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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1171 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 27, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Let's say I enjoy the writing style of court opinion excerpts like Wilkinson in Owners Ins. Co. v. Walsh and Wilkinson in Abrego Garcia v. Noem.

Does anyone have either a) a repository of other similarly-written court opinions, or b) one-off examples?

I was having a conversation with someone about how rich people or large corporations being able to afford the best lawyers gives them a massive advantage in leveraging the legal system as a weapon against smaller actors. My instinctive naive solution was to enact a rule that any legal expenses must be matched by an equal donation to the opponent’s legal fund. The idea being that if you genuinely believe the law is on your side, you shouldn’t have to outspent the opposing side by X million dollars to prove it. Supposing this rule magically came to be, would this actually solve the issue and are there any major flaws/unintended consequences I've overlooked?

Alternatively, suppose the US had a true two-party state (instead of just a de facto one, since it gets more complicated with more than two opposing factions). Would an analogous rule for campaign contributions (any contribution to Democrats must be matched by an equal donation to Republicans and vice versa) work to reduce big-money influence in politics?

The side that believes more strongly in its case will pay all the legal fees.

It's a much bigger problem than this: Most laws favor the entrenched & powerful by default unless very carefully designed not to. This is one reason why large companies often are neutral or even actively lobby for extra regulation. THEY can afford a large legal department for compliance. Smaller competitors, not so much. This is completely independent of whether a law is also deliberately designed to boost specific actors.

And it gets worse once you consider politically entrenched powers. A new law to limit political donations to specific parties in the vein you are considering? Well, WE are only unaffiliated NGOs defending democracy, YOU are obviously a thinly veiled campaign contribution, so all money spent on you needs to be added to the fund of our the other side!

Turns out, helping the genuinely weak compete is pretty hard. Usually you just end up helping a different faction of elite. And even if you design a law that helps bring down a powerful actor, the same law can often be used to bring down anyone, which means it destabilises the entire system.

If you subsidize lawyers, you'll get more of them. There are already way too many lawyers in Anglosphere countries.

https://www.americanbar.org/news/profile-legal-profession/demographics/

The largest increase in lawyers occurred in the 1970s, when the number of lawyers jumped 76% — from 326,000 in 1970 to 574,000 in 1980.

WTH happened in 1971 may well have something to do with lawyers.

What’s the advantage of this over ‘loser pays’?

Personal injury lawyers would take a haircut, but I think that’s a good thing. The ghetto lottery should be harder to get.

To the extent that more expensive lawyers are actually better at winning cases, it reduces the role of raw monetary advantage in deciding who wins.

To the extent that the costs of defending a suit are comparable to the costs of prosecuting one, it reduces the effectiveness of intimidation suits.

A 'loser pays' system still allows the rich to apply significant stress simply by suing someone without the resources to mount a proper defense and in some situations would even doubly screw over the defense if they lose more due to weaker representation rather than by the merits of the case.

Supposing this rule magically came to be, would this actually solve the issue and are there any major flaws/unintended consequences I've overlooked?

If you get sued, does this rule still apply? In other words, does the defendant have to supply money to the plaintiff's legal fund? Because if so I think patent trolls get 100x worse with this proposal.

Doesn't the plaintiff need to hire lawyers to draw up and file the case? I fully admit to ignorance here, but I imagined the plaintiff as first-mover, so they would pay an amount for a legal team to create a suit and deposit the equivalent amount for the defendant to hire a team an create a response? Any extra the defendant spends must be declared and must be matched for the plaintiff to spend, then this repeats iteratively?

Yeah. Patent trolls acquire portfolios of vague patents, and then mass-file suits against companies that might plausibly be argued to be infringing those patents, in the hopes that the company settles to make them go away. Filing is cheap for the plaintiff (patent troll).

If the defendant (the company accuded of infringement) fights the case, they have to spend a ton of money on expert witnesses, discovery, etc.

Under this proposal, the defendant would, in addition to the usual expenses, also have to contribute to the patent troll's war chest.

