so basically, we live in a society where anyone's reputation can be instantly, completely and forever ruined, at will, by someone leveling a rape accusation on the internet.
In an ideal world we would simply say "where is the evidence, this should be sorted out in a trial". But given that the cops are so hostile to sexual assault victims, forensics which aren't processed for decades (http://www.npr.org/2014/01/25/266275211/tested-at-last-rape-... ) and a legal system which will try the credibility of victims, it's hard to blame any sexual assault victim who shies away from reporting.
In the end, unanswered questions persist.
The day when these sorts of accusations from a man against a woman carries the same weight with the same debilitating effects, then we can start talking about the legal problems.
Until then, this is about the bias our society as a whole has against men with respect to the rape issue, and woman understanding this.
What does it even mean for 'society' to 'have a bias'? That individuals in group G fare worse in situation S, all other things being equal, than individuals in other groups? If you have a better reading, please let me know. If not, we have disembarked too far from the cognitive for bias, an inherently cognitive thing, as our explanation.
Look at my name and call me a hammer-nail guy, but here's what I think: it comes down to options - yours, others', your expectation of others', theirs of yours, and most especially the resulting interplay of all of the above. Human beings are the situation you put them in.
You and I (and Max Temkin and Julian Assange) have a grounded reason for a general fear of false rape accusation: that option is available to any woman we've ever spent an hour with. Is any individual, no matter her motivations, terribly likely to exercise that option? No, but that's not the disturbing part. The disturbing part is, there's no recourse once they do - no options.
But why! Why are there no options? Because rape is the exact thing that it is: a grievous crime whose lasting scars are emotional more often than physical. Anything else, it's different: show me the dead body, show me the stolen thing, what have you. If you're a woman, and some dude rapes you but somehow there's no physical scarring and no dna and no webcam recording and no witnesses-- an altogether plausible scenario, we can all agree-- then fuck you, says the legal system. No options. Not that the legal system has an option in the matter either; you can't have a system that sends people to jail for decades on testimony without evidence. No options here, no options there, no options everywhere, for everyone.
We, by which I mean the public, tend to believe the accuser, in my personal opinion, a) because some fraction of the public is women who have been exactly there, with no options, and see themselves in the accuser (regardless of whatever the real truth of the matter may be), and b) because they don't believe their voice matters anyway. Perhaps secretly, but all the same. Your girlfriend's opinion on Ben Roethlisberger's guilt of rape will, she is well aware, have zero legal effect. But it's your potential no-option situation, not hers, on your mind when you challenge her living room accusations for lack of evidence. A challenge which she can't answer because rape is the thing that it is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/adria-richards_n_29...
"He has three children and is now unemployed. "
And then she was acquitted and the nation lost its mind? And if you ask anybody on the street "is Casey Anthony a murderer?" you'll get the answer "oh I know she is, I studied the evidence and the prosecutor is a moron?" You know how so many people want justice for the girl that now Casey Anthony has to hide, everywhere she goes, for the rest of her life?
That's what people are working toward with the Internet. You should not care if someone is accused of something because accusation is an easy thing to do. Being convicted of a crime is a different story. Yet, we have an entire ecosystem of people who have built up a defensive wall around the sacred act of accusation by calling it "coming forward," and absolutely destroying anybody who speaks out against that holy act being considered as important as it is.
I don't know how to fix it, either, but I do know now, more than ever, it is frightfully easy. And that a frightening portion of people are perfectly willing to spend their limited time on Earth debating something that impacts them absolutely zero, including this accusation.
Yes, I'm aware of that bias, and no, it has no bearing on the observations at the top of this thread.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=female+...
i'm guessing the respondant didn't even notice my use of gender neutral nouns.
this is a completely unfalsifiable statement, the standard stock-in-trade of people on the internet promulgating a specific political agenda.
As long as no further evidence or testimony surfaces, this will be forgotten by almost everybody within a week, and in a month or two, nobody will even think about it except for the accuser and the accused.
Want proof? You raped me. Remember when you did that? Hey everybody! Beachstartup actually raped me. It definitely happened and I'm very traumatized by it. Not a day goes by where I don't encounter some trigger that reminds me of the time that beachstartup raped me.
See? Nothing happened. Both in meatspace and online, accusations that aren't backed by evidence might gain temporary attention, but they won't last. You certainly can't just decide to make someone's reputation "instantly, completely and forever ruined" on a passing whim.
Adhering to a presumption of innocence when trying to determine facts about the world more generally is obviously nonsense.
I was not advocating presuming guilt in any context - that would be even more nonsensical.
In this case a presumption of innocence means "things are the same as I understand them to be based on previous evidence until I am shown that they are now different." You are not born guilty so you must remain in a state of innocence until you commit a crime. And because that crime must be proven you are innocent until proven guilty.
