4 ms·

> 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 viewpo

> 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]
adjkant 9y ago
> 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 judgment. You can have due process with different legal standards. See preponderance of the evidence above. I agree, due process, of course. I'm saying the root of the social backlash is that the legal system is failing. > 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 than interested in reading it. That is absolutely not what I am saying. I am advocating for the use of a different legal standard, one already being used in the US justice system. I'm also advocating for focusing on the victims over the rarer cases of false accusations, which while they should be remedied, should be the secondary focus between the two issues. See below the line for more. I also think to classify it as virtue signaling is missing the point. That is one of the straw men I see here. The reason people's lives are affected so strongly by rape accusations is because regardless of guilt, people would rather not take a risk in most situations. It has nothing to do with virtue signaling. --------------------------------------------------------------- The thing I find more frustrating here is that when you have many people suffering from rape and sexual harassment and a few suffering from false accusations, people in this thread seem far more concerned with shifting focus to the falsely accused rather than the victims of the true crimes when there are numbers showing that one is the much more widespread problem. I see it equivalent to complaining about people blocking the highway to protest BLM stuff (and generally the response to BLM in general about the message not being conveyed perfectly, which for sure it wasn't), or the 60's with the black panthers. If you see a large injustice that needs correction and you're focusing on a smaller injustice that hinders the larger correction, I think that practically amounts to implicitly supporting the larger injustice. It's a disturbing pattern you can find with pretty much every social movement.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

adjkant 9y ago

> 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 judgment. You can have due process with different legal standards. See preponderance of the evidence above. I agree, due process, of course. I'm saying the root of the social backlash is that the legal system is failing. > 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 than interested in reading it. That is absolutely not what I am saying. I am advocating for the use of a different legal standard, one already being used in the US justice system. I'm also advocating for focusing on the victims over the rarer cases of false accusations, which while they should be remedied, should be the secondary focus between the two issues. See below the line for more. I also think to classify it as virtue signaling is missing the point. That is one of the straw men I see here. The reason people's lives are affected so strongly by rape accusations is because regardless of guilt, people would rather not take a risk in most situations. It has nothing to do with virtue signaling. --------------------------------------------------------------- The thing I find more frustrating here is that when you have many people suffering from rape and sexual harassment and a few suffering from false accusations, people in this thread seem far more concerned with shifting focus to the falsely accused rather than the victims of the true crimes when there are numbers showing that one is the much more widespread problem. I see it equivalent to complaining about people blocking the highway to protest BLM stuff (and generally the response to BLM in general about the message not being conveyed perfectly, which for sure it wasn't), or the 60's with the black panthers. If you see a large injustice that needs correction and you're focusing on a smaller injustice that hinders the larger correction, I think that practically amounts to implicitly supporting the larger injustice. It's a disturbing pattern you can find with pretty much every social movement.