Slashdot Mirror
Washington Finds Computer Simulation Unreliable
Toadpipe writes "Washington State Court of Appeals reverses a conviction in which a computer simulation had been the main evidence. Quoting 'At issue was PC-Crash, a computer program distributed by Vancouver, B.C.-based MacInnis Engineering Associates. The program recreates traffic collisions using simulations and reconstructions.
"PC-Crash had not been validated for the purpose for which the evidence was offered, simulation and prediction of multiple-occupant movement within a vehicle during a multiple-collision accident," the Court of Appeals said in ordering a new trial. "There is no general acceptance in the relevant scientific community of the use of the PC-Crash program for the purposes to which it was put."' Here is
the Court's opinion."
Are they going to stop accepting my Grand Theft Auto murder re-enactments?
So I can't get a pilot license just for playing with Flight Simulator?
Was this a MicroSoft product by any chance?
In other news, the Oval office informs all good citizens of United States that Kyoto computer simulations are no longer valid.
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
uncertified.
Anyone can say that they're an expert. The court system requires that if you're going to present evidence, you better have some credentials. This program, apparently, did not have the proper credentials.
wouldn't the ammount the people doing the sim affect the simulation? Lets say im doing a sim about quarks, the only real thing i know about them is that protons, nuetron, and electron are made out of them. One the other hand i could do a sim on my daily habit. I know exactally what i do so i could code the sim many times better.
JFK Reloaded
Every part on a car would need to be tested for strength, width, height, depth, shape, mass, the connections holding it to another part, and that bolt tested...You get the idea. You would also need the conditions that happened the second the crash occured. Road type, amount of friction, temperature, slope, etc. As a juror I would never trust a computer simulation.
My PC crashes quite reliably actually.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
The program has not been validate for accuracy of what it simulates by the community at large. Therefore, it was dropped, and it cannot be accepted as evidence. I don't see this story as newsworthy.
"Dammit, that thing said I could stand up in the boat!"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'd like them to stop accepting photo radar data. The cities in my area have switched to digital photography. Currently one's only out is to request the Plaintiff to produce the calibration records for the system for the day of the ticket and hope that they don't have that data.
I'd be okay with photo radar and with red light cameras if they were used to bolster the Prosecution/Plaintiff, like if there were a car accident and the red light camera data were used to show that the cited person (by the officer on the scene) had indeed run the light, and that the officer was correct. The current system of using photography with near-automatic conviction deprives people of privacy. If the police want to cite people for speeding or for any other traffic violation then they need to get out there with people who will be required to testify as to what they saw; people who actively claim the count in the charge, not some computer or desk-jockey who analyses data after the fact.
Of course, I also have the opinion that if there's no victim then there's no crime. Take this as you will.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You're kidding.... ....right?
Can anyone else verify this story for me?
A trillion simulations will always be outweighed by one real test.
Both people would be alive if they had been wearing seatbelts instead of being flung from the car when they crashed.
Yes, on a related technological point, I once noted here at Slashdot, that we as Americans tend to over engineer. In the process, we make everything complex. After the recent missile interceptor failures, I am now even more hungry for good news. Who knows whether simulations relied on in earlier days were never valid at all? Now there is this news too....where should I stop?
It's ok to moderate down, you know...
I know, I may have to turn in my /. account.
/sarcasm off
I would like to see more of this kind of common sense in life today.
The story states both occupants were ejected from the car in the accident. The prosecution is quoted as saying their key element of the case was that part of the passenger door was melted on the dead guy.
So which was it? Did the dead guy stay there and take the burn, or get ejected? Did the car sit for awhile burning, and take off again?
I will make the specific conclusion from the vast amount of data in the article that there was enough doubt to go around in this case.
To often attorneys for both sides put up a George Lucas light show in order to sell their version to a jury. Matters are not helped by the fact that jury selection all to often resembles a Jerry Springer casting call.
