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Comment by siftrics | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but I only have to come up with a reasonable doubt.

It's analogous to coming up with one counterexample to disprove something in mathematics.

I can reasonably theorize that he fully intended to stop bombing people based on this "deal". There. Done. I can doubt he planned to bomb people in a reasonable way.

The onus is on you to remove all reasonable doubt. You have not done so by simply showing that there are bombs in his cabin. He could have built them before he made the deal to stop bombing people. That's a completely reasonable scenario.

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> The onus is on you to remove all reasonable doubt.

No it's not.

Again, that's the standard for criminal punishment. Not moral judgement.

And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.

>Again, that's the standard for criminal punishment. Not moral judgement.

I never said anything about moral judgement. I was never talking about moral judgement.

> And have you heard of civil law? Despite the high stakes that's usually decided based on the preponderance of evidence.

Unrelated. Please, do share a link where Ted Kaczynski was convicted of a crime in connection with the unplanted bombs in question, because that's what I have been talking about in this entire string of comments.

I am exonerated by fact. Ted was not convicted of a crime for the unplanted bomb because there was insufficient evidence to do so. End of story ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

> I never said anything about moral judgement. I was never talking about moral judgement.

"Just because he bombed people previously doesn't mean he intended to do it again. You have to have stronger evidence, like writings or postage stamps, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these two bombs were going to be planted."

"He is doing moral judgement and that one requires only reasonable probability."

"Yeah but I only have to come up with a reasonable doubt."

Aren't those lines all replies in order? Then you're using "reasonable doubt" as a couterargument to a moral judgement.

Either https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36275516 is trying to apply reasonable doubt to a moral judgement, or you're not reading the comments you're replying to.

Okay, this is a miscommunication.

I should have made it more clear that "Yeah but I only have to come up with..." meant "With respect to what I claimed..."

Sorry, I really am trying to be as charitable as possible with my interpretations of these comments.

I just hate to see people conflate emotion with logical soundness and validity. Appeals to emotion are human and valid and expose interesting points, but I can't stand to see them used to tear down the intellectual value (whether or not something is logically true) of ideas.

> I should have made it more clear that "Yeah but I only have to come up with..." meant "With respect to what I claimed..."

That's fine with respect to your claims, but it means your claims can't be used as-is to counter other claims that aren't on the same framework. Those people aren't trying to convict him.

> I just hate to see people conflate emotion with logical soundness and validity. Appeals to emotion are human and valid and expose interesting points, but I can't stand to see them used to tear down the intellectual value (whether or not something is logically true) of ideas.

I don't think anyone is doing that in this thread? "he stopped because he was arrested" isn't an invalid takedown of his ideas. There was a mention of ideas further upstream, but from that comment on they don't come up.

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