If the patent troll and the legal firm representing them, you could end up with the following situation

  1. Patent troll cheaply files hard-to-defend suit, contributes $500 to defendant's legal fund
  2. Defendant decides to fight case, spends $100,000 on expert witnesses and discovery, then contributes $99,500 to plaintiff's legal fund
  3. Plaintiff spends $99,500 on the firm they hired to drag the case out as much as possible and otherwise do whatever they want at astronomical rates
  4. Plaintiff loses their meritless case
  5. Situation is
    • Plaintiff has lost $1,000 ($500 on filing fees, $500 on defendant'slegal fund)
    • Defendant has lost $199,000 ($100,000 on expenses, $99,500 on plaintiff's defense fund, minus the $500 received from plaintiff)
    • Plaintiff's legal team has made $99,500 doing a few hours of easy work
  6. Plaintiff's legal firm kicks back $50,000 to plaintiff under the table.

The plaintiff gains $50,000 every time they file and lose a case in this system.

Is the burden of proof not on the plaintiff? I thought it was almost always intrinsically harder to prosecute a patent case than to defend. Broadly, aren't differences usually easier to spot than similarities?

Of course, kick-backs of any sort would have to be heavily regulated and harshly punished.

Is the burden of proof not on the plaintiff? I thought it was almost always intrinsically harder to prosecute a patent case than to defend

It is fairly hard to prosecute a patent case and win if the defendant fights you. But if the defendant doesn't defend themselves pretty easy to win, it's a civil case so the standard is preponderance of evidence not beyond a reasonable doubt (disclaimer: ianal).

Of course, kick-backs of any sort would have to be heavily regulated and harshly punished.

Why don't we start with getting this proposal implemented robustly since it seems to be a hard prerequisite, and see where we end up at that point?

are there any major flaws/unintended consequences I've overlooked?

Define "legal expenses".

The first thing I'd do if faced with those rules is outsource everything from the law office. Instead of the lawyers hiring a forensic accountant to review the accounts, the accounting department would hire them and provide the report to the lawyers for free. Instead of lawyers hiring a mock jury, the marketing department would hire a research panel. If you allow splitting hairs enough, then the compliance team does legal research and provides it for free to the litigation team.

Even without deliberate dodging, large corporations simply have a lot of those resources available from other departments, and the incremental cost to get the lawyers that information is near-zero.

You'd need a set of ancillary rules for these kinds of loopholes with additional regulations on lawyers to maintain papertrail records "showing their work" and some sort of audit system in place. Indeed it may be that no effective system to prevent this kind of activity exists, but I'd hope the core rule at least makes it marginally more difficult to just overwhelm someone by outspending?

The danger with that is that the line is blurry. If you're too strict, then Joe Random gets gifted ten million dollars just for filing a lawsuit against Google, because they have corporate-standard recordkeeping, auditing, and accounting which is helpful to lawyers.

How about as long as materials are shared in full (i.e., not cherry picked) to the opposing party, the relevant expenses do not need to be matched? Seems about as enforceable as insider trading rules?

Then all that information is practically public. I don't think that's a very palatable solution.

Supposing this rule magically came to be, would this actually solve the issue and are there any major flaws/unintended consequences I've overlooked?

Even more incentive for lawyers to drag everything out forever.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Lovecraft and the Iliad. Trying Postman and Weingartner's Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

I finished Alastair Reynold’s Absolution Gap. There was a lot to like, but it was extremely confused as a novel. More thoughts to follow.

Currently reading The Fool Lieutenant, Bob Edlin’s autobiography of his time with the Army Rangers. Writing is a bit more amateurish than some of the memoirs I’ve read. This doesn’t detract from the charm and/or awe. We’re talking about a guy who was shot in both legs on Omaha Beach because he wouldn’t stay down after the first one. Then he spent two or three months in the hospital before shipping himself back to his unit and participating in the rest of the liberation of France. Tremendous badass.

I bought my girlfriend Mina's Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa for Christmas, which she loved and urged me to read. About a third of the way through and I don't know where the story is going yet. Pretty cool that one of the main characters has her own pet Moo Deng which she rides to school every day.

