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This was utterly, utterly predictable, and I'm sure the same dynamic is playing out in milder, more insidious forms in industries that are less openly regressiv

This was utterly, utterly predictable, and I'm sure the same dynamic is playing out in milder, more insidious forms in industries that are less openly regressive than Wall Street. I said as much to many of my friends during the nascency of the movement, and was baffled at how novel a concept it seemed to all of them. This isn't fair to women, of course. But Water flows downhill, and people follow incentives. If you create a no-due-process superweapon that a class of people can point at another class, expect the latter to avoid situations where the former can use it. Duh. (In theory, women wouldn't be considered potential false accusers any more than men would, but the fact that the breakdown of gender roles has been intentionally lopsided means that a female accuser is both more likely and more likely to be taken seriously). As die-hard a liberal as I am, I'm still sympathetic to the idea of examining whether we should shift the burden of proof for cases with characteristics that are systematically difficult to prove (not in the criminal justice system, of course; I think society-sanctioned state violence does and should have a much, much higher bar for protecting the innocent). But as a left-liberal, one of my primary points of departure with the contemporary left is that it seems to believe to its core that wishing on a star is all it takes for a policy to be effective, with no attention paid to the _actual_ way that a policy is expected to play out in the real world[1]. [1] I don't mean to suggest that the left uniquely has this problem, but I've got less exposure to the man-on-the-street version of the right, since I live in a deep Blue bubble and most of my friends form their beliefs based on whatever the Atlantic et al have on their front page.

dgzl 8y ago
> I'm still sympathetic to the idea of examining whether we should shift the burden of proof for cases with characteristics that are systematically difficult to prove (not in the criminal justice system, of course; I think society-sanctioned state violence does and should have a much, much higher bar for protecting the innocent). Could you explain this? It almost sounds like you're interested in foregoing proof to decide cases where 'proof is hard'.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  It's not a very well-formed idea, but it comes from the fact that I think that carefully-considered pragmatic exceptions to general rules can be valuable. For a simple example, many people don't understand what it is about markets that make them powerful[1]. That doesn't preclude any economic role for government, since markets aren't perfect and there are cases where govt action is more suited to the situation. Along the same lines, and taking a set of claims at face value: if there's an epidemic of rape and various institutions are systematically underserving victims, then it may make sense to shift that burden. I wouldn't say "forgoing" proof when proof is hard, but changing the standard of evidence. Proof isn't binary: for example, the "preponderance of evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt" standards for civil and criminal trials are pretty different. For a directly relevant example, I'm not very incensed by institutions cutting ties with Dr. Cosby and Harvey Weinstein despite the lack of a criminal conviction, and I don't think it's very controversial that decades of independent accusations may reasonably add up to a bit more than the initial presumed innocence. It's the formalization of this new standard (which many/most already agree to) that I'm open to. Of course, this is all theoretical. I don't think most people are remotely capable of handling even the bare minimum of nuance we're talking about here, so it's much more likely that we end up overshooting the target and doing blind damage to the concept of due process. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [1] I've had conversations with people on HN itself about how Uber's pricing would be more just and just as effective if they did it manually instead of using the distributed pricing system we call supply and demand
  - dgzl 8y ago
    > Cosby, Weinstein I see your point now. > decades of independent accusations may reasonably add up to a bit more than the initial presumed innocence. It's the formalization of this new standard (which many/most already agree to) that I'm open to. How much is 'a bit more' then? You're essentially saying we should be allowed to substitute evidence if enough people vouch for a claim. In which case, to what degree of guilt can we attribute a person based on this metric? If the degree has any significance, how is this different than mob-rule Justice? And you're claiming many/most people already agree to this standard?
    - 8y ago
Posibyte 8y ago
This happened to me. I started on a journey of transitioning to a woman and gathered a group of friends at work composed of women. They supported me for a few years helping me through the process. Then recently (as of this year), a woman came forward claiming I was harassing, intimidating, and sexually abusing her. This woman was one of the people who had supported me previously. She had been gunning for my position (she was just below me) and we had joked about her taking my position after I moved up. I'm still guessing to this day that was why she made those claims. We go to HR, her sister presides over the case. I filed a complaint due to conflict of interest. The woman filing the claim threatened to open up to the media about this if the company went forward with replacing the woman in charge of the case. It's probably no surprise, but they ruled against me and terminated my employment. I had no violations beforehand, no concerns, no performance issues, nothing. I was told to confess, just say it, was hinted at many times to just confess, just confess, we have evidence, anything else you say is a lie, don't drag it out, but I didn't. I felt as if my career was over. I was a trans freak who assaulted women as far as I knew it. Who would want to hire one of me? Thankfully, I got some good advice to fight it in court, and I did, and I won, thankfully. And that's when I learned, it's not about the truth, it's about image. The company didn't care what the actual ruling was, in fact the company came from having a very bad image in the past just now forming a new one. And even though I won the court case, that didn't matter. I still had to explain it to future employers and that was all it took to shut the door on me. I'm a die-hard liberal too. But that really shook my faith in the goodness of people. I had several suicidal episodes after that, only to be barely pulled out of it by my wonderful husband. It's so easy for someone to point a finger and that's essentially the only word to say in the matter. And I guess what I'm saying is, I hope this never happens to anyone. I'm sure women aren't anything special when it comes to being evil or twisted. That's a silly thought to me. I fully believe most of the women coming out on the #MeToo movement are being honest and truthful. But when you can mold the situation in a way that you know no-one will question you, it only takes one to flip the world upside down. That's a lot of power to just give someone.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Wow, what a horrible story. I'm really sorry to hear you went through that.
rdl 8y ago
I think the only viable resolution is: providing help for victims should be a very low bar, in ways which don't hurt anyone else including an accused, and punishment should retain a higher bar (although you certainly don't need to meet criminal conviction standards to fire someone accused of certain behavior.) And as with a lot of things, focus on prevention/rapid intervention as early as possible, rather than waiting until serious harm has been done.