I've seen the software in question used in a trial (once). What I saw seemed to be a believable representation of an elastic collision between vehicles. At no time were there any renderings, or mention of what happened INSIDE the vehicles. But then again, you know what they say about prepared demos...
I run PC Crash* on my computer too.
*windows
Even the summary belies the headline (and the article torpedoes it). The conviction was overturned because the software was not validated for the use for which it was used. The court made no comment on its reliability...they left that up to the scientific and engineering community. Based solely upon the court's comments and the article, it sounds like a good decision to me.
=h=
I have a more general problem with red-light radar (and most red-light radar) - it's "teaching to the test." Or in this case, "enforcing laws that are easily mechanized, not laws that are most critical to public safety."
The biggest problem I face on the road are tailgaters and the guys who cut me off at interstate speeds and the morons who barrel out of parking lots at 20 mph without checking for traffic and the idiots who think "right turn on red" has right of way over people already on the road. Hell, even the superjock riding his bike far too fast for me to see him approaching as I cross the bike path... and he wrongly believes that he, not I, have right of way. (Pedestrians do, but in this state mounted bikes are "vehicles" and bike paths are "secondary roads.") As if it will matter when he hits my car (or vice versa), other than me suing his estate to repair my car's paint job.
People who run red lights or are speeding between lights on limited access roads? Not A Problem. Maybe once every few years I'll nearly get clobbered by some moron who goes through an intersection at high speed long after the light changed, but that's reckless driving, not merely running a red light. The latter should remain illegal, but a low enforcement priority unless it's an ongoing serious problem at a specific location.
So why do we see more and more red-light X systems? Because they're cheap revenue sources. To actually make driving safer you have to hire more cops and put them in more unmarked cars and get them out on the street where they can nail the guys who really are hazards to other drivers. Not guys going 45 in a 35 zone because that's what the heavy traffic is doing and it would be far more dangerous to obey the law than to break it. Or the guy who's behind a truck and doesn't know the light has turned red until he's already in the intersection.
How long until the laws themselves are written on the basis of what's easily enforceable, not on the basis of what harms others?
And the guy in Denver who put a photo-radar system on the interstate onramp where traffic is always at least 15 mph over the posted speed limit? The cop who lectured my HS class wants to talk to you - he assured tens of thousands of us that no cop would ever, under any circumstances, ticket us for going over the speed limit in order to merge with traffic. (We were supposed to gradually slow down once merged.) Ticket or being flattened by a semi? Hmm, which will it be? Ticket or being flattened by a semi. Gee, that's such a hard decision. Not.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
How odd. My Judicial Appeal Simulator gave no indication that this ruling would occur.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
"As you can see from this computer simulation, the driver was in fact distracted by the 20 foot high Blue Screen of Death standing on the opposite corner of the intersection..."
Task Mangler
I hope this court decision doesn't have a dampening effect on automobile-accident-simulation research. It would be a shame to lose such a potentially useful tool. Too many times we've seen technology fail just because people tried to roll it out too soon, before it was truly ready.
The current system basically entails putting an expert on the stand and asking his/her opinion. I fail to see why this same system doesn't apply to the software. Of course it's not going to be perfect, but neither is an expert's testimony. So why can't this be considered something of an "expert" on crash simulation?
no problem, just reboot.
-pyrrho
This is something I have been wanting to write about for some time - in short the premise for my question/argument is: since the general public (to include the professional community of disciplines outside of IT support/development) has been exposed to so much "fuzzy" logic when dealing with computers, has this in fact relegated the computing professional community to explain itself over and over again for mistakes in software or related hardware? In other words although the general public very much believe in scientific research and forensic/medical "science" they are more likely to question computer related scientific findings as mentioned in this article? I mean really where are all these people going to place the frustration of having to close all those pop-ups? - Any help?
... if music be fruit of love, play on
The up-side is that most pro-audio types won't accept the "simulation" quality of MP3s, so this could be a great precedent for RIAA battles ;)
In related news, the Slashdot community have dismissed the post's title - "Washington Finds Computer Simulation Unreliable" - as being inconsistent with the article, or indeed even the summary of the article directly beneath the title.
