> Would the lawyer define "too hot", or would the jury?
The jury.
> the legal system would treat the jury's definition almost as definitively as a temperature reading input into an algorithm, right?
For this case, yes. For all time, no. The fuzzy set of "too hot" would become the legal precedent (the stare decisis). The actual temperature would remain a question of fact and not law.
If you read up on how fuzzy logic is applied in control systems, you'll see that there's always steps to take non-fuzzy inputs and "fuzzify" them before performing the fuzzy logic itself. Afterwards you de-fuzzify to get a crisp output.
Courts work very much like that: the law retains fuzziness because no crisply algorithmic system can encompass the total complexity of the human world. That's how equity arose ... which is a law history lesson for another day.
The jury.
> the legal system would treat the jury's definition almost as definitively as a temperature reading input into an algorithm, right?
For this case, yes. For all time, no. The fuzzy set of "too hot" would become the legal precedent (the stare decisis). The actual temperature would remain a question of fact and not law.
If you read up on how fuzzy logic is applied in control systems, you'll see that there's always steps to take non-fuzzy inputs and "fuzzify" them before performing the fuzzy logic itself. Afterwards you de-fuzzify to get a crisp output.
Courts work very much like that: the law retains fuzziness because no crisply algorithmic system can encompass the total complexity of the human world. That's how equity arose ... which is a law history lesson for another day.