The Neon Court (Matthew Swift #3) by Kate Griffin. Fun series, I'd probably love it even more if I were a Brit and I might absolutely adore it if I were a Londoner. Or perhaps in that case, I'd think it was shite.

Pictures at a Revolution about movies in the 60s.

Casino Royale. No corny gadgets so far, just plot, characters and setting.

The film is the only one of the Daniel Craig Bond movies I've seen. I rewatched it in January and found it held up quite well (Mads Mikkelsen, in particular, is magnificent). Curious how it compares to the source material.

That's pretty much why I chose it, I like reading the seminal pieces of genre fiction to see how they compare to their popular depictions.

Unfortunately the subsequent Bond films slowly regressed closer to the mean and I gave up on them entirely after watching Skyfall.

I thought the last Daniel Craig film, No Time to Die, was surprisingly quite good. Not amazing or anything but very solid, some memorable chase scenes and action, good actors, good enough plot. Some people hated it because Bond dies at the end but I thought it was a good send-off for the Craig series of movies.

It stays pretty close to the plot of the source material. The only major changes are geopolitics updates (LeChiffre is a terrorist financier rather then a KGB agent), and making up excuses to actually have action scenes. This makes it pretty rare among other Bond movies, which usually range between loose adaptations (Goldfinger), very loose adaptations (Moonraker) and “we just grabbed the title and made up our own plot” (most of the rest of them).

It's been years since I've read Casino Royale but FWIW, ISTR coming away from it thinking that the movie was a good overall adaptation of the book.

Decent book. Primal spy novel with Fleming's distinctive, somewhat cheesy cold war sentiments. Different feel from the films which made it worth the time, but I can't say that I craved a sequel.

Some lines in that book are interesting to read in 2025. In particular how Bond describes his desire for Vesper.

To be fair, a lot of Fleming’s writing was considered unusually puerile and trashy even contemporaneously.

While this seems true, arguably this was from literary circles, who would also have panned amy number of popular novels for the masses.

I'm thinking specifically about the "sweet tang of rape" line. Don't get me wrong, I've read all the Bond books except The Spy Who Loved Me ( I couldn't handle the jarring perspective change). But that line sort of sticks in the head.

Books on investing with dubious looking covers. They're good though. The old idiom applies.

Edit: idiom is the wrong word. :/ Should have said proverb or adage.

Weingartner's

Is this the same one who’s the head of the American federation of teachers?

Nope, this one's Charles. It's an old book (1969) on the inquiry method.

What AI is the best for combing the Internet and synthesizing opinions without hallucinating? I'm a teacher trying to edit together compelling but accurate video montages using clips accurately depicting content. These clips can come from works that are overall inaccurate or of mixed accuracy. I don't have time to find and watch all potentially relevant movies (and many are not in English) and can't be an expert on all subject matter, so I need AI to scour the Internet and synthesize me a list of these movies and scenes so I can take them. Which AI would be best for this? The children will thank you!

You can look into Pictori AI, Runway (Gen-1 & Gen-2) and Descript for generating videos using stock footage or your own clips.

You can use OpenAI Sora or Runway Gen 2 to generate videos from text or image inputs.

As far as scraping the internet and using those videos, that's kind of problematic for legal reasons.

Claude has web-search option, and it's reasonably good. I have a paid subscription plan ($20 per month), so I am not sure whether that option is available for free.

Not a clue, sorry, I've never done it. Perplexity AI is a name I've heard but no idea if it's any good.

What preparation if any have you been doing for the possibility of tariffs?

I've bought approximately five pairs of sneakers in the past two weeks, to try to get ahead of potential supply disruptions on the one brand of sneakers that actually fit my weird wide flat feet.

None. I think the impact of tariffs will turn out to be wildly overrated. I have no actual empirical basis for that belief or an articulable mechanism, I just kind of don't believe that Nike is actually going to have more than a marginal price change. Maybe I'll be wrong, but my current stance is that "tariffs don't work" will be even more true than many people believe.

