Could this not also be evidence for bias?
A judge scheduling longer hearings for cases with good outcomes suggests they've already made up their mind.
A judge scheduling longer hearings for cases with good outcomes suggests they've already made up their mind.
Is it difficult to believe that a judge would be able to predict at least some outcomes from a single paragraph?
All it takes is to predict above random chance to have a statistically significant effect.
It's difficult to believe that the decision should be made quickly. When making decisions about the trajectory of someone's life, they should be made with care. Having a system that removes snap judgements and bias is important, and I would say that even a quick-scan and re-ordering of documents is a form of bias.
Having interacted with the criminal justice system, that's the view they seem to take.
1) Most people charged with a crime these day are usually guilty of it. The public has made it pretty clear they would rather see no one charged if the crime is a legit whodunit -- no one desires to see innocent people arrested and charged just to give the impression of safety. Prosecutors, and downwards (police) feel pressure to only file and prosecute cases that are legitimately believed to be of truth regarding the suspect. That said, you are innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof is on the state. Even if we can mostly feel that you did it, if it can not be put before a jury to return a guilty verdict, you are not to face penalty in our society (mostly; ignore OJ's civil case... that's a pretty rare exception to be honest).
2) I understand why judges seem automatic -- but remember this: in a criminal trial (minus your option to do a bench trial), you are found guilty or not-guilty by a jury of your (location) peers. The judge has his own opinion, but he is restricted based on the guilty/not-guilty finding of the jury, and sometimes state/federal sentencing guidelines. Of course there are prick judges who SENTENCEMAXXXX people just to be an asshole - no one with an ounce of common sense will endorse that. In general, I trust and expect judges to apply their experience of both law and life in determining what is the appropriate penalty after someone is found guilty.
So no trial, no presumption of innocence, and absolutely no interest in anything other that processing 'criminals' as quickly as possible.
So your comment "Most people charged with a crime these day are usually guilty of it"
May well be true. the issue is that it is self reinforcing, most people are guilty, so the system treats you as probably guilty, so the people that aren't guilty don't get the protections theyre supposed to have the right to.
"Once you've abandoned principled, wholistic reasoning for your pet heuristics, you can figure out many outcomes from the inputs to your pet heuristics".
Do you mean something different by "bias"?
Being able to predict an outcome has nothing to do with the process of deriving the outcome, and it has nothing to do with bias.
There may be many signals that correlate with an outcome. If you are out of shape and move ploddingly, you probably can't do a triple axel even though you believe you can. Is that prediction biased?
Bias would be if you could demonstrate that predicting the outcome has influenced their decision-making.
To expand on the point using your analogy -
Your point is that there would be some things an expert would see, and then judge to be highly improbable.
While this point can inform our thinking, it is the lesser point that exists within a bigger issue:
First - This is a court of law, not the court of public opinion, or processes. There is an expectation of exactness, and of a fair, unbiased and attentive hearing of the facts.
Second- While I don’t know what a triple axel is, I have seen people who seem utterly out of shape dance with grace, and people who appear to be incredibly fit, turn out to be frauds.
In this scenario, I would say that the assumption that each case is similar, is not valid.
I will grant that it becomes human to behave this way though.
Then if we test it and it fails acceptance testing, I might learn there is a problem that takes some time to fix.
I did not arrive at a biased decision; I had priors that I used to make an estimation, which turned out to misleading.
The judge is exactly this case. They guess the time it will take to rule; it doesn’t have to mean their eventual ruling is biased.
The thing you think works gets less testing time than the thing you aren't so sure works.
Thus the thing you think works is more likely to pass, just because you are subjecting it to less tests.
Your bias (whether you think the thing works) is having an effect on the outcome.
Good testing, as with good judging should involve 0 preconceptions.
Yes it could be that the judge has a good eye for how long a topic will take, but leaving less time for the facts to come out, necessarily means the facts are less likely to come out.
I'm sure they get feedback on whether their decisions are consistent with what other judges would have decided, but that's qualitatively different from feedback on whether those decisions were fair or right. If anything, that is the kind of feedback that would propagate biases in the system! You would end up becoming an expert on making consistent, defensible decisions, even if those decisions were consistently and defensibly bad.
The expertise in question is predicting, from a short summary of the case, what's going to happen in the trial itself.
So yes, every judge gets clear and timely feedback on prediction quality.