At issue was the word "Unreliable", which implies some comment on the accuracy of the software in question. The article, however, consistently states that the software "had not been validated for the purpose for which the evidence was offered", a far more sensible claim.
"Titles of Slashdot posts have not been validated for the purpose for which this one was offered, simulation and prediction of the content of the article itself," a Slashdot representative stated. "There is no general acceptance in the relevant online community of the use of article titles as a substitute for R-ing TFA."
CowboyNeal was not available for comment.
There seems to be much less to this story than the slashdot submission seems to insinuate.
The court didn't find that software simulation was categorically disallowed as evidence. It didn't even find that the PC-CRASH application was inadmissible in general. It just found that this particular software in modeling this particular event had not been shown to satisfy expert consensus.
Maybe PC-CRASH will in the future be shown reliable for this type of modeling. Maybe it will be shown to be inaccurate. Maybe the makers will enhance the software to demonstrably cover this type of event. None of these are anything terribly profound, and none have any great moral for the intersection of law and software.
Buy Text Processing in Python
as any college student can tell you. Ever wonder why physicists leave out friction and air resistance when making up the formulae? Because those are especially tricky.
Any simulation represents a subset of reality - - the quality of the simulation depends on how large this subset is.
When a car-crash simulator that accounts not only for the vectors, but also the exact conditions of the road, the exact nature of the cars, and friction (maybe air resistance!), I'll see it acceptable as the crux of an argument in court, or even peripheral evidence.
The devil is in the details.
boyd allin of macinnis engineering associates, inc., the distributor of pc- crash for north america, emphasized that the multi-body model pc-crash program had not been validated for use in modeling the interaction of occupants within the vehicle interior, and that heusser's use represented 'an overextension of the capabilities of the model.'
While they're at it they could do something
truly useful by making DNA evidence inadmissable
in court for the prosecution. DNA should only
be allowed by the defense to exonerate an accused
person. DNA evidence is *way* to easy to plant
and/or misinterpret.
I remember ten years ago, gradebook software calculated grades incorrectly. It was used in thousands of schools.
I was a high school student at the time, doing a little part-time work for a company writing a competitor. We actually discovered this after hand testing our calculations by hand. Our calculations were right. But what other tests could we do? We figured we'd try their numbers and see if we got the same results. We didn't. Surely it was our problem, since we weren't on the market yet? No, it was their problem.
I had a 18% grade swing as a result of pointing this out to my chemistry teacher. She apologized over and over again. We also reporterd it anonymously to the company, which fixed it in their next version. But I discovered last year that as of two years ago my high school was still using the same version of the same flawed program, and it was still generating incorrect grades.
A younger friend of mine pointed this out to the teachers. The response was the same as ten years ago: "Of course it's right, the computer did it."
This is absolutely astonishing. It means that final grades produced by thousands of schools are not according to the criteria specified by the teachers and/or school and/or school district. If they are right, it is only the happiest of coincidences.
Here's the actual website for the piece of software in discussions.
http://www.maceng.com/pc_crash/
Looks like a very interesting piece of physics simulation applied to specific situation software. They also have AVI of the simulation in action here.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
PC Crash? Is this what the official name for Longhorn will be?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The unreliability wasn't the software's fault, it was due to operator misuse-- rather than following the normally expected operating procedure for an accurate simulation, the prosecution apparently just dropped all the simulated humans into a swimming pool and then deleted the ladders
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This may be shocking, but I am actually familiar with both this software and the process of giving expert testimony. PC-Crash is one of several *Crash* programs provided by different vendors that share a common lineage. It and its sister programs are used extensively in accident reconstruction and the results are presented to juries every day. The core of these *Crash* programs are a series of well-established (although certainly not perfect) algorithms and physical properties related to vehicle dynamics. The problem here was the extension to occupant dynamics, not the use of simulation programs in general.
You may now return to your regular uniformed ranting.
Is that what you get when a Turing machine wins a 5-night stay in Hawaii?
