5 ms·

"don't work for that person, he rapes his employees" That statement needs to be backed up by hard evidence. It's a very terrible thing to accuse someone of suc

by tfha 9y ago

"don't work for that person, he rapes his employees" That statement needs to be backed up by hard evidence. It's a very terrible thing to accuse someone of such a serious crime. And if the statement is true, I somehow don't feel comfortable accepting that the solution is just to warn people not to work for them.

soared 9y ago
GP is talking about an actual system - if 99% of people have positive views of someone and then 1 person accuses them it's much less credible than if 20 people accused them. Obviously there are inherent problems, but maybe better than what we have now.
- aperrien 9y ago
  We've had that, except by word of mouth for most of humanity's history. I think that it's one of the ways we got here, unfortunately.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  As a perfect current example of just that in practice, see: Woody Allen.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    Child molestation is another can of worm, see the Outreau trial. Note : I am NOT saying that it is also the case for Dylan Farrow. Just that sadly the world is not all black and white and for this kind of crime it is very hard to find the truth.
rayiner 9y ago
And what if you don’t have hard evidence? What if you’re an intern who was raped and you just have your word? Do you give up your opportunity to work at Microsoft? Do you go to work with your rapist? Isn’t that also a terrible thing? Dealing with a work place complaint is very different than dealing with a criminal case. With crimes, we can say “it’s better to let one thousand guilty people go free than to convict once innocent person.” We can do that because a false negative has relatively little cost. As we are learning with the Harvey Weinstein allegations, that’s not true in a work place setting. A false negative means that some woman has to either exit the job and give up career opportunities, or live with ongoing harassment and abuse at the hands of a coworker. And if you set the standard for believing accusers so high that you let one thousand victimized women continue to be harassed to save one innocent man from a false accusation, you get what we have now: a bunch of really angry women.
- Spivak 9y ago
  So what would you do instead? Alice and Bob work together and Alice accuses Bob of rape (or really any personal crime like assault or theft). The police investigate and either decide not to press charges or Bob is found not-guilty in court. After the fact it's clear that Alice and Bob working together isn't good for either of them. And to the best of your knowledge Bob isn't guilty of anything -- unless you claim to know better than the police and the courts. If you were the manager of Alice and Bob what action would you take that you belive is fair?
  - Retric 9y ago
    The courts are not designed to find the truth they are a complex compromise that evolved over time to protect both people and society. Having a different burden of proof for firing someone and sending them to prison is completely reasonable.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      I don't necessarily disagree but then what should that burden be? "More likely than not?" I wouldn't even feel comfortable sending a child to time out if there was a 49% they didn't do it. Reasonable doubt is, at least to me, pretty much the gold standard for all forms of punitive action. Also, if you aren't going to follow the justice system's outcome then what system are you going to use to evaluate the evidence under the new burden? The court of office opinion sounds terrifying.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Here are the two failure modes. Say you believe Alice, but she’s lying. Then Bob gets fired or moved despite being innocent. Or, you believe Bob but he’s lying. So Alice has to either leave (the exact same result as Bob), or continue to work with her rapist (arguably a worse result). The two failure modes are equally bad. From the point of view of minimizing social harm, you want to minimize the sum of the two failure cases. Now, let’s look at the statistics. Rape is much more common than false accusations of rape. Now, you run a simulation using these statistics. What happens? The rule of believing Alice results in vastly more cases where you make the right decision than the rule where you believe Bob. And it results in vastly less social harm overall. So what’s fair? I’d assume that you’d say it’s to believe Bob, since you have no “hard evidence” to the contrary. (To nitpick: a sworn statement by a witness, Alice, is evidence admissible in court.) But that means that 10-20 women are forced to leave their jobs or work with their rapists for every one man who is spared from wrongly being fired due to a false accusation. From the point of view of minimizing social harm, you’ve failed. Of course, in reality, you’re usually going to have some other evidence to go on. Bob might say, “Alice is lying I was at the bar with my friends when the alleged rape happened.” If so then you should believe Bob, of course. The idea of shifting the burden of proof might not work in a criminal case, but for the reasons explained above, the considerations in a work place scenario are very different: false negatives are just as bad as false positives.

