Room for Whom More on Maroon Island?

A big tent
sits atop
Maroon Island.

It is not
only the
"econo-
mists" who
spell it with
just one "O".

Consider the legal scholar
to the right, or more
precisely, his position paper
on abolishing software patents.

He writes:
"[For] pharmaceutical and biotech companies, ... patents are clearly necessary to encourage innovation,... [The] exclusion [of "software patents"] from the patent system would [yes,] discourage some software innovations, but the saving from litigation costs over disputed patent rights would more than compensate the economy for that cost. Moreover, some software innovations would be encouraged because the inability to patent software will eliminate uncertainty over whether someone else with a similar patent will sue and do battle [with the copyists]in the courts."

Compensate "THE ECONOMY"?
What about the inventor?

Eliminate "UNCERTAINTY"?
What venture doesn't have uncertainty?

Eliminate LAWSUITS?
Maybe first we wipe out all the "judges" (and then the lawyers ala Shakespeare)?

Posner's (mis)understanding of what the patent system is about? Click more (below).

Marooned --On Science Illiteracy Island

It's tempting to take the "O" out
of "maroon" when talking about
them who are scientifically illiterate.
Often, the marooned don't know
they are missing an "O".

Consider the "cure cancer"
theory of the economist
to the right (at 4:50/16:28)






(If you don't want to watch, he says basically that increased size of the free marketplace (to the "Global" scale) is what incentivizes all manner of scientific advance: in medicine, in computers, in energy, etc. The mind just boggles.)

Failed Economists Seek Inventor Scape Goat

With ...

the sustainability
of their "dismal science"
in serious doubt, ...

the ever inventive
theorists of "econumbnics"
have embarked on a witch and troll hunt.

And at last they have found their scape goat ...
the software inventor.

Who better is there to blame for the collapse of Western Industrial Civilization then the ones who keep the complexity going with their bits and bytes?

The objective number crushers have even come up with an emotion packed pack of lies to support their Inquisition. There are no patents in the food industry? Seriously?
Give us all a popcorn-popping Ron Popeil break! This is what you call objective rationalism? Ayn Rand roasts and rotates in her graveyard rotisserie over this kind of fantasy fiction. Some of these so-called econo-numb-nuts pull convenient, but unsupportable "facts" out of their dismal derrieres.

Real Science? Get that junk out of our courts sir!

"I have been a professor of organic chemistry for nine years ... I cannot accept a Supreme Court decision that trivializes chemistry and elevates [misunderstood] biological ”information” over [the real science of] chemical structure in patent law, and that usurps the role of Congress and creates a new class of patent-ineligible subject matter by judicial fiat."

So writes one scientist in his
Chemist's View of the Supreme Court's Gene Patent Decision

(Pictured above is Galileo's Recant)

Framing Inventors out of Innovation's Box

"Innovation" is an anonymizing, impersonal "thing".

There is no human inventor behind or inside the closed box that frames the "Innovation" concept.

...
...
...
...
...
...
...
The "inventor" is not left as invisible or even marginalized outside the box, but rather vaporized (vay-pooh-rized) as if he or she never existed.
Indeed no person breathes, bleeds, sweats and strains within the totally-automated factory that we think of as being modern "innovation" per se.

Consider for example this article:
Why The Patent System Is Not Fit

How often does the word "inventor" appear?
Answer: none.
Why?

Embracing the Mental Midget's Metaphors (or How I Learned to Love the Idiocracy)

Scientists tell us
our brains work
with metaphors.

So it is no small wonder that
the US Supreme Court g(r)asped for
metaphoric help when trying to grapple
with the micro-bio-chemistry monster that
confronted them in AMP v. Myriad

Pray tell us,
is it more like strolling through the Garden of Eden and plucking a leaf off the Tree of Knowledge?
Or are we standing in the machine shop and whittling down the trunk until only cellulose in the form of a baseball bat remains?

Which rings more poetically true in the biochemistry quiz that vexes us?

Surely the gods will inform us of the correct answer by meme of the harmonically resonating spheres if only we carefully circle competing narratives and listen for the vibrations of the truer truth.
Ours is not to truly understand but rather to appear as if song-speaking from Olympian quarters.

This has always been the Herculean task of a Supreme.

Appearance is perception.
Perception is Truth.
We know an ultimate truth when we hear it.
The mortals beneath can bank on our sound logic.

If you are not in tune with the split metaphor way of thinking of English major Supremes, here is how the divide in AMP v. Myriad came into being:

The molecular composition known as "cDNA" appears to have been synthetically milled on the lathe of the life scientists and hence it is machine-shop "eligible".

However, the molecular composition known as "BRCAx" appears to have been naturally and simply plucked from Nature's Tree of Life and thus it is not a product of machine shop synthesis but rather a natural drop out from Mother Nature's loins, hence "ineligible".

Footnotes
(1) Transcript of Oral Hearings 4-15-2014
(2) The European view (not an Idiocracy?)
(3) Blood, Sweat & Isolataion? --too bad
(4) Debbie Does Disease Tech
(5) The Curious Concurrence of Justice Antonin Scalia
(6) The "Hercules Unchained" Metaphor
(7) If you patent a molecule, you sir are a "troll"
(8) Patent Docs looks back at Myriad Reactions
(9) More ... here, here, here, here, here,
(10) Recent blog posts ...

One Nation, Under Rule of Isolated Politico-Arbiters, With Idiocracy and Mediocrity for All

AMP v. Myriad Genetics (click here for Wiki page including SCOTUS decision)


In the movie, "Idiocracy", actor Luke Wilson plays the role of an Average-IQ Joe ("Joe Bauers") who is transported into a future where every American is so dumb (or brain washed by political dogma) that Joe turns out to be the smartest man in America.
How dumb are they all?

So dumb that they don't know to irrigate their crops with "isolated" (pure) water.

They all believe, due to repeated brain washing, that a drink called "Brawndo" (a spin on Gatorade) has to be used for everything (including feeding their crops) because ...

because "it's got electrolytes".

They have no clue what these electrolytes are and why they are "good". This taken on pure faith.

On June 13th 2013, America sunk deeper toward its inevitable collission with an "Idiocracy" future thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court decision on patenting of "genes".

At least one of the Justices (Scalia) admits he has no idea what an "isolated gene" is; but in his being one of the "Supremes", one of the isolated deities who rule America, he must agree that the thing he fails to understand is nonetheless not patent "eligible". Scalia wrote (in concurrence):

"[Admittedly, I don't grasp the] fine details of molecular biology. [Even though] I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief [it] suffices for me to affirm [their idiocracies], having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical [...IDENTICAL...] to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; ..."

Welcome to Idiocracy USA --we got electoral college "lytes"

At least a few sites get it on how "sketchy" the Supremes are in their science:
(1) The Supreme Court’s Sketchy Science
(2) Supreme Court bungles the science in DNA patent decision
(3) Supreme Court Gets ... Science Wrong
(4) Errors in Supreme Court Decision
(5) On "Junk Science" --Wiki
(6) The art of the metaphor (See also Metaphor & Policy in Patent Landmines-stan)