Dear Kathryn,
I do hope that you can carry on the sort of work on Dave's theory that you
mention below. Such work would have ramifications for legal theorizing about
forensic evidence and proof and, ultimately, for the law's treatment of
evidence and proof in litigation. Legal scholars have done quite a bit of
interesting work on uncertain factual inference. But once the element of
_time_ is thrown into the picture, the legal folks, I think, are largely at
a loss about how to think or argue in an orderly or coherent way about the
workings of factual inference and proof in litigation. The little that I have
seen of AI work (e.g., work on temporal logic, ontologies, distributed
decision making and inference, and various other things) makes me think that
the AI people may be the _only_ people who have even a chance of bringing a
semblance of order into the disordered thinking that one now usually finds in
legal circles about the workings of investigation, inference, and proof in
litigation over time. I hope that some of the possible AI contributions to
the understanding of the process of forensic proof can be presented and
discussed at the Amsterdam conference that I mentioned in an earlier message.
My very best regards,
Peter T.
Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
> Peter,
>
> A partly-finished response to your initial missive has been sitting in my
> out-box since the first day you sent it. I don't know whether or when I'll
> get to finishing it. I discovered that formulating a cogent response was
> going to be difficult and require significant time and energy.
>
> Dave Schum's office is 2 floors below mine and we are frequent lunch
> companions. I have thought for years that Dave has been raising important
> issues our community needs to be thinking about, but expressing them in
> language that many UAI folks have trouble relating to. For years we have
> had an ongoing intention to spend the necessary time and effort to see
> whether we could formalize Dave's ideas in a way that Judea or others who
> think like him can at least respond to intelligently, if not accept.
> Unfortunately we've not made as much progress on this as we would like, due
> to the many pressures of "urgent and important" matters that leave little
> time for leisurely exploration of challenging but unfunded research issues.
>
> There may be a real opportunity to do this now. Dave and I are both being
> PAID to work on the same research program -- one in which these issues are
> relevant. We are hoping to find space in this program for the dialogue
> we've been meaning to have all these years.
>
> I just wanted to say that you should count me in as one who finds the
> questions you ask important and interesting, who thinks they deserve a
> thoughtful response, and who would like to be able to find the time to give
> you a solid answer to your questions.
>
> Kathy Laskey
*********************************************************
Tillers' Dynamic Evidence Site
--with "frames":
http://www.tiac.net/users/tillers/index.html
--sans "frames":
http://www.tiac.net/users/tillers/home.html
**********************************************************
Peter Tillers, Professor of Law
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University
55 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003, U.S.A.
(212) 790-0334; FAX (212) 790-0205
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Dear Kathryn,
I do hope that you can carry on the sort of work on Dave's theory that you mention below. Such work would have ramifications for legal theorizing about forensic evidence and proof and, ultimately, for the law's treatment of evidence and proof in litigation. Legal scholars have done quite a bit of interesting work on uncertain factual inference. But once the element of _time_ is thrown into the picture, the legal folks, I think, are largely at a loss about how to think or argue in an orderly or coherent way about the workings of factual inference and proof in litigation. The little that I have seen of AI work (e.g., work on temporal logic, ontologies, distributed decision making and inference, and various other things) makes me think that the AI people may be the _only_ people who have even a chance of bringing a semblance of order into the disordered thinking that one now usually finds in legal circles about the workings of investigation, inference, and proof in litigation over time. I hope that some of the possible AI contributions to the understanding of the process of forensic proof can be presented and discussed at the Amsterdam conference that I mentioned in an earlier message.
My very best regards,
Peter T.Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
Peter,*********************************************************A partly-finished response to your initial missive has been sitting in my
out-box since the first day you sent it. I don't know whether or when I'll
get to finishing it. I discovered that formulating a cogent response was
going to be difficult and require significant time and energy.Dave Schum's office is 2 floors below mine and we are frequent lunch
companions. I have thought for years that Dave has been raising important
issues our community needs to be thinking about, but expressing them in
language that many UAI folks have trouble relating to. For years we have
had an ongoing intention to spend the necessary time and effort to see
whether we could formalize Dave's ideas in a way that Judea or others who
think like him can at least respond to intelligently, if not accept.
Unfortunately we've not made as much progress on this as we would like, due
to the many pressures of "urgent and important" matters that leave little
time for leisurely exploration of challenging but unfunded research issues.There may be a real opportunity to do this now. Dave and I are both being
PAID to work on the same research program -- one in which these issues are
relevant. We are hoping to find space in this program for the dialogue
we've been meaning to have all these years.I just wanted to say that you should count me in as one who finds the
questions you ask important and interesting, who thinks they deserve a
thoughtful response, and who would like to be able to find the time to give
you a solid answer to your questions.Kathy Laskey
Tillers' Dynamic Evidence Site**********************************************************--with "frames": http://www.tiac.net/users/tillers/index.html
--sans "frames": http://www.tiac.net/users/tillers/home.html