Ironic that you would claim that people are too trusting in your title and yet provide no factual evidence in your post. Care to name any names of the software involved? If it really is such a large scale problem, surely you would want people to know what programs are involved in it. If you are scared for some pathetic reason of litigation, reply to this post as an AC or else post as your real account. If you will do neither then formally buzz the hell off.
I wouldn't be surprised one bit if it was Easy Grade Pro. Frankly, that's some of the shadiest software I have ever run across. Our high school used this in 99.9% of every classroom, the other 0.1% were classrooms that did grading by hand. It was absolutely amazing how easy it was to fix peoples grades. Simply changing the weight of a single test could raise everyones grade by X%--and it never showed up on a printout. Sure, some people in our English and Government classes ended up with 118%, but, the computer did it, so how could it be wrong? ;)
Vehicle crashes are way more complex than anything we could currently think of.
Nonsense. Vehicle crashes are actually fairly straightforward to model so long as you have sufficient data. And trust me, the data exists. I've worked for several years as a simulation engineer for a major Tier-One auto supplier.
Every part on a car would need to be tested for strength, width, height, depth, shape, mass, the connections holding it to another part, and that bolt tested...
Guess what? Automotive firms do this. All of it. Finite element analysis, Dynamic simulations, virtual crash testing, genetic product shaping, and a host of other computer simulation is applied to products as well as the processes used to make them these days. Not only did we simulate parts like tubing but we also simulated the hydro-forming and stamping processes used to make the parts. It's a LOT cheaper than real world prototyping and destructive testing.
Sure there is a lot of number crunching but in case you hadn't noticed, computing power is cheap. The physics and materials science involved is well understood and there are easy ways to create 3D models of entire vehicles. The models don't run in real time but that's not necessary to get useful data.
As a juror I would never trust a computer simulation.
Depends on the simulation. Remember this phrase, "all models are wrong, some models are useful". Every non-trivial financial, physical, chemical, process and any other sort of model any engineer creates is wrong. The only real question is by how much. A simulation model could provide useful insight. Heck lawyers are creating models of their interpretation of events in the court room. Would I convict someone of a crime simply on a computer model alone? Hell no! (and remember I make simulation models all the time) A simulation's results are highly dependant on the data fed into it so no they cannot tell the whole story.
All a simulation can do is tell you whether a certain set of conditions is likely to produce a particular result. Interpreted correctly, a simulation will never give an answer, merely a probability of a result given the conditions and assumptions. Engineers don't get paid to make simulations. That's actually rather easy (most of the time) believe it or not. We get paid to create useful models and interpret the results. To give them meaning and context. Could a simulation be useful in a trial? By itself, no. But as a part of the evidence? Sure. One just has to be VERY careful about understanding the assumptions and data that went into it. Lies, damn lies and statistics...
I've done some work with simulations (not auto-crash ones) and after reading all that, it sounds like the prosecution was trying to use the simulation (pc-crash) to prove their side of the case (which is reasonable, I guess.) The defense could have made a good case by using the exact same program, inputting different variable values until they obtained THEIR interpretation of what happened. As a juror, seeing both sets of results coming out of the same program would create some real doubts as to whether the program can really show what happened, or only what one side wants to present.
There, fixed. Now it makes sense. Doesn't anybody proof read these titles before posting stories?
PC-Crash sounds like a dodgy name.
They could've used engineering programs like: CATIA, Pro Engineer, Strand/Straus, or any other FEA (Finite Element Analysis) program and apply the right forces to the element to come up with a half decent result. However, if you've ever used any of them, you'd know the immensity of constructing an accurate model.
I can't judge PC-Crash. Maybe it is useful and accurate, however, the blurb says it was not "certified" or accepted for the senario it was used for.
I think this goes back to using the right tool for the job.
"Nothing to see here, move along!" is probably the right thing to say for this article.
a simulation of a type of crash is VERY different from trying to repeat a particular complex real life crash in a simulator.
fish and pipes
Maybe PC-Crash just needs some time to "evolve."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"Let's plug it in. It's going to say, hey I see you've plugged in a new device, and it's going to load in the appropriate drivers. You'll notice that this scanner, Bill........whoa!"
