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This is a huge straw man if I've ever seen one (and present in many other posts on this thread). To act as if there isn't any logic in the opposing side isn't g

This is a huge straw man if I've ever seen one (and present in many other posts on this thread). To act as if there isn't any logic in the opposing side isn't going to get anywhere. Because of the very nature of sexual assault, providing evidence up to the standards of the US criminal legal system is very hard to do. It likely means that more harassers get off and very few get wrongful sentences. The logic in supporting a standard that requires less than the US criminal legal system currently is that it will help put away many more guilty people and put away few/none non-guilty people given the rarity of false accusations with evidence that would say, pass a 50/50 guilt test. The lack of criminal recourse leads to a court of public opinion being the victim's only option often. The court of public opinion is far from fair, which leads back to the idea of working on the criminal recourse options to allow for more victims to actually report and fix this. You can disagree with some of the premises of that argument, but it's a valid one (philosophically speaking). In this case, someone was wrongly accused, and even under a 50/50 system, it's clear the charges would not go through, and yes obviously the pre-meditated wrongful accuser should face a punishment. I think some jail time for a pre-meditated false accusation is more than fair. But a discussion and a call for a different legal standard given the uniqueness of these types of cases is perfectly logical. Instead of complaining about the public lynch mob and blaming the mass of people who likely won't stop, discuss and focus on the problems that prevent it. Like actually getting rape kits tested, creating more avenues for sexual assault reporting via a calmer system than anonymous blog posts, etc.

int_19h 9y ago
> and put away few/none non-guilty people given the rarity of false accusations with evidence that would say, pass a 50/50 guilt test. We're already putting away non-guilty people, and we know about it - check out Innocence Project some time. So lowering those standards is guaranteed to increase that number. A huge problem is that in US, the prosecutors have a lot of incentives to pursue convictions regardless of actual guilt or innocence. If you give them a tool to convict more people, they will use it, because more convictions look good on their resume. And in many cases, the minority demographics are the ones disproportionally targeted. So, until the problem with prosecutorial misconduct is fixed, I don't think it's the right time to talk about making it easier to imprison people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/01/21/why-do-prosecutors-go-after-innocent-people/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/01/21/... https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B007FA38KW/ https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B007FA38KW/
dahauns 9y ago
>You can disagree with some of the premises of that argument, but it's a valid one (philosophically speaking). Philosophically speaking, If I reject some of the premises, this would be a classic ex falso quodlibet, so - unless I subscribe to the use of paraconsistent logic - no, it would actually not be valid. I fully agree that everything should be done to make reporting crimes and presenting evidence as easy as possible and to root out problems preventing this. But: Loosening the standards of presumption of innocence, one of the cornerstone achievements of human rights, can never be part of this. Especially in the age of social media. Everything else is a slippery slope (and one that has been written about in every concievable context on thousands of pages over the centuries). It's easy to say "it will help put away many more guilty people" if you simply redefine what it means to be guilty to be slightly more likely than a coin toss (or what do you mean by "pass a 50/50 guilt test"?).
- adjkant 9y ago
  You aren't working with a philosophical definition of valid then. http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/ An argument can still be valid with false premises. The point of using this definition is to say that if person A disagrees with the premises and person B agrees with them, that is the source of your difference, not a lack of logic like the parent comment implied. My redefinition is not a simplification or hand waving - it is exactly the standard we use in civil cases in the US justice system. Looking up the term, it's "preponderance of the evidence" - it boils down basically to the 50/50 above. It is not at all synonymous with a coin toss. > Preponderance of the evidence, also known as balance of probabilities, is the standard required in most civil cases and in family court determinations solely involving money, such as child support under the Child Support Standards Act. It is also the burden of proof of which the defendant must prove affirmative defenses or mitigating circumstances in civil or criminal court. In civil court, aggravating circumstances also only have to be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, as opposed to beyond reasonable doubt (as they do in criminal court). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law) I'm not working with the assumption that the US criminal system ever had the 100% correct definition in the first place. It is not the only legal standard in existence and questioning it should not be seen as "simply redefining" but examining further. I agree with the caution, but the whole post is directly addressing the idea that there isn't logic in what's happening with the general trend.
tepidandroid 9y ago
> This is a huge straw man if I've ever seen one Where is the straw man? I simply argue that accusations should be substantiated. Once upon a time, this viewpoint would have been considered common sense and not something controversial. And yet here we are. > The logic in supporting a standard that requires less than the US criminal legal system currently is that it will help put away many more guilty people and put away few/none non-guilty people given the rarity of false accusations with evidence that would say, pass a 50/50 guilt test. However inefficient it may be, we have a legal system for a reason. The accused are entitled to due process. IMHO there is no greater travesty than an innocent person having their life ruined because we as a society are unwilling to give them fair and reason based judgement. > The lack of criminal recourse leads to a court of public opinion being the victim's only option often. The court of public opinion is far from fair, which leads back to the idea of working on the criminal recourse options to allow for more victims to actually report and fix this. You're proposing extra-judicial recourse as the path forward. That may be a possible solution, but the basic mechanisms do not change. Evidence will have to be presented and corroborated one way or another. > In this case, someone was wrongly accused, and even under a 50/50 system, it's clear the charges would not go through, and yes obviously the pre-meditated wrongful accuser should face a punishment. Just put yourself in the accused's shoes for one moment. Let's take this specific case. If the accuser had not been so incompetent and exposed himself by using his home IP address, or had the accuser not been so wily in discovering the link between the IP address and the accuser, what would have happened? At best his VC career would be over and his marriage destroyed. > Instead of complaining about the public lynch mob and blaming the mass of people who likely won't stop, discuss and focus on the problems that prevent it. Like actually getting rape kits tested, creating more avenues for sexual assault reporting via a calmer system than anonymous blog posts, etc. I don't claim to have the solution to our problems, but blame must be allocated where blame is due. It is far more fashionable nowadays to virtue signal than to be objective, which is the precisely cause of situations like these. If you have a proposal for an effective extra-judicial system that is not based on facts, evidence and due process, I would be more more than interested in reading it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 9y ago
marcoperaza 9y ago
You're ready to throw away our precious legal protections because you think false accusations are rare. The number of high profile false accusations should be enough to give you pause: the University of Virginia Rolling Stone "gang rape", the Duke Lacrosse case, Columbia University “mattress girl” Emma Sulkowicz, and the Parker Gilbert case. Not to mention the dozens of lawsuits won by accused students against universities for depriving them of meaningful due process. You're insistent that your argument is logically and philosophically valid. I'm not sure what that's exactly supposed to mean, but it's rather irrelevant. By your same standard, we should entertain the policy of unlimited police power and summary executions as a way of ridding ourselves of organized crime. Bringing down the leaders of such groups within our legal system is notoriously difficult, yet Castro was able to eliminate the mafia from Cuba in a hurry, because he didn't have to deal with due process and civil liberties. You're just falling for a politically-current moral panic. The American way is quite simple: if there is a reasonable doubt of someone's guilt, then they must go free.
gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? The reason we don't lower the standard of proof is that we've been down that road already - and it leads to bad places.
- adjkant 9y ago
  Notice how I never once said I agreed with the argument. To be honest, I don't know where I stand on this and likely fall somewhere in the middle, though that middle seems a bit unclear. The slippery slope argument isn't invalid in all cases, but I would say it's quite a stretch here considering the argument I presented already exists in civil court in the US.