Assume that the Congress decides to impose universal age of consent in all states. And pull from their ass the authority to do it. What do you think the current culture war coalitions and factions will push for and will it create intracoallition splits.

Hardline Religious conservatives hard - 21 with exception for marriage
Moderate Religous conservatives - 18
Centrists/liberals - they will look at Europe and see that the world didn't ended and probably say that it is 16 with romeo and juliet clause
Feminists - probably a split here - some will push for maximum, other for 16
Andrew tate fans - hard 14
Anime fans - soft 14
LGBTQ+ - a spectrum based on the how activist they are ranging from 16 to 12.

No idea about how will it go based on race and income

The culture has been pushing for later and later ages. Most people seem to assume it's already 18 and I sometimes see people arguing for 25.

Thus, returning to the original no-tech biology-based standard: 0 for men, infinite for women (except when married).

The cultures that think there should be that age of consent are the only ones that think an AoC should exist in the first place (the liberals are, famously, much less likely to think it should exist in the first place, or if it does they argue for 10-14 for “they should be allowed to have it when their bodies tell them to seek it” reasons- traditionalists confuse these guys for progressives all the time because “muh 70s” though).

They’re mostly arguing over small details, like the uniform you have to wear to fuck young boys (some people see this more traditionally- teachers, clergy (but I repeat myself), but progressives also consider men wearing dresses and certain skin colors to be one of those uniforms; and “allowed” as in they judge their mission to be so important that the correct amount of tolerable abuse by these people is not 0) and who the balance of power in a relationship must ultimately rest with (man for traditionalists, woman for progressives, a minor distinction given an equal society).

Hardline Religious conservatives hard - 21 with exception for marriage Moderate Religous conservatives - 18 Centrists/liberals - they will look at Europe and see that the world didn't ended and probably say that it is 16(.)

So, let me get this straight:

Hardline religious conservatives in Congress, many hailing from states like or constituencies resembling Alabama and Arkansas and Ohio (16) are going to set the age at 21, while the liberals from California (18) and New York (17) are going to set it at 16.

Full list here. The plurality is 16, though we all seem pretty comfortable enforcing CP laws built around 18, and you have most of the big important states (CA, NY, TX, VA, FL) higher than 16. There's actually not much of a pattern to Red/Blue: FL and CA are both 18, TX and NY are both 17, Massachusetts and Alabama are both 16. Either this issue is simply not one actually considered,

Fighting the hypo a little: if we were to see a movement form to actually pass such a law, it would undoubtedly need some passionate movement behind it, and the passion right now comes from the "SHE WAS JUST A 28 YEAR OLD BABY YOU SICK FUCK" age-gap end of things. We'd need a movement similar to Prohibition: an alliance of women and Southern Baptists. I could genuinely imagine a scenario where we get some kind of insane age-gap law that took the Romeo and Juliet law approach and tried to set the "true" age of consent at 25, with a R+J rule set at 5 years and an exception for marriage. Feminists call it a law against exploiting young women (sub rosa: against young women stealing husbands!), the Qanon caucus calls it an Epstein law, the rump-remnant of the Evangelicals is happy with any law that both serves to restrict fornication and inserts the government back into sexual morality, a bunch of IdPol types on both sides find ways to make it about protecting preferred races against the exploitation of disfavored races. Zoomer online discourse around age gaps is truly insane, older voters are broadly more conservative and will relish inserting themselves into young people's sex lives. Only 8% of couples have an age gap bigger than ten years.

That's how I could see it happening.

Closer to your hypo, if everyone for some reason was forced to vote on it tomorrow, I think we'd land on 18 with a 4 year R+J, and at least at first blush without time to propagandize we wouldn't see much partisan breakdown, the state list shows no pattern and if there were a strong partisan pattern it would show up in state legislatures. That seems to be the direction that more recently passed laws are going, I don't know the last time a state truly lowered the AoC.

We've definitely wind up with 18. My personal stance is that this is pretty stupid and 16 is fine but the incentives against arguing that publicly substantially outweigh any gain from just shrugging and saying, "well, there ya go I suppose".

