Crashworthy Code

Code crashes. Yet for decades, software failures have escaped scrutiny for tort liability. Those halcyon days are numbered: self-driving cars, delivery drones, networked medical devices, and other cyber-physical systems have rekindled interest in understanding how tort law will apply when software errors lead to loss of life or limb. Even after all this time, however, no consensus has emerged. Many feel strongly that victims should not bear financial responsibility for decisions that are entirely automated, while others fear that cyber-physical manufacturers must be shielded from crushing legal costs if we want such companies to exist at all. Some insist the existing liability regime needs no modernist cure, and that the answer for all new technologies is patience. This Article observes that no consensus is imminent as long as liability is pegged to a standard of “crashproof” code. The added prospect of cyber-physical injury has not changed the underlying complexities of software development. Imposing damages based on failure to prevent code crashes will not improve software quality, but will impede the rollout of cyber-physical systems. This Article offers two lessons from the “crashworthy” doctrine, a novel tort theory pioneered in the late 1960s in response to a rising epidemic of automobile accidents, which held automakers accountable for unsafe designs that injured occupants during car crashes. The first is that tort liability can be metered on the basis of mitigation, not just prevention. When code crashes are statistically inevitable, cyber-physical manufacturers may be held to have a duty to provide for safer code crashes, rather than no code crashes at all. Second, the crashworthy framework teaches courts to segment their evaluation of code, and make narrower findings of liability based solely on whether cyber-physical manufacturers have incorporated adequate software fault tolerance into their designs. Requiring all code to be perfect is impossible, but expecting code to be crashworthy is reasonable

A Prospect Theory of Privacy

Privacy law has languished for decades while the other information law doctrines have flourished. This paradox can be explained by the relative weight assigned respectively to moral argument versus economic argument. Privacy law is unique in that it continues to be steered foremost by moral intuition. What qualifies as a “violation” of privacy is predicated largely on the moral reprehensibility of the act in question. By stark contrast, the intellectual property regimes have long since converted to being led primarily by economic considerations, and only secondarily by noneconomic factors. That distinction is counterproductive and nonsensical. Personal data is an informational good like any other. The same economic justifications for intellectual “property” can be extended to intellectual “privacy”— nonexclusivity harms the incentives to generate new information that can further the progress of social knowledge. Where moral rhetoric has failed to advance robust recognition of privacy interests, economic reasoning may prove more effective. In particular, this Essay offers Edmund Kitch’s prospect theory as an important counterweight to prior economic critiques of privacy, which have frowned on restraints on alienation of information. Prospect theory shows that the social value of recognizing exclusive claims is not just to shield information that already exists, but also to shield deeper investigations of that information to unearth further information that would not be otherwise discoverable

Emotional change in resolving depressive self-criticism during experiential treatment

The goal of this study was to empirically demonstrate emotional changes that differentiate successful versus unsuccessful resolution of depressive self-criticism during experiential treatment. Emotion episodes occurring during five sessions across three phases of experiential treatment (early, middle, and late) were sampled for nine highly self-critical depressed clients (five good resolvers of self-criticism and four poor resolvers) from the York II depression project. Emotion episodes were then coded using two emotion process coding measures: the Classification of Affective-Meaning States (CAMS) and the Object Valence Scale (OVS), and later analyzed employing three analytic procedures: graphical/descriptive; linear mixed modeling; and pattern analysis using THEME. Convergent evidence that EFT emotional change processes generally hold within experiential treatment for self-criticism was found. Compared to poor resolvers, good resolvers expressed: 1) greater decreases in secondary emotions (mainly in rejecting anger) and greater increases in expression of needs and primary adaptive emotions, and 2) more frequent transformations of secondary to primary adaptive emotions, and secondary to primary maladaptive to primary adaptive emotions. Good outcome cases also displayed 3) greater increases in positive emotional self-states and greater decreases in both negative emotional self states and other-negative emotional states. Future directions of this research are discussed

Emotional Change Processes in Resolving Self-Critical Subtypes of Depression During Experiential Treatment

This mixed-methods study explored emotional processing that predicts long-term outcomes within subtypes of self-critical depression during experiential psychotherapy. First, I validated Kagans (2003) qualitative analysis which identified four subtypes of self-criticism among depressed clients: (1) compare and despair; (2) too sensitive/needy; (3) internalized shoulds/unacceptable feelings; and (4) unworthy/not good enough. I did this by performing a confirmatory reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) on the same original sample (n = 42) Kagan used to establish her self-critical subtypes. Kagans classification system was reliably applied by new coders. I then used Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) theory to hypothesize and extend Kagans self-critical subtypes into higher-order self-critical subtypes. As hypothesized, two higher-order self-critical categories emerged: (1) Socially Inadequate (SI) self-criticism which combined Kagans first three self-critical subtypes, and (2) Core Worthlessness (CW) self-criticism that retained Kagans fourth subtype. Higher-order self-critical subgroups were then examined for differences in working phase emotional processing (WP-EP) occurring within clients in-session emotion episodes. This was performed using proportion analyses and THEME 6.0 sequential pattern analyses (Magnusson, 2000). Measures used were: (1) discrete emotion states and higher-order emotion scheme categories operationalized by the Classification of Affective Meaning States (CAMS; Pascual-Leone & Greenberg, 2005). I also measured (2) the apparent "target" of emotion episodes measured by the Object Valence Scheme (OVS; Choi, 2013). WP-EP differences were found. SI clients expressed more other-positive, and CW clients expressed more fear, shame, and negative self-evaluations. I also examined differences between higher-order self-critical subgroups on 18-month follow up outcomes for clients who provided this data (n = 29). Higher-order self-critical subgroups did not differ on any 18-month post-treatment outcome measure. Finally, depressed versus nondepressed clients at 18-month follow up within each higher-order self-critical subtype were compared for WP-EP differences. Supporting theorized EFT emotional change processes, nondepressed clients in both subgroups expressed greater proportions of, or more sequences involving, primary adaptive emotions and fewer sequences of being stuck in secondary and CAMS-uncodable emotions. Further, nondepressed SI clients expressed specifically more hurt/grief and self-soothing. Nondepressed CW clients also expressed more primary maladaptive emotions and needs. Clinical applications, limitations, and future directions are discussed

Randomizing religion: the impact of Protestant evangelism on economic outcomes

We study the causal impact of religiosity through a randomized evaluation of an evangelical Protestant Christian values and theology education program delivered to thousands of ultrapoor Filipino households. Six months after the program ended, treated households have higher religiosity and income; no statistically significant differences in total labor supply, consumption, food security, or life satisfaction; and lower perceived relative economic status. Exploratory analysis suggests that the income treatment effect may operate through increasing grit. Thirty months after the program ended, significant differences in the intensity of religiosity disappear, but those in the treatment group are less likely to be Catholic and more likely to be Protestant, and there is some mixed evidence that their consumption and perceived relative economic status are higher