int_19h 9y ago

> and put away few/none non-guilty people given the rarity of false accusations with evidence that would say, pass a 50/50 guilt test. We're already putting away non-guilty people, and we know about it - check out Innocence Project some time. So lowering those standards is guaranteed to increase that number. A huge problem is that in US, the prosecutors have a lot of incentives to pursue convictions regardless of actual guilt or innocence. If you give them a tool to convict more people, they will use it, because more convictions look good on their resume. And in many cases, the minority demographics are the ones disproportionally targeted. So, until the problem with prosecutorial misconduct is fixed, I don't think it's the right time to talk about making it easier to imprison people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/01/21/why-do-prosecutors-go-after-innocent-people/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/01/21/... https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B007FA38KW/ https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B007FA38KW/

dahauns 9y ago

>You can disagree with some of the premises of that argument, but it's a valid one (philosophically speaking). Philosophically speaking, If I reject some of the premises, this would be a classic ex falso quodlibet, so - unless I subscribe to the use of paraconsistent logic - no, it would actually not be valid. I fully agree that everything should be done to make reporting crimes and presenting evidence as easy as possible and to root out problems preventing this. But: Loosening the standards of presumption of innocence, one of the cornerstone achievements of human rights, can never be part of this. Especially in the age of social media. Everything else is a slippery slope (and one that has been written about in every concievable context on thousands of pages over the centuries). It's easy to say "it will help put away many more guilty people" if you simply redefine what it means to be guilty to be slightly more likely than a coin toss (or what do you mean by "pass a 50/50 guilt test"?).

