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Is it really worth this much effort of yours to defend the honour of a guy who is so involved with a pedophile rapist and pimp that he arranged a conference on

Is it really worth this much effort of yours to defend the honour of a guy who is so involved with a pedophile rapist and pimp that he arranged a conference on said pedophile's private island, where he kept his sex slaves? Like, isn't at that point time to step back, look at the situation, and go "wait, this does not seem right"? To think that maybe this guy might just be rotten, and maybe he is neither worth listening to or defending?

cgriswald 7y ago
If you think I'm defending Krauss, you're missing the point entirely. I'm defending a value system that includes a presumption of innocence. It's well within ASU's rights to listen to the allegations, conduct their own investigation, and decide whether or not it is right for them to employ Krauss. Taking that decision as proof of wrongdoing on Krauss' part isn't at all compelling. "This does not seem right" is not proof enough for me to convict someone in my own mind. I have reasonable doubts. As far as I can tell, I've done more work than anyone in this thread to find the evidence both for and against the allegations against Krauss. If the best argument you can offer is "Well, it looks shady and his motivations might be in question, so we should ignore his arguments on that basis rather than on whether they are sound," you're just wasting your time and mine. You've got a mob mentality. It might feel good. It might do some good. It might feel effective. It might feel like winning. But it's going to have false positives, going to do more bad than good in the long run, and it might even do bad to you personally. You need a rethink.
- foldr 7y ago
  The presumption of innocence is the standard used in criminal trials. It makes no sense to apply it outside a courtroom to someone who isn't accused of a crime. The allegations against Krauss are backed up by direct testimony and eyewitness evidence, not merely some general appearence of shadyness. There's no "mob mentality" involved. There's good evidence that Krauss is a serial sexual harasser, and that is why I think that he is one. Every contrarian likes to imagine that they're standing up to a baying irrational mob. But in most cases they're just missing something obvious that everyone else can see clearly. None of this, obviously, entails that Krauss is wrong about the clock thing.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    The presumption of innocence has to be social and cultural, not just legal, for it to have any meaning at all. And I suggest that if it’s not social and cultural, it’s unlikely to be legal for long. The idea that we should abandon it out of hand because some people do bad things is mob mentality. It’s not like mobs are always wrong about their targets. It’s their decision processes that define them. The evidence you found is not compelling. The evidence I found is not compelling. The ASU statement is not evidence. It’s hearsay. (It’s hearsay even if it’s all true.) No one has even bothered to address the fact that ASU is a party to the accusations and also has potential liabilities to manage. If I’m missing something from your point of view it’s not because I haven’t seen what you’ve shown me. It’s because you’re “reading between the lines” which, while often useful in deciding whether to let someone in our home or business, is wholly inappropriate when deciding whether to vilify someone. “I don’t want to leave this guy alone with my daughter” is much different than “We shouldn’t listen to this guy about anything.” And, again, the issue here is @iron0013’s original post, in which he not only doesn’t cite any of the things you and I cited, but goes a step farther and tries to use the fact of Krauss’ resignation as evidence of his motivations without even bothering to make an argument. Then people piled on the idea that we shouldn’t listen to Krauss at all. I’m willing to stipulate that you don’t have a mob mentality. Although we disagree, I think you’re reasonable. But surely you can see that it exists.
    - foldr 7y ago
      The presumption of innocence is an irrational bias that we introduce in criminal cases in order to favor false negatives over false positives. If you think that we should all be applying the presumption of innocence to each other all the time, then you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the principle that you think you're defending. I think the original post didn't provide citations because Krauss's inappropriate behavior is well known and easy to verify from the sources in the Wikipedia article. This discussion would be a lot easier if you'd just make your defense of Krauss, instead of accusing everyone else of being part of a mob. Krauss is not the victim. The victims are the women he harassed and the sex slaves of the pimp who bankrolled him, and who he publicly defended. Extraordinarily, you still talk vaguely as if there is some realistic doubt about any of this.

cgriswald 7y ago

If you think I'm defending Krauss, you're missing the point entirely. I'm defending a value system that includes a presumption of innocence. It's well within ASU's rights to listen to the allegations, conduct their own investigation, and decide whether or not it is right for them to employ Krauss. Taking that decision as proof of wrongdoing on Krauss' part isn't at all compelling. "This does not seem right" is not proof enough for me to convict someone in my own mind. I have reasonable doubts. As far as I can tell, I've done more work than anyone in this thread to find the evidence both for and against the allegations against Krauss. If the best argument you can offer is "Well, it looks shady and his motivations might be in question, so we should ignore his arguments on that basis rather than on whether they are sound," you're just wasting your time and mine. You've got a mob mentality. It might feel good. It might do some good. It might feel effective. It might feel like winning. But it's going to have false positives, going to do more bad than good in the long run, and it might even do bad to you personally. You need a rethink.

foldr 7y ago
The presumption of innocence is the standard used in criminal trials. It makes no sense to apply it outside a courtroom to someone who isn't accused of a crime. The allegations against Krauss are backed up by direct testimony and eyewitness evidence, not merely some general appearence of shadyness. There's no "mob mentality" involved. There's good evidence that Krauss is a serial sexual harasser, and that is why I think that he is one. Every contrarian likes to imagine that they're standing up to a baying irrational mob. But in most cases they're just missing something obvious that everyone else can see clearly. None of this, obviously, entails that Krauss is wrong about the clock thing.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  The presumption of innocence has to be social and cultural, not just legal, for it to have any meaning at all. And I suggest that if it’s not social and cultural, it’s unlikely to be legal for long. The idea that we should abandon it out of hand because some people do bad things is mob mentality. It’s not like mobs are always wrong about their targets. It’s their decision processes that define them. The evidence you found is not compelling. The evidence I found is not compelling. The ASU statement is not evidence. It’s hearsay. (It’s hearsay even if it’s all true.) No one has even bothered to address the fact that ASU is a party to the accusations and also has potential liabilities to manage. If I’m missing something from your point of view it’s not because I haven’t seen what you’ve shown me. It’s because you’re “reading between the lines” which, while often useful in deciding whether to let someone in our home or business, is wholly inappropriate when deciding whether to vilify someone. “I don’t want to leave this guy alone with my daughter” is much different than “We shouldn’t listen to this guy about anything.” And, again, the issue here is @iron0013’s original post, in which he not only doesn’t cite any of the things you and I cited, but goes a step farther and tries to use the fact of Krauss’ resignation as evidence of his motivations without even bothering to make an argument. Then people piled on the idea that we shouldn’t listen to Krauss at all. I’m willing to stipulate that you don’t have a mob mentality. Although we disagree, I think you’re reasonable. But surely you can see that it exists.
  - foldr 7y ago
    The presumption of innocence is an irrational bias that we introduce in criminal cases in order to favor false negatives over false positives. If you think that we should all be applying the presumption of innocence to each other all the time, then you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the principle that you think you're defending. I think the original post didn't provide citations because Krauss's inappropriate behavior is well known and easy to verify from the sources in the Wikipedia article. This discussion would be a lot easier if you'd just make your defense of Krauss, instead of accusing everyone else of being part of a mob. Krauss is not the victim. The victims are the women he harassed and the sex slaves of the pimp who bankrolled him, and who he publicly defended. Extraordinarily, you still talk vaguely as if there is some realistic doubt about any of this.