Provided there's sufficient leeway for similarly aged young people to get together with their peers without the government getting involved, I don't really see what difference it makes on the margins between 15-19. I suppose there's some May-December, or April-August, marriages that get prevented; but that doesn't strike me as an overly tragic outcome.

Nobody will be willing to advocate for anything other than 18 with a shotgun wedding exception, most like.

Right now yeah, but as things are I can see some frustrations that might be able to set the stage for future agitation to finally stop the advancing postponement of adulthood. (By the time my sister felt "ready" to have kids she was pressing up against a geriatric pregnancy.) Right now the biggest rhetorical weapon against young adults is this idea that your brain isn't finished developing until 25.

Maybe more research discovers that this delayed development is of no real use. Maybe we recognize that most things we ask adults to take responsibility for do not require that your brain reach some state we can only even notice with brain scans. Maybe we suddenly remember that, oh, not long after 25 your brain starts un-developing and we don't gradually strip legal privileges of people as they age (unless it causes the failure of some qualification, e.g. driver's license, but age will not per se disqualify you!).

Right now the biggest rhetorical weapon against young adults is this idea that your brain isn't finished developing until 25.

Uh, no it’s not. I’m sure it gets cited in the occasional thinkpiece, but how much does that translate into zoomers’ decisions? Have you ever seen an adult say, “sorry, I can’t, my brain isn’t developed enough”?

Today’s twentysomethings are getting out of college with alarming debt and questionable prospects. They’re looking at rampant inflation of credentials, let alone prices. Cars are expensive. Housing ie worse. Insurance is fucked. There is a sense that someone is benefiting and they know it can’t be them.

COVID-era remote school and work derailed their social lives. Social media, a poor surrogate at the best of times, metastasized into something actively discouraging. They are constantly reminded that the world is struggling, with the people in charge malicious and/or incapable. No matter what they believe, they are reassured that half the country hates them and will dismantle anything they like on principle.

Given a choice, more of them are choosing to hunker down and hope for better times.

but how much does that translate into zoomers’ decisions? Have you ever seen an adult say, “sorry, I can’t, my brain isn’t developed enough”?

Uh, yes it is. It's a very common sentiment. "My brain isn't developed how can I be expected to pick what I'll do for a living for the rest of my life?" "My brain isn't even finished developing why can I be drafted into combat?" (in your time this probably referenced legal drinking age in place of a reference to brain development). I've heard it used in stand-up comic bits. I don't have examples handy because I legitimately thought this wouldn't be denied, but you're just wrong here in my experience.

Uh, no it’s not. I’m sure it gets cited in the occasional thinkpiece, but how much does that translate into zoomers’ decisions? Have you ever seen an adult say, “sorry, I can’t, my brain isn’t developed enough”?

I have heard over-25s and under-25s alike all state this, and the problem with the over-25s who are also parents is that their kids hear that and take this seriously... and then, just as you'd expect, they proceed to shut the fuck down and never amount to anything (creating the "incompetent, risk-averse youths" problem).

And you know what? If I spent my entire fucking life having adults (and their power structures) scream the exact functional equivalent of "YOU STUPID NIGGER!"[1] at me I'd actually think the target's response of "everything out there is dangerous and Not For Children, so time to lie flat" is completely and eminently reasonable!

Besides, delaying [personality changes that are supposed to happen at] puberty has no consequences whatsoever, right? Just give them the [sociological] puberty blockers and they'll turn out well-adjusted, I'm sure.

[1] Too much melanin hormones in the brain just makes them inferior, end of story. We have a lot of scientific literature backing it up- it's not discrimination if they actually are inferior, after all.

Eighteen is the compromise between ‘c’mon now, teenagers obviously need the guidance of their elders’ and ‘they can’t stay kids forever’ we’ve already settled on as a society. Is it intrinsically better than 16? Only by already being established. For that reason I don’t see that changing.

Your formatting is broken. Add two spaces at the end of a line if you want a line break after that line.

(I don't have an informed opinion on the question.)

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