Interesting exchange between Lawrence Lessig and Dave Winer. I still don't understand why Dave has so many readers. I guess when you own the radio station, you get all the free air time you want.
Here are Dave's remarks about Lessig's criticism of Nader for not taking responsibility for his actions, just like the manufacturers of the Vega:
And if we should nominate a Democrat as uninspiring as Gore, for all we know Nader's presence in the election will serve to inspire, and in turn get us better government. My friend Larry Lessig argues too linearly. No, Nader was not responsible for the war in Iraq. That's two levels too complicated. He wasn't even responsible for the tied election in 2000. But I love a good argument, so let's keep this one alive. I hope Nader runs for precisely that reason.
Here is Professor Lessig's response:
Dave accuses me (in the most constructive way possible) of thinking too linearly about responsibility and Nader. I’m sticking to my line, because it is precisely the line Nader (rightly) took when arguing against, e.g., car manufacturers.Here's a familiar story about how the law tries to assign "responsibility": A guy forgot milk at the store. He gets into his Corvair to return to pick up the milk. It's raining. A girl scout troop is, at the same time, coming home in a bus from a meeting. The bus is 5 minutes late because one girl couldn't find her bag. The guy in the Corvair is driving up a curvy mountain road. The bus is coming down. A deer darts into the road. The guy skids and then swerves a bit to miss it. Because the steering column design in the Corvair is bad, the car goes out of control. Because the car is out of control, the bus swerves to avoid it. But the bus driver miscalculates, and the bus drives off the cliff. Thirty girls are killed.
Who's responsible? Because of course each fact I described might well have been a "but for" cause of tragedy. If the guy hadn't forgotten the milk, he wouldn't have been on the road in the first place. If the girl hadn't lost her bag, the bus wouldn't have been where it was when the guy swerved. If the deer hadn't crossed the road, the guy wouldn't have swerved. If the Corvair hadn't been badly designed, it wouldn't have gone out of control when the guy swerved....
So those actors may have "caused" the accident, but we don't assign to them the "responsibility." Instead, as Nader-types (and I'm wildly one of these), we place the responsibility on the one actor whose behavior produced a foreseeable risk, and who could have avoided that risk at a reasonable cost: the car manufacturer. A better design would have avoided the famous flipper of that car. It would have increased the cost of the car a bit, perhaps; but that increase would have been the cheapest way to avoid accidents just like this....
The same analysis applies to Nader...
Here is my own (sarcastic) reply to Dave's argument:
Posted by Mike at February 6, 2004 12:25 PM | TrackBack
Clearly, the problem is that when thinking linearly, one assumes certain cause and effect relationships between given events or actions. In the non-linear world, the effect does not necessarily flow from the cause, but can rather be jumped to directly, or “pulled out of thin air” - to borrow a phrase. Thus, using non-linear logic, Dave can say of Nader: “He wasn’t even responsible for the tied election in 2000.” As you can see, Nader is really just a victim of circumstances here. He had no way to suspect that campaigning in key battle ground states could hurt the chances of Al Gore. To assume that he could know this would be to assume that an effect flows from a cause! What a silly idea! Nader had no choice but to run and campaign in the battle ground states, or else he would have been censoring himself! To think non-linearly means you must take all possible paths. Fate is destiny. Ask Dave.