago
  > "The only way to approach something new is though analogy, right? I can't think of any other way." That's certainly true to an extent, but it also strikes me as the sort of thing you're a lot more likely to hear from a philosopher than a mathematician. Sure, you could try to understand computers by drawing analogies to televisions and typewriters and everything else that they can emulate, but that approach will always miss the rather fundamental concept of what it means for a machine to be a universal computer, capable of building complex processes out of a very small set of very simple operations. The analogies only serve as our inspiration for which algorithms to implement and what meaning to ascribe to the result of a computation that the machine was always capable of performing. You can gain useful knowledge about the capabilities of computers in a bottom-up fashion starting with a simple instruction set and building things, just like mathematicians can start with a set of axioms and explore their implications ad infinitum.

ZanyProgrammer 12y ago

The sharpest young minds who went to the right law schools.

thinkcomp 12y ago

This vastly overstates the wisdom of the justices. They're using clueless analogies most of the time because they're actually clueless, regardless of whether the arguments could be made better. It's true that lawyers should explain their positions clearly in any court, but if the ultimate interpreter of fact can't even understand the facts they're being told, there's a fundamental problem.

3rd3 12y ago

> peruse HN for background on issues. Is HN really such an important source for background on cutting edge tech issues?

pessimizer 12y ago
It's an important source of educated debate about things currently going on in often very specialized tech news, often between domain experts. Isn't that why you're here?
- 3rd3 12y ago
  I wonder whether HN comes close enough to the effeciency of curated sources, conferences or some private circles to mention it as a proxy for staying on top of current developments, because the gems on HN are usually burried under a lot of comments and submissions without any societal significance. I can’t really form an opinion on that since I have never attended to technology assessment conferences and don’t read tech magazines.
  - existencebox 12y ago
    If nothing else, I think it serves as a barometer for some sectors of tech's outlook on various visible events. As long as you keep in mind what sort of echo chamber/groupthink to look out for (a task when reading _any_ media) it's served well for me as a jumping off block for finding vectors to explore to better understand an issue.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    >I wonder whether HN comes close enough to the effeciency of curated sources, conferences or some private circles to mention it as a proxy for staying on top of current developments. When a development hits the media, there will be a thread on it at HN, and that thread will contain entire arguments and links to curated sources. The question is where to start to research if you're not an engineer. This is a better place than most.
  - hackuser 12y ago
    It would be great if you could share some other curated resources (HN is curated) that are more efficient and publicly available. What do you like?
    - 3rd3 12y ago
      As I said, I don't know whether they exist. HN might be the best source for the people, but the supreme curt might have access to more efficient sources.

themartorana 12y ago

There is no straw man here. Yes, the article is poorly put together, starts with one thought and never finishes, etc. But the inability to truly understand the impact of technology on the country and the globe by the highest court in the land - and further inability to understand that much of that impact exists without deep historical context and outside traditional court definitions - is worrying. To think that this group of technology-illiterate academics can hand down judgments that can drastically alter the legality of future innovations - without understanding the most basic parts of those innovations - should give everyone pause. I'm sure their clerks are incredibly bright - but so are the lawyers standing before the Supreme Court - and if they can't explain the technology they're trying to defend to the justices, what makes you think a clerk can do better? It's incredibly easy to stifle innovation and its potential offspring for centuries by not understanding it.

wfjackson 12y ago
>But the inability to truly understand the impact of technology on the country and the globe by the highest court in the land - and further inability to understand that much of that impact exists without deep historical context and outside traditional court definitions - is worrying. >To think that this group of technology-illiterate academics can hand down judgments that can drastically alter the legality of future innovations - without understanding the most basic parts of those innovations - should give everyone pause. This is not the job of courts nor is it intended according to the US constitution. That job falls on the other two branches of the government i.e Congress that needs to make and update laws of the land and the executive which has some discretion on which are actually enforced etc. The job of the courts is only to see what the written word of laws means and get inside the heads of the lawmakers wrote that law at the time to try to learn the intent behind the law and how it applies to the case at hand. Thus analogies are perfectly appropriate to pursue. If Congress thinks that, for example, the Aereo decision was wrong and hurts innovation, they can pass legislation legalizing Aereo in probably just a week or two. It's not the court's job to decide that Aereo is good for innovation so it should be allowed to operate, even if it's illegal. It's the courts job to understand what Aereo is, and how the law and it's intent applies to it.
waterlesscloud 12y ago

j2kun 12y ago

I would also point out that the justices could simply say something like, "Could you please provide a definition of the term 'troll' for the court?" This shouldn't be considered clueless because even if the justice does know the definition, it establishes a record of the terms as they're used in what follows. I would hope that the reason we get these seemingly silly quotes is rather that the justices usually do this, and the occasional jokes result from boredom (even if they do show some misunderstanding).

arrrg 12y ago
It's an interesting question about the interesting etymology of the word. It certainly doesn't show any kind of illiteracy. How could you even begin to view it that way? That' span absurd interpretation of the words.

pessimizer 12y ago

I had a relative that was a appeals court clerk, and I definitely got calls to explain computer concepts and answer questions. I answered with metaphors and references that she could follow up on. The only way to approach something new is though analogy, right? I can't think of any other way.

wtallis 12y ago
> "The only way to approach something new is though analogy, right? I can't think of any other way." That's certainly true to an extent, but it also strikes me as the sort of thing you're a lot more likely to hear from a philosopher than a mathematician. Sure, you could try to understand computers by drawing analogies to televisions and typewriters and everything else that they can emulate, but that approach will always miss the rather fundamental concept of what it means for a machine to be a universal computer, capable of building complex processes out of a very small set of very simple operations. The analogies only serve as our inspiration for which algorithms to implement and what meaning to ascribe to the result of a computation that the machine was always capable of performing. You can gain useful knowledge about the capabilities of computers in a bottom-up fashion starting with a simple instruction set and building things, just like mathematicians can start with a set of axioms and explore their implications ad infinitum.