by tfha 9y ago

soared 9y ago

GP is talking about an actual system - if 99% of people have positive views of someone and then 1 person accuses them it's much less credible than if 20 people accused them. Obviously there are inherent problems, but maybe better than what we have now.

aperrien 9y ago
We've had that, except by word of mouth for most of humanity's history. I think that it's one of the ways we got here, unfortunately.
QAPereo 9y ago
As a perfect current example of just that in practice, see: Woody Allen.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Child molestation is another can of worm, see the Outreau trial. Note : I am NOT saying that it is also the case for Dylan Farrow. Just that sadly the world is not all black and white and for this kind of crime it is very hard to find the truth.

rayiner 9y ago

And what if you don’t have hard evidence? What if you’re an intern who was raped and you just have your word? Do you give up your opportunity to work at Microsoft? Do you go to work with your rapist? Isn’t that also a terrible thing? Dealing with a work place complaint is very different than dealing with a criminal case. With crimes, we can say “it’s better to let one thousand guilty people go free than to convict once innocent person.” We can do that because a false negative has relatively little cost. As we are learning with the Harvey Weinstein allegations, that’s not true in a work place setting. A false negative means that some woman has to either exit the job and give up career opportunities, or live with ongoing harassment and abuse at the hands of a coworker. And if you set the standard for believing accusers so high that you let one thousand victimized women continue to be harassed to save one innocent man from a false accusation, you get what we have now: a bunch of really angry women.

Spivak 9y ago
So what would you do instead? Alice and Bob work together and Alice accuses Bob of rape (or really any personal crime like assault or theft). The police investigate and either decide not to press charges or Bob is found not-guilty in court. After the fact it's clear that Alice and Bob working together isn't good for either of them. And to the best of your knowledge Bob isn't guilty of anything -- unless you claim to know better than the police and the courts. If you were the manager of Alice and Bob what action would you take that you belive is fair?
- Retric 9y ago
  The courts are not designed to find the truth they are a complex compromise that evolved over time to protect both people and society. Having a different burden of proof for firing someone and sending them to prison is completely reasonable.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree but then what should that burden be? "More likely than not?" I wouldn't even feel comfortable sending a child to time out if there was a 49% they didn't do it. Reasonable doubt is, at least to me, pretty much the gold standard for all forms of punitive action. Also, if you aren't going to follow the justice system's outcome then what system are you going to use to evaluate the evidence under the new burden? The court of office opinion sounds terrifying.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Here are the two failure modes. Say you believe Alice, but she’s lying. Then Bob gets fired or moved despite being innocent. Or, you believe Bob but he’s lying. So Alice has to either leave (the exact same result as Bob), or continue to work with her rapist (arguably a worse result). The two failure modes are equally bad. From the point of view of minimizing social harm, you want to minimize the sum of the two failure cases. Now, let’s look at the statistics. Rape is much more common than false accusations of rape. Now, you run a simulation using these statistics. What happens? The rule of believing Alice results in vastly more cases where you make the right decision than the rule where you believe Bob. And it results in vastly less social harm overall. So what’s fair? I’d assume that you’d say it’s to believe Bob, since you have no “hard evidence” to the contrary. (To nitpick: a sworn statement by a witness, Alice, is evidence admissible in court.) But that means that 10-20 women are forced to leave their jobs or work with their rapists for every one man who is spared from wrongly being fired due to a false accusation. From the point of view of minimizing social harm, you’ve failed. Of course, in reality, you’re usually going to have some other evidence to go on. Bob might say, “Alice is lying I was at the bar with my friends when the alleged rape happened.” If so then you should believe Bob, of course. The idea of shifting the burden of proof might not work in a criminal case, but for the reasons explained above, the considerations in a work place scenario are very different: false negatives are just as bad as false positives.