That must be uh, that must be why they're not shipping the new Windows Media Center yet.
Thing is... it's not really an engineering program. Not a design engineering program. (It is a forensic engineering program, though, in that it's usually applied by MEs)
It's based on CRASH3 (originally designed by some ex-NASA folks at Cornell) and the PC-Crash version runs on a PC and greats output animations and other nifty eyecandy.
You cannot, even in theory, predict how a human with arms and legs banging around will move in a complex crash. It's chaotic, in the formal mathematical sense of the world. That is, an arbitrarily small change in the initial conditions can create a large change in the outcome. In Falling Bodies, if you change the low order digit of a double precision number in the initial conditions for a fall down a staircase, the simulations will start to diverge after about a second, and the fall may end quite differently.
I had this discussion a few years ago with an Army officer who was trying to reduce accidents in parachute landings, and was considering using Falling Bodies. I talked him out of it.
Auto collisions can be simulated well because there's one big mass that dominates the simulation. So you get a deterministic result within some error limits. Multibody systems with joints and links are quite different.
Realistically, you can probably do a sound simulation which predicts how a passenger will bounce around from the beginning of the collision to the first passenger interior collision with the vehicle. Beyond that point, forget it.
One thing that stands out in this case is that the judges who decided the appeal actually READ THE MANUAL! Not just the user's manual but the technical manual. The formatting of the opinion is lousy (I guess the Washington courts don't use TeX :) ) but
it shows that they paid attention and did their homework. I say three cheers for the court.
Uh, dude? You do know that global warming isn't contested, right?
Really? See http://www.sepp.org/books/hotcold.html and http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/00000002D37 1.htm among others.
Not so long ago, we were facing imminent threat of an ice age caused by -- you guessed it -- our polluting ways. The proponents then were as convinced of their inerrancy as you are now.
When your computer model can accurately predict whether it will rain ten years from next Friday, then your inanity will warrant a rethink.
I write scientific simulation software, and I'd be rather upset if that software was used as evidence for something in an area where it had not been validated.
It actually is basic science: 1) You make some observations, 2) you formulate a model (which can be in the form of a computer simuilation), and 3) you validate the model by making predictions and comparing them with new observations.
Until step 3 (validation) has been completed, your model (computer simulation) is at best an educated guess.
"Court makes scientifically sound decision" would be a better headline.
Here around when there is a clearly marked bicycle path (where only bicycle are allwoed) then they are NOT secondary road. They belong to the main road and car turning have to pay attention to bicycle the same way car turning have to pay attention to other incoming car traffic. If in the US the bicycle specific path are considered secondary road, then really this is screwed up. But I can imagine reading the way the grand parent post write that like most US citizen he is a vehicule driver which do not care that much for pedestrian (they are tolerated) and for other road user like bicycle (the "superjock" get it coming at them when a faster , heavier vehicule on a primary road break their paltry secondary road).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You ought to be able to do a monte carlo simulation to obtain a probability distribution on the result. I.e. run the simulation with a large number of random but exact values within the uncertainty of the initial conditions, and count the results. If 80% of the simulations end with a broken leg, that is a likely outcome.
Of course, you would still need to validate the results of the monte carlo simulation on (lots of) observed data, both to see if you got all the relevant factors in the determinstic model, and to see if your estimate on the uncertainty of the initial conditions is reasonable.
Anyway, considering average quality of software on the PC, 'PC-Crash' is a really cool name...
The thing about cars is that they can kill or maim. _Far_ more people die or end up crippled in car accidents yearly than died in the 9/11 terrorist attack. More die or end up crippled in car accidents than in violent crimes.
That's why those laws are there, and that's why those cameras are there. I'd hardly discount that as "enforcing laws that are easily mechanized, not laws that are most critical to public safety." It _is_ critical to public safety, and if it can be easily mechanized, I for one am all for it.
