Having listened to the opening argument MP3s from the MGM vs. Grokster case, and occasionally perused transcripts of other cases, what I find interesting about the lawyer’s arguments and judge’s questions is the amatuer tone of the discussions. Lawyers and judges are of course not experts in all fields of human endeavour, but the legal system has to grapple with issues which arise from just about all of them. Since no one defends themselves in court anymore, the champions (lawyers) and arbitors (judges) of decisions which often rest on the sticky details of the real world are all second hand tourists of those details. The result, apparently, is a generalist tone of first-timers who spend a lot of their time nailing down the basic outlines of the situation. The lawyers and judges showcased here are clearly smart people with quick minds, but they still ain’t experts in the areas at hand.

It’s a bit familiar actually – it feels kind of like science. In the workaday world of scientific research a lot of the people involved aren’t really experts at what they are doing. I recognize this runs a bit counter to what you might assume, but the whole point of research science is to ask questions we don’t have answers to yet. Often, if we don’t have an answer and it’s a question worth asking, it’s because we hadn’t thought of a good way to ask the question: we hadn’t found a good technique or methodology or technology to probe the world with yet. When we find or invent one and start using it, we are often starting to use it, and don’t have anything like the refinement and wealth of experience that people who do applied work have with their tools – engineers, consultants, whatever. Scientists are mostly early adopters making it up as they go along without a frim grip on the fine controls. There are plenty of exceptions, but they are often in the more boring fields of research where the methodologies are old and creaky and people are just filling in the details of murals whose composition and colour scheme have already been settled on. Most of the exciting work runs along the 30/70 rule, or at least the 40/60 rule – applying the first 40% of the effort to get the first 60% of the results. Let the profit-motivated pro’s struggle into the steeper peaks of the effort-yield curve, there are no lack of important and downright interesting questions to take a first substantial whack at after this one.

Einstein said all this very succinctly: If we knew what it was were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.

The other flavour of the legal system that I find familiar is the extent to which pure rationality rules. There is no doubt that both science and law are diluted by subjectivity and selfishness, but compared to other arenas of decision making, it’s minor. The demand for shareholder-pleasing short term profit clouds corporate decision making like the breath of a dieing man on a mirror (er, or something) and even more poisonous to rational thought is the 4 year election cycle in politics. Compared to those, scientists judges and lawyers mostly sit around earnestly talking about and debating stuff trying to make up their minds. It’s the obvious way, but in a culture where external agendas insinuate every public discussion as an accepted matter of course, it has a startling feel when experienced.

Sort of a minty, fresh feeling.