News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by dragontamer on Friday August 05, 2022 @08:10PM (#32363440)
You're performing some kind of weird Russell's teapot applied to legal arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

* "There's a good argument for Elon Musk's side of the case out there, floating between Earth and Venus if only you'd look at it".

* "Oh, I'm not an astronomer, you shouldn't expect me to point out this teapot to you or tell you where it is".

Okaaaaaaaay. But that's not how discussions work in practice. I put forth the best arguments I'm aware of, and you put for the best arguments you've thought of, then we both evaluate the evidence for ourselves. That's... normally how discussions work.

If you're not interested in the legal minutia, then you don't have to discuss them with me? I'm not saying I'm a perfectly good lawyer myself (indeed, I'm an engineer). But there's value in the struggle to understand these things, even things outside of my field.

----------

The legal arguments for this case so far, are actually really simple. You don't need to be a lawyer to understand:

1. That the Court of Delaware has been chosen.

2. That the judge (Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick) has been chosen. She has set the date on October 2022. Her history of cases is public and well known.

3. The contract in question is public, well known, and well discussed.

All of these items are publicly available to you and me. Maybe I'll get some facts wrong, as I struggle to understand the case, but we're not exactly in rocket-science level or PH.D levels of legal theory here yet.

You're seemingly trying to make some kind of weird... meta-Argument like this is too complicated to understand? But its actually really simple so far.

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by Banana699 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @06:19AM (#32375322)
Acknowledging your ignorance and the limits of your capability is not Russell teapotting.

>If you're not interested in the legal minutia

How can I be interested in that which I don't even know ? I'm neither interested nor disinterested, I simply don't know. This doen't require a big brain to understand.

>The legal arguments for this case so far

Those are not arguments, what you listed are the facts of the case. Some of them are even 'future facts' that have not happened yet, but are scheduled to happen with high (but not certain) probability. All of those facts are and will be subject to the experience and argumentation of a team of lawyers who spent the last decades learning and practicing how to extract the most favorable interpretation out of any set of facts, and dismiss and trivialize those facts which can't be interpreted favorably.

Here is a game you can play with a person you know : Tell the person to select N public cases at random from a source you are not allowed to read. For each case, the person should tell you the facts of the case but not a single argument from the trial, the facts include anything known about the case prior to the trial. See if you can guess which party will win the case. How many cases out of N you think you will get correct on average ? You will not exceed 40%.

>All of these items are publicly available to you and me.

The entire history of China is publicly available to anyone with an internet connection, can anyone be a foreign diplomat to China ? A vast trove of medical and biological information is publicly available to anyone, can anyone be a doctor or even an assistent to one ?

Facts are not knowledge. Books are not knowledge. Records are not knowledge. These are "String Representations" of knowledge, crystallized and ossified remains of true knowledge, which are the mental representations inside the brains of people who studied and thought hard about the domain. You're not going to replicate those mental representations simply by reading their dead remains, you can say something, it's just not going to be very useful or truthful.

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by dragontamer on Sunday August 07, 2022 @06:42AM (#32375434)
> I'm neither interested nor disinterested

For someone "neither interested nor disinterested", you're making a lot of posts about this subject matter.

Don't you think that if you're in a topic posting about the Twitter vs Elon Musk court case, that you should at very least _PRETEND_ to have interest in this case? Or what are you trying to do to me, just waste my time with these replies of yours?

----------

I'm not saying you have to be _correct_ in your posts. All I'm asking is for you to be interested enough to seek the truth in the case before you write up a post.

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by Banana699 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @07:31AM (#32375679)
>For someone "neither interested nor disinterested", you're making a lot of posts about this subject matter.

Your statement was "If you're not interested in the legal minutia", and I replied that I'm neither interested nor disinterested, *in the legal minutia*.

I'm mildly interested in the outcome of case itself, namely my preferred outcome is that of Twitter losing as much value as possible and its users lose as much of their time and peace of mind as possible. I don't particualrly care how much Musk loses or wins.

This still doesn't need to imply I need to be interested in legalities. You can perfectly well be interested in your health without being interested in medicine and biology, you're interested in the 'what', not the 'how'; in the ends, not the means. I'm interested in a prticular outcome for a legal case, but not interested (and not necessarily disinterested either) in the legal intricacies of a country I don't live in when I'm not a lawyer.