And here's my take on all those "waah, the police is evil because they don't let me go 'only' 20mph over the speed limit" morons: do the maths folks.
Kinetic energy is proportional to the _square_ of the speed. Friction however can only dissipate that energy _linearly_ with the braking distance. So the braking distance is increases literally with the _square_ of the speed.
A 40% increase in speed _doubles_ the braking distance.
Here's a _fact_: if you have two identical cars, car A going at 50 km/h (the speed limit in cites here), and car B doing 'only' 70 km/h, car B needs _double_ the braking distance to stop. In fact, at the point where car A stopped, car B is still going at 50 km/h.
So when that moron goes at 20mph out of parking, or when that idiot jock on the bike goes in front of you, the 50 km/h car might stop and save a human life where the 70 km/h will kill or cripple.
And for what?
Most of the time streetlights are synchronized anyway. Someone who obeyed the speed limit will just go through the streetlights with less stress (on themselves _and_ the car), while the 70 km/h macho cretin will just have to brake and accelerate all the time... and still not get home any faster.
So all that endangering others' lives was for... nothing whatsoever.
So here's my take. Forget revenue generation. I'd like to see some public executions. Yes, I'm talking death penalty. Have them swinging by the neck from the streetlight pole. That would serve as a better warning to others than the cameras.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Model validation is the key issue--most modelers are weak in that area.
Where I'm from, there are bicycle paths along main roads, and they have stop signs just like the roads do. I see very few cyclists actually respect that, however. I was driving home from work one day, and turning right (across the bike path), and noticed a cyclist coming upon the intersection. I made the mistake of assuming that he was intelligent enough to take the large red stop sign on the path to heart. I'm still surprised he didn't kill himself as he nearly slammed into my van after blowing the stop sign. Then he yelled at me. I'm pretty mindful of pedestrians and all, but i had the right of way at the time. I was playing by the rules, and had he actually hit me i would have had no problem suing him for the damage to my vehicle caused by his recklessness. The problem i have with most pedestrians is that they forget they're crossing the paths of large, swift-moving pieces of metal. It's like some people have no survival instincts.
My computer model predicts that it will rain heavily ten years from next Friday around 2 PM GMT. Unfortunately, it doesn't say where :(
"All models are wrong, but some are useful"
For the record, I'm employed in the modeling and simulation business and, yes, I think this quote is quite true.
-1: flamebait should really be -1: inciteful
Dang, I hate it when a smack-down back-fires.
...are not subject to this type of scrutiny.
Any computer model that "proves" global warming must be accepted.
The thing about a computer simulation is that it's only as good as the rules and data it uses. The computer isn't some infailible holy amulet that turns everything into infailible Truth.
You can simulate _any_ bogus stuff on the computer, if your rules are bogus enough.
For a less expert thing to think about, look at simulation games: no two car racing games have the same physics. You can tweak the physics for gameplay, or for "realism", or fail to achieve either. ("Driving Emotion, Type: S" comes to mind. A.k.a., "the real drunk driving simulator".)
But here's the fun part: even the "realistic" ones differ massively from each other. The "realistic" physics in GT3 differ massively from the "realistic" physics in GT2, and both differ fundamentally from the "realistic" physics in Sega GT.
Or take space combat sims. About 99% work by submarine physics, and _none_ simulate what happens in a gravity well. I.e., anwhere near a planet or star.
Yet the game works. It has the wrong rules, but it simulates them faithfully. It looks like it's in space... even if it behaves like a submarine.
Same idea about a crash sim: it may well look like it simulates a car crash, but get it all wrong nevertheless.
That's the whole point: before you can convict a human based on a simulation, you better be damn sure _what_ it simulates. What rules are in it? Who made up those rules? Did any real experts _test_ the program, or do we just have to take it on faith that it's good? What if it isn't?
But wait, it gets worse.
Floating point calculations are notorious for inaccuracy. There are well documented cases where errors don't just accumulate at the 10'th decimal, but cascade to produce a result that's wrong by orders of magnitude.
