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Comment by mikedilger | Hacker News Reader

This is a very difficult issue. Most sexual assaults happen in private, so there is rarely any evidence a victim can use to convict the perpetrator. Most accusations are real, but some are questionable as to whether a crime was committed, and some accusations are false. Given there is almost never any evidence, victims are at a severe disadvantage in the innocent until proven guilty paradigm. I can understand why some people want to flip the tables and "believe all women" but it's also clear that such a flipped situation has it's own severe problems, and that IMHO there is no good solution. Knowing this I have more empathy for everybody's view on this topic, rather than being in one camp and demonizing the other.

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> Most accusations are real

See, I want to believe that, but I'm not sure there is a way to know whether or not that is actually true. In much the same way that there is rarely evidence of guilt when an accusation is true there isn't likely to be evidence when an accusation is false. I keep seeing people say some variant of "X% of rape accusations are false" but none of the sources I have ever seen have had a particularly accurate way of gathering data... because one doesn't exist. The proportion of unproven accusations that happen to be false is unknowable in practical terms, and I get frustrated by people variously flat out stating it is high/low.

You may borrow priors that are personal but calibrated based on reading statistics: accusations are real at a 3/4 rate, about 1/3 of people have been sexually assaulted ever, and in 9/10 of sexual assaults it is not the assaulter's first time.

I personally would not say that 3/4 is "most", but I don't think any kind of blanket statement can occur below 7/8, and usually I prefer to think in nines or other logarithmic scales very close to certainty or uncertainty.

We need to have evidence before we can make certain reasoned decisions. Without evidence, we need to listen, consider, and keep ourselves open to possibilities.

Do you have sources for those numbers?

Thanks to Aumann's Agreement, I cannot convince you that the priors are well-calibrated priors without infinite regress. Do you have sources for other numbers that you would prefer be used instead?

I'm gonna take that as a no.

Sure. Take a step back and look at this with some perspective:

* Neither of us really know what's going on

* Both of us have done private research

* We came up with some numbers

* I shared my numbers, you didn't share yours

Your complaint is that I'm not delegating the numbers to some authority. My complaint is that, regardless of which authority you choose, you're still choosing an authority.

I'm not saying that I'm right; in fact, part of the point of choosing priors is to be wrong. However, when we publicize the process of selecting priors, we of course embarrass each other: If the priors were already well-known and well-agreed-upon, then by Aumann's Agreement, we would have nothing to discuss.

You are correct that we cannot know. I've made some assumptions I can't prove. But I think they're likely.

Can you at least consider yourself outside of the camp that considers it to be "rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated”, and feels no need for standard due process measures in campus sexual assault judgments?

What would be the equivalent extremities of the opposite camp? I'm not hearing from many opponents that sexual assault should be tolerated. It's more common to hear that they should be immediately escalated to law enforcement.

> I'm not hearing from many opponents that sexual assault should be tolerated.

It wasn't that long ago that a literal parade of college students were chanting "No means yes! Yes means anal!"

Fortunately, that behavior isn't common. But it also isn't fair to insinuate that the other side doesn't exist.

It definitely exists, but doesn't appear to have anything like the equivalent influence. It has been successfully marginalized.

> It wasn't that long ago that a literal parade of college students were chanting "No means yes! Yes means anal!"

Nor too long ago that a parade of college students were chanting "Die Cis Scum." Bizarrely (to me), detailed reporting showed that neither groups actually believed the words they were chanting - most people shouting "No means yes! Yes means anal" didn't believe rape was ok and most people shouting "Die Cis Scum" didn't believe murder was ok. Such cultural phenomenon deserve more than the surface glance you've given them.

I cannot find a single source for your claim. Do you have one?

I can't find any either. Just stuff about the meme,[0] and the woman who started it.

But at least two frats were using the first one as an initiation ritual.

0) https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/die-cis-scum

That's actually pretty funny. In reality, I'd say it was a good thing too. Better to be upfront that the world is a cruel and unforgiving place to young men/women than to pretend the judicial process is ever going to consistently be able to obtain sufficient evidence for rape charges.

Yes I'm outside the camp you describe. I side with due process and the presumption of innocence, name supression (not calling someone out who hasn't been found guilty) and I've been against the mob justice aspect of "me too", and I've seen it and cancel culture in general as a kind of social madness. But recently I started to understand the other side better, and I wanted to share why that side feels the way that they do... it's not as mad or as illogical as I had once thought.

"Innocent until proven guilty" and the need for evidence prior to an assumption of being guilty are not difficult issues.

Innocent-until-proven-guilty is morally, ethically, and logically superior to guilty-until-proven-innocent.

The former is the high ground, the latter is the low ground. Full stop.

I have empathy for accusers and the accused. But I don't have any empathy for people pushing guilty-until-proven-innocent.

I agree with your post that "victims are at a disadvantage", but you say that:

> there is rarely any evidence

while also saying that:

> Most accusations are real

This feels like a contradiction. We can only know whether an accusation is real or not when there is enough evidence. I think that doing extrapolation exercises based on no evidence is a bad idea.

You are correct that we cannot know. I've made some assumptions I can't prove. But I think they're most likely.

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