adjkant 9y ago
You aren't working with a philosophical definition of valid then. http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/ An argument can still be valid with false premises. The point of using this definition is to say that if person A disagrees with the premises and person B agrees with them, that is the source of your difference, not a lack of logic like the parent comment implied. My redefinition is not a simplification or hand waving - it is exactly the standard we use in civil cases in the US justice system. Looking up the term, it's "preponderance of the evidence" - it boils down basically to the 50/50 above. It is not at all synonymous with a coin toss. > Preponderance of the evidence, also known as balance of probabilities, is the standard required in most civil cases and in family court determinations solely involving money, such as child support under the Child Support Standards Act. It is also the burden of proof of which the defendant must prove affirmative defenses or mitigating circumstances in civil or criminal court. In civil court, aggravating circumstances also only have to be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, as opposed to beyond reasonable doubt (as they do in criminal court). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law) I'm not working with the assumption that the US criminal system ever had the 100% correct definition in the first place. It is not the only legal standard in existence and questioning it should not be seen as "simply redefining" but examining further. I agree with the caution, but the whole post is directly addressing the idea that there isn't logic in what's happening with the general trend.

tepidandroid 9y ago

> This is a huge straw man if I've ever seen one Where is the straw man? I simply argue that accusations should be substantiated. Once upon a time, this viewpoint would have been considered common sense and not something controversial. And yet here we are. > The logic in supporting a standard that requires less than the US criminal legal system currently is that it will help put away many more guilty people and put away few/none non-guilty people given the rarity of false accusations with evidence that would say, pass a 50/50 guilt test. However inefficient it may be, we have a legal system for a reason. The accused are entitled to due process. IMHO there is no greater travesty than an innocent person having their life ruined because we as a society are unwilling to give them fair and reason based judgement. > The lack of criminal recourse leads to a court of public opinion being the victim's only option often. The court of public opinion is far from fair, which leads back to the idea of working on the criminal recourse options to allow for more victims to actually report and fix this. You're proposing extra-judicial recourse as the path forward. That may be a possible solution, but the basic mechanisms do not change. Evidence will have to be presented and corroborated one way or another. > In this case, someone was wrongly accused, and even under a 50/50 system, it's clear the charges would not go through, and yes obviously the pre-meditated wrongful accuser should face a punishment. Just put yourself in the accused's shoes for one moment. Let's take this specific case. If the accuser had not been so incompetent and exposed himself by using his home IP address, or had the accuser not been so wily in discovering the link between the IP address and the accuser, what would have happened? At best his VC career would be over and his marriage destroyed. > Instead of complaining about the public lynch mob and blaming the mass of people who likely won't stop, discuss and focus on the problems that prevent it. Like actually getting rape kits tested, creating more avenues for sexual assault reporting via a calmer system than anonymous blog posts, etc. I don't claim to have the solution to our problems, but blame must be allocated where blame is due. It is far more fashionable nowadays to virtue signal than to be objective, which is the precisely cause of situations like these. If you have a proposal for an effective extra-judicial system that is not based on facts, evidence and due process, I would be more more than interested in reading it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
9y ago

marcoperaza 9y ago

You're ready to throw away our precious legal protections because you think false accusations are rare. The number of high profile false accusations should be enough to give you pause: the University of Virginia Rolling Stone "gang rape", the Duke Lacrosse case, Columbia University “mattress girl” Emma Sulkowicz, and the Parker Gilbert case. Not to mention the dozens of lawsuits won by accused students against universities for depriving them of meaningful due process. You're insistent that your argument is logically and philosophically valid. I'm not sure what that's exactly supposed to mean, but it's rather irrelevant. By your same standard, we should entertain the policy of unlimited police power and summary executions as a way of ridding ourselves of organized crime. Bringing down the leaders of such groups within our legal system is notoriously difficult, yet Castro was able to eliminate the mafia from Cuba in a hurry, because he didn't have to deal with due process and civil liberties. You're just falling for a politically-current moral panic. The American way is quite simple: if there is a reasonable doubt of someone's guilt, then they must go free.

gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago

Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? The reason we don't lower the standard of proof is that we've been down that road already - and it leads to bad places.

adjkant 9y ago
Notice how I never once said I agreed with the argument. To be honest, I don't know where I stand on this and likely fall somewhere in the middle, though that middle seems a bit unclear. The slippery slope argument isn't invalid in all cases, but I would say it's quite a stretch here considering the argument I presented already exists in civil court in the US.