[LINK] Bitcoins, "Investment of Money," and Law

1 TimS 08 August 2013 07:33PM

A federal magistrate judge in Texas issue a decision on Tuesday that "Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money." More discussion on the legal reasoning is here

Some context from reading the decision: A promoter offered a profit if investors gave him Bitcoins. The Securities and Exchange Commission asserts that the promoter made false or misleading statements as part of this scheme (which is illegal). 

The promoter asserted the scheme was not within the authority of the SEC because it was not a "security." (Everyone agrees that the SEC can only regulate securities). To the surprise of (hopefully) no one, the judge ruled that the promoter's conduct was covered by the SEC. Specifically, the court found that the scheme was an "investment contract." One of the elements of an investment contract is that there is an "investment of money." 

Thus, the case is potentially interesting to BitCoiners because of the judge's reasoning about why Bitcoins can be characterized as an investment of money.

Open Thread, June 2-15, 2013

5 TimS 02 June 2013 02:22AM

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

[LINK] Possible Unrepresentative Subjects in Studies of Medical Interventions

7 TimS 23 April 2013 01:18PM

This blog post on subject selection in study design seems like it might be interesting to folks.

From the post:

[C]linical trials often forbid enrollment by many patients who are treated in our health care system, including for example anyone who is over the age of 60, or has multiple medical conditions, or is on medications etc. This makes the clinical trial easier to conduct but it can also result in a research sample that is completely unlike real-world health care recipients. If for example a new medication has been FDA-approved based on a clinical trial that excluded anyone who was already taking another medication, any adverse medication interactions won’t come to light until patients start experiencing them in the health care system.

The post links to the article, published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Abstract for the publication:

Because they assign patients to treatment conditions, randomized clinical trials (RCTs) offer unparalleled internal validity for drawing inferences about the efficacy of a medical treatment. Whether such inferences can be generalized is not always clear because many RCTs enroll a low and unrepresentative proportion of all patients. The challenges of judging the clinical utility of clinical trial results are increased by poor reporting. The study by Gross et al of trials published in leading medical journals from 1999 through 2000 found that only 28% reported the proportion of screened patients who were enrolled. These deficiencies may have been ameliorated in the past decade because the CONSORT statement was revised in 2001 to require more complete information on the enrollment process in reports of clinical trials, and because many treatment research fields have been showing greater concern about generating knowledge that better informs clinical practice. Accordingly, the present study assessed the extent to which low enrollment rates are still characteristic of widely cited clinical trials, and whether reporting of enrollment information has improved.

[LINK] Law Goes Meta

3 TimS 28 September 2012 07:11PM

Some legal background:

  • In the United States, there are several courts of appeals, called Circuit Courts. They can disagree about legal points - this is called a circuit split. One of the purposes of the Supreme Court is to resolve circuit splits.
  • Sometimes, laws are ruled to be ambiguous. If so, the relevant agency regulations interpreting the law are determinative, unless the regulations are an obviously stupid interpretation. This is called Chevron deference.

One would think that disagreement between Circuits about the meaning of a law would be legally relevant evidence about whether the law was ambiguous. Instead, there appears to be a circuit split on the meaning of circuit splits.

More available here, for the amusement of those on this site who like to think meta. Also a bit of a lesson on the limits of meta-style analysis in solving actual problems.

Please Don't Fight the Hypothetical

19 TimS 20 April 2012 02:29PM

It is a common part of moral reasoning to propose hypothetical scenarios.  Whether it is our own Torture v. Specks or the more famous Trolley problem, asking these types of questions helps the participants formalize and understand their moral positions.  Yet one common response to hypothetical scenarios is to challenge some axiom of the problem.  This article is a request that people stop doing that, and an explanation of why this is an error.

First, a brief digression into law, which is frequently taught using hypothetical questioning.  Under the Model Penal Code:

A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when:
(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant
circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such
circumstances exist; and
(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is
practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.

Hypothetical: If Bob sets fire to a house with Charlie inside, killing Charlie, is Bob guilty of knowing killing of Charlie?  Bob genuinely believes throwing salt over one's shoulder when one sets a building on fire protects all the inhabitants and ensures that they will not be harmed - and did throw salt over his shoulder in this instance.

Let us take it as a given that setting someone on fire is practically certain to kill them.  Nonetheless, Bob did not knowingly kill Charlie because Bob was not aware of the consequence of his action.  Bob had a false belief that prevented him from having the belief required under the MPC to show knowledge.

The obvious response here is that, in practice, the known facts will lead to Bob's conviction of the crime at trial.  This is irrelevant.  Bob will be convicted at trial because the jury will not believe Bob's asserted belief was true.  Unless Bob is insane or mentally deficient, the jury would be right to disbelieve Bob.  But that missed the point of the hypothetical.

The purpose of the hypothetical is to distinguish between one type of mental state and a different type of mental state.  If you don't understand that Bob is innocent of knowing killing if he truly believed that Charlie was safe, then you don't understand the MPC definition of knowing.  Discussion of how mental states are proven at real trials, or whether knowing killing should be the only criminal statute about killing are different topics.  Talking about those topics will not help you understand the MPC definition of knowing.  Talking about those other topics is functionally identical to saying that you don't care about understanding the MPC definition of knowing.

Likewise, people who responds to the Trolley problem by saying that they would call the police are not talking about the moral intuitions that the Trolley problem intends to explore.  There's nothing wrong with you if those problems are not interesting to you.  But fighting the hypothetical by challenging the premises of the scenario is exactly the same as saying, "I don't find this topic interesting for whatever reason, and wish to talk about something I am interested in."

In short, fighting the premises of a hypothetical scenario is changing the topic to focus on something different than topic of conversation intended by the presenter of the hypothetical question.  When changing the topic is appropriate is a different discussion, but it is obtuse to fail to notice that one is changing the subject.

Edit: My thesis "Notice and Justify changing the subject," not "Don't change the subject."