>that you should at very least _PRETEND_ to have interest in this case

I don't need to pretend, I *am* interested in a very narrow thing about that case, namely that of twitter losing or signficantly suffering damage at least. I don't have to be interested in every single thing about that case to participate in the discussion, I mostly care about 1 thing and stated it very clearly all of my comments.

>All I'm asking is for you to be interested enough to seek the truth in the case before you write up a post.

I did read up 1 expert talk about Musk's legal chances posted here about 2 weeks ago, and he did give Musk low chances of winning according to several reasons I found convincing, but - like a true expert - he also acknowledged that he is (1) Not Musk's legal team or any one of them (2) Not in possesion of the full facts since he is not a party of the dispute or the judge (3) That there is enough stake on the matter, billions of dollars and reputation, that the judge can significantly hesitate and not be as straightforward as her history implies.

So that's enough for me to still have reasonable hopes that my preferred outcome is going to happen.

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by dragontamer on Sunday August 07, 2022 @08:01AM (#32375815)
> Your statement was "If you're not interested in the legal minutia", and I replied that I'm neither interested nor disinterested, in the legal minutia.

This topic is legal minutia of Twitter's counter-argument to Elon Musk's legal-claims. The very topic of discussion, is Musk's bot analysis tool behind his legal claims. (Which is beginning to look a lot like bullshit).

> Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

The topic of discussion. Are you interested in this topic or not? Do you have something relevant (not necessarily correct, but at least __relevant__) to the stated topic at hand?

Because as far as I can tell, you're just interested in publicly declaring that you're ignoring the topic of discussion.

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by Banana699 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @08:46AM (#32376069)
The topic of this entire HN discussion thread is, indeed, nominally about the legal minutia.

But the topic of the super comment we're both arguing in reply to is "Who could possibly be on the side of Musk", i.e. a question about the relative sympathy both sides of the legal dispute evoke. My reply to that, the one this entire sub-thread is a reply to, is that Musk evokes greater sympathy, because of how twatter abuses their power and position as a social media monopoly and how much this harms online conversations. So, in this particular scope, you're the one who is actually off-topic, my reply was about who I'm more sympathetic to.

>Do you have something relevant (not necessarily correct, but at least __relevant__) to the stated topic at hand

Do you mean the bot issue ? it's probably bullshit. Every social media cesspool is full of bots, some more, some less. There is no reason to think twatter is any better or worse on that particular front. It's probably instagram who's the filthiest bot playground.

I think its pretty obvious that Musk will try to milk every single point, fair or not, to improve his position in the court. Bullshit or not, it ties up important resources out of twatter's legal team and gives legitimacy to his claims (because if you spend several lawyers trying to debunk bullshit, then you at least take that bullshit seriously, which gives legitimacy to the bullshit).

So I don't understand what to discuss, Musk bullshitted ? no shit, he's billions-of-dollars committed to the case now, off course he's going to bullshit and do whatever it takes to win. What's interesting or novel about that ?

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by dragontamer on Sunday August 07, 2022 @10:08AM (#32376578)
So are you on Elon Musk's side on this case, and what evidence points you on Musk's side?

It's fine to have your own personal bias here. We all do. But at a minimum, discussing why we hold those views is beneficial for both of us.

If you are just anti-twitter then that's good that you are admitting that. It at least gives me something to work with from a discussion point of view. But ideally, you should be discussing why Twitters argument here is wrong and why you think they'd lose this court battle.

Re:Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called h... by Banana699 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @01:22PM (#32378037)
>So are you on Elon Musk's side on this case, and what evidence points you on Musk's side?

That would imply I want him to win, when in reality I just want twitter to lose. I don't particularly care what happens to Musk, I just want him to deal maximum damage to twitter, at whatever cost to him it takes.

>It's fine to have your own personal bias here. We all do. But at a minimum, discussing why we hold those views is beneficial for both of us.

I did say why I hate twitter and want them to lose this case: they are a bunch dumb anti-free-speechers who coddle certain groups and ban others arbitarily, and on top of that their terrible poisonous platform is not conducive to intelligent speech.

>why Twitters argument here is wrong and why you think they'd lose this court battle.

I don't have a particulary strong expectation that they will lose, indeed if anything their legal position is stronger than Musk, as the experts are fond of saying. My hope is that they will underestimate Musk and do something dumb that will hurt their position and force a favorable concession that will hurt them more. Even if they win, that might anger or humiliate Musk so much that he destroys twitter out of anger, this is still fine by me.