In this case neutrality is the same thing as believing in someone's innocence.
This is fundamentally different than, for example, the distinction between a lack of a belief of God and a belief that there is no God - because we know something about people, all people, from experience, whereas we know nothing about God.
If you interpret "presumption of innocence" as purely a check against the base rate fallacy, then sure - it applies anywhere humans are doing reasoning.
I think that it serves other important roles in regard to punishment in particular, and those other roles are harmful in situations where you are seeking truth as opposed to asking whether to punish.
In particular, consider the obviously fallaceous:
"Should we put more resources toward investigating rape allegations? Well, in each of those cases where we have not put enough resources to determine the veracity of the allegations, we need to assume the innocence of the accused. By that reasoning, we can conclude that 100% of uninvestigated allegations are false, so we clearly should not spend any more resources on them."
Lets say we know from experience that about 10% of the prevously uninvestigated cases end up proving guilt. Does that mean the allegation itself means the person being accused has a 10% increased probability of being guilty, merely because they were accused? In other words, does merely accusing them make them less innocent? I would have to say no - their objective innocence or guilt has nothing to do with whether or not an allegation was made.
You said: "those other roles are harmful in situations where you are seeking truth as opposed to asking whether to punish."
To use your example about investigating rape allegations, the presumption of innocence doesn't stop the legal system from investigating (possibly true) allegations to begin with, so why would it stop our political system from being open to the possibility of devoting more resources to investigating rape allegations, or journalists from pursuing a story to determine the truth of what happened?
In other words, the possible truth of an allegation shouldn't nullify the presumption of innocence because possible truth is not evidence. We are in no better position now that this particular allegation has been made than we were before it ws made - we still have no idea what happened. And that's true whether we're a prosecutor or just a regular person wanting to know what happened.
In fact I'd say in all cases the presumption of innocence is not harmful to seeking truth and in fact enhances it as it prompts the production of further evidence.
Assuming anything less than innocence seems more harmful to seeking truth as it allows instances like the Duke Lacrosse case or (perhaps) this recent Michael Arrington ordeal to take place, which causes more skepticism when future victims make a legitimate accusation.
Of course an allegation is evidence. If it was not evidence, we would expect to do as well investigating cases where there have been no allegations as cases where there have. That's crazy.
And what you've done above isn't "unpacking things" - you're using the same terms in the same ways with all the same assumptions.
This is not productive. I'm done here.
My use of "unpacking" was not serious and in fact meant to be over-the-top condescending, as yours was.
I agree that it is not productive to continue this conversation. But for the record if you decide to argue against a bedrock ethical principle like the presumption of innocence, you should expect some pushback.
In the future you could probably earn more respect in debate, and perhaps even friends, by being less snarky and more respectful/charitable towards your opponent
Unquestionably.
"Which one do we weigh more?"
The one that is stronger evidence, in the precise mathematical sense - P(B|A)/P(B).
In the case of accusation, "the odds you are accused, given that you are guilty" may be low - let's say that only 10% of women so assaulted come forward. But the number of people accused is far less than one in ten.
In the case of denial, "the odds of denial, given innocence" is very nearly the same as "the odds of denial, regardless", so the odds don't shift back much.
So it is more likely after accusation and denial than before accusation and denial. Note that this doesn't mean that it is more probable than not, it means that it is more probable than it was. That depends on the base rate that we agree needs to be incorporated. But there being a low base rate doesn't change what is or isn't evidence, or the strength of that evidence.
"We're in the same position as we were before the allegation was made. We still have to assume the accused is innocent, because that's what we assumed before the allegation was made."
If that were true, it would make no sense to look into allegations - you'd be equally likely to find guilt looking into a random person.
'My use of "unpacking" was not serious and in fact meant to be over-the-top condescending, as yours was.'
Mine was not at all intended to be condescending. It was very specifically intended to say, "We aren't getting anywhere referring to 'presumption of innocence' without talking about what we mean by presumption of innocence", which is what I then tried to do.
"I agree that it is not productive to continue this conversation."
And yet we continue to. This isn't reflecting very well on either of us, I suppose.
"But for the record if you decide to argue against a bedrock ethical principle like the presumption of innocence, you should expect some pushback."
I was not arguing against the presumption of innocence. From my POV, I was arguing against misapplication, overextension, and dilution of the presumption of innocence. We are both of the opinion that "the presumption of innocence" as we understand it needs protecting.
"In the future you could probably earn more respect in debate, and perhaps even friends, by being less snarky and more respectful/charitable towards your opponent"
Pot, possibly lighter kettle. I fully agree we should be respectful and charitable. I try. I fail. When I fail, call me on the particular violation. You responded to perceived snark with snark, where snark wasn't even intended!