(That's why, for example, any DBMS and almost every language has some form of a BigInteger or BigDecimal class. Because you don't want your accounting program to return a result that's wrong by a million dollars. Not that it will stop incompetent monkeys from using "float" for database operations anyway, but it exists.)
So does their program have that problem? You better damn be sure it doesn't before you accept in court that someone was driving at _literally_ supersonic speeds on the highway.
That's the whole point.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Many a good theory (re: model) has been ruined by a single piece of real data.
Models are only as good as our assumptions. And I assume badly often, thats why we test.
Where are my mod points when I need them?
We are the 198 proof..
More extreme example: I have a hypothesis that jumping out of an aircraft at 30,000 ft. without a parachute is not survivable.
If my theory is wrong I'll survive (which is good), however testing it would be bad should it prove to be true. Not testing this theory is then, perhaps, the best alternative.
Humankind will not terminate their economic development for the sake of a hypothesis. You have to show them some kind of real reason to do it. It has to be visible to all. Sensationalist movies don't count.
This is one reason I don't argue hard against the global warming zealots. They are destined to lose for this one simple reason.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Who certifies it?
The whole decision smells of some slimey lawyer.
I remember during a jury selection process that some sleazebag lawyer kept going on and on about innocent until proven guilty and he (the lawyer) didn't have to prove innocence. He also went on about how we should not give any special weight to the word of a Law Officer. While this all may sound fine, the defendant was accused of driving on a suspended licence. There is not a lot of proof needed to show guilt here. After all this, the lawyer managed to delay the trial with a surprise witness. This all for a trial that should have taken half an hour.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
When say, forensic evidence is presented in court, it also has to be basically validated. You want to see the person's credentials, for example. Are they really the expert in forensics that they claim to be? There's also a bunch of questions about the data and the conclusions. One has to present _what_ scientific facts and theories are behind that conclusions, and whether there is reasonable doubt about the conclusions.
You can't just take a bum off the street to say "yeah, I'm the greatest expert. Take my words as absolute truth. And my tarot cards told me that the buttler did it, so that's the absolute truth. Oh yeah, and I used my divination rod to examine the body."
See, the whole idea behind a criminal trial is "beyond reasonable doubt." Regardless of what method or science branch that data was obtained by, you must, in fact, ascertain that there is indeed little reason to doubt it. The whole point of a fair trial is to try to _find_ reasons to doubt everything.
Seems to me like the exact same applied here. No more, no less.
Just because something was spit out of a program doesn't mean that it's automatically right. Perhaps _the_ oldest thing about computers is: GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. It's not even a 20'th century thing. In the last century Babbage was asked the same thing by a British member of the Parliament: if we put the wrong numbers in, does the right data come out?
So it seems to me very reasonable to first want to assert _what_ the program calculated, and to what degree accuracy. What rules did go into that simulation? Are the persons who wrote it even competent to write that kind of a program? Was it validated by anyone? What kind of data went in? What data _didn't_? Etc.
Seems very reasonable to me, and again it is something that's should be expected about any other scientific methods as well. It has nothing to do with whether it's a computer or not. It has to do with whether it is scientiffic or not. That has to be proved.
And that's what they utterly failed to do. They just expected to wave a hand (Jedi style) in front of everyone and have their version taken for granted, just because it happens on a computer screen. It must be the absolute truth. You don't need to know anything else.
Sorry, no. That's just not how it works.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Imagine being convicted by the testimony of a computer that doesn't reflect what really happened. This is as bad as the global warming models that incorrectly blame CO2. They fail to predict what has already happened if you reverse them to predict what has already happened. BS for sale, step right up. The judge that accepted the testimony in the first place should be removed from the bench. He is obviously incompetent.
>"Washington State Court of Appeals reverses a conviction in which a computer simulation had been the main evidence
Should we still believe that all of the global warming or the more modern 'suden climate change' simulations are accurate enough to warrant massive social changes?