dgzl 8y ago

> I'm still sympathetic to the idea of examining whether we should shift the burden of proof for cases with characteristics that are systematically difficult to prove (not in the criminal justice system, of course; I think society-sanctioned state violence does and should have a much, much higher bar for protecting the innocent). Could you explain this? It almost sounds like you're interested in foregoing proof to decide cases where 'proof is hard'.

wutbrodo 8y ago
It's not a very well-formed idea, but it comes from the fact that I think that carefully-considered pragmatic exceptions to general rules can be valuable. For a simple example, many people don't understand what it is about markets that make them powerful[1]. That doesn't preclude any economic role for government, since markets aren't perfect and there are cases where govt action is more suited to the situation. Along the same lines, and taking a set of claims at face value: if there's an epidemic of rape and various institutions are systematically underserving victims, then it may make sense to shift that burden. I wouldn't say "forgoing" proof when proof is hard, but changing the standard of evidence. Proof isn't binary: for example, the "preponderance of evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt" standards for civil and criminal trials are pretty different. For a directly relevant example, I'm not very incensed by institutions cutting ties with Dr. Cosby and Harvey Weinstein despite the lack of a criminal conviction, and I don't think it's very controversial that decades of independent accusations may reasonably add up to a bit more than the initial presumed innocence. It's the formalization of this new standard (which many/most already agree to) that I'm open to. Of course, this is all theoretical. I don't think most people are remotely capable of handling even the bare minimum of nuance we're talking about here, so it's much more likely that we end up overshooting the target and doing blind damage to the concept of due process. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [1] I've had conversations with people on HN itself about how Uber's pricing would be more just and just as effective if they did it manually instead of using the distributed pricing system we call supply and demand
- dgzl 8y ago
  > Cosby, Weinstein I see your point now. > decades of independent accusations may reasonably add up to a bit more than the initial presumed innocence. It's the formalization of this new standard (which many/most already agree to) that I'm open to. How much is 'a bit more' then? You're essentially saying we should be allowed to substitute evidence if enough people vouch for a claim. In which case, to what degree of guilt can we attribute a person based on this metric? If the degree has any significance, how is this different than mob-rule Justice? And you're claiming many/most people already agree to this standard?
  - 8y ago

Posibyte 8y ago

This happened to me. I started on a journey of transitioning to a woman and gathered a group of friends at work composed of women. They supported me for a few years helping me through the process. Then recently (as of this year), a woman came forward claiming I was harassing, intimidating, and sexually abusing her. This woman was one of the people who had supported me previously. She had been gunning for my position (she was just below me) and we had joked about her taking my position after I moved up. I'm still guessing to this day that was why she made those claims. We go to HR, her sister presides over the case. I filed a complaint due to conflict of interest. The woman filing the claim threatened to open up to the media about this if the company went forward with replacing the woman in charge of the case. It's probably no surprise, but they ruled against me and terminated my employment. I had no violations beforehand, no concerns, no performance issues, nothing. I was told to confess, just say it, was hinted at many times to just confess, just confess, we have evidence, anything else you say is a lie, don't drag it out, but I didn't. I felt as if my career was over. I was a trans freak who assaulted women as far as I knew it. Who would want to hire one of me? Thankfully, I got some good advice to fight it in court, and I did, and I won, thankfully. And that's when I learned, it's not about the truth, it's about image. The company didn't care what the actual ruling was, in fact the company came from having a very bad image in the past just now forming a new one. And even though I won the court case, that didn't matter. I still had to explain it to future employers and that was all it took to shut the door on me. I'm a die-hard liberal too. But that really shook my faith in the goodness of people. I had several suicidal episodes after that, only to be barely pulled out of it by my wonderful husband. It's so easy for someone to point a finger and that's essentially the only word to say in the matter. And I guess what I'm saying is, I hope this never happens to anyone. I'm sure women aren't anything special when it comes to being evil or twisted. That's a silly thought to me. I fully believe most of the women coming out on the #MeToo movement are being honest and truthful. But when you can mold the situation in a way that you know no-one will question you, it only takes one to flip the world upside down. That's a lot of power to just give someone.

wutbrodo 8y ago
Wow, what a horrible story. I'm really sorry to hear you went through that.

rdl 8y ago

I think the only viable resolution is: providing help for victims should be a very low bar, in ways which don't hurt anyone else including an accused, and punishment should retain a higher bar (although you certainly don't need to meet criminal conviction standards to fire someone accused of certain behavior.) And as with a lot of things, focus on prevention/rapid intervention as early as possible, rather than waiting until serious harm has been done.